i never really liked voyager despite being a huge trekkie during that time period. i always thought that it was stupid that there was no through line from episode to episode. if the enterprise gets damaged in one episode, you can infer that they went to a space dock for repairs in between episodes but voyager wouldn't have access to that. no matter what happened at the end of an episode, voyager always looked pristine in the next episode. my friends and i used to talk about how cool it would be if the ship gradually degraded over time and they had to adapt resources they found to fix the hull or replace weapons or even certain decks.
and the ship's visuals would represent how the crew's behavior would change too. a lot of the behavior and morality of starfleet comes from living in a utopia. how much of that changes when the replicators stop working, when basic medical supplies run low, when you can't just press a button and get a clean uniform. the ship wasn't designed to function without basic things like that and it could have been really interesting to see if/when the crew started breaking down too. the over-arching message could still have been one of hope, if at the end they were still able to adapt and thrive on the ingenuity of starfleet training and whatnot... i don't know, maybe that wouldn't have been a very "trek" show, but i would have enjoyed it significantly more than what we got.
oh... to get back on topic... i hate this show.
