Primitive Culture 74: A 1990s Time Capsule / by Trek fm

Looking back on 25 years of Star Trek: Voyager.

Running Time: 2 hours 1 minute 35 seconds
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On January 16, 1995, Star Trek got lost in space. The premiere of the fourth live-action Star Trek series offered not just the franchise’s much-anticipated first female captain (something explicitly ruled out in the final episode of The Original Series) but a strong science fiction premise: a ship stranded on the far side of the galaxy and crewed by a mixture of by-the-book Starfleet officers and reckless Maquis renegades. It was a bold new approach, brimful of opportunity. And yet, somehow, the show—hampered, in part, by meddlesome corporate oversight—became one of Star Trek’s least adventurous outings, retreading familiar ground rather than truly venturing into the unknown. To its detractors, Voyager was little more than a lite version of The Next Generation. But its devoted fan base found much to love in the franchise’s most cozy and comfortable show. Some 25 years on, is it time for a reassessment of Voyager’s strengths and weaknesses?

In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Darren Mooney, who has recently completed a set of detailed Star Trek: Voyager reviews on his website The M0vie Blog, to celebrate the show’s silver jubilee with a thorough retrospective. We consider Voyager’s merits and failings, the behind-the-scenes battles that set the template for what played out on screen, and how looking back with the benefit of hindsight offers new perspectives on familiar stories. In particular, we examine how a quarter-century of history helps us see just how quintessentially of its time Voyager was.

For Darren’s complete Voyager reviews, visit: https://them0vieblog.com/reviews-hub/79613-2/

Chapters

Intro (00:00:00)
DS9 vs Voyager (00:05:32)
First Contact with the Delta Quadrant (00:35:38)
Partying Like It’s 1995 (01:05:25)
Now Voyager (01:29:00)
Final Thoughts (01:41:55)

Host

Duncan Barrett

Guest

Darren Mooney

Production

Duncan Barrett (Editor and Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Tony Black (Associate Producer) Clara Cook (Associate Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Amy Nelson (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager)

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