Star Trek: Voyager Third Season
Original air dates: September 1996 – May 1997
Executive Producers: Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor
Captain’s log. The primary theme of the third season was that there wasn’t really a primary theme. For the first time, there were no recurring villains. Yes, we got one last look at the Kazon, but that was just resolving the cliffhanger in the “Basics” two-parter, and the Vidiians, but they were illusory in “Coda.”
Instead, Voyager pressed onward. They firmly moved away from the space occupied by the Ocampa, the Sikarians, the Vidiians, the Talaxians, the Haakonians, the Trabe, et al, and instead entered unknown territory, encountering tons of new species. They have at this point gone so far that Neelix’s value as a guide is pretty much gone as they traverse the Nekrit Expanse, so that their remaining journey is a mystery even to their self-styled native guide.
And so we have a lot of Trek’s mission statement: seeking out new life and new civilizations. Sometimes Voyager helps them out (“Remember,” “Rise”), sometimes they help Voyager (“Darkling”), sometimes the new life harms them, not always intentionally (“Macrocosm,” “The Swarm,” “Sacred Ground,” “Alter Ego,” “Favorite Son”), sometimes they get their ship stolen (“Displaced”), sometimes they wind up imprisoned (“The Chute”) or embroiled in local politics (“Warlord,” “Fair Trade,” “Distant Origin”).
Plus there are the uniquely Trek elements: the telepathic virus that leads to an extended flashback to the time of The Undiscovered Country and appearances by Sulu, Rand, Lojur, Valtane, and Kang (“Flashback”), wacky time-travel adventures (“Future’s End,” “Before and After”), wacky holodeck adventures (“Real Life,” “Worst Case Scenario”), a Vulcan character undergoing pon farr (“Blood Fever”), and appearances by Trek standbys, Q (“The Q and the Grey”), the Ferengi (“False Profits”), and, most importantly, the Borg.
While, as I said, there was no primary theme, there was a secondary theme, and that was building toward the arrival in Borg-controlled space in at season’s end, which was seeded in “Blood Fever” (finding a Borg corpse) and “Unity” (encountering some ex-Borg). This led to the slam-bang finale of “Scorpion,” where Voyager not only reaches the Borg, but also learns that there’s someone out there nastier in Species 8472…
Highest-rated episode: A three-way tie among three of the final six episodes of the season, “Before and After,” “Distant Origin,” and “Worst Case Scenario,” all of which earned a warp factor of 9, helping close out the season on quite the high note.
Lowest-rated episode: “Sacred Ground,” an offensive, anti-intellectual piece of claptrap unworthy of Star Trek, the season’s only 1. (Though four episodes did earn a 2…)
Most comments (as of this writing): “Basics, Part II” with 143, the only entry this season to break three figures in terms of comments. Also, 14 of the 26 episodes had 50 or more comments, which is kinda nifty.
Fewest comments (as of this writing): “Alter Ego” with 26, the only entry to be under 30 comments. Surprising, given that it was one of the season’s stronger episodes.
Favorite Can’t we just reverse the polarity? From “Rise”: It’s never made clear why Voyager’s only option is to fire phasers on the asteroids when they have a perfectly good tractor beam that can deflect the asteroids onto a different course. Or, for that matter, why they don’t destroy the asteroids when they’re much much farther away from the planet…
Favorite There’s coffee in that nebula!: From “Basics, Part II”: Janeway wastes no time taking charge of the stranded crew, giving people assignments, dealing with each crisis as it comes up (including rescuing all but one of Chakotay’s group from the cave), and making it clear that if they have to eat worms, they’ll damn well eat worms.
Favorite Mr. Vulcan: From “Future’s End, Part II”: Tuvok’s plan to get Starling to come to them didn’t take the possibility of him kidnapping Robinson into his car into account, which shows a spectacular lack of planning on the part of the security chief. Maybe his do-rag was too tight…
Favorite Half and half: From “Displaced”: Torres is annoyed when Paris accuses her of being hostile after she yells at him following their holodeck adventure.
Favorite Forever an ensign: From “Alter Ego”: Kim is despondent that he has fallen in love with a holodeck character. Like many young people, he acts like this is a unique thing that has only happened to him and woe is him, but then Paris points out that everyone has fallen in love with holodeck characters at some point or another. (William Riker, Geordi La Forge, and Reginald Barclay, front and center!)
Favorite Everybody comes to Neelix’s: From “Warlord”: The episode opens with Neelix getting a footrub, an image I will never get out of my mind no matter how much therapy I engage in to try.
Favorite Please state the nature of the medical emergency: From “Darkling”: The EMH is trying to improve his bedside manner by incorporating the personalities of various famous people. I can see Byron and Gandhi, both of whom have a CHA of 20 (Dungeons & Dragons reference, sorry), and probably Socrates, too (most of what we know of him is secondhand from Plato, so it’s hard to judge), but T’Pau? The one whose response to Kirk’s suffering in the thinner atmosphere was, “the air is the air”? This is who you want your doctor to emulate? And Curie and da Vinci are useful for their scientific curiosity, I suppose, which would probably help with research? I guess?
When he’s Evil EMH, his eyes are beadier and his teeth are different.
Favorite What happens on the holodeck, stays on the holodeck: From “The Q and the Grey”: Kim and Paris display their tremendous professionalism by doing crew performance reports at the Paxau Resort on the holodeck while getting massages from holographic women in bathing suits.
Favorite No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: From “Real Life”: Paris flirts with Torres, interrupting her while she reads her Klingon bodice-ripper (armor-ripper?), Women Warriors at the River of Blood.
