Endgame really feels so hollow as an ending, it really feels incomplete, somehow. Like, I would love to have one episode of them adapting to life back on the Alpha Quadrant, or at least a few scenes… but sigh, that’s Voyager for you
I still can’t believe they threw at us Chakotay/Seven as A Thing in the last episode, coming out of nowhere
Honestly, Neelix is probably my least favorite character in Voyager, mostly because of how horrible the portrayal of his relationship with Kes was (because of her inexperience and Neelix’s possessiveness over her, his jealous nature that seems to want to own her in those early episodes). When they break up and in later seasons, the de-fang Neelix a bit and he assumes more of a goofy, weird uncle role, but the character was already soured to me by then.
(That being said, this is not Ethan Phillips’ fault - he was maybe one of Voyager’s strongest actors, but he simple couldn’t do miracles with scripts where Neelix was written like that.)
That being said, while there’s no love for me when Neelix is on screen, I do think that the fact that he leaves Voyager in Homestead both very unfair and incredible infuriating like, this is Voyager all over alright, in its terrible tendencies.
I mean, Neelix has spent seven years with the Voyager crew by then, seven years where he forges strong bonds with them, where he has a goddaughter and later seasons Neelix seems to love this people, to have adopted them as his family. He’s very enthusiastic about human culture, he studies Starfleet norms, and seems always very eager to know the Alpha Quadrant and the different people who lives there.
Then, two episodes before the end, he magically finds a Talaxian colony (so very very very far from Talax, this people really should not have the means to be this far in the galaxy but alas logic was never Voyager’s strongest suit), gets to know their people for over a week and decide to leave Voyager to be with them permanently, apparently too alured by the reality of finding his species again to give it up.
It’s bullshit.
I have seen lately the argument that Voyager was maybe the most conservative of the Trek shows despite having a woman as a Captain and honestly, after this rewatch, I’m seeing myself agreeing with it. Voyager has some very strong anti-immigrant tendencies - not even mentioning the mess that episodes like Displaced are, we have things like the Borg children being dumped into some random person of their species because apparently their similarity is enough to trust the fate of these children (despite Child’s Play as an episode existing….), Kes’ exploration and evolution in a higher being was a wreck that she regretted and she came back to Ocampa to live the rest of her life among ~her people~ despite the fact that everyone she knew in Ocampa was probably long dead by then, and Neelix also don’t get to be with his found family - no, back with his own species (despite the fact that he doesn’t even know them!) before the end, where he should be, and the ship gets to be back in the Alpha Quadrant with his original crew, no new additions whatsoever.
…. oh no. This is the episode where they introduce us to the horrible concept of Chakotay/Seven, isn’t it.
I think the two-parter Workforce are a very strong couple of episodes on Voyager - I’m not sure what the original context was, but these days they can be read as a critique on capitalism and workers’ exploitation, and it was a very effective one at that. I think the romantic subplot with Janeway moved way, way too fast but otherwise I think the episode was good enough overall, a pleasant surprise in this rewatch since I don’t remember liking this one so much in my first watch.
One of the reasons for Voyager being my least favorite Star Trek show (yes, imo every modern Trek show is better than Voyager and also Enterprise IS better than Voyager, fight me) is because is really frustrating to see this show throwing away every single chance it had to explore its huge potential.
Voyager had an amazing premise, perhaps the best of all Trek shows - a single Federation vessel lost in a completely unknown quadrant, uncapable of contact with anyone back home and having two different crews be forced to work together. This premise alone is incredible, but it demanded two little things - conflict between the crews and continuity of the show as a whole, and Voyager did neither of these things.
The conflict between the Maquis crew and the Starfleet crew are resolved in a couple of episodes, sometimes it gained a few mentions here and there, but that is it. It was resolved that Starfleet was The Way and that Maquis crew should Comply and Fall Into Line, or else. And alas, that was what happened, but it really shouldn’t tho - this story could take at least a full season to be fully explored, and the fact that it didn’t take more than two episodes just make it seems like the Maquis crew really didn’t have all that faith in their own cause. They look a bit shallow for it.
But the most damning thing is that Voyager needed to have continuity. The premise demanded that. I’m not saying it couldn’t be episodic - Deep Space Nine was also episodic, but with a strong sense of continuity into its seasons - but it needed to have this continuity. What we got instead was Bland TNG-like episodes where the characters were all stuck into having the same character development over and over and over - if they were lucky enough to have it, that is, because Harry Kim and Tuvok rarely were granted this opportunity at all.
Other thing that Voyager should have been is like, a damaged ship. Sort of like a lighter version of the Equinox crew, perhaps, but it should not have been that pristine and clean and comfortable all the time. By its very nature, Voyager feels like a show where the characters should know hardship and struggle, but most of time their troble are like, discovering that the anomaly of the week is or what adventure they’re choosing to play in the holodeck that day.
This bit of Voyager bashing is just to pay a compliment, actually, and to say that The Void is one of the strongest episodes of the seventh season because it delivers in the premise that Voyager always absolutely refused to do, and does it quite well actually. I didn’t remember much of this episode so it caught me unaware of how good it actually was.
The Void sees Voyager lost in ‘pocket’ in space - a place with nothing, no stars, no planets, no chances to get out of. They’re hit by enemies as soons as they come and are in a very hostile enviroment. They need to ration everything and seem to finally be in a tight spot, and work together to get out of it.
Janeway forges an alliance with some of the other lost ships and honestly I loved to see her attempts to win them over, while sticking to her principles. Kate Mulgrew was a powerhouse here - she often is, Mulgrew is perhaps the strongest actor on Voyager, and she oftens saves a little even very bad scripts with her presence, but in this case the script works with her. She’s very intense here, very commanding and showing some real leadership here. Would love to see her like this more often.
I also loved to see the alien species native to the void communicating through music - they were a nice touch in the episode, and I love that they were the key for the alliance’s victory - Janeway’s and the EMH’s kindness towards them being returned with their help in getting them out of there.
The Void is a pretty great example of the potential Voyager always had being made into practice - the show certainly could have used more episodes like this during its seven seasons.
There are some potential in Repentance as an episode, but as it so often is the case with Voyager, they do some bullshit that completely undermines the core message, like
This is obviously an episode trying to make a commentary about death penalty and rehabilitation of prisioners, right. It’s a theme with great storytelling potential, but they just… ugh. That they had a character claiming innocence and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, pointing out his people are a minority occupying a majority space in prisions often with little to no proof in a real very obvious parallel only to have this same character be a murderer after all planning to escape and kill people on his path…
I would say it aged very badly but tbh can’t think it was any good even when it originally aired
Lineage is mostly a good episode - or an interesting one at least. One frustrating thing about Voyager is that the characters are often stuck with the same character issues in an eternal loop, and it sort of is the case with Torres - but while this episode does revolve around the same things it also offers some insight in B'Elanna and her mind, and if it’s a bit clumsy and oversimplified I can appreciate the effort in trying (even if it’s too little, and a bit too late, but still. better than nothing)
But tbh one of the things in this episode that makes me go “…” is that B'Elanna tampers with EMH’s program so he’ll follow her wishes (because he was REALLY against it when she proposed her idea to him) and it’s treated like no big and it makes me go ??? I mean. Voyager makes a big case of showing and advocting that the EMH, while an artificial lifeform, is as good as a person. He is sentient and aware and intelligent that has his own personhood and gains rights along the series, so to tamper with him like that is actually a horrible act of violation and it’s like. a footnote in the episode?
captainsblogsupplemental:
The look my sci fi hating friends give me when I try to explain Star Trek plots to them
