Janeway's Ethics

[TheGoodStuff]

The psychological impact is negligible!? The impact would be massive: potentially never seeing family/Earth ever again would be a tremendous strain.

All Starfleet crews sign up for the excitement and danger of deep space travel and the risks that brings. If she can't handle that then she's is the wrong job. Additionally, none of the crew think for a second that they're actually gonna be in the Delta quadrant that long. The Maquis crew (especially Chakotay) are positively thrilled at their new circumstances.

I seriously doubt anyone on board is thrilled at being stranded, alone, at the other end of the known galaxy. Starfleet crews sign up to explore, make contact not for 'excitement and danger', I do not think they are all adrenaline junkies.

While many starships are attacked, none have to contend with the reality that critical damage may spell complete doom even if they win the fight

And neither did Voyager.

That is ludicrous. Voyager is in a survival situation. There is no help or promise of aid, that ship and crew are a finite resource. They most certainly have to accept an over-arching sense of additional danger any time the ship is threatened.

To me, Janeway [if Voyager was real] would be under tremendous strain, unlike anything the other hero captains have endured.

To me, Janeway [if Voyager was real] would have arrived home then various high-ranking Stafleet officers would have had read all the logs and debriefed the entire crew.

Then Janeway would have been be promoted to admiral as quickly as possible and put behind a desk in some dark corner in order to ensure that she never commands a Starship ever again.

Which is pretty much what happened.

Her worst behaviour was when Janeway had no choices to make.

So basically, you're saying that even when she wasn't making a decision, she still somehow managed to make the wrong decision.

Many others [as is shown in Equinox] would have utterly cracked under the pressure. Can you imagine the pressure she would be under on a day-to-day basis? People are going to want home [to see families], others are going to want to settle on the first uninhabited M-Class planet they find. EThe very situation, and every subsequent decision she makes, is going to be on her.

For so early in her career, to keep her sense of morality in tact, to not resort to barbarism, and to actually successfully lead that ship home is highly, HIGHLY commendable of her. I fully suspect she is a cult hero in the Federation.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They were such deep recessed denial, that I wondered if they were in drug induced denial about the enormousness of their predicament.

 

[hux]

That is ludicrous. Voyager is in a survival situation. There is no help or promise of aid, that ship and crew are a finite resource. They most certainly have to accept an over-arching sense of additional danger any time the ship is threatened.

And how is that different to any Starships encounters with hostile aliens? If you're attacked, you can't phone for back-up. That's the world they all live in. The only difference for Voyager is that the hostile alien in question is........the Kazon.

Many others [as is shown in Equinox] would have utterly cracked under the pressure.

She did crack under the pressure. That's what we've been discussing. You're attempting to justify it by saying she was under unique pressures. I say she wasn't and even if she was, why does the pressure only affect her when it's time to make the important decisions?

She's fine with day to day captaining. It's only when the big calls need to be made that she loses her shit. To me, that does not suggest the stress of ongoing pressures, it suggests poor judgement and inexperience in the moments where a more experienced captain would demonstrate composure.

 

[Beawild]

She did crack under the pressure. That's what we've been discussing. You're attempting to justify it by saying she was under unique pressures. I say she wasn't and even if she was, why does the pressure only affect her when it's time to make the important decisions?

She's fine with day to day captaining. It's only when the big calls need to be made that she loses her shit. To me, that does not suggest the stress of ongoing pressures, it suggests poor judgement and inexperience in the moments where a more experienced captain would demonstrate composure.

I disagree. I don't think that she "cracked under pressure". Furthermore, reading some of the comments, I smell a whiff of sexism.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Gotta wonder if Janeway wasn't tweaked when she was put back together in The Killing Game or Workforce?

 

[hux]

I disagree. I don't think that she "cracked under pressure". Furthermore, reading some of the comments, I smell a whiff of sexism.

You disagree with criticisms of Janeway AND simultaneously believe that criticisms of Janeway might demonstrate sexism.

What were the odds?

 

[Beawild]

I disagree. I don't think that she "cracked under pressure". Furthermore, reading some of the comments, I smell a whiff of sexism.

You disagree with criticisms of Janeway AND simultaneously smell sexism.

