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Grandtheftcow
Junior Cadet
Joined: 07 Aug 2005
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 Sat Aug 13, 2005 11:32 am |
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Shortly after leaving the Star Trek franchise Ron Moore did an interview and openly discussed his work on Star Trek, the future of Star Trek, and its problems. Here�s the Voyager part that brings forth the shows biggest problems.
| Quote: | Moore went over to VOYAGER expecting to do his job as a writer and co-executive producer. He studied the episodes of VOYAGER, asked questions, and tried to familiarize himself with the show�s characters. This did little to allay his underlying doubts about the show. He says, "I can only criticize VOYAGER so much. I only worked on it for a given amount of time, but I do have a lot of experience at STAR TREK. I did work on it for a couple of months, and I did study it intensely for a few months leading up to that, trying to get my head inside of it. Writing an episode forces you to kind of get your hands dirty and see where the flaws in the show are."
In fact, Moore is very qualified to comment on VOYAGER, knowing TREK inside out and having worked on all of the last three incarnations of TREK. Moore knows TREK as well as anyone can. He recalls early impressions. "I would see things from the outside, and I would just pick up things from talking with Brannon, and his frustration. He wasn�t happy a good chunk of the time either. I think VOYAGER has always had a certain rocky, internal structure. That�s not to say you can�t produce a quality product out of that. If you can put it on the screen and make it work, the internal politics don�t matter. But when what�s on the screen isn�t working, then the whole equation gets thrown into question."
Who judges if VOYAGER is working? Moore answers, "The audience is still watching VOYAGER. The ratings are down, but the ratings are down across television, in every category, on every network, and every program. As long as the studio believes that the franchise can make money, and that there is an audience there, they will continue to produce it. If they believe that it is seriously in great difficulty, Paramount will make changes. But each of us has to make our own judgement on what is good and bad. I know what I like in the series, and what I don�t like in the series. I don�t really care for where the franchise is now, where it�s going. It�s not about anything. It feels to me that it is a very content-free show. It�s not really speaking to the audience on any real level anymore. What�s happening is that it�s very superficial. It talks a good game. It talks about how it�s about deep social problems, and how it�s about sociological issues, and that it�s very relevant. It�s about exploration, and it�s about the unknown, and all these cute catch phrases, but scratch the surface of that and there is really not much underneath it all. VOYAGER doesn�t really believe in anything. The show doesn�t have a point of view that I can discern. It doesn�t have anything really to say. I truly believe it simply is just wandering around the galaxy. It doesn�t even really believe in its own central premise, which is to me its greatest flaw."
Moore notes, "I�ve said this to Brannon for years, because he and I would talk about the show when it was first invented. I just don�t understand why it doesn�t even believe in itself. Examine the fundamental premise of VOYAGER. A starship chases a bunch of renegades. Both ships are flung to the opposite side of the galaxy. The renegades are forced to come aboard Voyager. They all have to live together on their way home, which is going to take a century or whatever they set up in the beginning. I thought, This is a good premise. That�s interesting. Get them away from all the familiar STAR TREK aliens, throw them out into a whole new section of space where anything can happen. Lots of situations for conflict among the crew. The premise has a lot of possibilities. Before it aired, I was at a convention in Pasadena, and [scenic illustrator, technical consultant Rick] Sternbach and [scenic art supervisor, technical consultant Michael] Okuda were on stage, and they were answering questions from the audience about the new ship. It was all very technical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn�t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn�t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. That didn�t happen. It doesn�t happen at all, and it�s a lie to the audience. I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. VOYAGER is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spick-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of *beep* the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn�t act like this."
Moore says that he recognized VOYAGER�s biggest problem by the end of the first episode. "By the end of the pilot, you have the Maquis in those Starfleet uniforms, and� boom�we�ve begun the grand homogenization. Now they are any other ship. I don�t know what the difference is between Voyager and the Defiant or the Saratoga or the Enterprise or any other ship sitting around the Alpha Quadrant doing its Starfleet gig. That to me is appalling, because if anything, Voyager�coming home, over this journey, with that crew�by the time they got back to Earth, they should be their own subculture. They should be so different from the people who left, that Starfleet won�t even recognize them any more. What are the things that would truly come up on a ship lost like that? Wouldn�t they have to start not only bending Starfleet protocols, but throwing some of them right out the window? If you think about it in somewhat realistic terms: you�re on Voyager; you are on the other side of the galaxy; for all you know, it is really going to take another century to get home, and there is every chance that you are not going to make it, but maybe your children or grandchildren will. Are you really going let Captain Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] rule the ship for the next century. It seems like, in that kind of situation, the ship would eventually evolve its own sort of society. It would have to function in some way, other than just this military protocol that we repeat over and over again because it�s the only thing we know. You�ve got the Maquis onboard. From the get-go they are supposed to be the anti-Starfleet people. They behave exactly like the Starfleet people with the occasional nod towards B�Elanna [Roxann Dawson] making a snide remark about Starfleet protocols, or Chakotay [Robert Beltran] getting a little quasi-spiritual. But in essence, they are no different than any other ship in the fleet. The episodes that you watch week after week are so easily translatable to NEXT GEN that it�s almost a cookie-cutter kind of thing. It�s a waste of the premise. That�s not to say they don�t have any good episodes. There are some good episodes in the mix, and I have seen a couple. The show can work.
