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It took me about six months but I'm now finished with Voyager.
It got better than the above post may indicate, especially once they (mostly) left the Kazon and Vidiians (all of whom I hated so very, very much, with the exception of Danara Pel) behind after season 2 (although both kept managing to slink back in occasionally, thanks to time travel stories). It still had its ups and downs, with a lot more downs in the later seasons when compared to either TNG or DS9, in my opinion. At least through season 6 anyway. Season 7 was fairly consistently good, though, for the most part. Or, at the very least, I don't recall actively thinking "man, this episode sucks" during season 7 the way I did through the previous seasons, anyway.
The major gripe I had with Voyager was that pretty much all of the original alien species that they introduced as recurring antagonists all sucked, such as the Malon and the Hirogen, along with the aforementioned Kazon and Vidiians (though I liked the Malon and Hirogen a lot more than I did the Kazon or especially the Vidiians). Of the lot, the Hirogen were probably the best. Actually, no, I take that back. Species 8472 was probably the best, mainly because they didn't really appear all that many times in order to wear out their welcome (though the ep where they recreated Earth and Starfleet Command in hologram form was definitely pushing it).
With that said, even the instances of Next Gen aliens got kind of mangled in Voyager, particularly the Borg. Several of the Borg episodes of Voyager weren't really what I consider to be true Borg episodes, though. Usually it was Voyager coming upon former Borg or those who were otherwise disconected from the Collective. (That said, I think Icheb was a fine addition to the cast, and I wish that at least Mezoti had stuck around for longer as well.) Still, even when Voyager encountered the actual Borg, it still wasn't all it could have been, in my opinion. I blame that mostly on First Contact and its introduction of the concept of the Borg Queen, which I dearly hate. The Borg were so much cooler before that movie than after, and as evidence of this I simply present any given episode of Voyager that involved the Borg, because most of these eps tended to focus around the Queen, rather than the Borg as a whole.
Some claim that the Q suffered a similar fate as well, but I don't really agree with that. For what it's worth, I enjoyed all three of the episodes that involved Q, even the later two about his girlfriend/wife/whatever and his son.
The few appearances of the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians (i.e. pretty much any episode involving Seska, after the "big reveal"), and Ferengi were okay for what they were, I guess, and fairly typical. The Romulans probably got the best treatment out of those.
I did enjoy all of the episodes that featured Reginald Barclay, especially the ones that featured Deanna Troi as well, though she never interacted with the Voyager crew in the same way that Barclay himself did, aside from the Doctor.
And, lastly, I found it somewhat amusing that Naomi Wildman appeared in over twice as many episodes as her mother did. Seriously, there were several episodes where Naomi showed up and Samantha wasn't seen or even mentioned at all.
Now, all that's left before I can say that I have watched all of Star Trek is Enterprise.
It got better than the above post may indicate, especially once they (mostly) left the Kazon and Vidiians (all of whom I hated so very, very much, with the exception of Danara Pel) behind after season 2 (although both kept managing to slink back in occasionally, thanks to time travel stories). It still had its ups and downs, with a lot more downs in the later seasons when compared to either TNG or DS9, in my opinion. At least through season 6 anyway. Season 7 was fairly consistently good, though, for the most part. Or, at the very least, I don't recall actively thinking "man, this episode sucks" during season 7 the way I did through the previous seasons, anyway.
The major gripe I had with Voyager was that pretty much all of the original alien species that they introduced as recurring antagonists all sucked, such as the Malon and the Hirogen, along with the aforementioned Kazon and Vidiians (though I liked the Malon and Hirogen a lot more than I did the Kazon or especially the Vidiians). Of the lot, the Hirogen were probably the best. Actually, no, I take that back. Species 8472 was probably the best, mainly because they didn't really appear all that many times in order to wear out their welcome (though the ep where they recreated Earth and Starfleet Command in hologram form was definitely pushing it).
With that said, even the instances of Next Gen aliens got kind of mangled in Voyager, particularly the Borg. Several of the Borg episodes of Voyager weren't really what I consider to be true Borg episodes, though. Usually it was Voyager coming upon former Borg or those who were otherwise disconected from the Collective. (That said, I think Icheb was a fine addition to the cast, and I wish that at least Mezoti had stuck around for longer as well.) Still, even when Voyager encountered the actual Borg, it still wasn't all it could have been, in my opinion. I blame that mostly on First Contact and its introduction of the concept of the Borg Queen, which I dearly hate. The Borg were so much cooler before that movie than after, and as evidence of this I simply present any given episode of Voyager that involved the Borg, because most of these eps tended to focus around the Queen, rather than the Borg as a whole.
