>>19494
Trek series are always really shitty in the first one or two seasons before they really figure out what they're doing. It's because they always end up with the plots being mostly character-driven, but it takes a while for the characters to get established enough for that to work. Like, how after a couple of seasons you can immediately tell (sometimes from just the episode title!) what kind of episode it is; a "Data episode" or a "Worf episode" or a "Quark episode" or a "Doctor episode", or what have you. That kind of thing is impossible to do when the characters are big unknowns, both by the audience AND the producers/writers. You can't write a plot around a character that's only been on screen for five minutes and had a few lines of dialogue to establish a flimsy backstory.
>>19513
Related to the above, because Trek relies so much on its characters, the strength of those characters largely determines how good the series is. That's why Voyager suffers, because ultimately only a few of its characters are really that good, or even really that well-established.
The only top-notch ones are the Doctor and Seven (who doesn't even show up until late in the series). Janeway and Paris and SOMETIMES Chakotay are okay (more when they explored the Maquis angle than his spiritual angle), but the rest of the cast is pretty much forgettable. They tried to make Harry Kim the "straight man" to Tom Paris' flippant playboy, but really never let him be his own person; except for rare occasions, Tuvok was just there, with no characterization other than "he's a Vulcan"; Neelix had no personality other than being a walking encyclopedia and look-what-crazy-thing-I've-concocted-today chef, near as much as I can remember; B'Elanna was just that bitch down in engineering, and only really became interesting when she and Tom started dating.
Really, it's the interactions between characters that are the most interesting. Janeway and Chakotay could have been a lot better if they'd made him less of a first officer and more of a co-captain (and dropped the "we know it's never going to happen" romantic tension), but maybe that would have spoiled the whole "female captain" thing. The Maquis subplot was dropped too quickly; the two crews integrated too quickly.
>>19868
I always wondered why they never made DS9 or Voyager movies like they made TNG movies. Year of Hell was cinematic and "large" enough that it could have been made a full theatrical movie, and fans would have loved it.
There were other standout episodes, too. My favorite is probably the one where they find some people in cryosleep caskets, and discover their minds are trapped in an endless nightmare run by a malevolent clown created from their own fears.
Also, the episode where they go to this hellish planet, and come in contact with some silvery goo that clones things and people. There's a followup episode, where they're just tooling around like usual, and suddenly everything starts falling apart. It's then revealed that the entire goddamn ship, everything in it, and everyone on it, is just clones made from that same stuff, and they didn't even realize it because their memories were also copied. That was one of the best plot twists I've ever seen in a series, and the ending was just heartbreaking. Kinda funny that a bunch of clones of the crew made me feel more than the ACTUAL crew ever did.