What were the odds?

Ever since the announcement was made that Voyager's captain would be a woman, there were a lot of male viewers who couldn't handle that decision. There were outcries against it and even death threats (Mulgrew has spoken about it more than once). I've noticed that a lot of criticism against Janeway seems to have its origin on the inherit sexism of having a woman in charge. Janeway was a good captain who most of the time followed Starfleet rules. The times she didn't were due to the unique circumstances that they faced in the DQ. The only time where I questioned her judgment was during the incident with Lessing. Except for that instance, I think that she was a stellar captain.

 

[hux]

If we start talking about sexist death threats every time Janeway is criticised, then those of with legitimate criticisms don't stand much chance, do we?

No doubt there's a lot of sexism about Janeway but equally, there are genuine complaints to be made about her behaviour and her decisions.

As I've said on this thread, I don't think the problem was that she was a woman. I think the problem was always that the writers were men (and not very good at writing women well). This is why it is my contention that they deliberately made her an inexperienced captain. They clearly didn't feel entirely confident about writing a woman so making her an inexperienced woman gave them some leeway if mistakes were made (and they were made).

For me, Equinox is a perfect example of this. They obviously want her to be a strong, confident, no bullshit kinda gal so they write her threatening Lessing, threatening Chakotay and Tuvok and being gung-ho and unilateral. They clearly think this makes her look confident, powerful and in control but instead it just makes her look ridiculous. They would not have felt the need to write a male captain like this as the implicit assumption about male captains is that...of course they're strong. It doesn't need to be demonstrated so blatantly.

Why did they give her a partner? None of the other captains had one at the start of each respective show. As far as I'm concerned, it's another example of the writers being scared of writing a woman (give her a boyfriend and we don't have to worry about that).

They wrote her as a strong, no nonsense woman in a mans world when what they should have done is simply written a captain......who happens to be a woman.

The criticisms of her are certainly fair. Most of them go back to the writers though.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I disagree. I don't think that she "cracked under pressure". Furthermore, reading some of the comments, I smell a whiff of sexism.

You disagree with criticisms of Janeway AND simultaneously smell sexism.

What were the odds?

Ever since the announcement was made that Voyager's captain would be a woman, there were a lot of male viewers who couldn't handle that decision. There were outcries against it and even death threats (Mulgrew has spoken about it more than once). I've noticed that a lot of criticism against Janeway seems to have its origin on the inherit sexism of having a woman in charge. Janeway was a good captain who most of the time followed Starfleet rules. The times she didn't were due to the unique circumstances that they faced in the DQ. The only time where I questioned her judgment was during the incident with Lessing. Except for that instance, I think that she was a stellar captain.

22 years since voyager started, 23 or 24 since the cast was announced.

There's been nearly 5 next generations of sexist pigs since 1992, who have no idea what "Star Trek" is.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

"The poor you will always have with you."

 

[TheGoodStuff]

And how is that different to any Starships encounters with hostile aliens? If you're attacked, you can't phone for back-up. That's the world they all live in. The only difference for Voyager is that the hostile alien in question is........the Kazon.

It is blatantly different. The Enterprise CAN send a distress signal, or report to Starfleet and request reinforcements. Of course they can 'phone for back-up' as you put it. Your Kazon quote is odd as well.

Did you watch the episodes with the Hirogen? Borg? Species 8472? Krenim? Voth? Vaadwaur?...

She did crack under the pressure. That's what we've been discussing. You're attempting to justify it by saying she was under unique pressures. I say she wasn't and even if she was, why does the pressure only affect her when it's time to make the important decisions?

She's fine with day to day captaining. It's only when the big calls need to be made that she loses her shit. To me, that does not suggest the stress of ongoing pressures, it suggests poor judgement and inexperience in the moments where a more experienced captain would demonstrate composure.

She does not 'lose her shit' she deals with each unique situation as it develops as the other captains do. At what point did she crack under pressure? She resolved every situation she was involved in without major loss.

 

[Guy Gardener]

She lost her shit in Scientific Method.

Charged a couple suns like Don Quixote, playing say-uncle/chicken with the baddies.

