Star Trek: Voyager - Season One
Picture: C+ Sound: B- Extras: B- Episodes: B-
To launch
the United Paramount Network, a new Star Trek TV series was created to launch
it. Voyager
set sail in 1995, but like The Next
Generation, it was off to a rough start.
Casting the female lead took a while, including the arrival and
departure of Lindsay Wagner and Genevieve Bujold. Finally, the role of Captain Kathryn Janeway
went to Kate Mulgrew, who previously had a strange run in the title role of Mrs. Columbo. This first season only ran 15 episodes, as
follows:
Caretaker
Parallax
Time and Again
Phage
The Cloud
Eye of the Needle
Ex Post Facto
Emanations
Prime Factor
State of Flux
Heroes and Demons
Cathexis
Faces
Jetrel
Learning Curve
After
going through the shows, I realized trying to explain them would take the
pretense of expecting you to know about the Trek world, but all you
need to know is that they get hit by a power mass and land up “on the other
side of the galaxy” as if they had figured out the whole thing. The show was not stuck in the “holodeck” like
the first few seasons of The Next
Generation, or add new meaning to “suspended disbelief” as Deep Space Nine did, but it did get
caught up in uncertainty of what direction to take. The military direction Nicholas Meyer took
that reasonably upset Star Trek
creator Gene Roddenberry had this show taking itself way too seriously. Even more than The Next Generation, because it offered a more varied cast, this
felt like a version of the original show that (at least initially) missed the
point of the franchise. That is to say
it forgot its roots. It felt more like a
carbon copy that the previous spin-offs.
From the
demand for Mulgrew, to asking for her hair to be changed to something more
conservative, Paramount wanted something more
conservative in feel. This nearly
backfired as a series, but it eventually found its audience. They also knew it felt too much like Lost in Space and likely influenced the
ultra-dreadful feature film of that series to be so stupidly dark. The studio was likely playing it safe because
of their new network, which makes looking at these initial episodes again very
mixed.
It feels
like a huge comedown from the better feature films and their great vision,
their production values, and maybe a third Star
Trek series being produced at the same time was stretching it a bit. The other result it that it not distinguish
itself from the likes of Babylon 5
and like shows trying to capitalize on the initial (eventual) success of The Next Generation. Muddy is the best way to describe the result.
The
authorship of Roddenberry, the curiosity about life, space and the unknown was
overtaken by melodrama too much. The
characters were not as developed and the thing critics wrongly accused the
original show of became true here, in that everyone feels like they are talking
too much at each other, and not to each other.
Also, this could only be repeated sop many times without getting into
trouble, so we can give the decent cast that much.
The soul
of the franchise was really starting to disappear at this point, whether it was
from Roddenberry’s absence or how overextended it was. By becoming too familiar, how can it explore
the unknown, especially when that unknown is reduced to mixed visual effects,
the unfamiliar as familiar and a record use on TV of latex?
The full
frame image shows its age, with softness in its detail, dated digital effects,
and an annoying use of video-based editing and special effects finalizing that
also plague The Next Generation and
shows like The X-Files. It is something that nobody will miss as
digital High Definition continues to take hold, except for more dated digital
graphics. The cinematography is mixed,
at least those shots actually filmed.
Some documentary footage is 16 X 9, but not anamorphically enhanced.
The sound
is available as Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surrounds and a new
Dolby 5.1 AC-3 mix that is no major improvement. In some ways, it sounds less naturalistic
than the original audio. It also does
not add anything major to the low-end with its .1/LFE/subwoofer/low-frequency
signal. It should be said that the music
by Jay Chattaway is some of the least memorable in the franchise.
The fifth
disc has all the extras, which include Easter Eggs on parts of the ship on the
menu page. Genevieve Bujold’s shooting
footage before Mulgrew was picked at the 11th hour is shown. It is obvious it would have been a different
show with her and who knows what would have happened. It may have taken a less militaristic
direction and been more successful as a result.
Had Wagner done the series, she would have demanded the same high
standards she did on The Bionic Woman,
resulting in more good shows in the long run than the show it came from, The Six Million Dollar Man.
There are several featurettes that cover the invention of the new show,
Mulgrew on getting the part, cast reflections, the Kazon aliens from the pilot,
visual effects, actual science behind the show, how the website for the show
was made (an oddity considering we do not get one about the point of this
particular series), and a photo gallery.
The
overall result is a series that continued the franchise, but like The Next Generation burned it out too
much in the long run. The show did get
better as it went along, also like The
Next Generation, but thinking these things out more in advance would have
been nice. The diehard fans just see
this as a rough start. Even with better storylines, it will be
interesting to see how this show’s upswing helped it and if that all holds
up. Seasons 2 – 7 are scheduled to be
released throughout 2004.
- Nicholas Sheffo
