Beltran: Being Vocal About Chakotay
- Thread starter TrekToday
- Start date
His character was not dynamic so we assume that a more dynamic actor would make Chakotay more dynamic.
In truth a more dynamic actor would have been told to tone it the fuck down.
Beltran was complaining that the writing made him look shit.
We agreed with him.
There's no disharmony here.
In truth a more dynamic actor would have been told to tone it the fuck down.
Beltran was complaining that the writing made him look shit.
We agreed with him.
There's no disharmony here.
Woot!I've been enjoying your Tom Paris stories, and can't wait to see each new chapter when it gets posted! Are you going to have Seven join the ship at some point?
(we have corresponded over at fanfiction.net, but you know me by another name there)
Thanks!(Feel free to send me a PM to my FFN account so I know who you are ...)
The sequel to "After the Ashes" is taking shape in my head, and in fact is kicking hard to come out. Is there room for 7/9 in there? Well, that would be telling ...But right now I'm working on two short pieces, one of which does in fact have Seven in it.
+ 1
IMO, Beltran voices the primary problem with Voyager - most of the characters were not given many chances to shine, and very few of them had an arc to follow. TNG has a similar "issue" but had the benefit of being new and different Trek during its run.
DS9 demonstrated the value of allowing Trek characters to have a continuous and consistent arc to follow, but unfortunately for Voyager, the writers opted to fall back on the TNG style of storytelling, i.e. they chose to play it safe rather than try and evolve the franchise as DS9 did.
The above quote was Timewalker's, and not mine.
Woops. Still trying to figure out the quote thing -- especially how to clip only bits instead of whole epics. Guess I cut too much ... my apologies. Chalk it up to ignorance, not malice aforethought ...
Another thing about Chakotay is that I feel like his character was used as a springboard for Janeway. He supported her and was her trusted colleague, but she was the one who got most of the writer's attention (at least before season 4). I wish that they had found a way to balance that, and there should have been way more tension between them in terms of a Maquis having to serve under a Starfleet captain.
I theorize that Janeway had Chakotay castrated after Caretaker. He was lively and likeable in that episode with just the kind of rogue streak you'd expect from a terrorist leader. Noble and threatening at the same time. Boy that didn't last.
In the seven years that followed, Chakotay was essentially Janeway's "yes man." Otherwise exiled to the background of the bridge unless he was following her orders. You literally can count on one hand the number of times he seriously stood up to her over the following seven years.
Ironically you can so often tell when there's a holodeck or alternate reality episode at any given point if Chakotay is more animated and human than usual.
What would be the best way to emotionally castrate the Maquis terrorist and make him manageable?
Mind Meld.
Drugs.
Cybernetic Implants.
Hypnosis.
Replacement with clones.
or
Those earwigs from the wrath of khan?
Mind Meld.
Drugs.
Cybernetic Implants.
Hypnosis.
Replacement with clones.
or
Those earwigs from the wrath of khan?
Last edited:
I'll admit that your theory made me raise an eyebrow and release a slight guffaw of surprise, but you have a point. I haven't watched Caretaker in a while, but to my recollection Chakotay was much more menacing, probably accountable to his captaincy in the Maquis.
But like all good things, they must come to an end. Unfortunately for Chakotay, it seems that some of the good things about his character ended seven years too early.
Agreed. The only instance that comes to mind where Janeway actually legitimately listens to him is in "Unimatrix Zero" where Janeway listens to him when he tells her to take Tuvok and B'Elanna with her on the cube.
You've just illuminated a possible Voyager conspiracy to me.
If you watch the interviews on the dvd's, footage from conventions, read his interviews on Startrek.com, it seems to me that he wasn't the most passionate about the gig anyway. On some levels, Beltran was just glad to have a steady paying acting job - and although yes, I believe he was actively interested as an artist about his role, ultimately it was just a job. I remember reading somewhere, I think it was his recent startrek.com interview, that he was rather nonchalant about getting fired. He complained, or rather, spoke up about things he wanted to do with his character and where he felt Chakotay should go (remember he was just as disturbed by Chakotay's hooking up with Seven as anyone - but in the end it was whatever). Yet he never did get fired, so yeah. I think he's a great actor, but definitely didn't put his heart and soul into Voyager.
I've always assumed he was castrated by love.
After living in a Maquis warzone tenement shanty bunkers and then shoving 40 people into a ship the size of the Delta flyer... He's in love with his stateroom.
While certainly a Janeway/Chakotay pairing would make far more sense than throwing him together with Seven at the last minute, I never really saw the chemistry between the two. To me Janeway never really regarded Chakotay as an equal.
