When did the Janeway hatred truly start to coalesce?

Lol... he had potential as a ship's counselor, though.

 

I would agree with all of this, and add ... IMO, Janeway is very poorly served by this impulse to make her a strong leader by taking long chances in an effort to keep heading to the Alpha Quadrant. I have this image that when Kirk did something like that it was so they wouldn't die:
"My God, Bones. What have I done?"
"What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live."

When Janeway seems reckless or impulsive, it's because she risks everyone's death when there's an alternative. It was generally to give up on Earth and settle in the DQ. So you have a leader essentially saying "we will get home or we will all die trying," and a first officer saying "Is getting home worth (probably) dying for?" I'm sure there are plenty of people in both camps there, but the end result of all this being that she rejected what would otherwise seem like a very reasonable, if disappointing, response to the adversity of the moment, especially when operating under the understanding that you likely aren't going to ever reach home in your lifetime anyway. Both she and Chakotay suffer for it.

 

Hatred of Janeway started the moment the character was first announced. Back then, just as now, there was a segment of fandom that vehemently objected to telling stories about anyone but white heterosexual men. So the hate -- in the literal sense of hate, rather than the way the word is exaggeratedly applied to criticisms about how a character is written or portrayed -- was there from the start. There was all sorts of ferociously misogynistic crap hurled at Janeway and the show back in the '90s, more so than tends to be acknowledged today.

As far as criticisms of the character go, I think those coalesced in the later seasons of the show as the writing of Janeway grew more and more inconsistent, and as she was portrayed in unflattering ways in episodes like "Equinox."

 

I never saw Janeway as a female Picard. She never bloviated as Picard did.

 

Early counseling: "The Maquis way."
Later counseling: Electronic peyote.

Yowch!

 

Five stars. best game!

 

You should get the PC version, with the Holomatch PVP mode. You can arrange a duel between yourself and Neelix, and kill him as many times as your heart desires. I recommend the Photon Burst...

One of the worst aspects of the show was the whole "Cult Leader Janeway" sort of vibe. They find a safe, human civilization on the other side of the galaxy... and no one leaves the ship to live there. Because apparently, Janeway has Jim Jones level charisma.

I personally think that would have been a great way to dispose of Carey... have him lead the faction (about 5-10 crew, mostly Maquis) that jumps ship on Planet 37's. He had a reasonable grievance, and it was better than just waiting 6 years and then redshirting him a week before Voyager gets home.

 

I mainly watch Picard for Seven of Nine.

 

Good thing those same ridiculous sentiments DIDN'T effect the very black heterosexual man who spearheaded DS9. Talking to my Dad and my brother about this when they were introduced to VOY the publicity was HUGE and the GOAT was everywhere and all of it was positive. They said something was also going on where fandom were getting a moment of Star Trek fatigue where at the time, Star Trek was on the air nearly everyday on many cable outlets, TNG was doing movies every couple of years, and DS9 was on the cusp of carrying the mantle. Some fans were hurt that some portions of fandom were claiming VOY was going in the right direction and DS9 was not Star Trek.

They believed the attacks on the GOAT was retaliation for the mean spirited criticisms of the series where DS9 fans believed were unwarranted and more than likely never gave the bold series a chance. In their minds, Star Trek was actually having its own Civil War in the mid to the late 90's, so it was not about sexism at all.

 

Whaa??? I never got any sense that that was about Janeway. I never thought it made much sense, I thought it was implausible and simplistic, but it certainly wasn't about any kind of personality cult. Rather, it was meant to show that the early divisions between Starfleet and Maquis had ended and the whole crew was now a single community united behind a common purpose.

I think maybe you're back-projecting aspects of Janeway's characterization that were established years later. I suppose that in the wake of "Scorpion," when Janeway proved willing to take insane risks in the name of getting closer to home, that desire to get home started to feel more like Janeway's personal obsession that she was dragging the crew into, and that might color how "The 37s" looks in retrospect. But that wasn't the way it came across at the time, and it certainly wasn't the way it was intended. It was just an overly pat, sentimental, and simplistic way to resolve the arc of Starfleet-Maquis tensions and end the season on an upbeat note.

