 <\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nThe rest of the crew unraveled almost instantly. Tuvok was written and performed as a prickly cantankerous grouch, lacking the calm dispassion we expect from Vulcans. Chakotay had no personality beyond the cringe-worthy native American stuff they gave him to do. Kes was an obvious case of “Hire a pretty actress, we’ll figure out what to do with her once the show takes off”. (And then they forgot to do the second part.) Neelix was a comedy character in a show where all the comedy was unintentional. Having a “bad boy” like Paris was a great idea, except they could never really figure out what “bad boy” meant and ended up making him argue for often sensible things in an unreasonable voice. Kim was the closest thing on the ship to a human being with a soul, so of course everyone treated him like a doormat for no reason. Torres was an interesting idea but ended up competing with Tuvok for the title of “most pointlessly petty and cantankerous person”.<\/p>\n That was a bad enough start, but instead of gaining traction like TNG, the show slid from simple mediocrity to outright travesty. For me the last straw was when someone slipped their fanfiction into the script pile and got their odd, awkward, poorly-paced Paris \/ Torres pairing made into canon. The worst thing about this pairing is that they really thought the audience would love it. It was the centerpiece of the trailers for the show every time it came up. It came out of nowhere and the trailers made it sound like this was the long-anticipated Confession Of True Love that we’d all be waiting for. It was bizarre.<\/p>\n It was like the writers never watched Trek before. What happened to “Strange New Worlds”? What happened to mystery planets with puzzles for us to unravel? What happened to tricky ethical dilemmas? What happened to having a good old-fashioned Socratic Exercise? In Voyager we just ran into a never-ending procession of idiots with lumpy foreheads who wanted to shoot at us for various reasons. <\/p>\n I thought that Kim and Paris made a perfect “Odd Couple” and Wang and McNeill had good on-screen chemistry together. So OF COURSE the writers ignored that in favor of odd romance pairings and more dumb scenes with Neelix. I suspect that half of all Trek fans have written an episode at some point. When I wrote mine, it was a Kim & Paris adventure. Paris vs. Kim was the closest thing Voyager had to a fun Spock vs. McCoy battle of personalities. I really wish they had more episodes where those two bounced off each other.<\/p>\n
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