"But the ship wouldn�t look like that," Moore continues. "It�s not truthful. On DEEP SPACE NINE, that was the watchword. We wanted it to be true. There was a lot of truth in DEEP SPACE NINE, a lot of difficult questions that we tried to answer, and some difficult questions that we couldn�t answer. DS9 was a real place, a truthful place; it was a place where we explored things on a real level. But VOYAGER doesn�t go there. It just will not go there. You are trying to tell the audience on the one hand, �We�re so far from home, and it�s going to take us so long, and we really wish we could get home. It�s rough out here.� Janeway wrings her hands about all the things that she has sent the crew through. Then, it�s off to the holodeck. You can�t talk with any kind of a straight face about food rations and energy conservation, and having a real kitchen in the mess hall, when at the same time you�ve got the holodeck going. It�s such a facade, and no matter what kind of technobabble *beep* you come up with, the audience intuitively knows, again, that�s not truthful. There is no reality there. That would not happen. Even on GILLIGAN�S ISLAND, they didn�t have the Skipper and Gilligan sitting in the Minnow, watching color television. But on VOYAGER, who cares? We want the holodeck to run so we can go do period pieces, and we can do dress up and we can do fun adventures on the holodeck, and we don�t want to give that up. Okay, but don�t try telling me at the same time that you are really out scraping by and barely making it out there on the frontier, when none of their hair is out of place, and their uniforms are pristine, and the bridge is clean every week."
Moore laughs, "What is the difference really between Voyager and the rest of the fleet? When that ship comes home, it will blend right in. You won�t even know the difference. They haven�t personalized the ship in any way. It�s still the same kind of bare metal, military look that it had at the beginning. If you were trapped on that ship and making your way home, for years on end, wouldn�t you put something up on the walls? Would you put a plant or two somewhere in a corridor? Wouldn�t you try to make it a little more livable? That is the challenge that I think they have really dropped. They just won�t deal with the reality of the situation that ship is in. They look for stylistic twists, and ways to make the show interesting visually, and up the action quotient, and up the sex quotient. But that�s not the problem. If you can�t believe in your own premise, you then certainly can�t take the next step and try to have a point of view about life, about what it means to be human: what is the nature of the human heart, and good and evil, all of the great questions that STAR TREK is famous for trying to grapple with in a science fiction context. When VOYAGER tries to go there it is so completely superficial that it doesn�t mean anything. Even when they are trying to really mine something, it�s undercut by the fact that nothing else surrounding it is real, and that you can�t accept these people in the positions and what they are doing. Kirk and company had a point of view. Kirk was a man of opinions. He was a man who had his own take on right versus wrong, when to take action, and when not to. I think he is respected for that. People that looked up to that character, looked up to him because he was a leader who said, �We are going this way, and this is the right thing to do.� Picard is a different kind of leader. Picard was a more thoughtful guy who saw there was a little more gray in the world, but still had a very high sense of ethics, such a high sense of ethics that I think it bound us a little too much; it bound the character a little too tightly. Sisko [Avery Brooks] was a man who saw the world in shades of gray, who was always thrust into ambiguous situations, who was always having to grapple with questions of faith and reason and right and wrong, and had to do it in an interesting in compelling way. The people around him supported that premise. They were all flawed characters on a flawed station dealing with a flawed situation. It gave them permission to explore that ground. I don�t know what VOYAGER is about. It just doesn�t seem to speak to me. I watch the show; I try to understand what it is saying to me, what it�s trying to explore. But it doesn�t seem to explore the human condition. It doesn�t have a point of view on the subject. It falls back on STAR TREK boilerplate; it falls back on the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive has now become this cop out for doing anything in an episode, for having any point of view."
