lol. Almost three years later and I did it! I finished voyager!
Basically I would either forgot about it. Get busy watching other things, or just living life. But this weekend I polished it off with the last 4 or 5 episodes.
There were 172 voyager episodes. My guess is I probably ended up watching 100 to 110 of them give or take 10 on either side. I watched a lot of the later season episodes by comparison mainly because the show seemed to get better by then and I was invested in the characters by that point.
Overall my take is I enjoyed it more than I thought I would which has a lot to do with avoiding the absolute worst of the worst episodes and a strong bit of just general Trek nostalgia. It was just fun to watch Star Trek again even if it wasn't the best Star Trek. I would have been much harsher on it if I had watched it when it was running and be more annoyed at its obvious flaws but honestly it mostly just felt like slipping into a comfy bath.
Like I said I totally get why everybody hates on it. There are lots of reasons for valid hate or dislike. And there are certainly things even I dislike about it quite a bit. How everything always wraps up with a nice neat bow at 2 minutes from the end of the episode. How the aliens they meet always feel more human than the humans on the ship. etc.
The standouts of the show are 7, & the doctor to a large degree and Janeway to a smaller degree. Those were generally the characters who were either given the most interesting plotlines, or the most fun plotlines. 7 in particular carries the show during the middle years and is probably the main reason why I think the later stuff is better than the earlier stuff. I barely remember plotlines from the early years. But the later years are memorable because of 7 of 9 and whenever an episodes focuses around her. Having never watched the show I always assumed this character was the lowest common denominator of Trek sex appeal but she is better than that and written better than that. Actually better than anything else on the show.
The final episode is kinda crap imo. It sort of symbolizes voyager in general. It's heart is in the right place. It wants to do the right thing. But it never really has the balls to ever do it or go where it needs to go. That's my overall take on Voyager as a show itself. Although I'm glad I watched it and there are also lots of moments I enjoyed as I watched it that I could mention but won't.
Up next: finish deep space nine. I have just like the last season of that to go. And then tackle enterprise. I want to finish enterprise before the new star trek show debuts. Although at the current pace that is going maybe I will have years to finish that too!
I'm finding it hard to maintain my interest in the final stretch of DS9 so I just said fuck it and started watching voyager. I expanded my plan. I'm going to watch any episode that has a decent imdb rating or any episodes that makes any significant best of List that I can find. Probably also all the season finales and such. So I'll save the DS9 finale to finish up with the Voyager finale at the same time.
So I will end up watching hopefully a decent amount of the "better" episodes while utterly avoiding the absolute worst ones. In a way its a bit fun. I've never watched a show in such a mercenary way before and whatever I think about Voyager it is almost completely new to me so that's always a little interesting at first.
I completely skipped the first season. The only episode that seems to be well regarded there is the pilot which I saw when it originally came on.
I watched about 7 or 8 episodes in the second season. It's been okay. The show is highly flawed of course but it does occasionally hit the high themes trek is known for.
"Tuvix" is a surprisingly decent episode about rights. It's almost a poor man's Measure of a Man with a twist. "Prototype" is a classic style trek episode that would feel at home in TOS and works well because of that. And Death Wish is another take on Measure of a Man except with suicide being the right fought over. Those were sort of the high points so far.
I'm already at season 4 of voyager. You have to remember though I skipped a ton of episodes including the first season completely.
Season 4 seems a little more interesting so I'll probably slow down a bit and watch more episodes as 7 of 9 is an initially interesting character and I'm curious to see the development there.
Like I say I have a very skewed perspective so far on voyager because I've skipped the bulk of episodes and only watched decent or highly rated episodes in a relative sense.
As sort of an overview the big problem I see is that it was just traditionally too typically trek for a premise that needs a lot more.
The show shares a lot of similarities conceptually to firefly and battlestar galactica and while those shows are not completely perfect they feel fully realized. Voyager has its foot in two worlds. It wants to be old style trek and evoke those same emotions and feels but it also wants to try to be modern and more emotional and dark. It can never really find the proper footing to bridge that gap. That being said I've enjoyed most of the episodes I've actually watched so far but once again with the caveat that I've skipped a bulk of the episodes and skipped nearly all of the absolute shit episodes that would completely sour me on the experience.
About halfway through season 4. Things have slowed down considerably because I've watched every episode in Season 4. Once you actually start watching episodes at that frequency, the fatal flaw of the reset button because much more obvious and annoying. It's not like TOS or TNG don't have reset buttton episodes and hit them a lot. Even the finale episode of TNG is a reset button of sorts.
The problem is voyager's premise is much more dependent on the on-going nature of the situation. Things should matter a lot more from one episode to the next. And when they don't it becomes frustrating. There is a good 2 part episode I watched called Year of hell where a lot of dark and interesting stuff happens. But its all one big reset button because a time machine device resets everything. You can be sure when watching Voyager that if an episode has anything really provocative and interesting happen it will all be reset by the end of the episode by whatever plot device to reset things they come up with. You can't cheat people like that. It's like a continual dusty finish from wrestling or something to make a weird comparison.
I know this isn't an original observation about voyager because I had heard it myself before from many people but until I started watching continual episodes instead of just jumping around, I hadn't noticed it.