Favorite Welcome aboard: Several recurring characters make their final appearances: Simon Billig as Hogan, Brad Dourif as Suder, Anthony DeLongis as Culluh (all in “Basics, Part II”), and Susan Patterson as Kaplan (“Future’s End,” “Unity”)
Other recurring regulars show up: Martha Hackett as both Seska (“Basics, Part II”) and a holographic image of her (“Worst Case Scenario”), Nancy Hower as Wildman (“Basics, Part II”), John deLancie as Q (“The Q and the Grey”), Alexander Enberg as Vorik (“Fair Trade,” “Alter Ego,” “Blood Fever”), and the great John Rhys-Davies as Leonardo da Vinci (“Scorpion”).
George Takei (Sulu), Grace Lee Whitney (Rand), Jeremy Roberts (Valtane), and Boris Lee Krutonog (Lojur) all reprise their roles from The Undiscovered Country, as does Michael Ansara (Kang) from “Day of the Dove” and “Blood Oath,” all in “Flashback.” In addition, Dan Shor reprises his role of Dr. Arridor from “The Price” in “False Profits.”
Other cool guests: Robert Pine (“The Chute”), Carole Davis (“The Swarm”), Michael Ensign and Rob LaBelle (“False Profits”), Bruce Davison (“Remember”), Harry Groener and Becky Ann Baker (“Sacred Ground”), Ed Begley Jr. and Sarah Silverman (“Future’s End”), Galyn Görg (“Warlord”), Abbie Selznick (“Macrocosm”), Carlos Carrasco and James Horan (“Fair Trade”), Len Cariou (“Coda”), Lori Hallier (“Unity”), Allan Oppenheimer and Lisa Kaminir (“Rise”), Jessica Collins and Christopher Aguilar (“Before and After”), Wendy Schaal (“Real Life”), Concetta Tomei, Henry Woronicz, and Christopher Liam Moore (all in “Distant Origin”), and Mark L. Taylor (“Displaced”).
We get some Robert Knepper moments! Patrick Fabian, Kristanna Loken (both in “Favorite Son”), Rachael Harris (“Before and After”), and Kenneth Tigar (“Displaced”).
In addition to his regular role as the EMH, Robert Picardo gets to play both his own evil twin (“Darkling”) and his lookalike creator (“The Swarm”). And in addition to her regular role as Kes, Jennifer Lien got to play Tieran possessing Kes’s body in “Warlord.”
But the best guest is the superlative Suzie Plakson, in her third role on Trek being magnificently snarky and awesome as Lady Q in “The Q and the Grey.”
Favorite Do it: From “Blood Fever”:
“For such an intellectually enlightened race, Vulcans have a remarkably Victorian attitude about sex.”
“That is a very human judgment, Doctor.”
“Then here’s a Vulcan one: I fail to see the logic in perpetuating ignorance about a basic biological function.”
–The EMH and Tuvok discussing pon farr
Favorite Trivial matter: The one for “Flashback,” even thought I wrote it in 2014 originally, just because Captain Sulu is awesomecakes.
Set a course for home. “Resistance, in this case, is far from futile.” It’s hard to discuss this season as a season with any kind of clarity. Even more so than the first two, it feels almost disconnected. While there are strong individual episodes, and some really nifty science fictional concepts, the overall feeling of watching all the episodes in a row is a big “meh.”
Part of the problem is the lack of consistency. The EMH loses all his memory in “The Swarm,” but then he’s back to normal thenceforth with only one throwaway reference to his having lost his memory. Tuvok and Neelix remain at loggerheads in “Rise” (and elsewhere) despite having shared a mind and body for two weeks last season in “Tuvix.” Janeway is interested in also exploring the Delta Quadrant in addition to getting home and in maintaining her Starfleet principles—except in “The Swarm” and “Scorpion,” when suddenly it’s get home at all costs! “False Profits” is a sequel to “The Price” that gets half the details of the latter TNG episode wrong. “Flashback” doesn’t quite track with the events of The Undiscovered Country (though that can be chalked up to faulty memory on Tuvok’s part). Plus we see the crew making new allies in one episode only to have the people never mentioned again (the Mikhal Travelers, the Vostigye).
Part of it is the lack of conflict or struggle. The crew has settled into a routine and they’re all sufficiently comfortable with each other that the discovery of Tuvok’s incomplete Insurrection Alpha training mission—which the Maquis crew would be wholly justified in finding insulting to say the least—is treated as an amusing curiosity. Whatever lip service had been paid to the ship’s supply issues has been all but abandoned at this point.
Part of it is the insistence on more connections to the Alpha Quadrant being found on this remote path between the Ocampa homeworld and the Federation (“False Profits,” “Distant Origin,” “Unity,” “The Q and the Grey”).
And the biggest part of it is the lack of any kind of forward motion for the characters beyond how they pair up. The only difference between the characters as we saw them in “Basics, Part II” and in “Scorpion” is that Paris and Torres are stumbling toward being a couple and Neelix and Kes have broken up.
One of the biggest problems with Voyager is that its characters have more interesting backstory than front story. This is writ large with Tuvok in this season, as the glimpse of his life as an ensign on the Excelsior looks way more interesting than his life as an only-sometimes-competent security chief on Voyager.
There are glimpses. Chakotay gets several chances to shine this season, and Robert Beltran does really well in “Unity,” “Distant Origin,” and “Scorpion.” Tuvok’s loneliness is brought into sharp relief in “Alter Ego.” And both Torres and Kim get the chance to explore roads not taken in “Remember” and “Favorite Son.” And Robert Picardo’s EMH remains the show’s rock star, finally given the chance to stretch his legs beyond sickbay in “Future’s End, Part II.”
