VOYAGER NEVER COULD ESCAPE THE SHADOW OF TNG
As we celebrate fifty years of Star Trek, CultofWhatever is looking back on each of the shows and film franchises that defined the Final Frontier.
We’ve talked about the Original Series and how, when it was great, it embraced the sixties social revolution. On the other hand, when the Original Series stumbled, it slipped into every silly cliche that doomed science-fiction from that era. The Next Generation took a little bit to find its mojo, but when it did it managed to surpass the original by expanding the franchise’s horizons. Deep Space Nine followed soon after, and though it was the red-headed step-child of the brand, it dared to be different and was rewarded with loyal fans, many of whom regard it as the best of the bunch.
And now we come to Voyager.
By the mid-90’s Star Trek was as big as it had ever been. Six movies had been completed, a few of which were big successes both with critics and ticket-buyers, the Original Series’ reruns were a regular mainstay on afternoon TV, Deep Space Nine was recently launched, giving the franchise two shows on TV at the same time (a first for first-run syndication), and the award-winning The Next Generation had just finished its sixth season. As far as fans were concerned there was no end in sight.
That’s probably how it felt to Paramount and Rick Berman too. Paramount was the parent company in charge of the franchise, and Berman was the man at the wheel (who had taken control of Star Trek officially after Gene Roddenberry passed away in 1991). For years Paramount had been trying to launch their own network and back in the 1970’s they almost did. Had they, the Paramount Television Service would have premiered in 1978 with its flagship show “Star Trek Phase II” launching alongside it. Plans fell through when not enough advertisers pledged money to support the new network. It didn’t help that Paramount’s original idea was to start with only one original show—Star Trek—and fill the rest of the airtime with movies of the week and infomercials.
Fast Forward almost twenty years and Paramount was ready to try again. FOX had broken into the network TV market a decade prior and (eventually) established itself as a popular alternative network. Paramount bought several independent TV stations across the country and in 1995 launched the United Paramount Network. The flagship show? Star Trek of course. It was the hottest property the company owned; why not Star Trek?
Rick Berman could see the writing on the wall with The Next Generation. The cast was getting older and more expensive, and the Original Crew was basically finished as movie stars. The next step for the crew of the Enterprise-D was to transition to feature films. That would have left Deep Space Nine as the sole Star Trek show on TV. DS9, however, was not the ratings juggernaut that TNG had become and Berman envisioned another Star Trek show that would continue the core concept behind TNG (namely, a ship in space, discovering a new adventure every week). The plans of Paramount meshed perfectly with the plans of Berman and Star Trek: Voyager began preproduction work during The Next Generation’s final season.
For the next seven years Voyager would be—along with WWF Smackdown—the two biggest shows on the network. For five of those years the show would be directly compared to its sister-show, DS9 (which was still airing in first-run syndication, while Voyager was exclusive to UPN). Whereas DS9 took the franchise in several new directions (partially thanks to how little Berman cared about it as he focused most of his energy on keep Voyager humming), the UPN Star Trek show was often criticized for playing things too safe and for stubbornly refusing to evolve beyond the Next Generation formula that was almost a decade old when Voyager launched.
It didn’t help that Voyager basically inherited two-thirds of the Next Generation writing staff, and more importantly, the TNG head writers (Michael Pillar and Jeri Taylor) both moved over to work on Voyager. Continuity and consistency were probably the words tossed around to explain the transition, but it came across as derivative. Plots for episodes often felt like rejected stories from their days working on The Next Generation. There wasn’t enough new blood in the mix to help the show find its own identity, and the people up top were too ingrained in “the way things are done” to really embrace much change anyway.
A wise man said “Experience is the greatest inhibitor of creativity and innovation, because you learn from experience what NOT to do.” Berman, Pillar and Taylor had lots of Star Trek experience, but by the time they applied it to Voyager, fans were ready for something new.
Instead, they got something “different.” It wasn’t a step up, it was a step sideways. The drapes were changed but the house was the same. A female captain, a black Vulcan, a half-klingon (woman!) engineer. The crew actually hearkened back to the Original Series in how it stereotyped the main cast. Just as the original crew had the token Asian, Russian, African-American, alien, Scotsman and country bumpkin, Voyager had its token Asian, woman, African-American, native-American, etc. It worked when Roddenberry did it in the 60’s because it was a time of social upheaval and he was trying to say “in the future everyone gets along.”
