I think that's the thing, romances don't always make sence. Not everybody seeks another out for emotional bonding. Many get togther for status or for simply sexual reasons. Many seem to be coming from the angle that C/7 had to have some emotional bond. Just because Chakotay wasn't for having Seven on the ship doesn't mean he didn't desire her sexually. Look at Chakotay & Tessa in "Timeless", they were only together for sexual release. Lets face it, Seven was hot, for many men that's all it takes and it seemed true of Chakotay.(It is for Robert Beltran) Do folks really think there was more going on between him & Seska? Look a Bashir & Leeta from DS9, they were sex partners and nothing more.
Chakotay and 7 of 9, why?
- Thread starter Mr. Scott
- Start date
I think I'm pretty much in agreement with Deckerd. I don't oppose romance in scifi, but I oppose badly done romance in any genre, and scifi is generally not good at romance. For that matter, television is generally not good at it.
Paris and Torres was great. I also like Worf and Dax - and I thought the O'Briens were interesting too. But look at how rare romances of that caliber are. The fact that good ones are so rare is one of the things that makes me resistant to inclusion of romance in a show I like with characters I like. I don't like to see either one misused, and history tells me that if the Trek PTB attempt a romance, they will almost always screw it up.
Romance ought to enhance the characterization. It almost never does, at least not in TV. Often, in fact, it actually detracts from the characters. Romances-of-the-week almost always detract from the character, for example. There are exceptions, of course (TNG's "Lessons" comes to mind), but generally, they tell us a lot more about how willing the writers are to manipulate a character for the sake of a plot than they do about the character itself.
Long-term romances that never go anywhere sometimes detract from the character, too - and I'm thinking here particularly of Picard/Crusher and Troi/Riker. Yes, I know the former finally went somewhere in the books and the latter in the movies, but that doesn't count - they had seven freakin' years on the show and they did nothing except use those supposed "romances" when they were convenient, only to forget them the moment they were inconvenient. The fact that Troi was supposed to be Riker's Own True Love didn't prevent him from falling in love with somebody if the plot demanded it, did it? And ditto (double ditto) for Troi. And ditto for Crusher and Picard, too.
And personally, I thought J/C wasn't particularly effective as a character development tool, either. In the early years of the series, the writers merely teased us with it. In the later years, they jettisoned it as an inconvenience. What did I learn from the supposed romance between Chakotay and Janeway that I couldn't have learned just as easily from their being friends all along (which is how I pretty much think of their relationship, BTW - friendship with a hint of romance)? Nuthin' that I can think of.
In the end, it was gimmick - so was Riker/Troi and so was Picard/Crusher - and I hate it when writers use the emotions of characters I care about as a gimmick.
Another one which is often shown as an example of a well-developed romance is the long unrequited love of Odo (although even here they managed to ruin it with a romance-of-the-week). I actually would have preferred it if they had left it unresolved since it was much more believable than what actually happened. Much as I like both characters they just had no chemistry together and I simply never believed the happy ending.
^ Oh, I absolutely agree on both the characters and the happy-ending romance. I haven't read any of the books in which the Picard/Crusher romance is finally resolved, but I find that one a little difficult to swallow as well - I don't know anybody in real life who behaves the way those two did. But if they lead up to it in an appropriate way, it might be fine.
I heard it was because Robert Beltran dared Brannon Braga to do it, just to see how low he would go in the bad writing.
But in that case, they made Chakotay look as the real idiot on the ship. A man who was thinking more with his "you know what" than with his brain. Talk about ruining a character who had so much potential.
And did they keep Seven on the ship just because of her sex appeal? Had they dumped her out of an airlock if she had been an 80-year old woman?
Kirk, Riker nor Bashir hardly ever chased after women for their intellect. Nobody ever looked down upon Kirk for doing it either, it's part of what gave him appeal and made the character one of the ultimate sex symbols. Jadzia Dax was a symbol of a sexually free woman but nobody ever saw her a idiot for enjoying all life has to offer.
Chakotay's sexuality didn't weaken his potential, it was the fact they made him Janeway's lap dog to make her appear stronger is what did.
^^Janewayrulz! I agree totally with everything you said.
I bet you do, too, KimC? Right?
Someday I'm going to disagree with you just for the shock value...
... however today is not that day.
I do. Well, I don't look down on them, exactly, but I consider it a major character weakness. I don't really like skirt-chasers...or pants chasers, either, not that I consider Jadzia a pants-chaser (she wasn't nearly as indiscriminent as those males you mention). Why should I? I tolerate skirt-chasers them better in fiction than in real life, but even so, I thought all three of them acted like hormone-crazed boys when it came to women, which wasn't so bad with Bashir, seeing as he was supposed to be young and callow, at least in the early days of DS9. But both Riker and Kirk needed to grow the heck up, in my opinion.
So yeah, that really damaged the appeal of those two characters for me.
Was it love or just sex?
Nobody seems to be considering the "open" relationship.
Ok, but we can't deny the fact that MANY people in real life behave this way. Hello Mr. Tiger Woods!