 

[hux]

It is blatantly different. The Enterprise CAN send a distress signal, or report to Starfleet and request reinforcements. Of course they can 'phone for back-up' as you put it. Your Kazon quote is odd as well.

Did you watch the episodes with the Hirogen? Borg? Species 8472? Krenim? Voth? Vaadwaur?...

Ships might not get back-up for days, weeks, months. The point being, captains have to deal with countless situations without help. They have to deal with Romulans, Kilingons, Borg, Jem Hadar etc, on a daily basis. Starfleet ships are no safer than Voyager just because there's help three weeks away. Captains don't ask hostile aliens to wait a fortnight before engaging.

She does not 'lose her shit' she deals with each unique situation as it develops as the other captains do. At what point did she crack under pressure? She resolved every situation she was involved in without major loss.

Hmm, tell that to Arturis and his people.

In the very next episode, she's locked in her quarters, sat in a dark corner, frothing at the mouth, rocking back and forth. You're telling me that the writers aren't making a point about her decision making in this ep.

You're saying she doesn't lose her shit even though we've been discussing an episode where she threatened a crewman with death as a means of extracting information from him then confines her first officer to quarters for pointing out that this was......bat shit crazy.

Maybe we should chat about the Borg alliance. Chakotay warns her, she ignores it but that's not the real pisser. On discovering the Borg have lied and were the aggressors against 8472, she continues to believe that her alliance with them is perfectly sensible (despite her first officer again pointing out that this was.....bat shit crazy).

I find it frankly bizarre that people don't see the major flaws in the character. Most of the time, she's fine but when it's time for big decisions the writers fail miserably and turn her into a cartoon. But to be fair to them, they do address it in certain episodes and acknowledge that they made mistakes.

 

[MacLeod]

It is blatantly different. The Enterprise CAN send a distress signal, or report to Starfleet and request reinforcements. Of course they can 'phone for back-up' as you put it. Your Kazon quote is odd as well.

Quite correct in the other trek shows they can call for backup or put into dock for repairs

So they can have endless supplies of

Crew
Shuttles
Starfleet Spec Replacement Parts
Photon Torpedeos

None of which VOY had access to yet, we had crew numbers which went up and down, endless shuttlecrafts, endless supplies of Starfleet Spec Replacement parts, limitless torpedeos.

It's just sloppy writting not to keep track of the number of crew they had left after all lose too many or too few specalists and you could run into issues.

Losing Shuttlecrafts could mean they have to becarful when they lose them.

As systems break down/get damage they might not be able to be reapired to Starfleet Spec, so they might run less efficent or they could find superior parts.

Due to limited torpedeos they have to be used sparingly and only in dire situtations. Remember we are told in dialouge they have no way to replace them, and if they can't replace a relatively basic bit of kit like a toropedeo then the chances of something more comples like a shuttle should be impossible as well. No you might thing the line shouldn't have been there and it was too limiting and I'll agree with that but it was in and as such it's part of the premise the writers wanted to setup. The fault lies with the writers for putting that line in the first place and not with people who call them on ignoring things when they are inconvineant.

Now all these points are hurdles to overcome which can lead to storytelling opportunities. Sometimes being limited can be better for story telling than having unlimited resources.

Sure there might have been some network interferrence, but once again as a viewer that's not my problem. They want to get around these issues then at least show or tell the viewers and all it would take is a line drop or two.

And the Captain's gender/race is irrelevant to telling a good story.

 

[Guy Gardener]

No, gender is really important. With a bloke like Kirk, we'd get a weekly ripping yarn about how he'd teach the naive alien girl that human thing called kissing, or out right root the Alien Captain's girlfriend.

Girls, on the other hand, can't teach alien boys that human thing called kissing, or take a load of alien splooge from the Alien Captain's Boyfriend, because "the prudish modern audience" is concerned about objectifying women in relation to sex, rather than empowering women to make the same foolhardy, stupid decisions men make without a thought to consequence.

Equality means you get objectified sometimes.

This was a cause Mulgrew stuck to her guns about, no sex without love, and no love without a damn good reason, like mind control or alien parasites. Besides, she had a fiancé, her cooch was spoken for, so there!