Some great individual episodes in this season, but the whole is way less than the sum of its parts…
Warp factor rating for the season: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido encourages all and sundry to check out his YouTube channel “KRAD COVID readings,” in which he reads his various works of short fiction, including some of his Star Trek work: the Voyager story “Letting Go” from Distant Shores, the Next Generation story “Four Lights” from The Sky’s the Limit, the Deep Space Nine story “Broken Oaths” from Prophecy and Change, the Lwaxana Troi story “The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned” from Tales of the Dominion War, and the Klingon stories “loDnI’pu vavpu’ je” from Tales from the Captain’s Table and “The Unhappy Ones” from Seven Deadly Sins, as well as an excerpt from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella Here There Be Monsters.
On rewatch, it occurs to me how much I wish they would have had a B-cast that was firmly in the “Lower Decks” (the episode) tradition for Voyager. That episode let us see how genuinely baffling much of what happened on TNG was for people who didn’t sit on the bridge the whole time, and I think that would have been even more pronounced on Voyager. Being stuck a million miles from home with a bunch of terrorists (or, if you are Maquis, your erstwhile prison guards) was a hard pill for the main cast to swallow (at least for 2 episodes) and they all got to at least have their voices heard about it. I’m interested in what the Voyager version of Chief O’Brien thinks about having to teach a terrorist how to repair sensitive systems. Or what a Maquis who joined up to fight for his home thinks about suddenly being Assistant to the Assistant Human Resources OIC or whatever. I’m curious what the people in Stellar Cartography think about stopping at every little nebula and comet. Do they like it? Do they wish they’d stop and just get back home? Do half of them think one and half the other? Does it cause tension in their shop? If you are a Maquis, how does it impact you ability to make friends and feel “at home” when you know that if the voyage ended tomorrow the people you are working alongside would hand you over to prison? Does that change who you hang out with? Who and indeed if you chose to date? If you are just some schlub who signed onto Starfleet to get away from home, what do you think of the Captain of the ship deciding to make friends with the Borg?
I think it would have been an easy way to show some tension on the ship without the bridge crew being the ones snipping at each other- and given Kes and Neelix a bit more to do, character-wise. As outsiders and people with regular jobs, they’d be more easily able to interact with regular crew members and bring a different perspective to things. One of the things I liked about DS9 was how lived-in the place felt. Sure, we had our regulars Doing Important Things in Ops, but we also had people who were just living their lives and would sometimes intersect with the main character’s (Keiko, Jake, Morn, various Bajoran religious/ political figures, Garak). On Voyager it feels like there is the main cast- and then everyone else waiting in the wings like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to come on and hit their mark and then vanish. DS9 didn’t spend a ton of time on what Garak or Kai Winn or Jake were doing when they weren’t on screen- but you got the feeling that they *were* doing something. They felt like real characters with real lives, and I think that is what is missing on Voyager. Giving Ayala or the Delany sisters some actual lines or a B-plot every once and a while would make it feel like this is actually a ship with the same 140 (ish) people stuck on it, instead of a ship with 10 people and whoever was milling around the back lot at Paramount that day. Instead of Neelix and Kes being in staff meetings for no earthly reason- have them hanging out with the people that make the ship run and get in some hijinks.
Season 3 had a lot of dramatic episodes, and I think it would have benefitted from seeing those events not just purely through the eyes of the characters in the opening credits.
wildfyrewarning: That would’ve been cool, yeah. One of the things I like about Discovery is that it’s not focused entirely on the senior staff, and in fact one of the things I tried to do in my books featuring the Klingon vessel I.K.S. Gorkon was to show the “lower decks” folks as well as the big bosses, in that case focusing on one of the four-warrior squads of ground troops assigned to the ship.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ultimately, I have to agree with that assessment of the season, although I may have marked it a bit higher for enjoyment value. It’s hardly the first season of Star Trek to just be a string of stand-alone episodes, but it feels like a backward step in terms of storytelling. People might have wanted the Kazon gone, but they haven’t really been replaced with anything. In a sense, it’s 25 episodes of waiting for the Borg to show up. And having built up a solid supporting cast in earlier seasons, there’s not really anything of that sort here apart from Vorik making a couple of cameos to set up his featured role.
It’s also of course the last season with the original cast. They’re a decent bunch and for the most part remain interesting and likable. (There’s a few borderline exceptions, of which the one who won’t be back next year is not one.) And a cast that the audience actually want to spend time with is always a good thing.
Yeah, the (unintended) tradition with the TNG-era shows was that they all seemed to have finally found their footing and ironed out the kinks with their third Seasons — and with good reason thanks to the talent involved.
With TNG, the upswing was heralded by the arrival of Michael Piller (and to a then-lesser extent Ronald D. Moore). With DS9, it was heralded by Ira Behr’s ascendancy to the Showrunner post and the transfers of Moore and René Echevarria.
But with VOY…not really. If anything, the inverse happened with Piller’s departure. And while VOY’s stabilization continued into Season Four, it never really matched what its siblings had achieved around the same time in their own respective runs.
On the subject of “themes,” I think it was still far from obligatory in the late ’90s for a TV season to have any kind of unifying theme. There were still plenty of shows whose approach was episodic, and Voyager was one of those shows — although it was behind the curve of the trend toward greater continuity and evolving plot and character arcs. But the producers made a conscious decision to downplay the “How do we get home?” arc and leave behind recurring foes that had worn out their welcome, choosing instead to focus on straightforward Star Trek-style episodic adventures. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that per se, although I agree it would’ve been better if more effort had been put into character growth.
But that wasn’t unique to this season. As you say, many of the characters had more interesting backstories than front stories, and once their initial conflicts and hangups had been dealt with, they became relatively boring. Going forward, while the Doctor and Seven of Nine would remain rich, evolving characters because of how much learning and growing they still had to do, most of the other series leads would remain pretty stagnant from here on in, with the evolving Paris-Torres romance being the only real exception.
@1/wildfyrewarning: I don’t think a Starfleet crew would have a kneejerk “Aaah, terrorists!” reaction to the Maquis. They’d all know that the Maquis are former Federation citizens who believe they’re defending their homes against Cardassian abuses. There would be disagreement over their methods and attitudes, but I doubt there’d be any fundamental animosity or fear toward them as people.