By 1995 the future was here. Women weren’t just slaves to the kitchen, blacks weren’t disenfranchised with Jim Crow laws, Russians were no longer the country’s mortal enemy. The days of needing the token-whatever character should have been ended with the original series. The Next Generation was a show that aired in 1987 (eight years before Voyager) and it didn’t pander the way Voyager did with its cast. Sure it had it’s “black guy engineer” and “Klingon in Starfleet” and “Android” characters, but they were allowed to evolve and develop personalities and quirks and “character” over the course of the show, making their race incidental.
After seven years Ensign Kim never moved beyond being “the Asian one who never got promoted.”
In fact, Kim is the perfect example to point to if you wanted to show how Voyager never evolved. The guy never got promoted! Lt. Paris was demoted and re-promoted in the span of the show, but Kim stayed an ensign the whole time. When Garrett Wang asked Berman why he was never getting what all other lower-ranked characters in Star Trek got, Berman just shrugged his shoulders and said “we have to have an ensign.”
After Star Trek DS9 ended a few of its writers were given the opportunity to work on Voyager. One of them was Ronald D. Moore, who had written some classic episodes of both TNG and DS9. He entered the Voyager writing team with the expectation that he would resume working with his old TNG writing partner Brannon Braga (together they had penned two TNG movies, including the beloved First Contact, and some of TNG’s best episodes). Moore had been promoted to co-Executive Producer on DS9 and Braga was a co-Executive Producer on Voyager but when Moore tried to put some of the ideas he learned on DS9 to good use (such as character development and story-progression over the course of episodes/seasons) he was shot down by Braga and Berman, who basically told him the DS9 way was not what Voyager was all about. Toward the end of his short stint as a Voyager writer, Moore expressed frustration that he was essentially having to pitch show ideas to Braga (who was supposed to be his equal as a team member, and who was certainly his inferior as a writing talent).
Moore only contributed to a couple episodes (one of which was Barge of the Dead, probably the best B’Elanna episode in the whole show) before walking away in frustration. A few years later he would develop the reimagined Battlestar Galactica for the Sci-Fi network, using many of the ideas he wanted to see Voyager explore but which Berman refused to consider (a ship that decays over the years, genuine conflict between the people, resource scarcity, multi-episode plots and arcs). BSG went on to win countless awards (including the coveted Hugo Award) and is hailed as one of the best science-fiction shows of all time.
Voyager remains the show that “could have been.”
By the end of its run, few of the characters were even being explored anymore. Chakotay, the first officer of the ship, became a character of less and less importance as the show progressed. The aforementioned Kim had his aforementioned promotion-snub, Tuvok was a static character, Neelix too. By the end of it, only three characters were positioned by the writers as important: Cpt. Janeway, Seven of Nine and The Doctor. To be fair, The Doctor is one of the best characters in all of Star Trek (thanks in large part to the brilliance of Robert Picardo), Seven was a very unique character (a detached Borg) and Janeway was the top-billed captain of the show. It’s just sad that so little effort was put into the whole rest of the crew.
Even one of the two core concepts of the show was fizzled out by the end of the second season. Originally Voyager was to be about (1) a starship, lost in the far-reaches of space, trying to get home, while (2) housing a mixture of rigid, by the book, Starfleet officers and roughian, scrappy, outlaw Marquis. The natural possibility for tension and conflict was teased in the opening season, but by the end of the second everyone was fine with everyone else. Other than a slight variant in their rank-insignia, you’d never know this wasn’t a whole crew of rigid, by the book, Starfleet officers. Maybe because that’s all Taylor, Braga, and co. knew how to write. Or maybe that’s because it was all Berman allowed them to write.
