When did the Janeway hatred truly start to coalesce?

Dark and edgy has been around before I was born, 1998, Star Trek during that time was trying to differentiate from the other series within its own world. The nowadays Trek can't seem to do that.

 

She's didn't have to be written to look foolish, Ben Sisko made some bad calls on DS9 and learned from them, that's what made him a better character. Janeway's hubris was annoying and I felt during the Berman run he should've ordered the writers' room for each series to trade places every season to add elements what the other series lacked.

 

When I walk away from current Trek I have a much different attitude than when I walk away from other shows, like the Mandalorian. More positive and inspired, rather than mildly content.

 

Agree with nearly all of your post, except the "initial premise". The idea of "a slowly crumbling ship, no support, limited energy reserves, a crew that's a quarter renegades, and a limited supply of essentials (torpedoes, shuttles, spare parts)... that wasn't stretched, it was just abandoned.

Again, not the fault of Janeway or Kate Mulgrew.

 

AHAHAHAHA!

My apologies. I forget that VOY was pitched to be more like the BSG remake and less like TNG. By episode 3 of season 1, the status quo of VOY being a standard Starfleet ship in a different part of space was firmly locked in.

Oh, that self imposed torpedo count. Always good for a laugh.

 

The thing is, though, in a universe with replicators, it would've made no sense for that condition to persist. All they needed was one working parts replicator and a supply of matter (countless asteroids out there) and energy (unlimited solar power out there), and they could've rebuit every system on the ship, replenished all their essentials quite easily. So it never would've made sense for the shortages at the beginning of the series to persist indefinitely.

Agreed that they dropped the ball on the Maquis tensions, though.

 

Even if you figure that some of those off-screen "fire" instructions were phaser blasts, and that the biomolecular warheads were turned back into regular photons, that's about 55-60 too many torpedoes...

 

There are those who wanted a premise akin to Year of Hell to be the default mood for the entire series. I cannot count myself as one of those folks...I do not watch Star Trek to see members of the Federation behave like a pack of jackals.

"Not committing war crimes" =/= "perfect". It is possible to have a heroic but flawed character that doesn't cross certain lines.

 

Having a year of hell style mood=/= behave like a pack of jackals.

Of course it is possible but it doesn't feel as real. The point of entertainment media is to engage and sometimes challenge the viewer, not reassure them that everything will be OK. That's not real life. Heroes can be flawed, can cross lines, and hopefully learn and grow from it, rather than always be correct.

 

Or, you know, refuse to yield no matter the consequences. A pox on this bastardized notion of "realism".

 

Or that there are situations that are unwinnable, despite every desire to avoid them. You don't have to agree with the choices to engage with the characters. That misses the point of drama if our heroes always make the right choices, no matter what.

 

Did they "share" Torpedoes with Equinox?

As good communists, they should have shared, until they both had an equal amount of torpedoes as each other.

Rudy ran more often than fought, so he might have had more torpedoes to spare than Kathy, even if he started off with less torpedoes than Voyager, although how could Voyager be the "tactically superior" (Which were the words used to justify Janeway promoting herself to Fleet Captain... Did she ever demote herself after she lost her fleet? The computer would have moved some walls around on the ship, making Janeway's room bigger, since Fleet Captains deserve an extra 12 square feet of living space than regular shitty Captains... Which is criminal fraud?) if Equinox had twice as many Torpedoes than Voyager? Larger phaser coils maybe?

What about the Dauntless?

Their Torpedoes looked Federation issue for hours and hours before they probably didn't any more.

Salvage from the Equinox?

Sure the ship blew up, but torpedoes only blow up when you want them to, and it's hard to make them explode when you don't want them to explode, otherwise everyone would have already been dead.

Using the transporter to sift through the wreckage, it wouldn't have taken long to pare through anything still intact, and then there's a hundred thousand tons of duranium just floating there, they need to patch up or Spackle a lot of cracks and blemishes on Voyager's hull.

 

precisely. There is a lot of drama potential in a Starfleet crew trying to stay true to their principles even if the conditions around them makes it harder and harder. Throw in the maquis part of the crew and you have still more potential for drama.

But no, they just made it TNG-lite and hand waved the issue entirely.

And I write it as someone who mostly enjoyed Voyager: the series was good enough but it had the potential to be much more.

 

Janeway said "I spent all night reading the federation charter looking for a loophole to justify piracy“ in The Void.

All she had to have done is read Jonathan Archer's Xindi War Logs about the time he stole a warp coil off some niave peaceful explorers, leaving them stranded, years from home.

 

Voyager pre-dated Enterprise.

 

Oh don't be like that. For all we know, Janeway did read Archer's log. Considering the episode Dark Frontier opened with a plot to steal a transwarp coil from the Borg.

Har Dee Har


Joking aside. Janeway always did what she wanted and rationalized what she'd done (with the help from the writers) as right and just. See her actions in Scorpion in creating a weapon to assist the Borg in their war against 8472. And then later in Hope and Fear pleading ignorance with regarding to the consequences of her actions and putting up a weak argument in her own defense. Prime Directive broken.

 

And the thing is is that it doesn't have to be forever. I always appreciated "Learning Curve" because Tuvok had to learn a small lesson in flexibility. Janeway could be struggling with the tension of commissioned officers and the Maquis but actually applying some of the principles in the face of limited resources. It wouldn't be a constant struggle to survive, but it would at least feel like the supposed limitations touted in the opening show actually mattered. Instead, it was lightweight adventure of the week that would feel just as at home with Picard and Co.

 

always hated that episode.

ah, yes indeed!
The future voyager shown in Before and After didn’t look that bad and that was after they went through a year of hell where the ship was thrashed and a lot of people dead.

 

Just like Steven Seagal.

Above the Law.

 

I liked Janeway myself. Mulgrew did a great job and I give lots of credit to her. As for the uneven writing that made her seem crazy I think in a weird way that also kind of worked as a strength because it also made her unpredictable.