AboutDeran McKean Expertise I am a 35 year fan of all the incarnations of Star Trek from the original show to the newer incarnations, to the books, comics and toys. I can answer most questions regarding the storylines and characters including their non-screen histories.
Experience Thirty-five years of collecting Star Trek merchandise, pouring over the books, comics and attending a number of conventions
Education/Credentials I have a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and an MBA
Question I guess I never took the time to carefully analyze Voyager. I liked both Tuvoc and the Hologram Doc.
I agree that it was stupid of Janeway to strand the crew in the Delta Quadrant, and Seven of Nine was added likely for nothing else but to increase ratings.
I also didn't like the fact that Naomi Wildman was on the show so much in the later seasons. I thought that was horrible.
I thought the plots of the show were fairly decent. Of course, some were bad, but that's true of all the Star Treks.
In DS9, I wasn't too fond of the episodes in which the Prophets "took over." I thought the writers gave the Prophets way too much power in some of the episodes.
I understand that by definition the Prophets are powerful extra-dimensional creatures, but I wish they would have minded their own business more.
Answer Hi John -
Well a lot of people disagree with me and think Voyager was the best of the spin offs. My opinion was that the show was sub par and started the downward trend that eventually led to Enterprise's cancellation, but again, just an opinion.
Seven of Nine was only added as a means to boost ratings. If the Borg are assimilating races all over the Delta Quadrant the odds of a given drone being human are pretty low, but here we have 7 of 9 who just happens to be human and who looks like a Victoria's Secret model.
I agree with you about Naomi Wildman! I am a huge 'hater' of the 'cute little kid syndrome' on sci fi shows. Next Gen had Wesley, DS9 had Jake and Nog and here on Voyager we have Naomi! My opinion is that the cute little kid thing is just an attempt by the writers of a show to include 'cuteness' without having any real reason within the story for it.
The plots were very up and down, from episodes that I really liked and were thought provoking to others that just seemed like 'filler'. You're right that all the Star Trek's have their less than stellar episodes (Spock's Brain for example), but I thought Voyager had a disproportionate amount of them.
I agree with you about the Prophets. I think there was an enormous storytelling potential with the Prophets that the writers completely missed. I liked the shows that concentrated on the Bajorans and their struggles to recover after the occupation and the parallels that were drawn between that and the recovery of Germany and Europe after the Second World War.
The Prophets were ill defined and poorly executed, especially towards the end when we find out Sisko is a 'half-Prophet' type of entity? I thought he was much more interesting when he was just a regular guy trying to figure out whether or not he believed he was the Emissary.
We really don't know much about the Prophets at all, even after seven years of DS9, and why they are so interested in the Bajorans.