If anything, the tension would be in the other direction, from the Maquis who feel that the Federation government (and by extension Starfleet) betrayed and abandoned them to the Cardassians.
Small nitpick: Alexander Enberg’s character in Voyager was named Vorik, for copyright reasons, I think. Taurik was his twin brother in TNG, which is a funny little back story created by the actor’s mother Jeri Taylor (who of course was a Trek producer too).
I’m of two minds. On one hand, there’s no denying season 3 is a bit all over the place. Losing Michael Piller meant losing some recurring narrative trends from the previous two seasons: the Maquis conflict, plus the Kazon and Vidiians. But on the other hand, I think season 3’s episodic approach works well enough for what it is. Not perfect, but an easy show to pick any episode and have a good time.
As @Christopher points out, this was a 1990’s episodic show and unifying themes weren’t exactly a trend back then (which you could still mess up even back then, as seen with X-Files mythology arc episodes; everyone still recalls their standalones fondly).
Clearly the staff was scrambling to put those two first seasons behind them. Given that the Kazon were simply not working out, I can understand them moving away from that, and try and tell new standalone stories. While in one hand, that occasionally delivers fatalities like Favorite Son, it also rewards the viewer with solid standalone episodes such as Remember and Distant Origin. Stories that could have been easily done on TNG, but still stories that can work within Voyager’s framework.
So overall, I think this is the better year. I also see season 3 as a transitional period for Voyager. They were working out the problems from their past, but were still lacking the one element that would redefine the show and give it its much needed identity and hook for the last four seasons: Seven of Nine. While the later seasons would still have a similar storytelling approach to season 3, they’d be more effective with Seven onboard and definitely more consistent (seasons 4 and 5, really; the last two seasons are a different tale).
@5 That’s a fair point, but I guess my issue is that we won’t ever really know, because the show rarely addresses it. There is also a difference between being intellectually sympathetic to someone’s cause, and working next to Lon Suder every day. One of my favorite episodes of “Derry Girls” is when the Provo hides in their car and they have to figure out what to do with them, and we get to see everyone have a very different reaction to having an actual terrorist in front of him. It ranges from fear (James and Erin) to sympathy and helpfulness (Joe and Orla) to annoyance and apprehension (Gerry) to…other reactions (Michelle). He doesn’t pose any direct harm to any of them, and all of them are likely even inclined to agree with his overall cause, but that doesn’t mean they all want him in the car, or around their family, or in the diner with them. Do I think every member of Starfleet would refuse to work with them? No (but it would be interesting to see the reaction it had on someone who had, say, lost a family member to a Maquis attack). But I think it would be more complicated than just “they are fundamentally good people who did what they felt they had to.” I even think showing that some of the Starfleet people were super sympathetic to their cause would have been an interesting thing to discuss! After all- what do you do if you are trying to get the Maquis and Starfleet to mingle, but you start worrying that maybe the Starfleet people are starting to become too much like the Maquis? How do you stop that without dividing the crew? That’s an interesting issue for Janeway to try to address!
Also, to me, season 3 is when the Doctor finally clicked as a character. This is where I feel Picardo finally nailed the performance mixing both the comedic and dramatic in one consistent package.
slowginlizz: Gah! Brain fart on my part! It’s been fixed. (Yay, edit function!)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, dumbass
@krad: lols, not a dumbass, just someone with a lot of words to write. Thanks for writing them; I enjoy reading them!
Not actually enough evidence to make an argument, but between the reimagining of the Maquis conflict in “Worst Case Scenario,” and Kes’s alternate future in “Before and After,” I’m tempted to make a cheeky argument that the theme of this season was “Look what shows this isn’t.“
We’re going to be heading into uncharted territory for me soon. I know I watched the first part of season 4 back in the day, but I was annoyed at the addition of Seven of Nine and stopped. I felt like she was a transparent ploy for sex appeal based on her wardrobe and makeup and the fact that all my male friends were gaga over her (we were in college at the time). In retrospect and based on what I have read about the character, I wasn’t being very fair and was being as sexist as my friends, judging her solely on her appearance. In my defense, feminism wasn’t as overtly sex-positive as it is today, and obviously sexy women were frequently denigrated or written off as bimbos. And I was in college…enough said. So I’m excited to jump back in and see what I missed!
@13 In fairness, how Seven of Nine was dressed was almost entirely decided by men (ironically, in-universe and out), and the intent was most certainly to amp up her sex appeal for the benefit of male viewers. Jeri Ryan has been pretty open about how the original costume made it hard for her to breathe, and so I don’t think it is unreasonable to find it off-putting. She developed into an interesting, nuanced character, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was some blatant male gaze and fan service going on.
@14- I do seem to recall reading somewhere that she regretted not being allowed to keep the original costume- because she would have quite liked to burn it.
Jeri Ryan is certainly the antithesis of a bimbo.
“Most comments (as of this writing): “Basics, Part II” with 143, the only entry this season to break three figures in terms of comments. Also, 14 of the 26 episodes had 50 or more comments, which is kinda nifty.”
Right, because the conversation turned into a protracted debate about the Universal Translator. Meanwhile, “Non Sequitir” had a comment thread almost entirely about reusing a VFX shot. The comment threads are always entertainingly unpredictable.
@13/brightbetween: You’re right, Seven of Nine was a transparent ploy for sex appeal, one that even the producers copped to. But Seven was also a rich, well-developed, and well-acted character so she ended up being more than the icy blonde femme fatale type. That’s great you’re now receptive to jumping back into the series and seeing what you’ve missed! A bunch of the better episodes featured Seven, IMHO.
