No, I just started watching Voyager for the first time! This can't be true.
(In my defense, Voyager writers are as painfully terrible with science concepts in season 1 as I remembered. But this time, I'm gonna hold my nose and get through it, so I can see the stuff everyone loves so much.)
Truthfully that's actually a lot of shows. And actually say it's pretty rare for a show to keep the same tone and story elements from season 1 into other seasons. Outside Star Trek, Parks and Recreation, and Community come to mind.
You will benefit immensely if you also listen to the podcast “The Delta Flyers” where the actors discuss each episode. They give a ton of commentary that is pure gold.
It is a controversial show that's for sure. Plus it isn't nearly as good a series as DS9 overall - but it does capture that "adventuring spirit" from TOS and TNG better, and at the time when shows were watched more in isolation based on whatever came onto the TV when you wanted to watch something rather than binging in succession that was still an important factor in its popularity at the time. I definitely still recommend that show though.
Now Enterprise on the other hand... especially towards the end it literally crossed a line into being an absolute waste of my time imho. But Voyager isn't that, so enjoy it! (as you said, not quite all of it but mostly :-P)
You are correct: the show absolutely destroyed my faith, faith of the heart. If I had not been on a quest to watch every single show ever made, I never would have managed to finish.:-(
I used to think that, and in some ways it's true. I never really appreciated DS9 until much later. There is a ton of "drama" that coming from my sheer worship adoration of TNG, I didn't like or enjoy at the time. Though later I came to appreciate the greater depth of the show, and looking back I even see TNG now as lacking the drama - IKR, SACRILEGE!? Fortunately they are both excellent shows, and have lots to offer everyone:-).
Also if you haven't yet check out Earth: Final Conflict, which his wife Majel Rodenberry (computer voice woman) created from Gene's notes, after he died. It's a totally different show than any of the Star Treks, but he has such a versatile mind that basically everything he did was good - surely that speaks to enormous efforts made on his behalf to make them thus:-).
Dude, in the 5th episode of season 1, they encounter an alien species that has been decimated by an infection with a phage (which is a virus that targets bacteria, not animals, but ok). This species' solution to their problem is to steal organs from other species and graft them into their own bodies. So after two millennia, they have the tech to overcome organ rejection, but can't figure out how to deal with a virus.
So they steal Neelix's LUNGS, and he sits in sickbay with no lungs while they have a whole ass conversation about trying a dangerous experimental surgery to give him holographic lungs. They do this, and at the end of the episode, their solution is to transplant one of Kes's lungs into Neelix, leaving them both with one lung.
The doctor just says, "Don't worry you'll get used to it," and the whole show moves on like none of this ever happened.
Omg. Airing alongside DS9 in the wake of TNG, I can see why I declined to watch this show when it originally aired. The season 1 writing is just so bad. But I'm gonna tough it out this time.