Star Trek Voyager: Seasons 1-7
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Actor: Jeri Ryan, Kate MulgrewBrand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 7782 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-12-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of Star Trek Voyager: Seasons 1-7
DVD Review: Started slowly, ended well, but absurdly priced
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me add to what others are saying: this is an absurdly priced set. I honestly consider it immoral for any company to price a set this high. I don't know about others, but my life is sometimes kind of hard. I don't have enough money for necessities. For any corporation to gouge fans of a show in a time of growing economic inequality is simply outrageous. The discounted price for this set should not, under any circumstances, be more than around $175. I'll go further: anyone who buys a set priced this high is not only crazy but doing their share to support a system that abuses fans and consumers. OK, off soapbox. I'll merely add that I don't quite understand why Paramount refuses to bring their prices in line with industry standards. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, a show about 20 times better than VOYAGER at its best, has its Season One available at $18.99 after discount. Go buy that instead.
STAR TREK: VOYAGER is fascinating for a number of reasons. For one, it started off with an interesting premise but then completely failed to actualize any of its potential for three seasons, before correcting itself in Season Four and unexpectedly becoming a decent show for its final four. The overwhelming majority of TV shows ever made are better in their first half than in their second half. VOYAGER is nearly unwatchable in its first three seasons, but became quite interesting in its final half. Why? There are two main reasons. First, few shows have profited so enormously from the addition of a single character as VOYAGER. At the end of Season Three VOYAGER was in danger of cancellation, but they agreed to some shake-ups. The most important was the addition of Seven of Nine, wonderfully portrayed by Jeri Ryan. The character worked on a number of levels and quickly became perhaps the most crucial role on the series. Most obviously, she brought a sexiness to the show it had previously lacked. Jeri Ryan in her skin-tight uniform was more jaw dropping than anything that could be found on BAYWATCH (she won the swimsuit competition in the Miss America pageant as Miss Illinois, something that no one who has seen VOYAGER is the tiniest bit surprised by). But Ryan was (is) not merely a pretty face. She was a subtle and versatile actress and brought unexpected depth to a character that could easily have been merely a walking automaton. Moreover, her character was wonderfully conceived. As a human who had been assimilated by the Borg, but now freed and in search of her lost humanity, the character offered a host of possibilities. Some of my favorite moments on the show toward the end consisted of holodeck programs in which Seven would engage in imaginary social situations, fitting in with others in a way that she never did outside the holodeck.
There was a second major reason the show got better as it moved into its four final seasons. The initial premise of the show seemed to demand a progressive narrative. Yet, almost immediately the show became almost completely episodic, with virtually no narrative development for three entire seasons. Emblematic of this was that at the end of Season Three Neelix was still completely knowledgeable about every race and planet that they encountered. At that point I felt the show would have been better titled STUCK IN SPACE. But at the end of Season Three and moving into Season Four the narrative began to accelerate. Though most episodes remained standalones, more elements were sustained from episode to episode. There was increasingly a sense that Voyager was in fact going home. There was far more character development. As a result, the show took on a greater degree of depth than it had before.