I agree that this season didn’t really have much of a unifying theme and the quality of the episodes was all over the place. Seasons 4 and 5 are an improvement and Seven of Nine is an excellent addition to the series, not to mention extremely popular having now been carried over into Star Trek: Picard (and I believe a contender for her own spin-off series).
Rick: Hey, as long as people are being civil, I don’t care what they talk about. It brings eyes to the site, which makes the people who pay me happy. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@16 I’ve seen several people make the point over the years that Paramount cast a pair of boobs when they hired Ryan, and ended up with a talented actress by accident.
Mods, is it just me or is the recent comment page not updating?
@21/Austin: That happens to me sometimes. Try logging out and in again, or clearing your browser cache. Those might help (no guarantees).
@22 – No luck :( Not working on my phone either.
I confess to liking season 3 of Voyager. It had some awful episodes, but it also had some really good ones. To me, season 3 is the sweet spot between the first two seasons where Voyager was just getting warmed up, and the “Seven of Nine years”, where my memory is that half the episodes focussed on Seven of Nine, and nanoprobes saved the day a bit too frequently – which isn’t to say I dislike the later seasons or Seven as a character (and she is very well acted). Plus this is goodbye for Kes too – I always wonder what would have happened if Kim had been axed rather than Kes.
@24/crystalline-entity: I did a breakdown of character focuses in VGR’s last four seasons as part of a Star Trek Magazine article about Seven of Nine some years back (“Catsuits Are Irrelevant” in Star Trek Magazine Vol. 1 #143 (UK)/16 (US), Titan Magazines (March 2009), pp. 44-46). It’s true that in season 4, she was a focus character in the A or B plots of more than half the season’s episodes — but that’s reasonable for a newly introduced character who has a lot of new backstory and relationships to develop. She and Janeway were about equally featured in that season. But in the latter three seasons, Seven had fewer focus episodes. Overall, in those four seasons, she was the focus of the A plot only about a third of the time. The most heavily featured character in season 4-7 was Janeway, followed by Seven, then the Doctor (followed by Chakotay, Torres, Paris, Tuvok, and Neelix and Kim tied for last).
Incidentally, I also did a season 3 overview for ST Magazine a couple of years later (“Star Trek: The Ultimate Guide: Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 September 1996-May 1997″ in Star Trek Magazine Vol. 1 #164 (UK)/37 (US), Titan Magazines (October/November 2011), pp. 40-43). I should’ve mentioned it before, but I confused it with my Seven of Nine piece and thought it was for season 4.
In that overview, my top five season 3 episodes were: “Remember,” “Distant Origin,” “Sacred Ground,” “Real Life,” and “The Q and the Grey,” while my bottom vote went to “Macrocosm.” Clearly some major disagreements with Keith. My favorite moment of the season was Belle’s “death” scene in “Real Life,” best guest star was Henry Woronicz as Professor Gegen in “Distant Origin,” and my vote for the MVP of the season was Lisa Klink. My discussion of the season included this passage:
That’s pretty much my reaction to “Voyager” as a whole, actually.
S
@13: “In my defense, feminism wasn’t as overtly sex-positive as it is today, and obviously sexy women were frequently denigrated or written off as bimbos.”
Honestly, that trend has unfortunately reversed in recent years; there’s an ugly, sex-negative streak that’s emerged in a lot of progressive politics over the past few years that wouldn’t be out of place from the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Jack Thompson, the constant Puritanical concern trolling about “sexualization” is proof enough.
Still, while it’s easy to rag on Ryan for the costumes she had to wear, she’s a genuinely talented actress (“Body and Soul”, where she’s imitating Robert Picardo’s mannerisms perfectly, is a good example). I do have issues with how her character ended up dominating way too many storylines and crowding out the ensemble, but that’s a problem with the writing, as she always did well with what she was given. That’s a common theme with Voyager as a whole, really: talented performers like Ryan, Mulgrew and Picardo managing to make silk purses out of the sow’s ears sent their way week after week from the writer’s room.
@26: Yeah, that’s the show in a nutshell, unfortunately.
@27/Devin Smith: “I do have issues with how her character ended up dominating way too many storylines and crowding out the ensemble, but that’s a problem with the writing”
The problem wasn’t with Seven, the problem was with the other characters. When I had a chance to pitch for season 5, I tried to avoid Seven and Doctor stories, because I figured everyone else would be pitching those and I wanted to offer something different. But most of the ideas I ended up with were Seven or Doctor stories after all, because they were the characters with the most potential for growth and conflict. The other characters’ conflicts and problems had already been resolved by then, and there just wasn’t that much left to say about them.
@26: Agreed. As a whole, Voyager is a disappointment to me for not living up to its potential. It basically became a retread of TNG. Still, it had a number of good to excellent episodes and a few strong, endearing main characters that made the show entertaining and pleasurable viewing.
@24: I for one think Kes is a more interesting character than Kim so it baffles me why he was kept over her. For one thing, she had her burgeoning superpowers. She had the relatively short lifespan so you could explode her dealing with advanced age. She was basically the Doctor’s main backup medical support so she was vital in that area. She could have eventually been made an officer by field commission and put her in a uniform. Aside from the close friendship she had with the EMH, she had the mentor-trainee thing going with Tuvok, the mother-daughter relationship with Janeway, ex-lovers transitioning to friendship with Neelix, and hints of a potential romance with Paris in “Before and After” that could have laid the groundwork for some kind of love-triangle between her and Paris and B’Elanna. If Kes had stuck around you could see at least a respectful relationship between her and Seven or maybe even a friendship.
But of course Kim remained and we can make judgments on the material of the episodes that did heavily feature him as to whether he really grew as a character or not. “Timeless” is one of my all-time favorite Voyager episodes but Kim in general wasn’t really featured much and I have to admit I have yet to watch some of the later season episodes about him because of a lack of interest really. For this rewatch though I suppose I’ll force myself to watch them.
