Jornada nas Estrelas: Voyager

The universe of Star Trek has done something brilliant to keep alive. The creators have imposed a story arch for all the series starting with DS9. Don't get me wrong. TNG was what got me into Star Trek in the first place. It had vibrant characters, unique ideas, and was the building block for setting the stage for the other series and the later movies. However, in all it's glory, it lacked something. Continuity. The longest the crew of the Enterprise D would have to deal with an immediate situation, was no more than 2 episodes. No doubt things would reoccur, but it was seldom. Voyager, however, would have numerous back to back episodes dealing with something. And that might even resurface somewhere down the line.

I can't understand what people dislike so much about this show. They explored so much more than any of the others. Not just in the unverse, but with the crew. They all grew. Some more than others, but you can't go 7 years and not show growth in a character. And as with every other Star Trek, it was rough at first, but it gets so much better once the writers and the actors have about a year or two to get it right.

I truely believe that if people give it a chance and don't jump on the bandwagon, they'd like it. It's easy to say you don't like something if you've never really given it a chance.

Contrary to what many Trek nerds would have you believe, Voyager is not the worst Star Trek series, and is not at all a bad show. The acting is superior to that on the beloved The Next Generation (that comment alone will probably have people throwing their Spock ears at their monitors), and I think many of the stories were better. TNG stories always seemed to revolve around spacial anomalies and holodeck malfunctions, which became excruciatingly boring. I wasn't interested in seeing Picard dressed up like Sherlock Holmes and trying to solve a fake mystery, only to be trapped on the holodeck and have the safety mechanisms shut off. As many times as this happened, I would have shut the silly thing down and prohibited its use.

Voyager was so great because it truly put its protagonists into a situation that they could not extricate themselves from. For the first time since the original 1960's series, Star Trek characters truly went where nobody had gone before, discovering new races and acquiring knowledge. And they couldn't call on the federation to save them.

And no doctor has ever been as good in his role as Robert Picardo. That even includes DeForest Kelly, who was exceptional.

Jennifer Lien was also outstanding as Kes, who was very much missed after her departure from the series.

Voyager brought back a lot of the adventure that was inherent in the first Star Trek series, and was lost in TNG. Perhaps it didn't live up to its enormous potential, but it was still a very good series that is, unfortunately, far to often the target of hate by TNG purists and people who like to pick at microscopic details.

I have a particularly strong attachment to this show and can honestly say it is my favorite in the whole Star Trek universe. I started to watch it from day one all the way to the end even though it took a while for the series to fully realize its potential. The first 3 seasons were good but nowhere near as great as the show would become later yet I hung on, hopeful that something better would come along and then boom, Seven of Nine appeared.

The show only started to become really wonderful when Jeri Ryan was added to the show with Scorpions at the end of the 3rd season as the cliffhanger for season 4. Somehow, I really connected with this particular character and from then on, they could do no wrong or at least, they could always count on my loyalty to watch. Sure the writing is uneven in places and some episodes are not as great as others but it's true for any series.

I have to say that the number one reason why I connected so strongly with this series is this particular set of characters. Somehow, it all gelled so well and even though I have favorites of course like Seven, The Doctor and Janeway, they all had something interesting to add to the mix and the chemistry always worked for me, even in sub par episodes. But thankfully, even the lowest rated episodes have something interesting to offer.

I was particularly satisfied with how the series ended, the perfect conclusion to one heck of a journey and I still miss it to this day even though I can always watch to my heart's content any time I feel like it. This is connected with a great time in my life and I will always remember if fondly.

A strong 9 stars is well deserved and the 1 star is deducted from the perfect score only because the writing is sometimes not as strong as it should be, especially with episodes not connected to the Borg or Seven of Nine. But still, every single show has something to offer and this series remain one of the very best I had the pleasure of experiencing as it ran for 7 successful seasons and I could not recommend it enough.

Just paying my tributes here: I gotta confess, on the side of the original Star Trek with Captain Kirk and his crew, Star Trek: Voyager is my other most favorite piece of Roddenberry's universe: lots of interesting and unique (and lovable) characters and on top the idea of a crew getting lost in some far away place of the galaxy, which provides a great background story for lots of unique and special stories. Still top notch.

I've been a fan of the Star Trek series since Star Trek the Next Generation. I used to watch The Next Gen after school and I loved the idea of going off to space to explore new worlds and meeting new peoples. But the one thing that bothered me about the series was all the constrictions that the Enterprise had to go through. There was several shows that had the Federation saying 'You can't do this, or that!' But with Star Trek Voyager you have a smaller ship with only a couple of dozen of people on board in a distant part of the galaxy who are trying to get home. Far away from their family, friends and superiors. The series does an great job at redefining several species and introduces new ones. The cast is great and is always fun to watch Robert Picardo as the Doctor because he gets me laughing all the time. The ship has plenty of interesting characters all growing throughout the series. The Doctor becomes more then just a hologram medical helper and becomes a real member of the ship. Captain Janeway becomes a strong confident captain. Tom Paris, a womanizing troublemaker buckles down with a former hot head, federation hating Klingon.

So if you love space exploration then this is the series for you.