In addition, Moore is bothered by the show�s lack of continuity. "The continuity of the show is completely haphazard. It�s haphazard by design. It�s not like they are trying desperately to maintain continuity of the show. They don�t care, and they�ll tell you flat out that they don�t care. Well, that is misreading the core audience. The STAR TREK, hardcore audience loves continuity; they love accumulating data on these ships. They love knitting together all the little pieces, and compiling lists, and doing trivia. That�s been a staple of the STAR TREK culture from the get-go. People really love the details. They love the fact that the details all add up and make one mosaic, and that the universe holds together. When you don�t give a *beep*, you�re telling the audience: don�t bother. Don�t bother to really learn this stuff, because it�s not going to matter next week, anything that happened this week."
The writer-producers of VOYAGER maintain that they don�t want continuity, so people can watch the shows out of order, for example, now in five-nights-a-week syndication. Says Moore, "I�ve just never believed that argument, because it seems to me that you�re just underestimating the intelligence of the audience. You�re just saying the audience is a bunch of idiots. Who is going to be watching the show in strip syndication five nights a week? People that like that show, and presumably have watched more than one show. Got forbid the stations have to run them in order. It�s an excuse that sounds plausible but is basically a way for them not to have to care about maintaining continuity, because it is tough to maintain continuity. It�s very hard to write in continuity, because of the nature of television. You are writing ahead, and you are writing at the moment, and you are changing things in post. It�s really hard to keep all the ducks in a row, which we found at DEEP SPACE NINE. In that last ten-episode run, where it was almost completely serialized, that�s a tough act to carry off. But it�s also worth the effort, because the payoff is the world has more validity. The audience can sense there is truth in it. It�s a better show, and it will last longer as a result. If you are really just so concerned that this week�s episode won�t make sense because you didn�t see that episode three years ago, why can�t STAR TREK do like ALLY MCBEAL, or THE PRACTICE, or ER, all the big successful shows do. Put a little recap at the top of the show: �Previously, on STAR TREK: VOYAGER...��even if it�s an episode from two years ago. You just quickly get the audience up to speed, because the audience is not stupid. The audience has watched television for a long time. They understand that they have missed some things, that perhaps this is a reference to a show that they didn�t see. They aren�t just going to throw up their hands and move on. If you are pre-supposing that, you are aiming towards the person that is grabbing a beer, and isn�t really paying attention, and is walking out of the room every ten minutes and coming back and sitting down; all you are going to do is dumb down the show. You are reducing it to its lowest common denominator, and what�s the point of that? What do you get out of that? You just get a so-so kind of television experience."
Moore asks, "How many space anomalies of the week can you really stomach? How many time paradoxes can you do? When I was studying the show, getting ready to work on it, I was watching the episodes, and the technobabble was just enervating; it was just soul sapping. Vast chunks of scenes would go by, and I had no idea what was going on. I write this stuff; I live this stuff. I do know the difference between the shields and the deflectors, and the ODN conduits and plasma tubes. If I can�t tell what�s going on, I know the audience has no idea what�s going on. Everyone will say the same thing. From the top down, you bring up this point, and everybody will say, �I am the biggest opponent of techno-babble. I hate technobabble. I am the one who is always saying, less technobabble.� They all say that. None of them do it. I�ve always felt that you never impress the audience. The audience doesn�t sit there and go, �God damn, they know science. That is really cool. Look how they figured that out. Hey Edna! Come here. You want to see how Chakotay is going to figure this out. He�s onto this thing with the quantum tech particles; it�s really interesting. I don�t know how he is going to do it, but he is going to reroute something. Oh my God, he found the anti-protons!� Who cares? Nobody watches STAR TREK for those scenes. The actors hate those scenes; the directors hate those scenes; and the writers hate those scenes. But it�s the easiest card to go to. It�s a lot easier to tech your way out of a situation than to really think your way out of a situation, or make it dramatic, or make the characters go through some kind of decision or crisis. It�s a lot easier if you can just plant one of them at a console and start banging on the thing, and flash some Okudagrams, and then come up with the magic solution that is going to make all this week�s problems go away."
Moore ran straight into these problems when he started working on VOYAGER. While writing notes on drafts of the scripts, as is customary, he was immediately being assaulted by techno-babble. He says, "When we were working on �Equinox Part II,� I remember the pages coming in, and I would take notes, and send the notes back. There were just pages of it that I have no idea what�s going on. It was just page after page of, �Reroute the so-and-so, and engage the blankety-such, and the subspace dewop is doing its other thing.� Just pages would go by, and in reading the script I�m flipping through it to find something of substance. It just fell on deaf ears. To be honest I haven�t even sat down and watched �Survival Instinct� or �Barge of the Dead.� I have them; I just haven�t watched them. They sent me the final drafts of the scripts, and I glanced through the script of �Survival Instinct,� and I knew that they had done some extra shooting after the show was over. The show was a little short, so they had to add some pages, which was nothing unusual. But they added the pages with all this techno-crap in sickbay! I hate it so much. It is so off-putting. It doesn�t add anything to the drama."