Either way, for seven years the show tried to be “TNG, part two,” but rarely did the charm, originality, spontaneity and simple fun of The Next Generation find its way to Voyager. A few episodes stand out, however. If I was to recommend any Voyager episodes, I would recommend the three on the following page. They perfectly encapsulate what made the show good, when it was good…
LIVING WITNESS / TINKER TENOR DOCTOR SPY / LATENT IMAGE / SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME / AUTHOR, AUTHOR
I’m cheating because I can’t decide which of these Doctor episodes is my favorite. All of them are great so let’s just call it a five-way tie.
In the first, Living Witness, the Doctor is awakened in what is apparently seven hundred years in his future. An alien race has called him to be a witness in a trial against Voyager (whose crimes had become renowned in that region of space). The hook of the episode is clever, as is the twisted and distorted history that the episode plays around with (depicting Janeway as a commander as ruthless as a Klingon, for example). The Doctor gets more than the spotlight, as he has to carry almost the whole episode, since the rest of the crew were depicted in harsh lights by the aliens. Doctor’s quest to clear his ship’s name and then later his conflict with whether or not to share the evidence he’s discovered (evidence which might open old wounds) is well-represented.
Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy is another great Doctor episode. In this one the Doctor wishes to be reprogrammed slightly so that, in the event of an emergency, he can swap his green (blue? turquoise? The colors changed between 1987-2000) medical colors for red command colors. Janeway says not but the Doctor tweaks his program just enough to allow himself to at least daydream about it. Unfortunately an alien race intercepts the Doctor’s dreams and interprets them as real. In the middle of a real conflict, the Doctor must pretend to actually be the Emergency “command” Hologram and bluff his way out of the fight. There’s a little Corbomite Maneuver in the way the conflict is resolved, and the show gives Picardo plenty of opportunity to do what he does so well: Act like the most important guy in the universe.
Latent Image is exactly what Star Trek is supposed to be about: It explores the human condition, even if the “human” in question is actually a hologram. In that sense it reminds me of TNG’s stellar episode “The Measure of a Man” (not in plot, but in sci-fi depth). It’s not quite as astounding as that one was the first time I saw it, but it’s still a great episode. The gist of it is, the Doctor comes to discover that the crew had wiped a portion of his memory. Feeling violated, the Doctor demands to know why, but is denied a straight answer. At the end it is revealed that an accident had taken place, where two crew members were in critical condition. With only the time and manpower to save one the Doctor chose to save Ensign Kim at the expense of the other. Later, racked with guilt, the Doctor comes to believe his friendship with Kim biased him against the other crew member. His work as chief medical officer suffered and, being without an extra chief medical officer for another 65 years, Janeway made the tough choice to rape his mind and pretend like it never happened. Janeway’s actions seem wholly improper, but they can still be debated on “situational ethics” grounds. Meanwhile the Doctor, upon learning the truth, again lapses into guilt. Faced again with the option to wipe the Doctor’s mind, Janeway instead decides to help him cope. He may not be a human, but what difference does it make if he feels human emotions? The difference is only academic, and his soverignty as a “living” “person” should be taken into account. By the end of the episode, they are. Brilliant show.
Speaking of feelings, who says a hologram can’t fall in love. Someone to Watch over Me explores that issue, as the Doctor attempts to help Seven reintegrate into human society by exploring “dating.” While he preps her, pep-talks her, and teaches all the finer points of romanticism, his own feelings start to bubble up. There are some contrived moments, such as a bet between Doctor and Paris over whether or not the Doctor can secure Seven of Nine as his date to an upcoming shindig. That’s romcom plotting 101, but it doesn’t detract from the great chemistry between Picardo and Jeri Ryan. In the end, the Doctor doesn’t get the girl; Seven finds out about the bet and that pretty much ends any chances of his winning her heart. The show fades out with the Doctor singing the title song with much poignancy. The plot is all about exploring Seven of Nine’s humanity but really it’s the Doctor’s that commands your attention.
The last great episode of Voyager was Author, Author. The basic premise is that the Doctor has written a book (because of course he has) and it basically parodies the Voyager crew in an unflattering way. Because the crew had gotten so much closer to earth, they are able to have intermittent communication with Starfleet. The Doctor’s book gets published (before he could edit out the bad portrayals of the crew) and all of the Alpha Quadrent comes to think that the Voyager crew are a bunch of Jerky McJerkfaces. High comedy ensues. There’s not much “to” the plot, but it’s a light and fun 40 minutes. Considering how much of Voyager season seven is not those things, it deserves mention here.
