Well, you know what grandma used to say: "Lists are arbitrary and capricious."
Now, I was always given a paddling for asking how it was that grandma knew such words as 'arbitrary' and 'capricious' given that -- by her own account -- she spent so much of her childhood walking uphill both ways to school for miles and miles, and still I remembered what she meant: lists, in the end, don't truly have any merit unless they're balanced against something more than a single person's opinion. All of this really boils down to grandma being a pretentious fuddyduddy, but I've avoided lists much of my life for that very reason: seeking out 'the best' based on such a limited sourcing generally means that you're missing so much else that might have greater meaning, greater impact to me, as a consumer ... so I tend to leave the A, B, and C's to other websites.
Occasionally, though, I do come up with some of my own (when the mood strikes) or I'll stumble across something I find worth sharing ... and such is the case today with Screen Rant's Worst 10 Episodes Of Star Trek: Voyager, a show I always found middling at best.
As always, let me clarify: "No, I never hated Star Trek: Voyager."
What I did find is that Voyager was a missed opportunity. It's pretty spiffy two-hour set-up -- "Caretaker" -- ended being followed up by showing the program wasn't so much going where no one had gone before but instead slipped comfortably into the usual 'menace of the week' format with the equally heavy dose of Starfleet proselytizing we'd already grown used to with Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a reasonable portion of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Here, I went into Voyager thinking that viewers were going to see how Trek's morality tales were going to play out against a vastly different fabric of space/time when all the writers truly ended up giving us were yet even more different noses, foreheads, and fabrics in the same formulaic process.
I guess what I wanted was Voyager to end up being like Syfy's much better fish-out-of-water scenario Farscape, a show that forced its human lead to 'fit in' with a vastly different universe in order to find his own way, bringing his compatriots kicking and screaming (if need be) to the proper course of action, even if that meant threatening the entire universe with eradication (as astronaut John Crichton eventually had to do in The Peacekeeper Wars) if they couldn't behave politely. Starfleet principles are all well and good, but even Commander-then-Captain Ben Sisko compromised them against the greater good if and when his circumstances required it: Voyager just kinda/sorta felt cut-and-paste too often, with Janeway forging ahead on whatever path she found culturally relevant for that particular 41 minutes.
But I digress ...
Best and worst episode lists are always interesting when they're compiled with greater input involved, as obviously is the case when viewing them from IMDB.com's portal. Check out the article, see how many of these stinkers you've seen, find comfort in knowing mankind agrees with you (well, at least those with a PC and an IMDB profile), and go about your day.
As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
Now, I was always given a paddling for asking how it was that grandma knew such words as 'arbitrary' and 'capricious' given that -- by her own account -- she spent so much of her childhood walking uphill both ways to school for miles and miles, and still I remembered what she meant: lists, in the end, don't truly have any merit unless they're balanced against something more than a single person's opinion. All of this really boils down to grandma being a pretentious fuddyduddy, but I've avoided lists much of my life for that very reason: seeking out 'the best' based on such a limited sourcing generally means that you're missing so much else that might have greater meaning, greater impact to me, as a consumer ... so I tend to leave the A, B, and C's to other websites.
Occasionally, though, I do come up with some of my own (when the mood strikes) or I'll stumble across something I find worth sharing ... and such is the case today with Screen Rant's Worst 10 Episodes Of Star Trek: Voyager, a show I always found middling at best.
As always, let me clarify: "No, I never hated Star Trek: Voyager."
What I did find is that Voyager was a missed opportunity. It's pretty spiffy two-hour set-up -- "Caretaker" -- ended being followed up by showing the program wasn't so much going where no one had gone before but instead slipped comfortably into the usual 'menace of the week' format with the equally heavy dose of Starfleet proselytizing we'd already grown used to with Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a reasonable portion of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Here, I went into Voyager thinking that viewers were going to see how Trek's morality tales were going to play out against a vastly different fabric of space/time when all the writers truly ended up giving us were yet even more different noses, foreheads, and fabrics in the same formulaic process.
I guess what I wanted was Voyager to end up being like Syfy's much better fish-out-of-water scenario Farscape, a show that forced its human lead to 'fit in' with a vastly different universe in order to find his own way, bringing his compatriots kicking and screaming (if need be) to the proper course of action, even if that meant threatening the entire universe with eradication (as astronaut John Crichton eventually had to do in The Peacekeeper Wars) if they couldn't behave politely. Starfleet principles are all well and good, but even Commander-then-Captain Ben Sisko compromised them against the greater good if and when his circumstances required it: Voyager just kinda/sorta felt cut-and-paste too often, with Janeway forging ahead on whatever path she found culturally relevant for that particular 41 minutes.
But I digress ...
Best and worst episode lists are always interesting when they're compiled with greater input involved, as obviously is the case when viewing them from IMDB.com's portal. Check out the article, see how many of these stinkers you've seen, find comfort in knowing mankind agrees with you (well, at least those with a PC and an IMDB profile), and go about your day.
As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
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