He continues, "I read Bryan�s first draft [of �Barge of the Dead], and I was giving him notes, and I liked things about it. I was looking forward to helping him through the rewrite, but it was right exactly at that point that the whole thing came down, and I left. The last week on the show, I was just waiting for the legal things to get straightened out, contractual issues here and there. The distancing had begun. Dailies were coming in on my own show, and I couldn�t even watch the dailies. It was becoming too painful. I just stepped away. I haven�t sat down and watched those two shows."
Although Moore did not watch "Survival Instinct" or "Barge of the Dead," he laughs and says, "I watched �Equinox� because I was involved with that. When we started the season, they had done �Equinox I,� but they had no idea what �Equinox II� was supposed to be about, which on one level is somewhat appalling, but it�s not the first time that�s happened. That had happened a couple of times on NEXT GEN, and Michael was actually kind of proud of it on NEXT GENERATION, that he left �Best of Both Worlds� hanging without any idea how to wrap it up. I don�t like to work that way, because it is really working without a net. We sat down and approached �Equinox II� and tried to find what the show was about. What was the point of meeting this ship and this crew and this captain, and what did it mean? We finally landed on this idea that the two captains were going to go in opposite directions. Janeway was going to really feel the same kind of pressures and stresses that Ransom [John Savage] felt, and watch how it could turn a good, by-the-book Starfleet captain into what he had become. At the same time, his interaction with the Doctor [Robert Picardo] and Seven of Nine would rekindle his humanity. It was this nice, double track approach, but it just got lost in the translation. It has no coherence. You�re not sure what�s really going on. You�ve got some potentially good scenes. The scenes between Janeway and Chakotay had some real fire to them, and you kind of felt like she is going off the deep end, a bit. Then she relieves him of duty, and there is this crisis of command between the two of them. But at the end of the episode, it�s just a shrug and a smile and off to the next. I just hit the ceiling. I remember writing in the margins, �This is a total betrayal of the audience. This is wrong. You can�t end the show like this. If you are going to do all this other stuff, you can�t end the show like this, because it�s not fair, because it�s not true, and it just wouldn�t happen.�
"But the show is what the show is. It just became about action sequences. Brannon is very proud of the fact that the show is more action-oriented than the others, and it�s faster; it�s stylistically a little more daring than the other STAR TREK shows. All that�s great. I give him a lot of credit for changing the look and feel of the show. When he came aboard VOYAGER, the show started to look and feel different; it has a different sensibility stylistically. Even in the storytelling, it was starting to become a little more edgy. That�s great, because STAR TREK needs that breath of fresh air to keep it vital. But it can�t all be flash and sizzle. It has to be about something at some level. The things that Janeway does in �Equinox� don�t work, because it�s not about anything. She�s not really grappling with her inner demons. She�s not truly under the gun and suffering to the point where you can understand the decisions that she�s made. She just gets kind of cranky and bitchy. She�s having a bad day; these things keep popping around on the bridge, and we just keep cutting to shots of people grabbing phaser rifles and shooting, and hitting the red alert sign, over and over again. It doesn�t signify anything. It�s kind of emblematic of the show. There is a lot of potential, and there is a lot of surface sizzle going on in a lot of episodes, but to what end? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to touch in the audience? What are we trying to say? What are the things we are trying to explore? Why are we doing this episode? That was my fundamental question. When I would say, �What was the point of doing the first part?� there was never a good answer for that. As a consequence, it was hard to come up with the ending to the show that has no beginning. You just start throwing things around. �Two captains on different courses� at least sounds like an episode. At least there is something in it. Janeway will take something away from that experience, but not in the current version. What does she learn from that experience? I don�t know how it�s affected her. Chakotay, for all his trouble, he just goes back to work. There is no lingering problem with Janeway; there is no deeper issue coming to the fore."
Taking this idea further, Moore relates a story about one of his suggestions. "When we were talking story before the season began, I thought, �One of the shows you should do is the trial of Captain Janeway. You should have the crew, one day, put her on trial.� That would be a real major thing in life of the ship, if the crew can do that, if they really have the power to take command away from her at any moment. If they are really willing to put her under that kind of microscope, it calls into question the entire structure of the show, the entire social fabric, the command structure. Why are we behaving in this way? Why do we hew to these rules anymore? Do the rules still apply to us? What do we find within the rules that work? What do we find that doesn�t work? What does it say about Janeway? I thought that there is ground to play there. Nobody wants to go there. On the one hand, you hear them say, �We don�t want the Captain to look weak.� They don�t want to make Janeway look foolish. But then the things that you do make her look weak and foolish anyway. It�s this strange, schizophrenic attitude about their lead character. I like Kate Mulgrew. I found her a charming, funny, very personable woman sitting on the set next to her. I think if they could let her do more of her own thing in the character, not straight jacket her so much, it would be a more interesting dynamic."