 

I remember the days when DS9 was the unwanted black sheep. A guy who claimed to be a Trekkie said he "sat through the entire first season of DS9", just for research purposes.

Yes, DS9 has aged well, and Voyager has aged poorly. But I think both series (and both captains) had their detractors.

Regardless, though, Janeway hate saddens me. Though the character had her issues, I really did like her.

 

There were plenty of us who liked DS9 far better at the time, not just in retrospect. If anything, I'd say it's DS9 that's aged poorly, since its all-male writing staff could be incredibly clueless about issues of sexual consent (e.g. Sisko's rape-by-fraud of Mirror Jadzia and the way the sexual enslavement of Sisko's biological mother was treated as some kind of poignant spiritual thing). But most of Voyager's flaws were as evident to me in its original run as they are now. The one thing I can think of that falls into the "aged poorly" category is the portrayal of Chakotay's culture and spirituality, which I thought at the time was respectful and progressive but turned out to be based on the advice of a fraudulent "expert" and was no more authentic to Native American culture than the "How, kemosabe" stereotypes of '60s TV had been.

 

I think the mid-90s United States-centric politics of DS9 have aged the worst: war crimes are cool as long as we're the ones committing them.

You see perfection.

 

Around season 3 or 4. The character was unevenly written and that's why she got a rep for being crazy and unhinged. Most people rejecting her because she was a female is overstated. Voyager was running at the same time as Buffy and Xenia and you already had characters like Ripley and Sarah Connor. Scully on X-Files. Ivanova and Deleen on Babylon 5 and soon Aeron on Farscape and Carter on Stargate. Genre tv is one of the places early on when you could actually get strong and interesting female characters. Other places the female characters were just romantic interests or leads in Chick Flicks as they were called or Horror. But Horror once again speaks to genre.

 

Wow, that's a profound misreading. DS9 was exploring the moral ambiguities of war, which is not even remotely the same as endorsing immoral acts. Showing the heroes forced to make moral compromises for the sake of war is not a celebration, but more like a tragedy. At the end of "In the Pale Moonlight," the reason Sisko had to repeat "I can live with it" to himself was because he really couldn't live with it and was struggling to talk himself into it.

And in the final arc, Bashir and O'Brien devoted themselves to preventing Section 31's genocidal war crime against the Founders, and stopping that war crime (curing the disease) was what achieved peace. That was taking a pretty unambiguous stand against war crimes.

 

I think a better ending would have involved the Romulans discovering the deception only for a new war to begin brewing on the horizon...

 

DS9 was made in the 90's but Trek spoke of universal themes so DS9 wasn't trying to say anything specific about the 90's. the issues Trek explore can find metaphor in stuff that happens throughout history. I mean the Bajoran Occupation was mostly built around what happened to the Jewish people in WW II but the Dominion War was more about that War from a broader perspective. The Maquis were anything from Native Americans to Palestine.

 

Back during TNG, the Bajorans were supposedly based on Palestinians.

 

the good old holomatch days. Both EF games would deserve a proper remaster...

Indeed, what they did with Carey was incredibly stupid. By the time they killed him a lot of people would have forgotten he existed at all.

They did, but possibly to a lesser degree. Here in Italy I remember a lot of resistance about a black captain and DS9 aired only for 2 or 3 seasons at night, the dubbing was eventually completed years later for the (very limited) DVD release. You basically had to order the DVDs by mail and it was a half miracle they could secure the same voice actors that did the first seasons.

just like some do with discovery these days, apparently!

 

Well put. And honestly, I love the fact that at the end of the war he pours out his drink. There is no celebration there, and a perfect call back to "In the Pale Moonlight" of him sitting their drinking and trying to rationalize his participation. He could not live with it.

Eternal war is always nice to end on.

It's amazing what people would rather do with their time. Certainly don't do enjoyable things with our time. That would be silly...

Honestly, on topic, I never hatred Janeway, nor did I see a bunch among my Trek fans. She was just not that interesting. I certainly skipped the show for the most part because the character was not interesting, and every time I'd try it again I still wouldn't be interested. Janeway was written especially unevenly, and came across as a bit hypocritical at times which made watching her less interesting.