#but which is still trapped by the exigencies of its prequel nature

[tanadrin]

my considered take on Voyager is that if it had aired directly after TNG, instead of DS9, it would have been regarded extremely highly, as a bold innovation in the franchise with an interesting new cast of characters, and a great cast; it suffers by comparison to DS9, which was airing its back half while Voyager was getting going; the early seasons of a Star Trek show are always comparatively weak, and this comparison did Voyager no favors. DS9′s last couple seasons were among the best Star Trek ever made (and not just for the gritty war stories), while Voyager’s first couple were fine-but-not-great.

it’s hard to compare Voyager and TNG directly, because the different formats really do make a difference in the kinds of stories they excel at, and IMO TNG, though nominally set in the same universe, still often approaches that universe with the ad-hoc sensibility of TOS, treating consistent and thoughtful development of the setting as an afterthought. That’s not a bad thing, by the way; it’s a neutral fact about the way the show is written. The setting and continuity were underdeveloped and disposable in TOS in a way they weren’t in later Star Trek, and TNG still had that as a hangover especially in early seasons. That kind of scattershot worldbuilding can be a jumping off point for interesting stories later (Klingons, the Vulcan-Romulan connection, references to future history like World War 3), and it can also leave absurdities that linger like topological defects in the fabric of a franchise (replicators, transporters, the vaporize setting on phasers), though those nevertheless add to its unique flavor.

Voyager for its faults had a much more well-developed universe to play around in, and took it seriously, while also using the stranded-on-the-far-side-of-the-galaxy format to hearken back to TOS and TNG’s freewheeling worldbuilding. It was the last series before executive demands for a sure hit and terror of trying to break new ground caused the franchise to start devouring itself with prequels and reboots and rehashing the same characters again and again, a trap that I don’t think was escaped in any capacity until Discovery finally bit the bullet and shifted the setting forward 700 years. Enterprise had its moments (most of them involving Jeffrey Coombs, tbf); Lower Decks is fun (and funny!); and there are even things I love about Picard (most of them involving Seven of Nine). But from the end of Voyager, it was a long, long time before we were really going where no one had gone before again, and even in that respect I don’t think the latest Discovery lives up to the best of Voyager.