Season Four Transition: Voyager

DS9 and Voyager are certainly companion shows with one another. While Next Generation grew out of a renewed interest in Star Trek (thanks to the movies, I'm sure,) these two grew out of the success of Next Gen. Voyager began a mere two years after DS9, suggesting that this had been the plan all along. They have a similar visual style, including the font in the titles sequence, and both struggled with the burden of striking out with new and different premises while also having the freedom to do something other than simply act as a new version of the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise.

Also, both shows deal with uncharted areas of the Galaxy - DS9 has the Gamma Quadrant while Voyager has the Delta Quadrant (both kind of suck compared to Alpha and Beta.)

Yet in another way, the two shows are diametric opposites. DS9 is about a single location. Deep Space 9 the station is always in the Bajoran star system, and it's always near the wormhole. It does not suffer, though, because as an outpost at a huge crossroads (and the front line of an enormous war) there is plenty of opportunity for variation, while its huge cast of recurring characters (how was Garak never a regular?) meant there was plenty of story to tell.

Voyager, on the other hand, is about a ship that is traveling a huge distance, and therefore is unlikely to encounter most of the people they see ever again.

In watching Deep Space 9, the transition from season 3 to season 4 was a marked one. For the first few seasons, we had not even heard of the Dominion, who would of course prove to be the primary antagonists of the series. Sure, the Cardassians weren't exactly friendly, but they never become a real, wide-spread threat until the Dominion gets involved. Season 4 is where confrontations with the Dominion begin, and we get to know the Vorta, the Jem Hedar, and eventually find out why Odo might not want to go back to his people.

I have just hit season four of Voyager, and there is a similar huge change that can be felt. For one thing, there was a change in the cast. Kes, whose psychic powers have grown to god-like levels, leaves the cast. I can understand that the writers wanted to pare down the size of the cast, given the introduction of a new cast member, yet personally I was not yet sick of Kes. At the same time, her departure did not feel entirely unearned, even if it was somewhat abrupt (this being before the age of serialized drama, I suppose I must make allowances that they could not create a season-long arc about Kes' development and eventual departure.) On one hand, her leaving the show means one less Delta-Quadrant-specific cast member, but, of course, we're not really in the same part of the Quadrant that defined those early seasons.

I imagine, then, that we will probably not see much of the Kazon, the Vidiians, or even the Talaxians (except Neelix, of course) moving forward. Borg space, though we spent far less time there than I expected, is a pretty serious barrier.

Though we lost Kes, we now have Seven of Nine, who is probably one of the more iconic members of the cast. Much as Worf helped to explore the Klingons after the original Trek depicted them somewhat as mustache-twirlers, I am eager to see how Seven lets us see another side of the Borg. I'm told that the Borg start to seem far less threatening as we watch cube after cube destroyed by Species 8472 - or "species CGI Protoss." Still, one of my favorite opportunities in Fantasy and Sci-Fi is to take a look under the hood of the monsters and maybe see how they might be turned into good guys. Granted, the Borg also largely get their coolness and scariness from being enigmatic, so it could be a bumpy ride.

I'll admit, I have a positive response bias, and despite people warning me that Voyager is the worst of the Trek shows (other than Enterprise, which again, those friends insist does not exist - I cannot guarantee I won't watch that one next) I am still enjoying it.

But just as the beginning of the Dominion War transformed DS9, I expect that crossing Borg space will mean a very different Voyager.