He continues, "My one episode is a Seven of Nine episode. I wanted to do it because that was the most VOYAGER-esque character. I wanted to jump in with both feet. I didn�t want to do a Klingon show the first time out. I wanted to play around with her. I have a lot of respect for Jeri Ryan as an actress. I think she does a remarkable job, for a character that could come off very one-note. There is a lot going on in those eyes. There is a lot that she can convey with just a look. All that said, that outfit has to go! I just don�t know how else to put it. How can you really take her seriously in this getup? If you want to posit a future where we wear our sexuality on our sleeves, where it�s very open, and no one is put off by people being very sexual, that�s great. That�s very much in tune with how Gene saw the future. The rest of Voyager is not like that. Nobody walks around with an outfit like that on the ship. You don�t go down the corridor and see some woman strolling by in a bikini on her way to the holodeck, which would be perfectly plausible. If you are really going to have the holodeck, and you are going to have beach parties down there, every once in awhile you should see somebody just strolling to the beach, doing their thing, guys in Speedo�s, or whatever. If you want to play that, play it, but to just have Jeri Ryan do it because Jeri Ryan is voluptuous and gorgeous and appeals to a certain demographic, is ludicrous! Nobody really wants to touch that. You bring it up in a meeting, �She�s a beautiful woman; we�ll let her look beautiful.� Yes, she is a beautiful woman. I don�t object to that. But walk her onto the bridge, and tell me that the audience�s eyes aren�t watching her walk onto the bridge. The original series did it all the time, but that was of a piece; it was of its time; it made sense in context. Uhura [Nichelle Nichols] could walk around the bridge in a miniskirt, and in the �60s nobody thought that was completely insane. That was just part of the era that show was produced, and people accepted it. Seven of Nine, what are you thinking? It kills me, and it was always just vaguely embarrassing when you would have to do serious scenes with her in the room. You are just sitting there thinking, �Well, you essentially have this naked woman at the table.� Everybody is just supposed to pretend like that is okay, but you don�t play anyone else like that. Why doesn�t Janeway come to the bridge in a halter-top one day. Seriously, why doesn�t Tom [Robert Duncan McNeill] where hot pants periodically. The characters don�t act that way. They don�t were their sexuality on their sleeve except her. I�ll even go one more. Let�s say that given all that, you still say: she�s a Borg; she�s expressing herself in a different way than the rest of the crew. She is shaking them up a little bit, and she is not afraid of her sexuality, or her impact, or the way she looks. Why isn�t she sleeping with the crew? Why isn�t she like jumping into bed with Chakotay, or jumping into bed with Tom, with anyone? If you are going to do it, do it. Otherwise, it�s just eye candy with no content. It doesn�t mean anything. It�s just a way to watch her walk around the bridge. It�s a disservice to Jeri, because she gets the brunt of it. She�s the one that has to answer the questions about the costume, and has to defend it, and has to talk about that it doesn�t really bother her. It may not bother her, and that�s fine, but I think it does a disservice to her, and to her character, because it�s the primary characteristic of her character, and that�s unfortunate. It�s the primary characteristic in the audience�s mind, I feel. I just think it�s completely unnecessary. The character is a good enough character, and she is a good enough actress, that you don�t need to do it, at least not every week. Even if �this is my preferred uniform,� it doesn�t mean she has to wear it 24 hours a day, and wear nothing else. If you are going to go there, go there with everyone. Take them all along. It�s an opportunity VOYAGER won�t seize. Why aren�t they developing their own social customs and morays? Why aren�t they doing their own thing out there? They are a long way from home. Develop your own habits and your own ways of dressing. People probably would pad through the corridors barefoot periodically, and treat the ship more like it�s an apartment building where they all live, and are stuck together for a very, very long time, and would stop being so straight-laced. In that kind of context, her outfit wouldn�t stand out so much, because you would see people letting their hair down a lot more, and being more individualistic, and walking around with earrings, and growing beards occasionally. Doing things to stand out from the crowd, instead of just being this homogenized cookie-cutter thing, where she jumps out at you, because, why isn�t everybody else like that?"
