Why do so many people hate Voyager?

[Ranger REG]

I alway wondered why there were so many episodes about 7 of 9, I guess a little something on the side never hurt anyones career.

Because then newly-divorced Jeri Ryan ("Seven of Nine") has been sleeping in Brannon Braga's bed. IOW, they're an item even to this day. It may not hurt Jeri's career, but it did affect the show's performance and the original cast members.

Season 5 has been unofficially dubbed "The Seven of Nine Show."

 

[Khorod]

Every time they had a good episode, they highlighted the theme and repeatedly beat it to death. Each show might be good, but ...

Also, while it started out okay, the whole Maki/Federation thing was drained dry. CHakotay was supposed to be a cunning, cagey, elusive captain of a dangerous terrorist group.

He became an unimaginative, straightforward thinker. That is symptomatic of the whole series.

And the final episode was such a HUGE COP OUT that despite having tried to watch most of the series regularly, I have a much poor opinion of it now.

 

[BeanFruit]

I enjoyed Voyager but did find it annoying that almost anything could be solved with a bit of technobabble. Too many stories could have been better if they weren't simply solved by some modification to this or that.

Also Harry and his women problems were annoying.

BUT, I found that if I only watched an episode every two to four weeks then I'd largely forget that between episodes and could therefore still enjoy each for what it was.

My main problem is that I found Captain Janeway to be far to principled. Sometimes I was just hoping they'd have an episode where Voyager would blast some innocent colony with torpedos just to resotre my faith in the dark side of humanity

 

[Ranger REG]

I don't recall Kirk or Picard would do something like that. If they do, it's probably because they care about their friends more, like Kirk saving Spock on the Genesis planet.

 

[Khorod]

The problem was not that Janeway was principled, but that she would belabor the point for half the episode. Then for the other half, she would relentlessly and ruthelessly find some way of solving the problem. And never did the innocents die...

I found long breaks between episode often helped. But sometimes, a bad episode in a vaccuum makes you wonder why you ever watch it. I've decided to like DS9 more. It was at least advancing some plots, and more often than not, added depth to characters instead of draining them of life.

 

[BeanFruit]

That's a good point which I agree with. But even after she made her decision she would (almost?) always go the way of maximum virtue. She would never take a messy approach or a decision that would advance her crew but that might harm others.

It just seemed to pure and perfect for me. Still liked it, but liked the grey areas of TNG, TOS and DS9 more. I really enjoy Enterprise as well. Poor Voyager!

 

[Ranger REG]

Of course, she would prefer to avoid the messy approach to resolving a problem. She was a science officer who once served under Tom Paris' father on USS Al-Batani.

 

[Khorod]

By the second season Tom Paris was the series hotshot/badboy.