I've seen more than my fair share of
Voyager and I think it's the worst of the
Star Trek series, by far. It was simply spineless. The show never took any risks and was afraid to show any faults in its characters, particularly captain
Janeway. I often see a gem of an idea in an episode but they never do anything interesting with it.
For instance, many episodes show how stubborn captain
Janeway is but not once has her stubbornness ever worked against her. In fact, it has always worked
for her, such as in the series finale. Why must she be depicted as perfect?! Are the writers afraid that giving her a character flaw will be seen as misogynistic? All the other captains have had their faults and have made their mistakes. Why must the writing staff ban such an obvious, useful, and (above all) interesting plot device?
That's not the only example of the show's cowardice. I just saw the third season premiere, where the crew was stranded on a primitive planet by the
Kazon, with the exception of
Tom Paris,
Mr. Suder, and the
EMH, who have evaded capture and are trying to retake the ship. A surprising amount of story time was spent on the crew's primitive life on the planet while surpringly little screen time went to the retaking of the ship.
I think it would have been really interesting if almost no screen time was spent on the rest of the crew and the entire episode was spent on the ship, with two principle characters and a recurring character, Mr. Suder. It would have been unorthodox for the show to open the season without most of the cast but it would have been bold, interesting, and they'd have a very interesting story to back them up (the retaking of the lost
Voyager).
But perhaps I expect too much of TV. I would have had a guest star play
Sam Beckett on every episode of
Quantum Leap but the producers obviously didn't think that would be a good idea. Personally, I would have had
Mr. Suder (coming back to
Voyager here) restore his psychosis as a sacrifice for retaking the ship but, again, that's just me...