What about the relationships should have developed during this long trip? Notes Moore, "Do the characters really believe they are not getting home for seventy years? They don�t act like it. They all believe they are getting home in a couple of hours. There is no big deal for them, because otherwise wouldn�t Janeway at some point have said, �Realistically, this is becoming a generation ship. Time to start having kids, because somebody is going to have to man this ship 60 years from now, and it ain�t going to be me. It ain�t going to be Chakotay, and probably nobody on this bridge. So let�s start making babies.� That�s a realistic thing that they would really do, and they are nowhere near that. The Tom and B�Elanna thing, when we were breaking �Barge of the Dead,� I just remember having these arguments. This should have big impact on their relationship. Her thing with Klingons, her mother, and her spirituality, how does that reflect to them? It was, �Yeah, it�s a relationship, but we don�t want to do a show about the relationship. It�s not that interesting, and it doesn�t really matter anyway.� If the character is in a relationship, if it actually matters to B�Elanna, and it actually matters to Tom, then something like this that happens to her is going to have an impact on the relationship. It�s going to get worked out in the context of that relationship. But STAR TREK: VOYAGER is afraid of any of the characters getting hooked, on any kind of real, steady, permanent basis. �No, no, no. No relationships between the characters. We don�t like it. It didn�t work with Kes and Neelix. And the Tom and B�Elanna thing it�s--well, we don�t really care.� It�s a weird attitude."
Moore adds, "VOYAGER won�t accept itself. It won�t believe it�s really in this situation in this area of the galaxy and that these are really the prospects in front of them. They just won�t embrace it. They fight against it. There have been more episodes that have taken place on Earth, or alternate Earth, or past Earth than I think the original series did in its whole run, and the original series was set over in the Alpha Quadrant. Kirk and company never went to present day 23rd century Earth, their contemporaneous Earth, ever. Gene wouldn�t do it. Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy, and they have already run into some alien race recreating Starfleet Academy. They�ve run into Ferengi, the Romulans. It doesn�t feel like they are that far away from home. It just doesn�t feel like they are in that much trouble out there. At its heart, VOYAGER secretly wishes it was NEXT GENERATION. If you really get down to it, VOYAGER on some level just wishes it was NEXT GEN. It really wants to be back in the Alpha Quadrant: �Just let us be normal STAR TREK.�"
A good example of the yearning for THE NEXT GENERATION was obvious in "Pathfinder," an episode so much like TNG that Marina Sirtis [Deanna Troi] felt like she was doing her old show. It also may have started the process of getting the ship home. Comments Moore, "Brannon goes back and forth on whether they should come home or not. They have been talking about it for a long time. I said this years ago: it�s giving up on the show. If you bring that ship home before the series is over, you have given up. You�ve rolled over and said, �We can�t make it work. Let�s just go back and do TNG all over again.� It comes back home, goes to Earth, there�s like a two-part episode as they go down to Earth and revisit their old lives. What�s going to happen at the end of that two-parter? All the characters are going to re-up and say, �I love Voyager. It was such a family. I learned so much from you. Let�s not break up. Let�s stay here.� All the Maquis people will take regular commissions in Starfleet. Chakotay will chose to be second in command to Janeway. B�Elanna will embrace those warp engines. Now Starfleet has given you a mission, and off you go. Essentially what was the point of this entire series? It�s a wasted opportunity. That�s what pisses me off. You are not really taking advantage of this golden opportunity that you are handed as writers and as producers. You can do so much with STAR TREK. It is such a broad, flexible canvas. If DEEP SPACE NINE proved nothing else, it proves just how far you can take this series, and how far you can take the franchise. It can look totally different. It can be serialized, and it can be a war show, and it can do stuff about religion and politics, and it can be interesting and engrossing, and gray and ambiguous. You don�t have to turn VOYAGER into DEEP SPACE NINE to take advantage of the fact that those opportunities exist. You just have to have the courage to do it. They are not speaking to me. They don�t have anything to say anymore."