If Trek is about exploring the human condition , then were shouldn't dismiss that sexual promiscuity & sexuality in general is part of it. We aren't robots, people do have carnal needs.
exodus said:
Depends on which relationship you refer to as "it." Some of them were definitely supposed to be love. If you need specific examples, I can find some, but unfortunately I have to quit playin' on the BBS now and go do some of the work I'm being paid to do, alas, so I can't look episodes up now. But here are two examples: Riker was in love with that person from the androgynous planet (the one where genders were considered abnormal), and Crusher was in love with that Trill. And there are other examples, too.
And for that matter, Kirk supposedly wasn't just having sex with all those women, either - some sure, but not all.
Post TOS-Trek didn't do a lot of sex-just-for-the-sake-of-fun, really.
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exodus said:
I don't quite understand your point. I don't have a lot of respect for people who act this way in real life, either - in fact, as I mentioned before, I am less tolerant in real life than I am in fiction. I was simply reacting to your statement that "Nobody ever looked down upon Kirk for doing it either, it's part of what gave him appeal and made the character one of the ultimate sex symbols." I did. I think it made him look like a man-tramp. Why should I admire that?
And I don't find it remotely sexy, either - in fiction or in real life.
Can someone please tell me what the scene was where Chakotay and Seven had sex?
That wasn't on my DVD...
To get back to topic:
I don't see how a kiss after knowing each other for 4 years (and developing a respect for each other over that time) makes either Chakotay or Seven a horn-dog.
Frankly, I found them rather tame for the 3rd date.
That wasn't on my DVD...
To get back to topic:
I don't see how a kiss after knowing each other for 4 years (and developing a respect for each other over that time) makes either Chakotay or Seven a horn-dog.
Frankly, I found them rather tame for the 3rd date.
Too bad, because back in the day of black & white films and westerns that Roddenberry and many of his generation grew up on, this is what romance was. Even in "Casablanca" Ingrid Bergman was promised to another man but she still gave it up to Bogart, her one true love yet they still could never be together. Even in modern times adultry is what helped make "Desperate Housewives" a number one show. That's a much larger audience than Trek pulls in saying this is what we want to see. In TV, that's part of what's going to keep your show on the air.
It doesn't really matter if you personally find it sexy or not, it happens and people like this exist. Why should even a show like Trek pretend it doesn't just because a few don't approve? It's not being truthful to human nature and it's turning a back to the larger majority of the audience that does see this as a big deal.
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Teya said:
I could have missed something, but I don't think anybody considered either C or 7 a horndog. If you are taking my comments about Kirk as having something to do with either of these characters, my apologies because they don't. What can I say? I got diverted.
It is the 24th Century, after all. Mores probably have changed from the 21st century, just as they've changed in the past 100 or so years in America. Plus, we are talking about a small community on Voyager, stuck in the Delta Quadrant potentially for decades, so it would be inevitable people would hook up, but not necessarily get married.
Therefore, what we would consider skirt-chasers (or pants-chasers) now may be more acceptable in the future. Also, remember, we are talking about humans living in a multi-species universe, where they must've been exposed to many other kinds of relationships.
Recall, also, we are talking about explorers, who, like sailors, don't have stable, long-term relationships, and are more likely to do some bed-hopping. It's one reason I thought that ep where Janeway got on Harry's case for having a fling with a woman from another species was bullshit. Poor Harry had blue balls, for crying out loud! I wish the Doc had weighed in with a medical opinion -- "Captain, the crew needs release. Leave Harry alone. That's my medical opinion!"
As for the topic at hand of Chakotay and Seven hooking up, it seemed out of the blue to me, too. The only long-term romance in all of ST that made sense to me was Tom and B'Elanna, and maybe, Miles and Keiko (poor hen-pecked Miles!).
RR
Casablanca was indeed romance. But even "back in the day," Exodus, Kirk doing the Roman slave girl in "Bread and Circuses" wasn't romance. It was sex. I doubt very much that even Roddenberry thought of it in any other way.
So what's the difference between Bergman/Bogart & Riker/Troi? They were both still "their one and only" while seeing other people romantically.
exodus said:
Riker/Troi isn't the problem. Even Riker/Troi/a-couple-other-women-over-the-seven-years-of-TNG isn't the problem. It's Riker and lots of women over the seven years of TNG. The guy tomcatted around the galaxy, a la Kirk, making him seem to me extremely immature and also a bit sleazy. Sorry, Riker fans, but that was how he always struck me.
The only problem with Riker/Troi per se is that although we heard that they were each other's One True Love, we only heard about it when it was convenient to the plot. When it wasn't, as in that episode where he fell for that person from the androgynous planet, it was just ignored. I hate that. It isn't unique to Trek, but I hate it every time.
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Regarding Riker/Troi, how much of that was a function of Riker's alleged tomcatting and how much was due to Troi's Betazed socialization? We know her mom is pretty free and easy with her relationships, so perhaps it's the way many Betazeds are socialized. In other words, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, even though we only saw Troi in a couple of relationships (Worf, that negotiator fellow). Frankly, we only saw Riker matched with a small number of women.
Even Kirk's "womanizing" was exaggerated -- he onlly slept with a small number of the women he was attracted to during the TOS run. I only recall two times they showed he actually had sex with women -- Deela (puttng his boots back on) and Miramanee (she was pregnant). Most of the other times it was flirtations (Marta, Lenore Karidian), or he fell in love but it wasn't consummated (Edith Keeler, Rayna, and Elaan).
RR
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