On Thu, 14 May 2009 14:39:55 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   At least the writers didn't make that mistake, and instead had them
>   find
> their own means to get back home. (Of course the actual solution was
> still a bit of a stretch and somewhat a Deus ex Machina solution, but at
> least it had *some* good ideas in it, and wasn't such a big downer.)

True, in all counts.  But that is kinda what I mean by the "Gilligan's 
Island" syndrome - the whole idea has to be that ultimately they have to 
get home, or what's the point?  And the limited setting in both 
programmes does make it necessary to depend on the strength of character 
development.

When you do that and you don't do good character development, then it 
becomes a bit of a loss.  The addition of Seven, I guess, could be said 
to add some character development because of her need to grow and to 
understand what it means to be human.  That may well, in retrospect, have 
"saved the show" even though it could've been done better.

Many of the other characters had already stopped being developed and were 
fairly predictable.  Tom was always going to be "the risk taker", 
Chakotay was always going to be "the spiritualist", Janeway was always 
going to be "the decider", Neelix was always going to be "the outsider", 
etc.  There wasn't a lot of growth for those characters, especially 
during the final few seasons.

That doesn't mean I enjoyed it any less, though.

>> I don't know that Seven saved the show, though; I thought Kes was a
>> much more interesting character, and it was a shame that she left. 
>> With Seven you basically had another Data-like character who had to
>> learn what it meant to be human.  Been there, done that, and I think
>> Brent Spiner did a much better job of exploring that idea.
> 
>   I don't think was so much about the character development which was
> decisive here... :P

Yeah, that's more or less my point.  No doubt sex sells, and Jeri Ryan is 
not hard to look at at all.  I just wish they had not strayed into such 
shallow waters to make it work.

Jim

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