Ronald D. Moore asks pointedly, "What is STAR TREK exploring? What are the things it�s trying to make the audience think about? What relevance does it have to you and me? If it doesn�t have a relevance to you and me, in our lives, what�s the point? Why am I watching this, as opposed to ER? ER will touch me on a human level. There are episodes of NEXT GENERATION that are very relevant, that make me think, that give me pause, that touch me as a person. �Inner Light� is a fantastic show about the span of one man�s life, and the span of a whole civilization, and what they gave to Picard to hold special in his memory. It�s a beautiful, moving episode. But VOYAGER is not doing that. It�s not taking advantage of it. It�s an enormous opportunity. It gives you a chance to really say something, to explore things with the audience, to challenge your audience�s expectations, to make them think about life and who they are, because it�s surrounded in this nice wrapper. It�s only science fiction. It doesn�t exist. These aliens aren�t real, so they don�t threaten you. You can put things into that context because they don�t threaten the audience the way it does if you set it in contemporary Los Angeles. Wrap it in science fiction, wrap it in STAR TREK and you can do just about anything you want. You can have flat out racism on television. You can have real thoughtful discussions on racism and what are at its roots. But you have to choose to do it. You have to want to talk about those things. You have to have a point of view. You have to have something to say. Are you telling me STAR TREK can�t afford to fall on its face periodically because it is trying too hard? I�d rather have the show try too hard, and fail, then just not try at all and just kind of settle for more of the same. I think that is where we are. We are settling for more of the same. It�s just very safe story telling. There is a cynicism about it that truly troubles me. We loved DEEP SPACE NINE. We loved the show. We loved all the characters. There are actors that always give you trouble, and there are always times when the producers and actors are sometimes at each other, because, �You don�t understand my character.� �No, you don�t understand the character I am writing.� That�s fair game. On VOYAGER, there are characters they have given up on. They will just say that to you, flat out. I started asking questions about B�Elanna, who she is. I was saying, �I�m having a little trouble watching episodes and getting a handle on her, and what she is about.� The response was, �We don�t have an idea. The past doesn�t matter. Just do whatever you want.� What are you talking about? How can you give up on your own show? How do you give up on your characters? There is such a cynicism about the show within the people that do the show. I�m not just talking about the writing staff. It permeates the production. The craft people and the artists down on the set, making the wardrobes and doing the sets, and the art department and visual effects take a tremendous amount of pride in their work, and delivering top quality product week after week. They are truly amazing. I can�t emphasize that enough. But even they don�t believe in what those sets, costumes and visual effects are being put to work, how they are being used. They are being wasted on this; it just isn�t going anywhere. I didn�t intend this to be a giant VOYAGER bashing session, but it is the only STAR TREK around. That is STAR TREK. If you are going to be the flagship, this is what it�s about."
Moore does have praise for some things about VOYAGER, however. "STAR TREK looks fantastic. It is one of the best-produced shows on television, and it is certainly the cream of the crop when it comes to science fiction. Nothing looks like it; nothing comes close to sounding like it. The visual effects are just stellar, top-notch. The sets look fabulous. The costumes are always lush and big and beautiful. You can make arguments on creative decisions, but technically, the way the show is actually produced and put on the air is stellar. It�s a big, beautiful show that isn�t doing anything with all this beauty. It goes for the actors as well. I�ve maintained from day one that the VOYAGER cast overall was probably the best cast of all of them. You really had a strong group of players that could really take the show someplace. I loved the other two casts that I worked with, but I looked at the VOYAGER cast and thought, �These group of players all really like each other, and they are all going to have fun together on the set. They are all willing to try anything that you give to them.� I found that in the brief time I was working with them, too; they will do anything for you. They work very hard; they take a lot of pride in their craft. Do something with them! It�s just such a wasted opportunity. It angers me because of the waste of it all. Here is this golden franchise; here is this series that has stood the test of time, and you are given seven years by the grace of God. Unlike any other show, you are going to get seven years out of the series. You can say anything you want with it. You�ve got a core audience that�s going to tune in every week. It�s the flagship show of UPN. Do something! Go somewhere with it! |
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Mentalist
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 10 Aug 2005
Posts: 82
Location: Somewhere being a nut
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| Sat Aug 13, 2005 1:41 pm |
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Ron Moore is a god. I read that when he released it and I heard some of his other stuff on newsgroups and the like.
Moore new what made good television and he wasn't going to waste years of his life living down to some allmighty rule-book Berman forced on him that stifled every creative drop from him.
They really did a number on Trek by losing Moore.
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:49 pm |
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When VOY was being aired originally, I watched it fairly regularly for awhile. But now? I can't stay awake. When DS9 ended, I was sad, because DS9, IMO, is the best Trek we've yet to see.
I tried, hard, to get into VOY, just because it was "Trek", but I only made it to about mid season five before just giving up.
So, yeah, I thought VOY was too cute. It was like having candy all the time when what you really needed was a steak. Too much sugar makes one sick.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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TrekkieMage
Office Junkie
Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 5335
Location: Hiding
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| Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:01 pm |
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I found that the plot of DS9 was a bit too dark for me to watch all of the time. I can take it in small doses, and what I have seen lately I do enjoy. Perhaps the trick is to watch DS9 and Voyager alternatly. A little dark and then a little light 
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magenta
Commander
Joined: 24 May 2005
Posts: 404
Location: AUSTRALIA
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| Sun Aug 14, 2005 12:47 am |
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I agree,it was cute a lot of the time.And where did all those extra shuttles come from,they got major damage to the ship on numerous occassions.Yet it was always back to ship shape form by the next episode.