BLINK OF AN EYE
One of Voyager’s few “the ship arrives at a strange planet” plots that feels worthy of Star Trek. It’s not half-baked, nor does it feel like an idea someone would have passed on in the TNG writer’s room. Here, the ship orbits a planet surrounded by an odd tachyon field that alters the way it experiences time. Things on the planet move in time accordingly, but everything else happens at incredible speed. Those above the planet experience time normally, but from their perspective the planet below is experiencing everything incredibly slowly. As Voyager moves to investigate it, they become trapped in orbit due to {insert technobabble explanation here}. With a starship in orbit for a few hours (Voyager time), the planet below experiences life with the ship above their planet for thousands of years. As life evolves on the planet they come to worship Voyager like a god in the sky. In the end, the alien life on the planet evolve enough to send ships into space, which free Voyager from orbit. The ship flies away, but they leave behind a world that is forever changed by their “brief” presence. I picked this episode because, like Latent Image, it embodies one of the things I love most about Star Trek: The celebration of bizarre premises that “work” because everyone plays it straight. In the wrong hands the premise would collapse under the weight of silliness, but they play it straight and produce one of the best “old school sci-fi” episodes in the Star Trek franchise.
TIMELESS
Every series has that one episode. It’s the one with the budget, the big high-concept premise. It’s the big “event” episode. TOS had The Doomsday Machine. TNG had Yesterday’s Enterprise. DS9 had Trials and Tribble-ations. And though Voyager tried to have several of these (Dark Frontier, Year of Hell, Workforce, etc), the best they ever did was Timeless. Of all people, the hero of the piece gets to be Ensign Kim. It’s the perfect “big event Voyager episode” premise: In the future the crew has made it home, but with much casualties. Desperate to do it over and do it right, Kim, Chakotay (the other overlooked character) and the Doctor embark on an illegal and dangerous quest to send key information back in time (through Seven of Nine’s magic Borg implants, which the writers greatly overused throughout the history of the show, but whatever, it’s cool here). They succeed but the new information doesn’t change the past: Voyager is still essentially destroyed and many are killed as they reach home. The Doctor encourages Kim to try again, only this time to send information that would prevent Voyager from even entering the Alpha Quadrent. Kim sacrifices his life, his “time,” and the chance for at least some of Voyager to return home, all to keep the crew closer home, but not there yet, and still very much alive. Unlike with Year of Hell, the “reset” button that is pushed here doesn’t erase everyone’s memories. Kim from the alternate future manages to sneak a message back to Voyager, and he gives his younger self the needed confidence to keep on keeping on (despite being stuck an ensign far longer than standard Starfleet protocol). As far as “big event” episodes go, this is one of the best, and certainly is one of the best Voyager episodes ever.
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Left unmentioned are three notable episodes: Scorpion (parts 1-2) which introduced Seven-of-Nine to the show. It’s a great episode that would probably be next in line if I were to expand the list. The biggest knock against it is more what it introduced to the show from then on: By the end of Voyager’s run, the Borg had become overused as a recurring villain (they only appeared in five episodes in six TNG seasons, but they appeared in twice that many in four seasons of Voyager). In order to give one lone Starship a fighting chance against all of Borg Space, they were watered down into lightweights, easily outsmarted by Janeway. Also part two of Scorpion really drags down part one, and neither are as good as the two-parter they are always compared to: TNG’s Best of Both Worlds.
The other left-out episode is Year of Hell, and though I am very fond of it and will rightly praise its cinematic production (and a great performance by Kurtwood Smith), it’s a controversial episode for some: It embodies the “reset button” approach that Voyager’s creative team applied too many times. At the end of the ordeal everything is as though it never happened—literally—rendering the drama and devastation pointless. It would be one thing if characters had retained their memories, but instead they are all none-the-wiser.
The other episode I didn’t touch on is Threshold, a Star Trek episode so bad it has been removed from canon (not even Spock’s Brain gets that distinction!).
There’s only one Star Trek show left (so far!). We’ll talk about Enterprise next month. Until then, follow me on twitter and like/share this article!