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star trek - Was ST:VOY watered down?


The premise of ST:VOY seems like it would introduce a whole new ethos and a whole new way of doing things for Star Trek. During the same time, you had DS9 being set mostly on a station hanging out at the same place each week, allowing for longer and more convoluted/interesting storylines involving the Bajoran/Cardassian situation (among others), which arguably changed the "tone" of the show compared to other ST series (TOS and TNG).


Similarly, you'd think that the premise of VOY - a ship stuck on the other end of the galaxy without support - would lead to a different tone. You'd have supplies running low, difficult moral decisions needing to be made, Starfleet principles needing to be sacrificed on the pyre of survival, redshirts needing constant replacement with Delta Quadrant locals (perhaps getting shanghaied into joining), and so forth.


This probably sounds very opinion-based so far, but as an illustration of what I mean, take for example Year of Hell. That had a beat-up Voyager on hard-scrabble survival mode, half the systems busted, people dying left and right, parts of the ship being visually replaced with alien tech scavenged along the way (at least Borg components if not others), etc.


Instead, what we got was a villain-of-the-week style of show with little regard or need for continuity, somehow maintaining a luxurious level of existence (with replicators, holodecks, and so forth), and every time something bad happens to the ship, it gets fixed by the end of the episode or at least before the start of the next one. Occasionally there's some lip service to resource scarcity or the need to get home or something, but it's mostly to drive the plot for one episode or two-parter only. Apart from that, and apart from giving Neelix a reason to maintain a galley in a universe with replicators, there are no permanent repercussions for their situation. They still maintain a luxury liner level of comfort right up to the end.


Doubtless, in-universe reasons have been constructed for this, but what I'm interested in is the out-of-universe reasoning for seemingly neutering the premise.


Have the series creators ever commented explicitly on whether they meant for VOY to be (for want of a better term) "more hardcore," but were hampered in doing this for some reason? Or conversely, have they addressed any concerns similar to mine as to why the premise seems to have little impact on the good ship Voyager's day-to-day, besides find-and-replacing "explore" with "go home" for an overarching motivation to go anywhere?



Answer



One of the show's writers, Ronald D Moore, would agree with you. In fact, he left Voyager because of a lot of the issues you mentioned. Eventually his ideas for what Voyager should have been were remodeled into the remake of Battlestar Galactica.


Have a read of these interviews:



Exclusive Interview: Ron Moore – Fighting The Trek Clichés - TrekMovie.com:



I really think…that when Voyager gets damaged it should get damaged, we should stop repairing the ship, the ship should be broken down more and devolving a little bit more.’ One of the ideas I had is that they should start developing their own culture within the starship and letting go of Starfleet protocols and stop thinking of themselves as Starfleet people on some level, even though they still wear the uniform and still try to adhere to the regulations. I thought it would be interesting that by the time this ship got back to Earth, that it didn’t even belong at Earth anymore.


[...] I probably would have sent it into a darker direction and sent it into a more harrowing journey yes. And made them more on the run and more less of a pretty journey getting back, [...]



"LCARSCom.Net", lcarscom.net


In short, yes, Voyager was watered down.


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