Why did Chakotay Choose to be with seven instead of janeway?

Are you saying the writers are the death of J/C? I'm pretty sure it was Mulgrew. she is very open about that. Jeri Taylor was going to write it in.

 

You are quite right, Catarina, of course. And though I'm aware of that factoid, myself, I did disregard it, with my statements. Romance in entertainment involves having an obstacle for the onscreen couple to overcome, either towards a good end ... or bad. And the obstacles that Janeway and Chakotay had in their way were insurmountable ... and twofold:
First was Mulgrew's kaboshing the idea.
And Second? The shitty-assed writing I'm so fond of complaining about. Because, had Taylor received the OK to introduce their love to the STAR TREK lexicon, I must be Frank & Ernest: there's no way it could live up to the hopes of Trekkies, anywhere. STAR TREK has a piss-poor track record in the Romance Department.

 

Mark should have got an episode, showing his grieving process running course to his wedding day, to finding out that Kathryn is still alive and he's married to the wrong woman.

Kes and Neelix is the example of how the writers room handle a shipboard couple in love.

B'Elanna and Tom is how they handle a boy and girl dating for 3 years until "Shit girl, you didn't tell me you wanted to get married?" They go from "casual" to "Married" in four seconds because the writers forgot that they were together and banging sinfully out of wedlock which supposedly is a terrible example for the children watching Voyager.

Seven of Nine and the fricking Doctor was the will they won't they. If there was a chance that your mechanical tooth brush might fall in love with you while it's in your mouth, toss it out the air airlock and find a brush without artificial intelligence.

 

There were parts of that were annoying. If she wanted to get married why didn't she just ask him? And the whole thing with the last name. We know it's the 24th century. 21st-century customs should no longer apply.

 

Torres is a (human) Latino name.

Klingon heritage is insanely obstinate about lineage and titles.

Humanity might have (almost) had it's overthrow of patriarchal oppression, but Klingonity had most certainly not, despite Klingon women being equals in the workplace, family status and tradition was still rooted in dudes... Although, House of Quark might have changed that?

Regardless B'Elanna was taught her value system, wrong or right, as a child, 25 years earlier, and was uinlikley to have been paying attention to a political oddity that happened 6 months after she was lost in the delta Quadrant.

 

While Torres finally accepted her Klingon heritage that doesn't necessarily mean she accepted Klingon customs. I'm part Cherokee. That doesn't mean I'm going to off in the woods and take a swim in a creek in January just because old Cherokee traditions say that's the thing to do.

Ron Moore tried to make up for his 'mistake' of saying that women can't serve on the high council by writing (during the Worf/Jadiza wedding) that women were in charge of the 'Houses' which were apparently equally powerful positions.

 

stardream, as someone who's ethnically Native American, in part, how do you feel about Chakotay's characterisation? Is it OK with you, or have you taken umbrage to aspects of how he was written?

 

Wasn't the Heritage episode partially about how much she hated her father?

Why still have his name anyway?

 

When I heard there was going to be an NI character on Voyager I did not have very high expectations because up to that point Indigenous culture was rarely done right in TV and movies and I was not surprised when I saw that mish-mash of whatever it was they had Chakotay doing. I also wasn't surprised when I heard that their 'advisor' for all things Native was a fake. At one time 'fake' Indians and 'fake' Chiefs were almost a cottage industry. Someone would advertise himself as being a descendant of Powhatan or Crazy Horse or whoever and people just took them at their word. They would get these individuals to speak at schools and events and what they were spouting was completely and totally made up nonsense. Since the internet, that sort of thing has pretty much stopped.

I wish they had just written Chakotay as being a member of a certain tribe, it didn't matter which one, and just done the research and had him adhere to their cultural traditions. No need to be so generic and all-inclusive. It wouldn't have bothered me, as a Cherokee if he had been Navajo or Seneca.

(FYI...If someone claims to be a Cherokee Chief and his name is not John Baker (Cherokee Nation), Joe Bunch (United Keetowah Band) or Patrick Lambert, (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) he's not a Cherokee Chief. I should add that two women have held that position so it's not exclusively a 'guy' thing. )

 

Good question. She should have just come up with a completely different name for herself.

 

Unless she liked her grandparents and cousins?



Back to the source.

Did Chuckles really choose Seven?

