Star Trek

@aunt Alison

Not sure what the other one is, and my memory is too faint to recall if Chakotay actually thought they could populate the planet together in the other one. If he has any knowledge of evolutionary biology, he should know that generations of incest will not preserve themselves. You can't repopulate with just two people, you are a dead end. Simple as that, deal with it, make the best of it.

The other episode you're talking about was some sort of mirror Voyager made of silver molecules or whatever. They all died to give us a glimpse of what could have been, only for the real Voyager to show up and go "hm ok, nothing here, let's move on" and the entire thing being forgotten about the next week, as always on VOY.

That one started interesting (things kept deleted from the Doctor's memory, it seemed like there was a bit conspiracy afoot) but I thought the conclusion was a bit dissatisfying, in fact there wasn't one really. Seven makes an argument that they should try to resolve the Doctor's problems and they shut him in the holodeck and take round the clock vigils talking him through it. And then it ends without him actually getting better. We assume he does though because he's ack to normal the next episode.

It doesn't ring a bell. At the of Year of Hell they kamikaze the ship to destroy an alien timey-wimey device and push a literal reset button making the whole thing never happen. Could be that you're thinking of?

I know some people are upset that Year of Hell was vetoed as an idea for a series long arc but I think it’d have gotten pretty miserable doing 24 grimdark episodes

TNG has plenty middle-of-the-road characters like Geordi, Beverly and of course Deanna, but I don't think any of them are neglected as much as Chakotay and Kim. While I do think EMH and Seven are among the more interesting characters, the show just focusses too much on them in the second half of its run.

I also like Janeway but she's let down by inconsistent writing, in one episode she's all super-principled prime directive above all else, in the next she tries to murder a prisoner. My favourite character is actually B'Elanna, who also was most consistent in getting her share of attention throughout the series.

I agree about both TNG and VOY being hit and miss, albeit in different ways. TNG had a lot of good to great episodes starting with S3, but even in its best seasons there was a considerable amount of boring filler. S1 was mostly bad, I don't think any season of VOY was as bad as that. S2 is like the definition of "hit and miss", it has some great stuff (most notably Measure of a Man) but also a lot of utter trash like The Outrageous Okona or the one with the drunk Irish farmers.

VOY also has good and bad episodes, but it's rarely as good as TNG's great episodes and rarely as bad as TNG's lots of stinkers. I think most of VOY is just... ok. And I'd rather have two great and two terrible episodes than four ok ones.

Both series are very episodic, pretty static and show little character development. But I think it's a bigger issue in VOY for three reasons: A) it seems to deliberately set up arcs like the very premise of the long road of getting from there to here, or the whole Maquis thing. Both "arcs" are thrown out of the window almost instantly to make way for TNG lite with aliens of the week. B) The notion that the Voyager is alone without any Federation resources make its reset button even more jarring, the Voyager can suffer any damage it wants only to be in mint condition again in the next episode. And it somehow lost 17 shuttles over its seven years. C) The point of reference for TNG was mostly TOS which was purely episodic. VOY unfortunately had to suffer comparisons with DS9.

DS9 blew all these shows away in terms of serialisation/continuity/character development/political development. Not only that, almost all of its main cast were great characters and none of them were sidelined. The only exceptions I see are Bashir who was pretty weak early on but got a LOT of character growth over the course of the show, and Dax who is fine but is never developed or explored that much imo. On top of that, you have a wealth of outstanding recurring characters. And on top of that, throughout its entire run was most consistent in delivering high quality episodes.

In VOY, with its focus on Seven, it could at least have truly developed this character. Sadly she was a victim of the reset button as well, it feels like every lesson she learned towards figuring out her humanity is forgotten at the end of the episode and so she keeps relearning the same lessons. I think EMH shows more lasting development than Seven does.

other than the reason they brought in Seven and what Janeway's actor thought of it

I might be wrong - like I say, I'm not hugely knowledgable about Voyager - but yes, they wanted a woman who could be seen as young and sexy in a way the other characters weren't, that was my undertanding. Maybe the Borg angle came first and they happened to just cast someone attractive, I don't know.

And then Kate Mulgrew (is that her name, who played Janeway?) was pissed off because she felt that, as the captain, she was the lead, and now all the attention was going to this supporting character just because she was young and sexy. Something like that, anyway.

It was mainly to do with a different TV model back in those days though. It was so the show could be serialised and shown out of order, so you could dive into one episode and pretty much know what was going in within the confines of one episode.

Who was the guy who was a massive dick to Wil Wheaton on the TNG set? Wheaton's spoken about this a few times but I can't remember the name of the producer/exec he's talking about.