Voyager Review

The problems of Voyager are basically threefold:

First:  the character of Captain Janeway failed to materialize in any meaningful way.  Her dramatic potential was reduced to throwing a temper tantrum when her crew disobeyed her, which they seemed to do constantly.  Neither Kirk nor Picard had to struggle with such contrary bridge officers.

Rather than a strong leader, Janeway always seemed to be an insecure micromanger who hated to be questioned.  She didn't trust any of her senior officers and looked at every contrary idea as a challenge or a betrayal.  The writers apparently felt that these confrontations made Janeway appear stronger, but in my opinion actually weakened the character.

I can recall a couple of occasions where Data actually disobeyed Picard's orders, and in the end Picard commended him for independent thinking.  This made Data, and the audience, feel more confident and comfortable following Picard as a leader.  Picard turned it into a moment for reflection and empowering independent action.  Janeway would have immediately made it personal and confrontational, turning it into a "my way or the highway" situation.  Her call was the last word, and she had to make every call.

A clear example came when Tuvok felt that Janeway was not in a position diplomatically to make the proper choice for the good of the ship, but that it was his duty as her friend and senior officer to make that choice for her.  And he was absolutely correct about that assessment, as Janeway herself acknowledges.  Nevertheless, he still got the "betrayal" speech, and was made to promise, like a bad boy, never to do it again.

When we finally introduced Seven of Nine, we found a way to explore her more nurturing and maternal side, and Janeway's character was improved immensely.  After that point, she was able to take a more supportive view of B'Elanna, began to have dinners with Chakotay, began to embrace the humanity of the Doctor, and a host of other subtle improvements.  If we could have had this Captain Janeway in the first season, the overall experience of the show would have been considerably improved.

Second:  None of the original cast developed any meaningful competencies.  Yes, they all had superficial personality traits:  Tuvok's deadpan, Kim's bumbling good nature, Chakotay's charming whipped puppy.  But once you got past that, many of these characters (Harry Kim, Chakotay, Janeway, Tuvok, Neelix) lacked any real core competencies.  Quick, think of a problem where the most qualified person to solve it is Harry "Can't Get A Lock" Kim.  What, exactly, does Chakotay bring to the table beyond his affable good nature and avuncular rapport with the crew?

Those characters that were given actual competencies (B'Elanna Torres, Tom Paris) were used in such a one-note fashion that they ultimately became boring.  "Set a course, Tom."   "Yes, Ma'aaaamm"   Tuvok had his mind meld, and Chakotay had his vision quest and once we'd done a couple things with them, the extent of their characters was explored.

In contrast, the Doctor and Seven were both characterized by their competencies.  In much the same way that Dr. McCoy was a highly skilled doctor and exobiologist, The Doctor could always be written into a scene to heal the injured or the sick, to analyze foreign DNA, to scan for microbes, when dealing with computer-based intelligences, or non-biological sentience.  This gave the writers an easy avenue to turn to when things needed to happen.  Contrast the Doctor with, say, Harry or Chakotay; the writers had to struggle to find a reason to write these characters into the plot, unless it was to receive a withering retort from Seven or Janeway.

Similarly Seven, with her Borg background and implants, was nearly omni-competent in whatever technological thing the writers needed to employ to move the story along.  Receiving transmissions halfway across the quadrant through subspace?  Seven can do it without blinking an eye - just say the word "implants".  Need to cure an intractable disease:  "nanites".   Searching for a needle in the haystack that is the Delta quadrant?  "Astrometrics lab".  In fact, Seven's character was singlehandedly able to supplant Tuvok and his logic, Harry and his sensors, and B'Elanna and the entire engineering section.  B'Elanna was called upon to describe problems, Seven brought solutions. 

The problem is not that the characters of Seven and the Doctor were too powerful, it was that the original characters weren't powerful enough.  When a story needed to be told, they didn't have any tools to bring to the problem.  Their interesting backgrounds didn't empower them in ways that were helpful to Voyager or to the writers.

Harry, as Operations officer, should have been a constant source of ideas, insights, and information, including sensors and long range scans.  Harry was portrayed as a top-of-his-class Academy graduate and an advanced engineer who designed shuttles. Tuvok was a full-blooded Vulcan who had lived over a hundred years and explored multiple careers before this particular mission.  Tuvok, as Tactical officer, should have been a constant source of military tactics, with an arsenal of weapons at his disposal, constantly seeking to improve them, strengthen the shields, and extend their tactical capabilities.

Chakotay was a charismatic and powerful leader who was able to hold together a Maquis rebel cell whose members were driven by hate and despair and a thirst for vengeance, and not only kept them alive but directed them to strike at a much larger Cardassian military force with so much success that the Federation targeted him specifically for capture.  Chakotay should have had the members of the Maquis retain some aspect of their uniforms as a symbol of their identity and his authority.  He should have had red shirts willing to risk their lives on his order and to die for a cause he believed in.

I believe that the writers just didn't know how to make these positions an integral part of their narrative.  More damagingly, I think that Tuvok and the others suffered from Worf syndrome, where the most powerful hand to hand fighter on the ship failed to win a single meaningful battle throughout his career on the Enterprise.  The writers had determined that Voyager wouldn't be a show about space battles, and Tuvok's position was a necessary casualty.  They were so insecure about Janeway as the first female Star Trek captain that they couldn't allow strong male characters around her.

Rather than embracing these characters as heroes, we preferred to think of them as everyday folk trapped in a starship and doing their best.

The third problem with Voyager was that it reduced its male characters to flat stereotypes.  It became obvious that Voyager would be a show about strong female lead characters, with Janeway, Torres, and Kes being far more developed and given far more screen time than the other main characters.  This became even more pronounced with the introduction of Seven of Nine and even Naomi Wildman.

In contrast, Tuvok remained the Dad, Chakotay was the older lothario, Paris was the young buck, Harry was the naive youngling, and Neelix was the clown - all established positions on the boyfriend hierarchy. These roles were far more important to the interaction of the characters than their actual assignments and competencies on the ship.  And because these roles were more important, they limited the ways that the characters could be used in plots, and how they could develop over the course of the show.  As writer/producer Brannon Braga said of Harry Kim, "Well, somebody's gotta be the ensign."  Similarly, somebody has to be the Older Romantic lead.  We can't have Chakotay grow out of that into something with more depth.