Janeway should have had the center seatwell.

[BlastHardcheese]

That always annoyed me about Voyager's bridge. It's like the writers weren't quite ready to give a female captain central control of a ship's bridge so they had her sitting next to her male first officer.

I'm no rabid feminist but I firmly believe that a ship's captain is a goddamn captain who does not share authority with the first officer. Two chairs side by side denotes a partnership, not a command hierarchy.

I don't think Janeway's chair could even swivel!

 

[TheGodBen]

At least she had a seat, poor old Sisko had to stand whenever he was in Ops. It's like the producers of the show were saying that black guys don't deserve to sit down, it's racist!

 

[SilentP]

Blame Cardassian architecture for that little tidbit, in their mind, having the commander stand tall and proud above his subordinates would have been more important than his comfort. This situation is at least somewhat remedied by the bridge chair on the Defiant.

 

[KiraDax]

I'm not sure any viewer that wasn't a rabid feminist (OP excluded) would have noticed such a thing, so I can't say this is one issue I'm terribly bothered by.

Besides, Janeway more than made up for it by trodding all over the man for seven years. Valued command partner? Chakotay got the least input of all the bridge officers. And when he was asked for his opinion, she promptly said 'thank you, but I'll just keep on doing things my way'.

 

[TheGodBen]

This situation is at least somewhat remedied by the bridge chair on the Defiant.

But did you notice how the chair on the Defiant was originally surrounded by a structure that looked suspiciously like a cage? Racism!

 

[exodus]

That always annoyed me about Voyager's bridge. It's like the writers weren't quite ready to give a female captain central control of a ship's bridge so they had her sitting next to her male first officer.

The writers don't design the sets.

Sisko had more than a chair, mofo had an entire office to himself.
Go on, my brotha!

 

[Hartzilla2007]

This situation is at least somewhat remedied by the bridge chair on the Defiant.

Not to mention those nice large control panels on the sides, Picard had those shitty little things at the top of the armrests that were probably hard as hell to make out.

 

[BlastHardcheese]

But did you notice how the chair on the Defiant was originally surrounded by a structure that looked suspiciously like a cage? Racism!

No wonder he shaved his head and grew the goatee which is the symbolic transition of all black men into bad-assedness.

FIGHT THE POWER!

 

[kimc]

Besides, Janeway more than made up for it by trodding all over the man for seven years. Valued command partner? Chakotay got the least input of all the bridge officers. And when he was asked for his opinion, she promptly said 'thank you, but I'll just keep on doing things my way'.

You mean like in "Omega Directive"?

 

[Akiraprise]

Besides, Janeway more than made up for it by trodding all over the man for seven years. Valued command partner? Chakotay got the least input of all the bridge officers. And when he was asked for his opinion, she promptly said 'thank you, but I'll just keep on doing things my way'.

You mean like in "Omega Directive"?

At least she was polite about it.

 

[AuntKate]

It wasn't really that different from TNG, where Picard had two seats beside him and some benches. When the rubber met the road, there was no doubt who was in charge!

 

[RTMS]

I was always put off the fact that the captain did not sit dead center. Even Picard could say his seat was the center of the circle. Janeway and Chatokay though both sat at the top half, equal. There would be no way if an alien was looking at that brigde to know who was the actual captain until Janeway ID'd herself.

For your comparison from Utopia Plantia Yards Starship Guide

Voyager


Enterprise-D


Enterprise-E


Defiant

 

[exodus]

I think the design might have been done to establish what Janeway & Chakotay represented on the whole. Janeway=Mother, Chakotay=Father. The two in co-leadership, yet also representing both crews as equal. If Beltran had been given a more solid role, this may have been more evident.

 

[BlastHardcheese]

I think the design might have been done to establish what Janeway & Chakotay represented on the whole. Janeway=Mother, Chakotay=Father. The two in co-leadership, yet also representing both crews as equal. If Beltran had been given a more solid role, this may have been more evident.

Starfleet command structure does not allow for co-leadership on its starships for a damn good reason. See Crimson Tide as a good movie example. The Maquis crew were not equal to the starfleet crew. They were terrorists who were given a place to stay for a while.

 

[exodus]

I think the design might have been done to establish what Janeway & Chakotay represented on the whole. Janeway=Mother, Chakotay=Father. The two in co-leadership, yet also representing both crews as equal. If Beltran had been given a more solid role, this may have been more evident.

Starfleet command structure does not allow for co-leadership on its starships for a damn good reason. See Crimson Tide as a good movie example. The Maquis crew were not equal to the starfleet crew. They were terrorists who were given a place to stay for a while.

I thought within the Federation everybody is equal?

If co-leadership within Starflleet doesn't exist, why have only two seats, both at equal standing? I would guess Starfleet revised their policy just as they did after the Borg attack about putting families on starships. Besides while th Captain gets the last word, don't the captain & First Officer work jointly together anyway?

 

[TheGodBen]

This is being over-thought, just a tad.

When the Berman, Pillar and Taylor created the characters they made Chakotay a first officer in the Riker tradition rather than the Spock tradition. He was purely a first officer and not a department head, that means he sits next to the captain and he has no console to man. If they had included a third seat (as on TNG) they would have had had no characters to fill it; Tuvok couldn't take it because he had to man the tactical station and the ship doesn't have a councillor or a sane Betazed (except in Counterpoint for some reason).

So, they had three choices; three seats with one empty all the time, two seats with Janeway in the centre and Chakotay to the side, or the arrangement they chose. Three seats was ruled out because everybody would wonder why the third seat is empty 90% of the time and the producers feared that somebody might misconstrue it as sexist somehow. Two seats with Janeway in the center was ruled out because it would have been asymmetrical with a big empty space next to Janeway, and somebody might have misconstrued that as sexist somehow. The current arrangement is what they were left with.

The bridge was designed to fit all the senior officers on it and to be easy to film in, that's all.

As for the chair not swivelling, that's a logical decision because when you're on a spaceship with substandard inertia dampeners, like they have on all Starfleet vessels, you want your chair to stay steady to help you stay on it. You don't want to be forever remembered as the captain who fell off her chair in the middle of a firefight. Besides, did Picard ever use the swivel on his chair?

 

[BlastHardcheese]

So, they had three choices

They had a fourth choice. Chakotay should've been standing constantly at an extra duty station added in like Riker did in the alternate universe bridge on Yesterday's Enterprise. Riker didn't get his own seat there if you remember.

 

[Thestral]

Nah, the arrangement they have works very nicely. Will Riker in Yesterday's Enterprise didn't have a separate station, he just stayed primarily at tactical instead of in his seat.

Having the first officer right next to the captain makes a lot of sense for discussing quietly and quickly decisions - SF I don't think is truly co-operative and there's a need to have the captain's decisions be the decision, but having a first officer close by would be useful.

Intrepids are relatively small fast ships, so there's no need for a second seat for another advisor, and having the two seats arranged as they are makes the most sense. It may at first glance appear odd that the captain isn't visually elevated in any way, but the crew would know who's in charge, and anybody with a moment's hesitation might help in a critical situation, which a ship like Voyager might find useful.

 

[TheGodBen]

I think I read somewhere that Michael Dorn was a bit annoyed on TNG because he was constantly forced to stand during the bridge scenes (another case of a black man not having a seat), and he found it ironic that he finally got a chair in Generations and then the ship was destroyed. If that's true then they might not have wanted Chakotay standing all the time in case Beltran got annoyed.

But we all know the real reason why Beltran had a seat; he wasn't African American.

 

[SilentP]

But we all know the real reason why Beltran had a seat; he wasn't African American.

LaForge didn't get a seat either