However Voyager really did try to get back to the original sense of adventure and being out there and alone (on the other side of the galaxy!) that the TOS series had....they just couldn't hit their mark.
That's because
Voyager was, fundamentally, a cheat. Because of the Paramont "franchise rules" (and don't forget, this is where the cosmic reset button
really came from)
Voyager could never be a really dramatic show where anything interesting happened because a) no major changes were allowed and b) their primiary mission, first, last and always, was to get back home. They were handed a situation in the pilot that could only be resolved by their returning home. So that was the predetermined end-point. And since Paramount's "protect the franchise' rules said they couldn't change much (except for losing gaining characters as any TV show will over five or seven years) everything in between was - and had to be - filler.
Voyager was a "puzzle-box story" writ large. David Gerrold wrote about "puzzle-box stories" in one of his books about
ST:TOS. The p-b story is fake drama because it traps the hero in some unpleasant situation from which he wants to escape, and then puts obstacles in his path to slow him down. Since we know he's going to escape (if he doesn't there's no show next week), the writers just try to make the puzzle seem interesting by adding some phony jeopardy or giving the hero a love interest to worry about for the hour. Remember the
TOS episode where everyone disappears into the past of a world that is about to be destroyed? Spock somehow reverts to a primative form of Vulcan and falls for a cave girl in an ice age of the alien planet's distant past. But there's no real question that Spock is going to stay there with her. She's a roll in the hay to him, and when he returns to the "present" all those messy emotinos are going to go away anyhow. In "The City on the Edge of Forever", on the other hand, essentially the same device is used to
put Kirk into the real dramatic story the episode has to tall: This one about Earth's past (and future) and a genuine choice that Kirk has to make with devastating consequences (personal or universal) no matter which path he choses. (Personally, I preferred Ellison's orginal ending where Kirk can't bring himself to do what needs to be done and Spock kills Edith, but that's just me.)
But
Voyager was the bad kind of puzzle box, the kind that simply stalls the inevitable for 7 years. There was never the sense of exploring the unknown because they
weren't exploring it. They were looking for the shortest route out of the place.
This is the opposite of
Crusade, which also seemed to be a puzzle-box show to many outside observers, who thought it was going to be about curing the Drakh plague. If anything it seemed to have less going for it than
Voyager, because while we could assume the ship would make it home, there was always the small chance they'd pull a
Quantum Leap on us and leave them out there after 7 years. But with
Crusade we not only knew they had to find a cure, we knew that a cure had been found, because varous episodes of
B5 had already given us glimpses of Earth long afert everything on the planet would have died if the plague hadn't been cured. The difference, of course, is the JMS never intended the show to remain the same series in the same situation for 5 years. By the end of year one it would already have taken one serious detour and been well on its way to another. (Just as he'd sold
B5 as "
Casablanca in space", but by the thrid season had turned it into
Seven Days in May, as he mentions in one of the script books.)
I once posted a proposed reimagining of
Voyager where the crew is forced pretty quickly to accept that they are
never going home and that they'll simply have to build lives for themselves in some quiet corner of the Delta Quadrant, avoiding contact as much as possible and keeping the Prime Directive in spirit, if not to the letter. That would last about 1 season, during which they'd keep hearing about this really evil force that dominated the whichever quadrant they were supposed to be in. The Macqis woud naturally want to fight the oppresors, and this would be a major source of contlict between them and the Federation types. Until the bad guys came after
Voyager, which would turn out to be one of the most advanced ships in the region. Then Capt. Kate would quietly tear up the Prime Directive and decide to do the RIght Thing instead by, in effect, conquering the entire quadrant herself, welding the disparate races into a single government and taking the Bad Guys
down once and for all.
(The model I had in the back of my mind was John Carter of Mars, who starts out just fighting in self-defense on a planet where every group is perpetually at war with every ohter group, then to help his friends and gradually keeps turning vanquisehd foes into allies until he's Jeddak of Jaddaks, Warlord of Mars and in charge of pretty much the whole shootin' match.)
After which the Federation would invent some sooper-dooper warp drive that allowed them to send ships to the area - at which point loyalteis would be tested again as various people had to decide whether or not to go "home", the Federation has to decide what to do criminal violators of the Prime Directive and Capt. Kate has to decide if she's ready to pit her Empire against the Federation.
it could have been fun.
Regards,
Joe