Sure there's Resolutions, that everyone is quick to point out, but I'd call that more lack of options on both of their parts, than any chemistry. Certainly nothing happened after they were cured and back on the ship.
A complete lack of options and they still didn't hook up.
He begged.
She said wait for it, wait for it, wait for it...
He begged.
She said wait for it, wait for it, wait for it...
As for a Janeway/Chakotay pairing, I always thought he'd bore her to death inside a week. Just .... don't buy it. Like kissing your cousin, the one who threw away a promising career as a shit disturber to become an accountant.
The big question for me remains -- what came first, the wooden acting or the wooden writing? And in my view, even in his good moments I found Beltran kind of meh. All the others had some really good moments, even Garrett Wang (the Chute, the Disease). Closest Beltran came to real acting IMHO was in Unity. So there it is. Prejudice declared.
BTW I heard that the whole C/7 thing was Beltran's idea, but I have no idea where that came from or whether it has a basis in reality.
The big question for me remains -- what came first, the wooden acting or the wooden writing? And in my view, even in his good moments I found Beltran kind of meh. All the others had some really good moments, even Garrett Wang (the Chute, the Disease). Closest Beltran came to real acting IMHO was in Unity. So there it is. Prejudice declared.
BTW I heard that the whole C/7 thing was Beltran's idea, but I have no idea where that came from or whether it has a basis in reality.
If you listen to his "Angry Warrior" speech in "Resolutions", he's basically telling Janeway he's giving up his balls too her because he really doesn't want to make the tough choices. It was the writers way of saying: in order to make Janeway look strong, we have to make the men on the ship subservient to her. Even Tuvok told Seven(YOH) he knew many of Janeways choices were wrong but chose to keep his mouth shut because he feared her temper. They even went further by showing in "Resolutions" that Tuvok may not be fit to be a captain, even in "Before & After", Chakotay's leadership abilities are almost non-existant.
How could Beltran ever make Chakotay shine as a character if he could never be allowed to step out from Janeways shadow? His character was never going to be written to upstage Janeway. Even when he was right, he was wrong. TPTB were more interested in featuring a strong female captain than surrounding her with a cast of characters that would challenge her.
Last edited:
Shh!! That's a secret. We don't say that out loud.
Agreed on the C/7 front; that relationship makes about as much sense as a shark growing wings and flying to Europa.
In terms of chemistry, I always thought that Janeway and Chakotay had some very real chemistry, they simply could not act on any of those feeling being in a command structure. From my perspective I've always viewed it as a very deep emotional friendship/relationship.
Yeah, admittedly as a J/Cer that is kind of the holy grail of J/C in the whole series. Call it lack of options or lack of space, I'd still say that there was some chemistry there.
Back on the ship, no, nothing would have happened because Janeway was still engaged to Mark, and she would not betray that. Do I think that something else could have happened later? I honestly don't know. There were opportunities for it (certainly in season 7 I believe, at least before C/7 reared its ugly head
), but realistically I think that an actual relationship for them would not have happened until they got back to the Alpha Quadrant.I don't think that the "Angry Warrior" speech was Chakotay "giving up his balls" so that Janeway can take the reins of Voyager while he sits around; I truly believe that it is an admission of feelings. Think about it: they were stranded on a planet and Chakotay had basically accepted the fact that they were going to remain there. It doesn't make sense that he would give up control to her when there really aren't insanely difficult decisions to be made. He was focused on building a life for them on that planet, not Voyager.
Tuvok did make that admission in YOH, but he did advise Janeway quite candidly throughout the series, and most of the time Janeway listened to him.
I don't think that their leadership abilities were properly tested to make a fair case about whether they are existent or not. They did have their share of command experiences, but evidently none as extensive as Janeway's.
Granted, Chakotay was in Janeway's shadow most of the time. However, I believe that you are forgetting the Doctor and the many times that he stood up to the Captain (and though he may not have always succeeded, he did get through to her). The Doctor stood up to many people on the ship, and often through his vibrant determination, got them to listen.
Harry Kim and Tom Paris also had their share of standing up to the Captain, though those instances did not come without reprimand (episodes such as "The Disease" and "Thirty Days" come to mind). But they got under Janeway's skin, figuratively of course.
The only episode I saw evidence of the deep emotional friendship/relationship, was that season 7 episode... oh I forgot it's name... Fractured or something like that? Where the ship was trapped in some sort of time anomaly where different parts of the ship where in different times. Chakotay had to take season 1 Janeway through the ship and explained all this in past tense.
