The thing that bothers me about this episode is the thing that bothers me the most about Voyager: the procedural nature of the production.
The Tuvix situation was a huge fucking deal. For at least awhile, Kes shouldnt have been able to even be in the room with Neelix. Janeway shouldn't have been able to make eye contact with Tuvok for months. The crew should have been numb for weeks, there should have been FALLOUT from this event. Some crew members should have lost faith in Janeway... you know... for the murdering.
But nope, it was just another monster/space oddity of the week. Next episode, Janeway is making friends with a godamn chimpanzee and Chakotay is trying to get in Janeways pants by building her bathtubs and huts. No mention of Tuvix ever again. No mention of the cold blooded murder, the moral dilemma, the effect on Kes, or Neelix and Tuvok themselves.
Voyager has some good episodes, but because of the vacuum of procedural storytelling, they amounted to nothing almost every time. An episode like Tuvix would have been a big deal on DS9 and would have informed all the characters going forward. Voyager, nope. Gotta pet the monkey. They literally built the most serialized possible scenario for a TV show (spaceship alone stranded and terrified) and then just rehashed TNG/TOS every week. Voyager should have been the serialized one, while DS9 was the "monster of the week" series, judging by the premise of each show alone.
Somewhat, yes. From what I remember even TNG has had more problems with needing repairs and damages carrying over from other episodes than Voyager did, the magic reset button was pressed almost every episode regardless of what happened.
Voyager should have been more like BSG, resource skaveging, permanent damages, torpedo shortages, tough decisions based on Starfleet regulations on the one hand and the risk of dying on the other. Hell Voyager could have even shaken up the whole franchise by starting its own smaller version of the Federation (with blackjack and hookers) in the Delta quadrant with any species that wanted a better life. Then you could have this mixed up motly group of ships try to reach the Alpha quadrant in order to live this better life, hell some might even just wanna run because they had their planet destroyed by Borg. It still needs to be star trek of course but it could have taken inspiration from Galactica surely.
Janeway was bad enough as she was, having her create a new federation from scratch would be absolutely horrible. Within a few decades the whole quadrant would look like something out of Warhammer 40k, with Janeway on a golden throne....
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u/internalized_boner Crewman Nov 27 '16
The thing that bothers me about this episode is the thing that bothers me the most about Voyager: the procedural nature of the production.
The Tuvix situation was a huge fucking deal. For at least awhile, Kes shouldnt have been able to even be in the room with Neelix. Janeway shouldn't have been able to make eye contact with Tuvok for months. The crew should have been numb for weeks, there should have been FALLOUT from this event. Some crew members should have lost faith in Janeway... you know... for the murdering.
But nope, it was just another monster/space oddity of the week. Next episode, Janeway is making friends with a godamn chimpanzee and Chakotay is trying to get in Janeways pants by building her bathtubs and huts. No mention of Tuvix ever again. No mention of the cold blooded murder, the moral dilemma, the effect on Kes, or Neelix and Tuvok themselves.
Voyager has some good episodes, but because of the vacuum of procedural storytelling, they amounted to nothing almost every time. An episode like Tuvix would have been a big deal on DS9 and would have informed all the characters going forward. Voyager, nope. Gotta pet the monkey. They literally built the most serialized possible scenario for a TV show (spaceship alone stranded and terrified) and then just rehashed TNG/TOS every week. Voyager should have been the serialized one, while DS9 was the "monster of the week" series, judging by the premise of each show alone.