@24: I for one think Kes is a more interesting character than Kim so it baffles me why he was kept over her.
@29:Well, for one, it was still the 1990’s, and Hollywood was still very much male-centric.
From the stories we’ve heard recently, Rick Berman didn’t have the best track record when it came to Trek’s female stars. It’s easy to notice a pattern. Almost all of the main cast casualties on the Berman-era Trek shows were women. TNG lost Denise Crosby and Gates McFadden (and Diana Muldaur by extension, when the decision was made to backpedal on Crusher). And in the 1997/1998 season, they lost not only Jennifer Lien, but also Terry Farrell on DS9. Five female characters is less than 10 years. The only male actor to leave was Wil Wheaton, and only because he asked to be let go of contract.
@30: I don’t think you can really cite Berman as the direct cause or even direct cause for the departures of most of these women. Crosby asked to be let go on her own because she was dissatisfied with her amount of screen time. It was Roddenberry who decided that the manner of her character’s exit should be killed off. McFadden was fired because she didn’t get along with Maurice Hurley who was showrunner at the time. You could arguably say Berman shares some blame for not backing her up. But then you can also credit him for allowing her back when Muldaur’s character didn’t really take off and so Muldaur wasn’t invited back or she decided she didn’t want to continue. Farrell left over a salary dispute and I believe issues with money would have gone above Berman to the heads of the studio. Really I only see Berman as directly responsible for Jennifer Lien leaving as that was his creative decision.
@30, 31
Berman played a part in Wheaton’s departure too, I believe. He said something in an interview a few years back about Berman screwing him out of a movie role during his time on TNG. I think it was on the Mission Log podcast.
Gates McFadden’s departure was specifically due to issues with Maurice Hurley. When Hurley left after season two, McFadden returned. That was not a coincidence.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@31: You have a good point, at least in regards to McFadden. Hurley was definitely one of the issues behind that exit. But since Berman was also a producer at that point, I see it as a sin of omission. Not enough people stood up to defend her.
As for Farrell, I’ve heard the salary dispute was only part of the problem. There’s at least one interview where she brings up Berman and the way he objectified her and other actresses, citing cup size at one point.
But it’s not even a matter of blaming one producer or another. The point I’m trying to make is that that era of television production was more toxic and hostile to female castmembers than male ones.
@32: I did not know that. Good to know. I’ll look it up.
@34: Oh, I agree and while it’s gotten better for women they still have to fight extra hard to get equal pay compared to their male counterparts or higher pay they have a right to ask for without being termed “difficult” or made to feel ungrateful for even asking.
All I know about Kes leaving and Harry surviving is the story about Garrett nearly being fired but then making People’s 50 Most Beautiful People list. So the studio supposedly insisted he be kept on. So allegedly, it was not the old “we can only have so many female cast members” trope. Given how little Harry had to do in the last 4 seasons, though, I really wonder sometimes. It feels like Berman was being petty to someone.
@1Wikdfyrewarning- great critique. I agree completely.
As for Seven of Nine’s sexualization, we are sexual beings, and there has been and will be an evolving balancing act between the effort to attract viewers with pretty people and overt objectification. And has been discussed on the comments to other Trek episodes, it’s unfair to judge the boots and mini skirts of TOS by today’s standards. In the context of voyager’s crew before the arrival of Seven, she definitely stood out. Kind of a shock to the system.
But honestly, it was just an attractive woman in a catsuit. There was no skin, none of the soft porn that we saw in Enterprise with T’pol and Trip disrobed or massaging each other or soaping each other down in steamy decontamination rooms.
Seven was considered attractive by the crew, but only in a few episodes did she reciprocate at all. She remained largely asexual. I still think pairing her and Chakotay was a monumental miscalculation. Not only did it make no sense in the context of the series, I haven’t seen such lack of chemistry Between actors since Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman.
@37:
It feels like Berman was being petty to someone.
Oh, Wang’s absolutely acknowledged there’s enduring bad blood between him and Berman. According to Wang, the origins of it go back to just before shooting began on “Caretaker”:
“When casting ended on Voyager, all the actors were invited by [Berman] to attend a congratulatory luncheon. It was during this lunch that Berman informed us that he expected all actors portraying human roles to follow his decree. He told us that we were to underplay our human characters. He wanted our line delivery to be as military — and subsequently devoid of emotion — as possible, since this, in his opinion, was the only way to make the aliens look real. My first thought was, “That’s not right! What the heck was Berman talking about? Was he pulling our legs? The human characters shouldn’t be forced to muffle their emotions. We were human, not androids!” But, being the newbie in Hollywood, I did not make any objections… yet.”
So this dissent slowly began fermenting in the ensuing Seasons and came to a head during Season Four…
“Years after the initial lunch meeting, I made a comment off record to a TV Guide reporter on how upset I was over (executive producer Rick) Berman’s ridiculous mandate of less emotion for the human characters. My wording to him at the time was, “I think the producers of Voyager did not take the risks to make the show as good as it could be.” Even though I wasn’t really specific about what the issue was, that printed comment alone sealed the death of my ambitions to direct an episode of Star Trek…I was the first actor in Star Trek history to be denied the chance to direct.”
…and which is probably also responsible for this:
“During the fourth season, I called writer/producer Brannon Braga and asked him why my character hadn’t received a promotion yet. His response? “Well, somebody’s gotta be the ensign.” Geez, thanks. Thanks for nothing. At some point, I even approached Kate Mulgrew and frustratedly asked her why I wasn’t promoted yet. In hindsight, this action on my part was hilarious because Kate Mulgrew had no more influence in promoting my character than a random person on the street. I would like to take the time to say that I had no influence on these Kim developments.
