Robert Beltran thinks Star Trek: Voyager's producers/writers took the easy way out sometimes

Robert Beltran played Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager for seven seasons, and with each season, his role seemed to diminish more. There were times when he was barely onscreen, but that didn't bother him. According to comments recorded in The Fifty Year Mission The Next 25 Years From The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, he would have been happy with just one good scene in every episode. He wasn't asking for more screen time. What he did have a problem with was the situation with Seven of Nine [Jeri Ryan] and Captain Janeway [Kate Mulgrew].

The idea was to attempt to bring Seven of Nine back to her humanity, but she'd take two steps forward and go back three. As Beltran says it, she'd make progress one week,and the next week, she'd be the same as she was before any progress had been made.

"I know that other people were not happy, but I'll let them speak for themselves. To me, it was this endless scene that was written episode after episode of these all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipotent characters that were battling each other, going through the same argument over and over between Janeway and Seven of Nine."

- Robert Beltran

On top of that, he thinks that the producers made Janeway weaker by making her "this all-seeing, all-knowing, never-made-a-mistake-in-my-life kind of character." To him, there wasn't any conflict in that and that made things more difficult for the characters, especially when Janeway and Seven of Nine were having the same battles each week.

"I know that writers have a huge challenge in trying to do that [maintain quality over seven years], and I sympathize with them. But that's what they're paid for. I think that they took the easy way out in many instances."

- Robert Beltran

It some ways, it's easy to see how Seven of Nine was made into this character who could solve any problem and who could not make a mistake. She didn't have many flaws, and the writers/producers chose to keep her that way even into the seventh and final season. It has only been since she reappeared on Star Trek: Picard that we've seen a different side of Seven of Nine, one that has more humanity and less Borg.