Some claim that the Q suffered a similar fate as well, but I don't really agree with that. For what it's worth, I enjoyed all three of the episodes that involved Q, even the later two about his girlfriend/wife/whatever and his son.
The few appearances of the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians (i.e. pretty much any episode involving Seska, after the "big reveal"), and Ferengi were okay for what they were, I guess, and fairly typical. The Romulans probably got the best treatment out of those.
I did enjoy all of the episodes that featured Reginald Barclay, especially the ones that featured Deanna Troi as well, though she never interacted with the Voyager crew in the same way that Barclay himself did, aside from the Doctor.
And, lastly, I found it somewhat amusing that Naomi Wildman appeared in over twice as many episodes as her mother did. Seriously, there were several episodes where Naomi showed up and Samantha wasn't seen or even mentioned at all.
Now, all that's left before I can say that I have watched all of Star Trek is Enterprise.
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Date: 2013-04-20 01:36 am (UTC)From:I have to say, one of my favorite Q episodes in all of Star Trek was the one with the Q who was trying to commit suicide. Had a very existentialist feel to it. (Plus, I loved the scene with, "Oh, come off it, we've ALL been the scarecrow!")
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Date: 2013-04-20 04:24 pm (UTC)From:And yeah, the first of the Q Voyager eps (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Death_Wish_%28episode%29) was my favorite as well. "You mustn't think of us as omnipotent, no matter what The Continuum would like you to believe. You and your ship seem incredibly powerful to lifeforms without your technological expertise. It's no different with us. We may appear omnipotent to you, but believe me, we're not." Although I know from a show standpoint that it would have been a bad idea to have a former Q as a member of the crew for the rest of the series, I still can't help but wish that he would have decided to commit suicide by old age, rather than taking the poison. :/ Oh, and I thought it was cool that they managed to slip in a Next Gen cameo with Riker in that one as well.
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Date: 2013-04-21 04:48 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-04-21 08:00 am (UTC)From:It takes a bit to get used to the switch between Kes and Seven of Nine at the beginning of season 4, and I think I still preferred Kes over Seven overall, but Seven got a lot less annoying over the four seasons she was there. I still kind of wish they'd dropped Harry Kim instead of Kes, like the rumors say they were originally planning to do, up until Garrett Wang got on People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" list in 1997. Heck, I'd have preferred that they'd dropped Neelix and kept Kes, though I do have to admit that Neelix kind of grew on me over those seven seasons. Even Chakotay is higher on my personal list of who they should have dropped over Kes, especially given that Robert Beltran apparently hated the show (http://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/n6gg0/robert_beltran_says_he_hates_star_trek_says_star/) and wanted to leave. Another rumor has it that Beltran asked for a huge amount of money in the later seasons, explicitly trying to get fired because he disliked the show so much, but they just gave him the money instead. >_>; That said, to his credit, I never really got the impression while watching him that he was just phoning it in, though. Given all the rumors about him and how he supposedly was backstage, I was explicitly looking for signs of it. He seemed to still take it seriously up to the end, at least what he was given to work with, which admittedly didn't seem to be all that much. And he does have a point in that there were a lot of times, even more so than in previous Trek, where the cookie cutter technobabble dialog could have been swapped between characters and it wouldn't have made a difference. He did get a lot of that, as did the others. (I was also looking for "Chakotay saves the ship by being Native American" episodes that some people warned me about, but while there were a few eps that focused on his heritage, there were never really any eps that relied on Native American hoodoo or whatever to save the ship. ...well, okay, there was at least one (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Cathexis_%28episode%29) that came kind of close to that.) Not to say that he was the most exquisite of actors, mind you. Honestly, though, I don't know how much of any of those rumors are true, and I don't know how much of what he's said over the years was him being serious or just taking the piss.
Anyway... >_>;
The show kind of gets a bit more action-y around the time that Seven showed up as well, which could be good or bad depending upon whether they went too overboard with it, which they did sometimes. That said, some of my favorite episodes were actually the obvious "bottle shows (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BottleEpisode)" that only dealt with, like, crew personal issues and such, and didn't have some alien attacking or whatever. Most of these, what few there were, came in the later season eps.
And to compare to Deep Space Nine, Voyager never really had the huge multiple episode arcs that DS9 did. They'd have a few two-parters here and there, usually as season finales, and they tended to do a better job of remembering continuity and referring back to previous episodes than TNG and TOS did, but there weren't any giant 6- or 10-parters like they had in the final seasons of DS9, which again is a YMMV thing.