As I said, I never really saw Janeway ever regard Chakotay as an equal, just as a yes-man. Certainly she never really listened to his advice all that often. If she had a moral crisis she either went to Tuvok or just pulled an "I'm the Captain, I'm making the call" moment.
And yeah, Chakotay's "Angry Warrior" speech wasn't him surrendering his manhood. (I'd joke this had long since already happened.
) It was just another Native American cliche veiling that he wanted them to stop focusing on what they lost and build a life on planet nowhere together.The Doctor and Seven both stood up to Janeway to be certain. But by season 5, Voyager was TOS like in it's "Big Three" being Janeway, Seven and the Doctor, so they could get away with this. Not like either of them were insecure about their positions on the ship anyways or wanted to advance anywhere. What's she going to do? Demote them?
Paris seemed to get away with a lot in regards to Janeway. For some reason she regarded him affectionately. All kinds of speculation on why this is, be it she's his "pet project" to reform, that he rocked her world in Threshold, or plain old nepotism since she's buddies with his daddy(this gets my vote). Thirty Days was something she really couldn't overlook if she wanted to maintain discipline on her ship, since he did basically openly defy her and her orders. Even so, he got his rank back real quick.
Kim? He was quite literally Janeway's whipping boy. I swear, she just like messing with him at times. Sure he stood up to her in the Disease, but he was under the influence of the alien STD in that one. Otherwise he never would have had the spine to do that. And I can't think of -any- other situation where Kim defied her. Kim did once angrily voice objection to Captain Tuvok in Resolutions, but I'd dismiss that as a need to get back to his one true mistress.
Poor Kim... when Voyager left Earth Nog was a janitor at Quark's, and that janitor made lieutenant before him.
Captain Chakotay in Before and After made it to season 7 as far as Janeway did, although Kathy had only bought the farm at the beginning of season 4.
Acting Captain Chakotay, with his captain in a coma, broke off the alliance she so pains takeningly brokered with the borg seconds after her head hits the pillow and charts a course through tn years of Borg Space with 8472 behind him planning galactic wide extinction for anything on two legs.
Citizen Chakotay (Captain? the ship was lost. Without a renaming ceremony, Voyager was not a Starfleet vessel anymore. or does the ECH void salvage rights?) thinks he's in a revival of death of a salesman as that child Kim and the lightbulb who wants to be starship captain are told to bitch slap each other until they can decide who has the superior strategy because he's too much of a pussy to call a light bulb a light bulb or an r-tard an r-tard, and ran off to suckle with brainwashed Kathy leveling his command to the dimwatt and the hollow man.
Technically in shattered, Chakotays rank as some one from the future superseded kathryn and even an Admiral if one happened to be aboard if they were from any junior point in the timeline, since he had "tactical superiority" over the rest of the idjits who thought that it was 7 years ago. even so he acted like a therapist not a warchief (That's a Gallifreyan term to me, not native American.) but what he really was doing was tearing down the person who needed to exist to make all the decisions she did in the beginning, AND who would never exist after he fixed the temporally shattered vessel and so never had to be fixed at all... Oh, and Janeway from 2370 was keen. She asked him if they were doing it, and was probably hinting that she wanted a taste of the future before her life was paradoxed to death because he was already pre-trained to hit all the right spots.
Acting Captain Chakotay, with his captain in a coma, broke off the alliance she so pains takeningly brokered with the borg seconds after her head hits the pillow and charts a course through tn years of Borg Space with 8472 behind him planning galactic wide extinction for anything on two legs.
Citizen Chakotay (Captain? the ship was lost. Without a renaming ceremony, Voyager was not a Starfleet vessel anymore. or does the ECH void salvage rights?) thinks he's in a revival of death of a salesman as that child Kim and the lightbulb who wants to be starship captain are told to bitch slap each other until they can decide who has the superior strategy because he's too much of a pussy to call a light bulb a light bulb or an r-tard an r-tard, and ran off to suckle with brainwashed Kathy leveling his command to the dimwatt and the hollow man.
Technically in shattered, Chakotays rank as some one from the future superseded kathryn and even an Admiral if one happened to be aboard if they were from any junior point in the timeline, since he had "tactical superiority" over the rest of the idjits who thought that it was 7 years ago. even so he acted like a therapist not a warchief (That's a Gallifreyan term to me, not native American.) but what he really was doing was tearing down the person who needed to exist to make all the decisions she did in the beginning, AND who would never exist after he fixed the temporally shattered vessel and so never had to be fixed at all... Oh, and Janeway from 2370 was keen. She asked him if they were doing it, and was probably hinting that she wanted a taste of the future before her life was paradoxed to death because he was already pre-trained to hit all the right spots.