The moment he saw that Hologram of him that she was having intercourse with... It was his turn to either ignore what he was seeing as politely as possible, or reciprocate the perhaps tenuous interest that she was displaying in a shadow of what he had to offer as a man almost twice her age.

 

Well, outside the fact that Mulgrew (and Brenan/Braga shared her point of view about the double standards in gender equity as well in Hollywood as in US society in general -> if they have disagreed with her, don't worry, they would have imposed their choice and Janeway would have been definitively paired with Chakotay!), it was necessary to give an appearance of closure to Chakotay and Seven, who were on their sides, without real emotional ties, while Janeway was married to Starfleet.
I just wonder why Beltran and Ryan waited to announce their concerning/ disagreement about the making of Chakotay/Seven's pairing in Endgame, knowing that nothing led to predict this romance. Strange!

About the choice of Seven instead of Janeway for Chakotay: it's just a theory but maybe Seven was supposed to be an "easy" target for him. I mean, she has very numerous human and intellectual qualities and furthermore, she is aesthetically pleasing to see BUT next to that, Seven is someone who had never experienced truly intimate emotions before, while Janeway is an unattainable woman (proud, clever, independent and lonely (not by choice but she assumes the situation fairly!), who knows how life/world work.
-> in fact, some people would say that Janeway is well out of his league, that he isn't up to Janeway) and frankly, it's true and this in spite of the fact that Chakotay's is a good man.

As for Chakotay/Seven's pairing, I'd say it's a win-win for each of them as long as they are together: Chakotay for the reasons expressed above (a pleasant presence by his side, and where he could be a comprehensive and patient mentor) and Seven, who had to start somewhere. And yes, Chakotay would treat her better than most men ... until she takes more assurance, is more familiar of the world which surrounds her and decides to fend for herself, leaving Chakotay, who is, let's be honest, unable to cope with strong women (ex: Janeway, Seska, etc)!

But fortunately, producers (and Mulgrew) let an opened door for our imaginations. I mean we know what was life aboard with its joy or dispair with but once arrived on Earth, the reality is going to override expectations/dreams. Result: some people will have difficulty in confronting with this new life while some others will marry it easily.
-> I want to believe that Chakotay/Seven in Delta Quadrant is a like summer romances. They don't survive the reality of the daily life (for both, in particular Seven, it will be a leap in the unknown!), because fast, the love magic disappears little by little to give way to the habits and to the disappointments!

 

In the episode Natural Law, Chakotay and Seven crash a shuttle and have to sleep rough in a forest perhaps cuddling to conserve warmth.

Apparently (this is not a joke, also not a quote, but it happened. probably somewhere in Memory Alpha) during filming these scenes Jeri said to the Director "Hey youse, you guy, Terry baby, I'm like y'know going to be sleeping next to this, whatchu calling it, big sexy guy, and you knows normally I'm thinking that Seven of Nine keeps her legs together, she's a damn lady don't chu know? You knows? Right?! A lady! But then I'm thinking about that episode last month where he's a whatchu call it, a hologram, and Seven of Nine ain't no lady, if you catch my drift, she ain't no lady with this same guy, this same big sexy guy, look at him y'know? Vah Vah voom! So what I'm trying to ask you is, does she like him? Does Seven of Nine like, you know, want to bang him? Yeah? I looked in the whatchu call it, script and it don't's says that I bangs him or he bangs me, but thens I thought maybe it's inferred, like what chu calling it subtext? Like the camera pans away and you don't see us banging, but every one knows that we're banging.. Yeah, so do I bangs him subtextually?"

The director (probably very politely) told Jeri to stop thinking, and just read her lines.

The producers knew about the pairing before Endgame, but the actors did not.

 

Well, I'm not sure of that.

According to an interview given by Braga in a Sci-Fi Magazine, he felt that it should have been 7 of 9 who died in the finale, "sacrificed herself to get the closest thing she had to a family home" (as a sequel to "Human Error" - 7x18 -, written by Andre Bormanis BUT he was shot down at the very last minute by the Paramount's officials who were afraid that to kill one of the most popular characters of the series would be very badly accepted by the fans. His colleagues (Ken Biller & Rick Bernan) lined up reluctantly in this opinion ... even if it would have seemed to me normal that Braga, as creator of 7 of 9, can decide on her fate, right?! .

