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Re: VOY S7: Endgame

It would have been better if the time travel wasn't the main explanation for the return. After all, why go back exactly to that time after the Borg nebula was found and that Voyager was already afraid of it? Future Janeway could have gone to almost any time, even back to Caretaker time and beat up the Kazon to buy time to return home using that technology (and then destroying the array anyway). It would have saved everybody, but killed the series. And using the time travel also diminish the "I will get you home" promise from Janeway... sure she did it (even twice!) but the one we saw was cheating!

But at least the time travel made it possible to kind of explore what happens after the return of Voyager (even if it's deleted) while keeping the getting back home with the end credits that the authors favored.

Re: VOY S7: Seventh Season Recap

Voyager was entertaining. Beside a few episodes, you rarely feel like you just wasted an hour of your time to watch it. And for a now "old" TV show, it looks very good. The effects were nice. The ships could move and fire at the same time, which wasn't always the case in TNG. But it is true that a lot of its potential was wasted. The idea of two crews (that shouldn't get along well) lost in space trying to get home just sounds better suited to arcs and continuity instead of reset-button episodes. While not damaging the exterior of the ship, they could have had more recurrent problems with some systems. And it would make more sense to have the transporters offline at the beginning of some episode and have to do without them instead of just losing them a few seconds before you could fix everything with a good beam out (well, if Harry ever got a lock). The results are the same, but there is more continuity and you can build some challenge too. Or introduce a miracle technical solution coming from a Delta quadrant species if you really want things to be perfect on Voyager (it did feel like a cruise ship way too much. That was good for TNG, less for Voyager).

If they wanted everybody to be a big family faster and avoid major conflicts, then the Maquis should have been a transport ship crew and not rebels. It does makes sense in a way for them to be so friendly in the latter seasons, but they underused the tension before that. Or never had any memorable event that would make everybody best buddies. Sure some tensions existed and the Seska situation happened, but she wasn't a true Maquis anyway. And sometimes I think they took good ideas and made them happen too early or too late in the series (like the Equinox, it should have been before Voyager started the big jumps across space)

And really the big thing about Voyager is the characters. Some of them are better than their TNG counterparts (like the Doctor is more interesting than Dr. Crusher, even if his stories are more like those of Data) but those that are worse and just way way worse (Harry Kim for one). Harry had a few moments, but most of the time he was there to say bridge technobabble, to be the fool or to be Tom Paris' Milhouse. They really should have taken a few things from Paris like the love for the 20th century and give it to Harry to help him have some character. Talking of Paris, he was an okay character (he did have a story arc too!) but he was used in so many different situation that made little sense (why send the chief pilot to sick bay duty instead of taking a science guy to be the nurse or a Maquis. But I guess they didn't even have field medics in the Maquis). His concept was simple and had potential after all (Han Solo in Star Trek).

For the other characters, Janeway wasn't always consistent (they could have used that to explain future Janeway in Endgame, how she already started bending some rules), but she was alright. But the problem was that her 2 highest ranked crewmembers were almost never doing anything. In TNG, Riker had the away mission duties to make him do something, but in Voygaer Chakotay pretty much had nothing to do most of the time (a few speeches and rare episodes). He had a clear backstory that gave him potential, but it was just there and nothing special happened. Especially in the latter seasons. Tuvok was better than Chakotay, but he was really underused. He was interesting, and it would have been nice to see him more focus on him when he is in Vulcan-mode (Many of the Tuvok episodes are about Tuvok not being Tuvok/Vulcan-like if I remember correctly). Instead of just looking at character trying to be human, why not focus on being happy at not being human even if surrounded by human? Tuvok was preparing the phasers and leaving the bridge with a phaser in hand most of the time we saw him during the last few seasons...

Really, many of the characters could have been good. They pretty much all had a little something that could make them interesting (Even Harry as the fresh ensign, but that didn't went very well). And I do think some of them were very good too. Like the Doctor (beside the fact that I find it strange that he got emotions so quickly compared to Data without any extraordinary program manipulation) and Seven of Nine (maybe overused, but worked well). B'Elanna was a nice character too (and a show focusing on her was usually a good one), even if she wasn't used to her full potential (but the pregnancy of the actress in S4 didn't help. At least it was good reason to underuse her). Even Neelix and Kes could have been much more interesting. But Neelix was mostly relegated to comic relief and Kes was written off.

And I also find it strange that for a series where the crew can't be changed there wasn't a better use of recurring guest characters. TNG did it well with Chief O'Brien and Nurse Ogawa. I know that production reasons explain a lot of it, but the show was made for that. Voyager did ok on that front with Naomi Wildman and Icheb, but it could have been interesting to have more character of that type (like expanding on Mother Wildman). I also wonder who is in charge on the bridge when all the main characters are together in the briefing room or the mess hall.

Voyager is a nice show, that's for sure, but its biggest problem is that some of the flaws are visible and if you decide to think about the show, you won't miss them.