Airing from the Winter of 1995 to the Spring of 2001, Star Trek: Voyager was the final Star Trek television series to follow in the footsteps of Paramount Studios new line of Star Trek television productions that began with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Produced by primarily the same individuals responsible for ST:TNG and also ST:DS9, Voyager took another huge step forward in the Trek-verse, breaking new ground not only by placing a female Starfleet captain at the helm, but also by dropping the show’s flagship namesake into an unexplored region of the Star Trek universe.
Here’s a look at 10 reasons why this show was much more awesome than most of us remember…
10. The Delta Quadrant
By whisking Voyager into an unexplored region of the Star Trek universe with the pilot episode, the creators of the show immediately raised the stakes for the show. With a female captain at the helm, Voyager found itself in literally uncharted territory, populated in large part by Federation nemesis, The Borg.
By Voyager’s projections, it would take nearly 75 Earth years to return home, thus placing Voyager in a place where literally “no man had gone before.”
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9 Comments
I agree mostly. HoweverTom Paris was not Marquis. He was a Federation miscreant doing time in a starfleet rehabilitation facility. It was his skills as a pilot that got Janeway to seek him out to pilot in the Badlands.
Jim, in the pilot episode it’s identified that Paris was working with the Marquis, but only for a week before being caught.
To quote the character page from memory alpha:
“After being expelled from Starfleet, he wandered around “looking for a fight” and found it in the Maquis. He was with them for a few weeks before he was captured on his first mission and sentenced to the Federation Penal Settlement in New Zealand.”
One of my favorite characters on the show, actually. Voyager was a rare one-of-it’s-kind sort of journey through the galaxy. Loved this article, and thanks for keep the spirit of the series alive.
Seven of Nine was not awesome, but the rest of the series was.
What a terrible article! The Maquis weren’t a ‘race’ of people, they were rebels who came from Federation Colonies and/or were mercenaries looking for a fight. The map on page one is totally wrong…the Hirogen were nowhere near that close to Federation space. All the other reasons listen pertaining to characters: they were severely under utilized. The characters were good, but never developed to their full potential (except maybe Seven and the Captain). Everything about Voyager was just ‘meh’, when it SHOULD have been ‘wow!’ It had its moments, but all in all the writers of that show never took any risks and boy did it show. Deep Space Nine was far superior in every way.
I say all the following as a Star Trek fan who likes, but feel let down by Voyager.
You see my problem with the Marquis is that, everything you say about them in this article SHOULD have been right but just wasn’t. I could count on one hand the number of episodes where it actually matters that it’s two different crews. The Marquis were terrorists and outlaws – wouldn’t it be really interesting to see some genuine tension between a Starfleet crew and terrorists with different morals and approaches to getting home, but by episode 2 Chakotay is in a federation uniform and taking tea with the captain.
It’s the same with a lot of these points really. Stranding Voyager in the delta quadrant was a good idea, but it all seemed a bit too…comfortable. A damaged ship with a stressed and hungry crew struggling to keep going would be more interesting than simply “Set a course for Earth, Tom, and stop to take photos of that interesting nebula.” Also how many episodes is it before they use an alpha-quadrant baddie? (7, Counting “Caretaker” as two eps to be generous).
What you are basically saying is bring back Stargate Universe? I still can’t bring myself to watch the “last” episode.
I’d love to see if they ever bring any elements of this, TNG or DSN into the new films continuity. I think it would be weird to have new actors playing the next generation of characters.
A lot of these reasons sound more like the ideas that show was based around but never really explored for whatever reason (remember Year of Hell? Brannon Braga wanted it to be a season long arc, but UPN said no). I don’t really give shows propss for their ideas unless they actually do something with them (see Tron Uprising for an example of that).
Personally, ‘The Next Generation’ was awesome, ‘DS9′ was okay, ‘Voyager’, in everything about it, is the best. The newer shows, since Voyager went off, ‘don’t cut it’ in my eyes. Janeway is the force to be reckoned with. Between Janeway, the Doctor, Chakotay, etc etc etc… They all had their share of the lime light, and the stars were bright… (pun)… This is my favorite Trek show… I’m still watching them… over and over… it never gets old… Thank you Admiral Janeway…