When it comes to discussions about favorite series or franchises, my number one answer is always Star Trek. But I never leave the answer that simple because I always follow it up with "It's my favorite, but I hate half of it". Voyager represents a sizable chunk of Star Trek that I hate.
To compare a series like Voyager to my favorite series Deep Space Nine was made very simple thanks to SFDebris. 9 times out of 10, Deep Space Nine took risks. 9 times out of 10, Voyager did not. It's kind of funny when a show about a small science vessel being stranded light years away from home can become one of the most predictable Star Trek shows ever when compared to a show where stuff does actually happen even on a station that doesn't go anywhere.
And despite the fact that this series is the only Star Trek "thing" to have a female character as the head of the show, Janeway as a character comes out really hollow. While she does have her moments at being strong and capable, she is seriously close minded, runs the ship like a dictatorship with the Prime Directive as her absolute rulebook, and almost never comes up with a Plan B. Most disappointing is that she doesn't come off as the kind of person who took great pains to get to where she is now but more like a spoiled child who's daddy talked to a few people into letting her take command of her own ship when every single psychic test puts her in the red. Now that could have been an interesting concept in having a character so inexperienced and thrown into a situation where she must make choices that no one in Starfleet has ever made before, but that's not the case. Every decision she makes is treated as absolute even when it's gut wrenchingly stupid. Example.
There is a station that has the power to take them back home. This station also has the power to eliminate a particular race of beings that live in an underground environment. In the series, Janeway sees only two options. She can Destroy the station, saves the alien race and be stranded 75 years from home, or use the station, get everyone home but doom the entire species.
Funny story. Voyager is equipped with a couple of these things called TORPEDOES. These torpedoes can be programmed to detonate without being fired from the ship's launcher. And since Voyager is dealing with a space fairing race who can't find water even though Voyager runs into a dozen planets with water in the first season, it's not outside the realm of possibility that they won't be able to defuse the torpedoes. To make this even more insulting, you could place dozens if not ALL of their torpedoes around various sections of the station to go off at the same time, thus reducing the likely hood that the bad guys will find them let alone defuse all of them in time. Does she consider this plan? No. Is this important? Yes. I'll explain later.
And this is the pilot. The episode that introduces us to the show and it's characters. And the number one thing that I walked away with after the episode was done was the thought that Janeway screwed up royally, and she was darn proud of it.
