Next week Spike TV will begin airing repeats of Star Trek: Voyager. Last week they were airing a week-long marathon to promote it so I had to take a sneak peek and see if I was still the Voyager fangirl I used to be. I think part of me was still that fangirl but the other part was like 'what the fuck?' I mean, did I ever really think this show was any good? Why was I so fanish about it? Was it just because it had that Star Trek label? The answer to all of these questions and more is...'huh?'
Voyager came along during some moments of growing pains in my late 20s and it was that bit of escape I needed. Hey, it was better than snorting coke. Wow, do people still say that? Maybe something more current...smoking crack. Anyway, it was an escape and maybe because it didn't challenge me on any intellectual level, I could really get into it. I could just watch and be numb and ignore the overacting by Kate Mulgrew or the complete lack of acting by Garrett Wang. So the transporters didn't work at a crucial moment...so what, I didn't have to think about it.
I joined email groups, discussed the show in such great detail that my current English profs would have been so proud. I attempted writing fanfic but realized quickly that I kept writing characters I wanted them to be rather than what they were so gave up on that fangirl endeavor. And I think that's what I see now watching it again - they weren't the characters I wanted them to be. They never developed or became interesting. It was like each episode it was all new again.
That's when I discovered shows like Babylon 5 and Farscape. These were shows that told stories and didn't try to do it all in one episode. And they let their characters grow and be flawed and wrestle with those changes. As I grew out of those pains, I discovered shows that forced me to sit up and watch and understand.
Okay, so I can't throw Stargate into that fold. Sure its a fun show and I love to watch the older seasons but it has overstayed its welcome and the characters still seem the same. I mean, how many times can Sam come up with the perfect solution at the last minute? Well, I guess if you're not gettin' any and you work 24 hours a day, you have the time to be that brilliant.
Now where was I? Oh yeah, good scifi TV shows. Well, it's getting late now and I need to explain to the fella why I got excited over a friend's brilliant post concerning Farscape and why that prompted me to write this post. Explaining my fangirl side and my fanish ways could take all night. I guess as Captian Janeway would say, "Coffee. Black."