@37, 39: Garrett is doing the Delta Flyers podcast with Robert Duncan McNeill and though they are only at the point of recapping early second season episodes, Garrett has said on a recent podcast that when they get up to the corresponding episode in the third season where Garrett was getting in trouble with the production that he’ll address it fully on the podcast and clear up all the inaccuracies about his alleged near-firing. He was basically insinuating that what we’ve been hearing all of these years isn’t correct at all so it’ll be interesting to hear what the truth from his perspective really is and if it contradicts or supports what he’s already said on the matter in other interviews and places like conventions.
Ensign Kim could have been promoted, while still slighting the actor who played him. The producers missed a chance to show an Asian character in not just a positive light but a leadership position as well. Garret Wang should show up at conventions dressed as a 90 year old Ensign Kim.
@37 Voyager seemed to have a fondness for keeping actors around but not giving them anything to do, for some reason. They did it to Kim and later (although to a lesser extent) with Chakotay, even though Beltran was practically begging to be released from his contract and demanding ridiculous salaries to stay. I could never figure out why they bothered keeping them around if they weren’t going to give them anything interesting to do. It’s actually been a little disconcerting to go back and watch the early episodes for me, because Beltran just seems to be alive in them in a way he clearly wasn’t in later seasons- where he just woodenly repeats technobabble until he is able to walk off screen.
@5: ChristopherLBennett:
Episodic television is still around and still quite popular. Case in point is the very long running series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit which began in 1999 (!!!) SVU does have several 2-part episodes dealing with complex cases, and there are some storylines that carry over from episode to episode, such as Sgt. Benson adopting a neglected child from a case she worked on.
The Simpsons has been around even longer than Law & Order and it is also very episodic.
But you’re right, serialized TV is now much more the norm today than it was in the 1990s.
In fact, I would say whereas TNG and Voyager were too episodic, Discovery has gone to the opposite extreme and it has become overly serialized. There are no standalone episodes so if you a newcomer to the series who has just started watching now, it is very hard to understand what is going on. Discovery I have found is really not enjoyable unless you have watched it from the beginning.
Episodic TV tends to be a bit less predictable because there is more freedom as the writers do not feel as confined to fit it into such a long narrative.
If I were an actor, I think I would much prefer acting on episodic series.
@43/RMS81:
I do miss the episodic format of TNG and VOY but DS9 probably did it best having an overall series-long arc while mixing in standalone episodic storylines. Strange New Worlds is also supposedly going back to a mix of an episodic format with at least one ongoing storyline, my guess being Pike’s impending tragic accident. But I agree, DSC and PIC, for that matter, are too heavily serialized.
I would say there was at least one episode of DSC that had an arguably standalone story: “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.” It was the time loop episode that was pretty much divorced from the ongoing Klingon war arc. It does follow-up on a previous episode featuring Harry Mudd on the series which helps to explain his motivations in the latter episode so it is still at least a bit serialized in that sense.
If I were an actor, I think I would much prefer acting on episodic series.
Perhaps, but then again if you are the star of the show and always featured heavily like Sonequa Martin-Green is on DSC or Patrick Stewart is on PIC you might not feel so. They are given a lot of screen time and given interesting things to do and play. I’ll have to say though another detriment to DSC in my opinion is this singular character focus. It’s like the whole universe revolves around Michael Burnham: she’s a part of Spock’s and Sarek’s family; she plays an integral part of the war with the Klingons and ending it; her bio-mom is the Red Angel and then Michael becomes the Red Angel; her counterpart in the Mirror Universe is essentially the daughter of the ruler of the Terran Empire; and it looks like she is the driving force to save the Federation in the 32nd century. I think it’s just too much Michael all the damn time. So I also miss the format that had a different character be the focus from episode to episode. As much as Lower Decks really does nothing for me, at least it’s the first Star Trek series since Enterprise that revolves around more than just one dominant character.
@44/garreth: “Strange New Worlds is also supposedly going back to a mix of an episodic format with at least one ongoing storyline, my guess being Pike’s impending tragic accident.”
I really, really hope not. That was already addressed in Discovery, and it’s still the better part of a decade in Pike’s future (“The Menagerie” established it as a recent event), so it would get really tedious and maudlin if it became Pike’s sole driving character trait from the very beginning of his series. I want to learn new things about these characters, not just endlessly rehash what we’ve already known for half a century.
To me, episodic to serialized is a spectrum. On the extreme end of episodic are shows that have absolutely no continuation between episodes. Think something like the old Looney Tunes cartoons. Then on the extreme end of serialization are the limited series, whose purpose is to tell one overarching story in a handful of episodes. Most shows fall somewhere on the spectrum rather than the extreme ends. In sci-fi/fantasy shows, it’s common to see a “big bad” for the season, while the majority of the episodes are episodic. Think something like Supernatural.
Oops, forgot to sum up my point. I wouldn’t say Voyager is purely episodic. They do call back to some previous episodes and there are continuing storylines.
@45/CLB: Yeah, I suppose Pike dwelling on his fate can get pretty maudlin if that were an ongoing storyline. But in reality, I think it’s actually a very compelling situation. I’m generally fascinated (and saddened) when I hear news stories about people who are given a diagnosis for a terminal condition and have only a finite amount of time to live or until they lose all motor function or the like. Something like that can really change how one lives the remainder of their life so I’m thinking that would naturally be the case for Pike’s character. But of course, there are plenty of story arcs that are much broader and not character-specific that the writers could come up with for the series.
Another thing I like about Discovery is they’ve really toned down the technobabble. I am in the middle of the first season and there’s very little of it. TNG and Voyager, especially in the middle parts of those series, seemed plagued by technobabble. I think they writers have deliberately tried to keep it to a minimum because it tends to confuse viewers.
@49/RMS81: I don’t think the technobabble confused viewers per se; it’s just that it took up time that could’ve been devoted to story and character instead. The words they used were incidental; the problem was that too many VGR episodes relied on climaxes where the problem was solved by characters pushing buttons and making techie things happen and reporting on the techie things rather than dealing with people and relationships and emotions and drama.