In fact, it seems that the whole Chakotay-Seven romance was a last-minute contrivance, which was never properly planned and developed by the show's producers and writers.
According to Jeri Ryan and Robert Beltran themselves, while they shooted "Natural Law", they specifically asked to producers if their characters were going to be paired and the said-producers answered them negatively (""No, no, no, no! Absolutely not. Don't play any of that. Nothing's going to happen." - Blastr 12.14.2012) and indeed, Chakotay and Seven didn't give any sort of attraction in the following episodes... until Endgame, where they were suddenly thrown together.

 

Thank you for agreeing with me.

 

Guy and Ghislaine, you both make a very good point about Chakotay's age, versus 7 of 9's. Like many young women - not all, not a majority, just 'many' - Seven's turning to an Older Man for Love & Sex, not as an equal, but as someone who's more eXperienced than her peers, who'll be grateful. Grateful, you understand, to be having such a younger woman. But I'm sure she'd prefer that he wasn't Old, but, hey ... that's the tradeoff, I guess. What can you do, you know? Take the Good with the Bad.

Picard was just as susceptible to young(er) women with "Daddy" issues, or whatever ... Vash, included. But with both Picard and Chakotay, it's very good to know that neither is exclusively into younger women. They don't discount younger women ... not at all ... but, from 21 to cougars, they're setting their explosives, with power-packed motives! Unusually, however, I do disagree with Ghislaine on one thing she said, which was that Janeway was out of Chakotay's league! When presented with Kathryn's taste in Men, otherwise, Chakotay's the cock of the walk, most definitely ...

 

Did having all that metal in her body, reduce "Anika's" life expectancy?

No seriously, when the Borg #### is turned on, her flesh would be practically immortal, but you turn off all those energy fields and chemical preservatives, so that she's just a regular human being with 15 pounds of tin grating against bone and sinew inside her, that's not good.

If all that metal scraping and rending her innards took 20 to 30 years off Seven's life expectancy, then it's no wonder she picked a bloke who was borderline 50 to settle down with who was probably going to expire of natural causes around about the same time she did.

Am I saying that the terminally ill should mostly date foggies?

Not really, but it's a considerate thing to do, when you consider the consequences of wittingly widowing some poor bugger for 50 years... "I fell in love with Seven of Nine before she mentioned that she had 5 years to live. Moved a lot of shit around to live our lives together, then I blinked, buried her, and I've been inconsolably crying about that for the last 30 years."

Oh, and kids.

They didn't say so, but I doubt she can have kids.

You pick a 50 year old for a boy friend because they have gotten the kid thing out of their system, or they were smart enough to realise that it's an awful lot of work just to invent a lout who will sell your new TV to buy meth.

 

I doubt she can have kids. i'm surprised she could have sex. reproduction is irrelevant. I'm surprised they didn't upcycle her lady regions into a USB port of their day. Yeah i gave that too much thought just now.

 

They can clone any replacement parts they need.

An entirely new uterus.

It's just a questing of what Borg widgety spindle is occupying that portion of her belly, that might be necessary for her continued survival, which will resist extraction. Even if they made Seven new pipes, there might not be any free space to accept that plumbing

Until Endgame Seven believed that love or sex would kill her. Strong emotion tripped a limiter that murdered her. Seven could not have a boyfriend and could not even have sport sex, until she had had 7(?) surgeries to replace/modify her cortical implant.

I doubt she was going to replace her womb, before she fixed her brain that turned her vagina into a bomb.

Which is another reason why I thought that Seven was not showing evidence of having a ticking biological clock that'd require her selecting a mate more her own age.

 

EXCELLENT!!!

And yes, I doubt she can have kids. If I remember well, children raised by Borgs have been removed from their family sphere or conceived like One (for whom she played the role of a surrogate mother -> a moving episode, btw).
What is quite surprising besides, is Chakotay's choice* of women (Janeway then Seven... with the exception of Seska, of course) who were unable to give to him offspring while he seemed to be a family man, like Paris...

As for intimate relations, I guess that her investigations about Paris/Torres taught her that sex was a part of being in a relationship. I don't think that Chakoatay or anyone else, would agree to spend his/her time to look at Seven from every angle without being able to touch, right?!