Why I think the Star Trek: Voyager series finale SUCKED (or at least could have been better)
Hey all – This is my response to a review Demonweasel wrote on the Voyager finale last night (spoilers included below). If you want his original review (very humorous, imho), check his site, but here’s my Voyager rant, once and for all 🙂
Man you liked it that much eh? I guess I’m just still pissed about, as you say, the ‘squandered potential’ of the series as a whole that I couldnt have been satisfied with any finale. Along those lines, here is what I think should have happened, if we could go back and fix the series as a whole, and then the finale. BTW – This is my rant I’ve been saying for years, just packaged in to one place.. your the only person I think that might have been interested in hearing my rant. Write me back and say ‘Thanks for your input, suggestion noted and logged, ensign’ and i’ll be quiet. Or if you’d like, take my rants and add it to your review your getting published, you can have them, I’m not planning on publishing anything I write.. well.. ever… 🙂 Here goes…and note this is one sequential rant, written in 15 minutes of a Thursday morning while procrastinating on walking my dogs.. my apologies for spelling, grammar or structural/logic errors.. but it is a review about Voyager so that should be par for the course, no? 😉
First off.. two major fixes in the series in the past few years:
First off, lets rewind the series a few years. Talking with Reg back home was cute, but it should have been sporadic and limited, none of this e-mail to families, 15 minutes chat time over the technobabble comm units and crap like that. They should have saved that for the end. What’s the point of being stranded if you take away the separation and lack of communication anxieties.
Second, the marqui (sp?) should still all be wanted criminals. I stopped watching voyager in the middle there, and maybe they fixed that when I was still trying to find when it was on in Maine, but no matter, that shouldnt have been resolved. They should have pulled into Federation space and then have all the ships greeting them say ‘Welcome back, glad to see you, good job.. but prepare to be boarded we’re taking your fugitives in custody’.. Janeway says bite me, raises shields and a big political/legal argument ensues.
So I say, this year, the much heralded ‘VOYAGERS FINAL SEASON’, should have gotten them home somehow, in around March. Then the remaining Seven or so episodes should have been the hearings on the margui crew, where the whole crew bands together and tells the Federation to go to hell if they can’t forgive the margui, and of course, just to mess things up, some the margui, part of the mythical 400 crew that we never met, are still all political and pissed off and shit and go and mess with Cardassia (Especially if they can get control of the ‘future/delta quadrant tech’d up Voyager and just kick Cardassia’s ass.. oh come on.. it would be fun). That’s a good 2 or 3 ‘To be continued’ episodes in itself if it’s done right.. in fact the whole last 7 episodes should be ‘to be continued’, sprinkle a nice cliffhanger at the end of each and keep us baited.
Seven – Take a page from Babylon 5 and have the sleazy news media go nuts over her. First have reporters making sexist and degrading comments about her appearance, extensiveness of her Borg implants, maybe even getting ahold of her medical file with nude photos they plan to publish.. yeah I know its the federation in the future and we’re beyond all that.. but oh come on, there still has to be sleazy press of some kind, and they should come out of the woodwork. Again the crew will need to band together, do some political manuevering, maybe even some undercover stuff and even step on a few censorship laws as they scare the reporters into being respectful.
Also, since the borg aren’t exactly on everyone’s favorite list these days, they can do the classic star trek ‘deal with an issue indirectly’ story and have her confront all sorts of racism etc., especially with her going out with Chakotay, etc’. Having her meet Picard at some point would be worth a good 10 minutes of borg and dealing with racism discussion. I mean.. if their back they could bring all the ‘best of’ folks from DS9 and TNG to do tons of cameos heck even throw Spock in for a cameo with Tuvok to help him with his brain disorder.. they wanted big ratings right? Pull out all the stops.. have Picard counsel Janeway and Seven. During the ‘court hearings’ for all the margui and other cases regarding breaking prime directives and stuff have various TNG members come on the give examples of how the Enterprise did the same thing and got away with it.. have the Doctor and Data have a chat about being human, have Worf help Belanna and Paris get recognized as a family of honor by the klingon high council, blah blah blah.. you get the idea. Oh and maybe Hugh, the borg dude, could show up to chat with Seven… why not? Make Chakotay jealous, etc etc. Again, good for 10 minutes.. a nice cliffhanger. I mean .. its the end of the series, but its also the end of the whole ‘future’ Star Trek.. TNG/DS9/VOYAGER all back to back… and BOOM their killing it (temporarily.. yeah right) so why not pull out all the stops!?
As for the last episode as it stands.. well first off, the whole ‘borg queen’ idea is just dumb, I still hate ‘first contact’ for her existence, and now apparently she’s immortal in some weird Borg way, so its even worse. The whole weird thing about the Borg were that they were a giant ‘hive’… there are no leaders, (ok Im still pissed off that Picard even got to be a semi-leader as locutus, but I guess one cube could go off track for a little bit until the big hive beats them into order.) But anyways.. they should have just encountered the borg and talked to the ominous tinny digital echo ‘WE ARE THE BORG!’ voice.. much scarier. Besides that….
Ok .. did the whole Janeway going back in time episode seem a little similar to the Harry Kim makes it back but goes back in time to save everyone episdoe ? It’s been done! This is old shit! Sigh..
Klingon technology – Lame lame lame interactions with the Klingons. You mean to tell me the captain woudlnt talk back to the lying Klingon and get his high council seat revoked or dishonor him if he did that? The best she could think of what a surprise transport snatch? Duh. Again.. why not a Worf cameo.. have an old Worf.. who became head of the council in the future, right?? Or ambassador? Something big and important, have her call in a favor from him and have him show up and slap this lame klingon around, dishonor his family, spit in his face.. all that fun Klingon stuff. Anyways.. lame…
Batmobile Shields – Oh FINALLY Star Trek starts using armor instead of shields and that stumps the borg..yup, no one else ever thought of this that the borg ever assimilated.. D’OH why didn’t we think of this before. Ok Ok.. its future shields but still, I find that a bit silly.. why couldn’t she just have given them some transphasic technobabble shields with a nice blue tint from the future or something .. anyways… it was nice to see, but much too batmobile like, they should have done something original.. but oops, that would require creativity and NEW special FX.. sorry.. what was I thinking.
Technobabble Torpedoes – Fun.. Dramatic.. but a bit overkill.. But ok ok .. she’s from 26 years in the future, she gets some big guns.
Messing with the Timeline – Still think there should be some reprecussions here, such as the borg figuring out how to block the fancy weapons & shields 26 years too early. OOPS! fall out for messing with the time stream.. what a concept. ‘Thanks for bringing your crew back early Janeway, but your future self just made life alot harder for us now’. Good thing you brought those weapons and shields with you (Theres a whole other episode.. every bad guy in the known universe tries to kidnap Voyager to get its goodies.. whoever gets the new shields/weapons, or the engineers that understand it, controls the world… again the whole ‘not really dealing with the issue’ episode they could make parallells to nuclear build up and the arms race etc etc.)
Enough for now.. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for my rants about Star Trek Enterprise once it’s out 🙂 I’m always happy to rant about how any series, episode or movie ‘could be better’.. so maybe I’m in the wrong business 🙂 Oh well. If you ever want my rant on a subject.. just ask 🙂
-Matt