But it was the antiseptic 90s, Paris, supposedly the sexmaniac, only got his end away maybe three times before he settled down with a loud Klingon girl in season 4.

I say this with hope, but with the same writers, it would have been the same sexless, romanceless scripts where Voyager plods through space orgasmless for 70 years no matter if it was a boy or a girl in charge.

 

[TheGoodStuff]

Ships might not get back-up for days, weeks, months. The point being, captains have to deal with countless situations without help. They have to deal with Romulans, Kilingons, Borg, Jem Hadar etc, on a daily basis. Starfleet ships are no safer than Voyager just because there's help three weeks away. Captains don't ask hostile aliens to wait a fortnight before engaging.

'Might' is not relevant. In Federation space, there is the potential for support. That potential is entirely lacking in the Delta Quadrant. It is a huge difference.

 

[hux]

'Might' is not relevant. In Federation space, there is the potential for support. That potential is entirely lacking in the Delta Quadrant. It is a huge difference.

In the Delta quadrant, there is potential for Voyager to meet an alien who bakes cakes and has the ability to magic them home.

If 'might' is not relevant to the ships in the Alpha quadrant then that also applies to Voyager in the Delta quadrant. The fact that it might be low on supplies, might be under constant attack, might be battle damaged, might be limping home. Yeah, but they never actually were.

Fact is, they had a luxury cruise liner with endless supplies and shiny carpets with plenty of air freshener and potpourri. They shouldn't have.......but they did. I don't see their circumstances being significantly worse than what the average crew is expected to endure. They had different challenges to overcome but nothing that would be considered out of the ordinary for a Starfleet crew.

 

[TheGoodStuff]

'Might' is not relevant. In Federation space, there is the potential for support. That potential is entirely lacking in the Delta Quadrant. It is a huge difference.

In the Delta quadrant, there is potential for Voyager to meet an alien who bakes cakes and has the ability to magic them home.

If 'might' is not relevant to the ships in the Alpha quadrant then that also applies to Voyager in the Delta quadrant. The fact that it might be low on supplies, might be under constant attack, might be battle damaged, might be limping home. Yeah, but they never actually were.

Fact is, they had a luxury cruise liner with endless supplies and shiny carpets with plenty of air freshener and potpourri. They shouldn't have.......but they did. I don't see their circumstances being significantly worse than what the average crew is expected to endure. They had different challenges to overcome but nothing that would be considered out of the ordinary for a Starfleet crew.

We are discussing the mental strain Janeway is under from an in-universe point of view. The fact Voyager is never half-wrecked with huge casualties is not quite relevant. The fact is she is in an entirely different situation to all the other hero captains.

I can't fathom how you can't see why their situation IS significantly worse than the average crew. Being stranded 70,000 lightyears from home isn't out of the ordinary? These statements are ridiculous!

 

[hux]

Mainly because they never showed us that this crew were experiencing things that were significantly worse than the average crew. Another legitimate criticism of the show.

It would have been nice to have seen more emotional trauma, conflict, strain but we didn't get any of that (even with the Maquis element). Everyone just knuckled down and grit their teeth.

I think we got a depression episode with B'Elanna (but that was apparently more about the deaths of her Maquis friends) and as I've said before, the only time we saw Janeway exhibit signs of pressure was in the actual pressure episodes and of course, "Night."

It should have been significantly harder/worse for them but that just never came across.

 

[Kilana2]

Mainly because they never showed us that this crew were experiencing things that were significantly worse than the average crew. Another legitimate criticism of the show.

It would have been nice to have seen more emotional trauma, conflict, strain but we didn't get any of that (even with the Maquis element). Everyone just knuckled down and grit their teeth.

I think we got a depression episode with B'Elanna (but that was apparently more about the deaths of her Maquis friends) and as I've said before, the only time we saw Janeway exhibit signs of pressure was in the actual pressure episodes and of course, "Night."

It should have been significantly harder/worse for them but that just never came across.

After Voyager's return to the AQ there were people (Starfleet officers of different ranks according to the Voyager relaunch) who claimed, that Voyager missed the Dominion War while being stuck in the DQ and therefore the crew was better off. It was before the Borg showed up again (Destiny). From this moment on they weren't really better off than the people who already went through the Dominion War.