Technobabble is fine when it’s there in service to the plot. It’s a problem when it becomes the plot. Few things are less interesting than the week’s problem being some bit of made-up science that is solved by the characters using some other bit of made-up science.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think technobabble is often confusing for people who do not have a good understanding of science. It’s also to conceal the nature of materials, technologies, or devices mentioned in the story, often because of a violation of the laws of physics.
@52/RMS81: “I think technobabble is often confusing for people who do not have a good understanding of science.”
Not really, because most of it is just random made-up words without a trace of actual science content. There was some pretty good science in the early years of TNG, but by the time of Voyager, they were just slapping random syllables together. (They had a bizarre fondness for the prefix “iso-,” meaning equal, and the suffix “-lytic,” meaning dissolving, even in contexts where they made no sense whatsoever.) As someone with a physics degree, I can say that people who didn’t understand science were probably better off, because they couldn’t tell what utter gibberish most of it was.
Indeed, to me, that’s always been the essence of the word “technobabble.” Some people use the word to refer to all scientific exposition in fiction, even the plausible kind, but to me, the word refers specifically to vaguely sciencey-sounding gibberish used as a substitute for the real thing. If it makes sense, if it’s grounded in genuine science, then I don’t consider it technobabble.
@@@@@ 52: Technobabble’s pretty confusing for people who do have a good understanding of science. It just doesn’t make sense if you try and take it as an actual attempt at communication. Most of it’s just sciencey sounding gibberish and the actual scientific terms are typically so misapplied that they lose all meaning.
And pipped to the post. :)
@43 – RMS81: Beyond anyone’s taste in serialized vs. episodic, Discovery has no strong reason to have many stand-alone episodes, as it’s an on-demand show. Unlike traditional TV shows, which you could catch random episodes of when they were airing, an on-demand show is either watched from the start (when it is released weekly) by people who are interested in following it, or it is discovered later, when the season is complete, by people looking for stuff to binge, and they will not pick episode 5 of season 2 to start watching.
Both SVU and the Simpsons are traditional TV shows, meant to air on repeat and have a great portion of their audience tune in into random episodes as they’re changing channels. Again, I understand it’s a matter of taste (I prefer serialization), but it’s also a matter of how and in what platform shows are meant to be shown.
I’d completely forgotten that Nancy Hower only made one appearance (was that true of most seasons of VGR?). Don McManus was an entertaining guest star – doesn’t he make the cut, Krad? VGR’s third season was a point of transition between what the series had been and what it was about to become, like DS9’s.
1: VGR later did a “Lower Decks” style episode in the sixth season with Good Shepherd. 4: TNG, yes. DS9, no. They both became bigger and better but with DS9, it wasn’t until S4. VGR’s fourth season saw the series embrace some much needed direction after three shapeless years, particularly with the addition of Jeri Ryan to the cast.
7: Some of S3’s better ideas included ditching the Kazon (they could have got one more year out of the Vidiians), giving the Doctor more mobility and putting an end to Kes and Neelix’s relationship (too many uncomfortable connotations). I think they like to pretend those first two years never happened.
15: She made up for it by burning all of the other catsuits. 16: She certainly is. 18: Is there a title yet? 20: Didn’t Jeri Ryan give an interview that focused solely on her cup-size? 24: That was the plan until Wang’s appearance in People Magazine saved him from the chop and the axe fell on Jennifer Lien instead.
25: Did Nicole deBoer face the same opposition because there was an equally strong focus on Ezri in DS9’s last season? 29: I could never get used to Paris as the Doctor’s nurse (neither could they!). I think Timeless is Wang’s favourite episode too. 33: McFadden still had to be persuaded to return (by Patrick Stewart, no less!).
37: Lien was extremely underused in S3. “It feels like Berman was being petty to someone” – yeah, Jennifer Lien! 38: Shipping Chakotay and Seven came out of nowhere, didn’t it? 41: Wang had to wait until Endgame before Kim got (and lost!) his promotion. 42: Beltran kept asking for inflated salaries thinking they would fire him for being too much trouble. But instead they kept giving him what he wanted – an interesting way to call his bluff!
43: I think the reason they don’t show Sapphire & Steel much is because each series has an ongoing storyline – you can’t just dip in and out. 50: No doubt that’s why Ronald D. Moore became so quickly disillusioned with VGR after working on DS9. 54: ST makes up its science once it runs out of the real stuff. 55: I can take either approach.
@56: Nancy Hower was in three episodes of Season 2 (not counting “Elogium”, which was considered part of Season 1 in home media releases and guidebooks until the DVD stuck it in Season 2). Other than that, she was only in one episode a season. Except Season 7, when she didn’t appear at all.
57: I couldn’t believe she wasn’t there to see Neelix off at the end of Homestead. He was the godfather to her child, after all!
I wouldn’t characterize the aggressively standalone nature of Voyager’s episodes as a lack of consistency. They’re incredibly consistent when it comes to not bringing up anything that has happened to them in previous stories!
At any rate, my current journey through Voyager has felt like one big downward slide. I really enjoyed the first season (I would go so far as to call it my second-favorite debut season of my current rewatch after TOS’s first season. The second season was a significant step down in terms of my enjoyment, and this season has felt line an equally big step down. It’s easily been the worst season for me since TNG’s final year, with more stories that I absolutely hated than stories that I absolutely loved. Since I’ve only watched Voyager in its entirety one other time, I don’t really remember if it gets better from here or if it just keeps going downhill. The saving grace of this portion of my rewatch is that it’s interspersed with DS9, and if I remember correctly, that show’s still got one more really good season in it, so that will keep me going , regardless of what direction Voyager goes from here.