Thank God for Mulgrew!

[Destructor]

Oh man, I appreciate this has probably done the rounds already, but check out the original Captain Janeway, before she quit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIZcDWKyw0

Is it me, or did we dodge a major bullet when Bujold quit and Mulgrew got the role? Hard to imagine seven years with that delivery.

 

[henbane]

Bujold is a great actress - but this role//setting just didn't suit her style. I believe the PTB went for her as a well-known actress for the role rather than her suitability.

If you look at some of the other actresses considered for Janeway, they are all rather similar in style and presentation (eg Susan Sullivan, Helen Shaffer etc) Bujold was really quite different and its a puzzle to know why she was selected (other than the "big name star" tag).

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

We dodged a bullet.

I thank God we got Kate every single time I see a clip of Bujold in the Captain's uniform.

She's stiff. She lacks any personality.

It's clear she's just going through the motions, and she just reciting her lines. She's not acting.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I saw the clips on YouTube a few years ago. I read about everyone's frustration with Bujold in "A Vision of the Future" - she wanted to be a quiet little scientist, not a military commander, and considering Voyager was on a quest to get home and not a scientific survey in friendly territory I'm not sure how they got as far as filming.

I only wish she'd taken Robert Beltran with her when she left

 

[ConRefit79]

It was a pilot, so that explains much of awkwardness. But her accent, just does not fit someone named Janeway.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

I've seen other pilots. Heck, the pilot for TNG was an awful storyline full of bad dialogue. However, at least everyone was acting and not just going through cardboard motions.

Even at his worst, Beltran acted better than Bujold's first day.

 

[Delta1]

It was a pilot, so that explains much of awkwardness. But her accent, just does not fit someone named Janeway.

And did they get the right accents for Picard, Torres, Fontaine, Ishikawa, LaForge, Sulu, Bashir, the Rozhenkos' kids, Pulaski, McCoy, Ogawa, Rasmussen, Locarno, Castillo, Sato, or the Borg? My suspension of disbelief is shattered every time the Borg speak in flat, midwestern American English. They should sound like the Swedish chef. "We are the Bork!"

 

[Pemmer Harge]

I don't get this. I've seen that clip and Bujold seems fine to me.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

There's no emotion behind any of her line deliveries. She's stiff, wooden in her on-stage movements.

When she gives the line, "It's not crunch time yet, Mr. Kim. I'll let you know when", it's very flat. In comparison, Mulgrew's delivery has the lilt of humor in it that should be there as a captain teases a very green officer.

Bujold never got into character. She simply spat out the lines.

Another example, when Janeway is looking at the tactical console to talk about the readings displayed there, Bujold just runs off the dialogue, but there's nothing to indicate she's interested in anything she's saying. When Mulgrew does it, she does it with an intensity that would indicate that here's a captain who has a passion for what she's talking about... a scientist, perhaps?

Mulgrew infused a lot of life into Janeway from the moment we first see her. Bujold could have been spitting off telephone book listings for all that it mattered in how she delivered the character of Janeway to us.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Bujold should have been the science officer on Voyager. She didn't have enough energy to be Captain of such a "small" ship.

Jean Luc could delegate right and left on the Enterprise, but the Captain of Voyager needed to be able to slide down the chute, phaser rifle at the ready, to rescue her crew. She needed to be able to do hand to hand combat in Resistance with the fascists storm troopers, and knife to phallic symbol combat with the macroviruses in Macrocosm.

Bujold, alas, wasn't up to that level of intensity and as Mulgrew frequently says, thank God she recognized that quickly and pulled out.

 

[jgdst]

I'm another one who thinks we dodged the bullet. The first time I saw Caretaker, I was dubious about Kate Mulgrew, but quickly started liking her.

Having seen Bujold's scenes, we were so lucky to get someone like Kate Mulgrew who was ready to make Janeway her own from the start and showed a number of facets of her personality. With Bujold, we barely get the lines in one smooth delivery, never mind with emotion or personality.

 

[kimc]

I don't get this. I've seen that clip and Bujold seems fine to me.

Watch it immediately followed by Mulgrew's take on the same scene. Night and day.

 

[henbane]

Bujold should have been the science officer on Voyager. She didn't have enough energy to be Captain of such a "small" ship.

Actually yes - to me Janeway was never a convincing scientist, and the addition of a science officer like Bujold would have been good.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Bujold.. talks... very.. slowly..

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

That's because she clearly couldn't get a grip on the technobabble.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

That's because she clearly couldn't get a grip on the technobabble.

Oh yes "On screen" was clearly too complicated..

 

[F. King Daniel]

There was much more to it than "on screen". Not a week went by where they didn't have to deal with "inter-phasic-tri-fluxinators", or "inverse-trionic-polarizers" or whatnot.

Although with Bujold they'd probably have had to drop the babytalk technobabble aspect of the show entirely! I think I found the first Bujold Janeway pro!

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

That's because she clearly couldn't get a grip on the technobabble.

Oh yes "On screen" was clearly too complicated..

Her "engage" made me cringe. There was absolutely no authority behind it what-so-ever.

There should always be authority behind "engage". How can there not be?

Who follows a leader who sounds like a mouse? There's a difference between speak softly and not having any authority. That Janeway, Bujold's Janeway, would have had a mutiny of epic proportions.

That Janeway could not have handled B'Elanna let alone any of the other hot-headed and green officers she inherited in the Maquis.

 

[Mary Ann]

Her "engage" made me cringe. There was absolutely no authority behind it what-so-ever.

There should always be authority behind "engage". How can there not be?

Who follows a leader who sounds like a mouse? There's a difference between speak softly and not having any authority. That Janeway, Bujold's Janeway, would have had a mutiny of epic proportions.

That Janeway could not have handled B'Elanna let alone any of the other hot-headed and green officers she inherited in the Maquis.

This is it. Bujold was simply wrong for the role. I cannot picture Bujold's Janeway squaring off with B'Elanna, Seven, or even Tom. Her soft-spokenness would have been useless against all the hostile aliens as well. Nope, the role definitely suited Mulgrew perfectly, and I can't envision anyone else playing the role.

 

[Akiraprise]