I personally find all of the STAR TREK shows to be frustrating and in many ways to encapsulate what is wrong with most TV outer space SF. I simply detest aliens. I find SF series without them -- like the new BSG and the wonderful FIREFLY -- to be far more compelling for their humans-only universe. If it were possible to convincingly portray other races, it might be different. But in VOYAGER and the other ST series virtually all the aliens look like humans with prostheses attached to their nose or forehead. All aliens are apparently the same height. And every race seems to have a universal translator. One thing I liked about SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND was the fact that the humans and Chigs were utterly incapable of communicating with one another. Another major problem I have with all the ST series is the use of technology. Every episode is stuffed to overflowing with technobabble. Most of it is meaningless gibberish. How many times to we hear something along these lines on VOYAGER? Tuvok: Stress caused by the anomaly will threaten structural integrity of the hull. Janeway: Strengthen shields. What? It is a writer's trick. You avoid a narrative difficulty by a verbal sleight of hand. OK, every show -- especially every SF show -- engages in such tricks to keep the narrative flowing. But the ST series use such tricks a hundred times more frequently than other series. Watch any episode of BSG or FIREFLY and then any episode of VOYAGER and you will be aware of how often VOYAGER uses such tricks. Worse, compare that same episode of VOYAGER with any episode of FARSCAPE -- another series that also engages in technobabble and Magical Science far too often than it ought (for the record, FARSCAPE is, despite that and its aliens, probably my third favorite outer space SF series after BSG and FIREFLY) -- and you will see that such cavalier use of technological vagueness can be avoided. Finally, the show's almost aggressive avoidance of anything approaching reality is, in my opinion, irritating. I cringed every time I heard Tuvok say something like, "Shields down to 40 percent." It is like playing a RPG computer game and having your character down to 20 percent health. I'll stop there. I could write an encyclopedia of elements about ST shows that I can't stand, from shields to pulse weapons to tasers to whatever. Again, contrast this with BSG and FIREFLY, where bullets are the name of the game. I can sort of excuse the original ST. In the sixties it was fantasized that lasers could be used as weapons, but scientists have increasingly insisted that apart from targeting, lasers and other kinds of "rays" will never be effective as weapons. Projectiles are here to stay. As a result, when you watch the ST shows, instead of looking advanced, they seem dated, tied to scientific ideas of an earlier decade.
Still, despite these irritants, there were some very good things on the show. I liked the majority of the cast. Neelix never became a character I liked or could tolerate (his physical design always reminded me of a circus clown and like many people, I simply don't like clowns). Harry Kim never became one of my favorites. But most I at least came to like. I very much enjoyed Captain Janeway. The nineties saw the emergence of "tough women" on TV. The most important character in this development was, of course, Buffy Summers, but before Buffy arrived in 1997 we had seen a variety of new, strong female characters, including Dana Scully and Xena. And certainly Janeway, as the forceful and highly intelligent commander of Voyager, played her role. But for me the two most compelling -- and provocative -- characters on the show were Seven of Nine and the Doctor. Today as more and more people are debating issues about intelligent machines (or even, as Ray Kurzweil would put it, "spiritual machines"), the Doctor seems particular relevant. A hologram, he has, in a sense, no physical reality at all. As he explains it at one point, he is made up of light and force fields. His character -- even his moral character -- often seems the result of his subroutines and programming. Yet, he pushes the question of "who is a person" more than any other character ever found on a SF series. He seems to incarnate the claims made by posthumanists more than any other character in SF.
I think in the long run VOYAGER will be remembered as an important SF series for two reasons. One might argue for three, the third being that it helped the idea of a journey from one corner of the universe to another. But the original BSG, as horrid as it was in every other way, did establish that template. But BSG had little or no influence on subsequent TV shows (not even that much on the new BSG), and furthermore because in the original BSG they did not have a precise idea of where they were going, there was not as focused of a sense of direction. But on Voyager they knew precisely where they were heading. Still, I think its legacy will be twofold. One, I think it raised the possible roles for female characters on a SF series to a new level. On previous ST series women had, for the most part, held positions that were compatible with more traditional understandings of the roles of women. On TNG, for instance, the two main female characters served as the ship doctor and as the ship counselor (though in Season One there was a female security officer). But on VOYAGER one woman served as the ship's captain while another was the chief engineer, and in later seasons Seven of Nine was the ship's resident genius and savior. Second, I think VOYAGER will be remembered for the two very intriguing characters of the Doctor and Seven of Nine. They both push notions of what it means to be a person and what it means to be human to an unusual degree.
Again, I do not recommend that anyone buy this set. In fact, I strongly encourage everyone NOT to buy this. This is why Netflix exists. Rent this. Do not buy it. Or at least do not buy it until Paramount lowers the price to a reasonable level. When this set costs $175, grab it.
Description of Star Trek Voyager: Seasons 1-7
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