rickgriffin wrote: ↑Sat Feb 09, 2019 5:34 pm
I'm pretty sure Chuck's dislike of Voyager stems most from the fact that it was instrumental to him personally; he was excited for this new series and they squandered it hard, even though the truth of the matter is the majority of Voyager is just mediocre. Enterprise and S1+2 TNG are obviously MORE BAD but they always seemed less personal to him.
Whether Chuck would rank Voyager or Enterprise at the bottom as far as finished Trek series, I wouldn't care to speculate. Clearly he was frustrated with Voyager, and of course it came before Enterprise. The review of the Voyager finale talks about how Voyager had everything going for it, and they wasted such potential by playing it safe and not even seeming to care to strive to be better much of the time. Something Chuck has talked about, that I've also used as an example of the Voyager writers not giving a damn is repeatedly talking about needing to find deuterium, even talking about mining deuterium. One of the more common things in the universe. So not only didn't they have a science adviser around, they didn't even have one review the scripts to try to make any scientific sense in their science fiction show. And let's not forget off-screen juggling. So they come off as incredibly lazy. With Enterprise, even when they managed to produce crap, to me at least it seemed like they were trying harder than the writers on Voyager.
Various problems that led to the failures in TNG seasons one and two are well understood, and were dealt with, leading to much improvement. It is easier to forgive such failings that were thankfully corrected.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
Pretty much. As bad as the two early seasons were in ENTERPRISE, there was at least an attempt to fix the show in the latter two that made it more fresh than VOYAGER as a whole. That’s why I personally rank VOYAGER as my least favorite series. It’s fourth season is the best as it’s the most consistently pleasing, but then later seasons just got more mediocre. ENTERPRISE may have had a very awful start, but (aside from the finale) it at least went off in a more interesting direction.
planescaped wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:11 pm
Enterprise was actually becoming legitimately good and interesting... then they killed it, and pissed on the body with that finale.
In a way, giving you a glimpse of what could've been before murdering it in front of you is almost worse then never having it at all like in Voyager.
It was almost cancelled after the third season. Even if the show ultimately ended with that Nazi alien cliffhanger, I would still take the third season over the entirety of VOYAGER. In all honesty, those first two seasons felt like extended seasons of VOYAGER in all its formulaic mediocrity that it's no wonder the ratings fell so fast and hard.
planescaped wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:11 pm
Enterprise was actually becoming legitimately good and interesting... then they killed it, and pissed on the body with that finale.
In a way, giving you a glimpse of what could've been before murdering it in front of you is almost worse then never having it at all like in Voyager.
It was almost cancelled after the third season. Even if the show ultimately ended with that Nazi alien cliffhanger, I would still take the third season over the entirety of VOYAGER. In all honesty, those first two seasons felt like extended seasons of VOYAGER in all its formulaic mediocrity that it's no wonder the ratings fell so fast and hard.
Indeed. I see the phrase "franchise fatigue" thrown about a lot when it comes to this era, but it's always directed at the audience without evidence or justification. I think the audience was there; it's the production crew who had grown fatigued.
They needed to bring in new writers and get them up to speed inside of the franchise. That would have saved us from The Great Discontinuity.
“Franchise fatigue” for me means exactly that, the franchise just going through the motions. VOYAGER had such a very promising premise that had potential to give new life to the franchise, instead it just sapped it.
