Reddit reviews Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN

There's actually a pretty good book about about the merger and all the behind the scenes drama: https://www.amazon.com/Season-Finale-Unexpected-Rise-Fall/dp/0061340995

> Do you have specific instances?

Yes. Early on the hark about how rare their photon torpedo are and how many they have; Here's some dialogue from 'The Cloud'

> CHAKOTAY: We have a compliment of 38 photon torpedoes at our disposal, Captain.
> JANEWAY: And no way to replace them after they're gone.

They fired 85 photon torpedoes by shows end. Did they come across a stockpile? No. Did they have an episode that addressed how they made more? No. A stray line of dialogue even? No.

Voyager had a shuttle complement of 8 at full capacity. They blew up 10. Is this ever addressed, no?

More to the point, they are supposed to be lost and struggling for survival in the delta quadrant. That's kind of the whole premise right? Voyager looks brand new from first to last episode. After the first season 'surviving' in the practical sense is nothing more then lip service. For 99% of Voyager episodes they might as well be in the alpha quadrant.

Once the Maquis put on Starfleet uniforms (end of the second episode I believe) they are indistinguishable from the other crew members. Betraying it's premise of having two crews with different ideals and temperaments having to work together to survive. That's what it was supposed to be about. If it took a few seasons for that to happen, fine. That's progress. Two episodes is lazy. The Maquis is only mentioned in passing, maybe half a dozen times after the first season.

I could literally go on and on and on.

> "Can be boiled down to" is a weak argument

Eh, you're right and wrong. Yes, ultimately every character revolves around a few key features. Voyager is worse. Voyager made no attempt to push them out of those boundaries, that's the difference. (The Doctor is the exception here, I will give you the doctor). Need an example? Does Chakotay have any episodes that aren't based around being a native american? I'm not saying none of them should have been- but every single person who tried to do something with a Chakotay central episode that wasn't related to him being native american was shut down. There are numerous examples of this, from the actor himself who practically begged to do more then say 'yes ma'am' to janeway on the bridge to directors. Here are some segments from a Robert Beltran interview:

> ...I think writers have an obligation to fill out all the characters if they’re regular characters on a series. I think several of the characters were diminished – Chakotay and Tuvok and Kim and Neelix.

> I risked being fired because I wasn’t happy creatively.

Here is the director of the season two episode Initiations talking about this issue:

> My problem with the Chakotay character was that I wanted to forget the Indian aspect and make him the Maquis that he was supposed to be. I knew Chakotay would have to eventually cooperate on the ship, but I hoped he would do it unwillingly most of the time. I talked to the writers about it, why we weren't playing that conflict. They went with the Indian thing, which was kind of intriguing, but in my opinion, never paid off because it was done too subtly.

The same case can be made for Tuvok who can be described solely as 'vulcan.'

> I would say having a woman lead a Star Trek show is taking quite a chance.

That was neat, and I can appreciate that. But they cast a woman captain and then what did they do with her? Nothing. When they cast Avery Brooks the fact that he was black actually occasionally made it into the show in a meaningful and respectful way. It was great they cast Kate Mulgrew, but for 99% of episodes they could have given her lines to Archer and it wouldn't have made a difference.

> Bold statement, but it comes down to speculation.

This is patently false. This is not remotely speculation. I'm not going to comb through the book and pull out quotes right now but if you don't believe me read Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN. This is not up for debate. It is a fact.

> I'm going to need some sort of documentation on this. You make them out to be inept at worst, conniving at best and I just don't follow that.

Ok.

Here is Ronald Moore again:

> "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.... The show was a little short, so they had to add some pages, which was nothing unusual."

Is that sufficient?

> Now, I think that's just speculation on your part, same as the UPN theory.

It's not speculation. You now have proof.

> The first two seasons of TNG were wildly inconsistent in their writing, performances, and even set design and yet that whole show is lionized among superfans.

Yeah the first season of TnG is pretty tough. I'll stand by season two though as being more good then bad. The difference is TnG got better. Voyager got worse and stayed bad. It never improved.

> Voyager remains to be underappreciated. I'll take "Caretaker Pt. 1 and 2" over "Encounter at Farpoint" any day of the week.

Yeah, well Caretaker was a pretty decent pilot episode with a lot of promise that they show immediately threw out an airlock. I probably would too. But comparing two episodes like that is a pretty bad argument. You can take the best episode of Voyager (which by the way is Living Witness) and put it next to the worst episode of The Next Generation (Sub Rosa) but that doesn't mean Voyager is a good show.

It's not underrated. It deserves the flack.