xjeffwoods-loverx

[nostalgia-tblr]

everyone has these thoughtful reasons and careful media analysis to make their point about why sylki will/won't "be endgame" and thus it's okay (or not) if they argue a bit first and i am slightly ashamed to admit that my entire thought process thus far has just been "well there's six episodes to fill, of course they'll drag the romance plot out as long as possible." :'(

[shesmyplusone]

Here be my Voyager Finale thoughts, beware:

I first saw this show as a ten year old, circa 2005. My Dad had returned from a work trip with three DVDs- Season 4 of Star Trek: TNG, Star Trek: First Contact (The TNG movie), and set of Borg themed episodes from TNG/VOY/DS9 (I think? I never watched them lol). I remember watching the First Contact movie clearly, just as I remember my Dad handing me the Borg themed DVD and telling me to watch VOY 3x26/4x01- Scorpion Part 1 & 2. He thought I would really like B’Elanna. (Clocked!)

I watched all of the VOY episodes, including Dark Frontier (Staring little Seven of Nine!!!), and of course, Voyager’s finale- Endgame. I had no context of the first three seasons at all, or even the non-Borg episodes, which no doubt colored my perception.

But I remember- so clearly, how much I loved it. I loved the time travel aspect, of Admiral Janeway deciding to go back and bring her crew home again. I remember being more or less introduced to Harry Kim via Captain Kim from the Endgame timeline, I remember loving Tom and B’Elanna and their grown up daughter, being scared of the Admiral, not really knowing who Neelix was (lol).

And that was all had of Season 7 for so long! I luckily got season 5 and 6 when I turned 12, and watched those episodes, and luckily, caught so many reruns on Spike TV. I didn’t get season 4/7 until later, and just got the first three seasons for Christmas last year.

I didn’t have a chance to watch the show all the way through until I was a sophomore in high school. My best friend had introduced me to the golden age of Youtube- that is to say, back when people could upload any tv shows they wanted onto youtube, if only in 15 minute chunks. (We watched the Canadian cartoon “Braceface” that way, fun fact!) And then, I got lucky enough to find a channel that had uploaded every episode of Voyager to YouTube.

So, I spent the second half of my sophomore year of high school watching the show. It was the first live action show I sat down and watched this way, going through each episode in order, one and night (I was so good back then. I miss that self-control!). So I watched it!

I remember getting to know all of the characters, to see them from the messy beginning of Starfleet and the Maquis, watching Kes and Neelix and the EMH grow up and into their characters. I remember loving the whole show- but finding myself preferring the later half, even then. I do remember being so surprised that C/7 only expressed romantic interest in the last bit of season 7, I remember even then, not liking the twist of their relationship at all.

Now, I am a decade older! I have finally rewatched the entire thing, and overall, my impression has changed, I think for the better!

I love the earlier seasons a lot more than I had before- there’s plenty to criticize, don’t get me wrong- but they have a charm to them. Watching the two crews get used to each other, watching them get used to their place in the DQ, watching the characters slowly come together- there’s something very satisfying about it now. I particularly love season 3, far more than I used to.

The second half of the show- it might be a mixture of nostalgia and honest improvement, but I still think it’s incredible. Season five remains my favorite, but I am shocked, really, at how close season seven came to challenging that. There are very few duds in the last season, and despite alot of what I hear from people online about the finale, I don’t think it’s a dud! I think it’s great!

The last few episodes really hit some of my favorite Voyager premises really well. Friendship One mixed a good old fashion Voyager episode in the caves with a good moral dilemma. Natural Law had Chakotay crash a shuttle. Renaissance Man let B’Elanna run around fix the ship and had the Doctor do something funky with his matrix, and really showed how much his relationship with Janeway had grown.

Then there was Endgame. I associate Voyager with two Star Trek tropes primarily- time travel and the Borg. Think of the show’s greatest hits- Year of Hell, Scoprion, Timeliness, Unimatrix Zero, Before and After, Shattered, Future’s End- lots of time travel and Borg! Endgame takes them both to an extreme- Kathryn deciding that getting the crew home at all wasn’t good enough, and instead, she had to get them home earlier. Despite what the Admiral told the Captain, she was already embracing being reckless again- who could call that plan anything but reckless! And the Borg might not have been at their most terrifying, but the discovery of a transwarp conduit is an overwhelming draw for the Voyager crew.

It was a good mix! I think that’s not the problem. If anything, I think the premise needed more time. I had forgotten the Admiral doesn’t even get there until the second part of the two-parter, and really, how much time was taken up by her talking with the Captain.

I would have give the episode more room to breathe- made it a threeparter. And I would have forced Kathryn to come to terms with her feelings for Chakotay, and force her and Chakotay and Seven to really have it out. (Ideally, there would have been no C/7 at all, but what can we do!) I think the episode plays it out in interesting ways- showing Kathryn at Chakotay’s grave, showing the admiral react more to Seven than Chakotay- but there’s the unspoken realization of the narrative that sending the ship home might break them up entirely.

The interesting scene where Seven tries to dump Chakotay shows the writers had considered it- but they didn’t go through. Instead, Chakotay doubled down, told her he didn’t want to end it. It of course, being a relationship that is four dates old, built on a premise that Seven didn’t share with Chakotay (the hologram program) and interestingly at odds with the EMH confessing his love to Seven just an episode before. (Why? why did that happen? Why wasn’t the peak of the EMH’s confessions just that he’d kissed Tom in B’Elanna’s form? I think that would have been funnier lol).

I know so much of C/7′s role here to simply not be J/C, but the entire premise of the episode is that Seven dies, Chakotay pulls away from Kathryn, dies young, and she sort of loses her mind and tries to time travel to fix it. It’s almost unspoken how much of the premise rests on J/C (romantically or platonically).

I think the end of the show would have been stronger if they’d started to play with J/C either post Shattered or post Workforce. It would have shown Kathryn finally coming to terms with the length of their journey, of finally letting her shields down and letting Kathryn peek out underneath the Captain Janeway armour.

But it wouldn’t have worked with the finale! So I, a J/C shipper and a Endgame fan, is stuck here, not being able to connect the two.

The other idea I had, was to make the show’s run tighter, and have this episode at the middle of season 7, and spend the rest of the season fighting battles with the Starfleet brass to let the Maquis keep their commissions and stay out of jail- to fight for the Doctor’s rights, for Seven’s right not be locked up in a lab somewhere, to let Neelix (he should have made it Earth! I’m still sad!) walk freely. I think the show spent so long in the beginning getting the crews to integrate- it would have been nice to see that come to head.

Instead there’s very little Starfleet/Maquis content in the finale at all. B’Elanna and Chakotay don’t even get to interact! (All of his scenes are with Seven. I’m not bitter (I am) but he has other relationships!)

I still love the finale overall. It would take a lot to make me mad at episode where B’Elanna finally gives birth and Harry gives a little speech about the importance of a journey (which i copied down in my journal as a child word for word. true Harry Kim Stan). They get home! Really, that’s what mattered.

And now, I get to watch Star Trek: Prodigy! A show I didn’t have as a sixteen year old, or even the six year old I would have been when the show was actually ending. I do get to see what comes next. Which is exciting, and takes a bit of the edge off.

So- The finale’s good, I love it. Could have been better, but that’s life. Paramount Plus just needs to slip me J/C and I can forgive everything. lol

Farewell, Katie’s great 2021 (-2022) voyager rewatch. you were fun. thanks for following along if anyone dared to!