It had potential to be something really good,but was bound by the Starfleet honour and loyalty.The marqis really slotted in too quickly and easily to believe.TNG was great and built the federation ideals/loyalty factors,the prime directive was put to good story lines and worked! I liked the episodes that revolved around the federation loyalty!But I also liked the Klingon fighting/honour type episodes too.Makes the show have a foundation to go back to. I still watched voyager despite its flaws,it had some good stuff too.It is about star trek after all!   
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B'Elanna Torres 7 of 9
Ballet Babe
Joined: 20 Aug 2001
Posts: 3642
Location: DISNEY WORLD
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| Wed Aug 17, 2005 1:00 am |
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nope -- definitly never thought it was too cute! It definitly had it's sweet moments, but scary moments as well! Made it very enjoyable i thought!
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"...I want so much more than they've got planned."*Belle Reprise* Beauty and the Beast
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rabbit
Lieutenant
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 208
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| Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:52 am |
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maybe this is because ds9 has darker corridors and rooms, and voyager has light ones..
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luit14
Commodore
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 2232
Location: Come on in HEEERE! :P
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| Thu Aug 18, 2005 3:57 pm |
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^lol, I don't think so, Voyager did sometimes seem too easy. And followed the rules and regulations so strictly. Voyager would have been a lot better if they had kept the bad guys bad. Like DS9. In Voy, they make Species 8472 into good guys. And they beat the Borg so many times they're not even scary. There were a few "darker" episodes though. Like "The Chute"
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Mentalist
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 10 Aug 2005
Posts: 82
Location: Somewhere being a nut
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| Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:51 am |
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The Chute happens to be one of my top 5 episodes of Voyager and a pretty high ranking overall. Alas they could have continued with great episodes like that but no...
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Fish1941
Senior Cadet
Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 24
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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| Mon Aug 29, 2005 3:00 pm Re: Was Voyager too cute? |
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| Mentalist wrote: | It only touched on darkness a few times then to compensate fo scaring perhaps its 80% timid fanbase it would overload us with Neelix's beaming smiles f cheesiness and Naomi Wilman playing with Flotta - or whatever that stupid things name was - for entire episodes in the holodeck.
They were in a dangerous unexplored Quadrant of the galaxy and they couldn't think of anything more interesting to do than have cutesy irish holidays in the holodeck?
Was Voyager too cute and should it have notched up the darkness and desperation for more than 3 minutes at a time so as to really get a feel of danger not you are my sunshine my only sunshine? |
I really find your comment EXTREMELY HARD TO BELIEVE. I had avoided VOY, because so many people had commented on how inferior it was. Apparently, all of those people were wrong. Thank goodness I had decided to avoid comments like yours and watch the series, anyway. I don't regret it.
And at least VOY didn't have such a boring cast, like TNG.
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Blancie
Commodore
Joined: 27 Oct 2004
Posts: 1119
Location: Shetland
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| Wed Sep 07, 2005 9:26 am |
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| zero wrote: | | ^naa, that's what DS9 is for. |
*Sarcastically* Yeah, and we all know how great DS9 turned out to be!
On topic: Voyager was and is FLAWLESS.
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Davay davay davay!
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dragonfang196
Ensign
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Posts: 50
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| Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:03 am |
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perhaps this version was made for a younger teen audience?
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MakeItSo
Commander
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 406
Location: Somewhere in California
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| Fri Apr 28, 2006 5:37 pm |
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| Number_6 wrote: | | Yeah, at least DS9's holodeck episodes were entertaining. The Voyager ones were just lame and sometimes creepy, particularly Janeway having a fling with a 24th century Real Doll. |
Yeah, I thought that DS9 and TNG had the best holodeck episodes. Whereas Voyager's were kind of weird. But sometimes, I just got tired of any of the holodeck episodes for all the shows put together. Always have the same plot: They're in the holodeck, something goes wrong, some holo character comes to life, tries to take over the ship or keep the person on the holodeck with them, and then in the end, they just shut down the program or fix it and then go on their daily journey. Anyway, and I DID not like Janeway having that fling with Michael Sullivan either! It was the stupid writers faults. Because I know that Kate Mulgrew did NOT want that episode to happen at all. But they didn't care. So yeah...
I didn't think that Voyager was cute neccissarily, just not as many dark episodes as DS9. The same thing goes for TNG. TNG and Voyager didn't have that many dark episodes. DS9 was supposed to be the darker side of Trek. But just because, they don't have enough dark episodes, doesn't mean the show sucked either.
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