I don't know if that's insultingly facile or insultingly ridiculous. Is it closer to "If you can expect that ice cream is chocolate I can expect vanilla" or "If you can expect rain to be water that fall from the sky I can expect rain to be kittens that fly up into the air"? Really, that's so weird, because I've read pages and pages of people complaining that they want Captain Janeway back. Every new Voyager novel is an excuse for two or three new threads on the topic, including the review thread for the novel in question, which is odd because Janeway isn't in them the people who care often make a point of saying they won't read books Janeway isn't in. But Christopher wasn't talking about you specifically. He was talking about the overall trend of death in fiction being a mild inconvenience. A character being Killed Off For Real should be the rule, not the exception, but here we are. Everyone knew Captain America and Batman would be back, to pick two fairly recent examples. Over on Stargate, they damn near stopped killing people off in conventional ways just so it'd be less trouble when they inevitably came back. If it wasn't for this larger context of death in fiction, even explicitly shown death, being easily reversible, then "I'm not buying Voyager books until Janeway comes back" would be nonsense, instead of merely being petulant. Do you only want to hear from those that do?
Glad you know what I mean. Yes things change. Life happens. Death happens. In a very real world all those things happen. But this is fiction. And in Star Trek fiction up until recently the captains of Star Trek have always been larger than life and lead the series they were a part of. I know she made admiral. I also know that was Rick Berman's idea for Nemesis. To just say that she had no more importance than the rest of the ensemble is, in my opinion, very short sighted. The way some talk they think Janeway was no more of a major character than Harry Kim. She was the captain and deserved better treatment than to be killed off by an author who wasn't fond of the character. I don't why I'm thinking of this but for some reason I keep think of the time before Voyager's premiere. Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway was on the cover of a few magazines. Like TV Guide. When ever a story was written in the media it was Janeway's face that represented the show. Funny that the captain's fate would end in such a way. I wasn't really going to get involved in this discussion. I wasn't going to make a Bring Back Janeway Facebook page either. I definitley wasn't going to post anything on Kate Mulgrew's Facebook page either asking for people to weigh in. But something clicked in me last night. It may seem a little silly to some. Hell it's even a little silly to myself. But after much thought and consideration and reliving my feelings about Before Dishonor I feel that I want to do what I can to speak out for the return of Janeway. I'm not a militant nor will I ever deny some one else's right to voice their opinion when it's opposite of mine. I say let everyone's voices be heard. It's a shame Kirsten Beyer couldn't have gotten her hands on Janeway before Peter David did....cause even if she wrote that Janeway were to die...at least Kathryn would die well. ETA I've read all three of the Beyer Voyager books and will continue to buy them even if Janeway never returns.
That would be very interesting. Would she be 20 or 30 years older or would she be the same age as when she disappeared and everyone else was older? This could be a fun story though it would have to be a personal or small scope one to avoid having too much info about how the future will unfold that then had to be factored into other books being written in current Trek years.
Look, I hear this over and over and I still don't understand it. At the end, Janeway overcame her assimilation with a last-ditch effort of pure willpower and allowed the Starfleet plan to work. Janeway died a hero and saved Earth - what other characters have, of their own accord and through their own force of will, overcome complete assimilation? Ultimately, though they killed her, Janeway was not defeated.
Halliwell I think we could do with plenty of BBKJ pages, just making sure you know about this one-- http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_366418642046 These groups don't seem to list members any more but last I looked there were about 740 people in it.
Yes there's an expectation in science fiction that we are never all we could be, something can always happen that can evolve/transform us into something new. See: Erika Hernandez. Though I certainly agree that overusing death and resurrection makes for potentially cheapened story telling as Christopher said I think it's as much a part of stock sci fi as deux ex machina. In the right hands you forget all about the cheesiness of such plot devices and get caught up in the science fiction element that rescues or transforms people. Trek is not realism, it is full of greater beings and processes that can turn humans into something other than what they are. Being human, being dead, being linear.. all these things have been transformed for the sake of a sci fi story.
Similarly, the elderly Admiral Janeway of "Endgame" was also to forfeit her life via Borg assimilation, giving the people she cared about a chance to survive some very narrow odds. Fate. Just as Pike seems destined to end up needing a mechanical chair to get around - in at least two timelines?
It was horrid. even at that moment where it could have been heroic, David's characterization of both her and Seven of Nine in that scene was so off that it didn't even seem like themselves. Janeway didn't die well because the way she was written in the book didn't allow for it.
This is ultimately the question, isn't it? What is Star Trek? What are its fundamental creative conceits? Is Star Trek supposed to be escapism or realism? It's a hard question to answer, because as a franchise, ST has done variations on so many genres that it can be hard to say sometimes. It's done tragedy and comedy and everything in between. More fundamentally, though, this also points to the question of just what we mean when we talk about Realism. Realism/Natural, if we look at the history of the theatre, was a set of conventions that developed in the late 19th Century based around the idea of accurately re-creating both the environment and the psychologies of characters. Instead of plays like Everyman, with a title character whose psychology is unrealistic, we begin to see characters like Hedda Gabler, who are designed to re-create the complex psychologies of real people. Instead of representative sets, we would see complex sets designed to re-create real life in as exact detail as possible. It is from the theatre's Realism/Naturalism movements that modern film and television developed most of their creative conceits. But it's important to remember that Realism/Naturalism, though they coincide, are not identical. Realism is based on the idea of psychologically believable characters; Naturalism is based on the idea of accurately re-creating the environment instead of using representative settings. Star Trek clearly does not embrace Naturalism. There are no faster-than-light starships, no space stations beyond Earth orbit, no alien lifeforms who happen to look just like humans except with pointy ears. But Star Trek has always embraced Realism, at least insofar as the conventions of television and film at any given moment of its production allowed. For all that Captain Kirk has the popular image of a two-dimensional 60s ladies man/action hero, he was actually a very dedicated officer who struggled with loneliness; Spock, of course, infamously struggled with his self-identity. Sisko was a single dad mourning his wife, considering leaving Starfleet. Etc. The characters have always had vivid emotional lives, even when they had green blood. Sure, not as Realistic as we might see on a premium channel -- ST has always had to conform to the conventions of American broadcast television. But within those confines, Star Trek has always embraced Realism. Yet it hasn't always held onto Realism in every single story. ST is full of silly escapist stories. Many of them are quite wonderful -- "The Trouble With Tribbles," for instance, or "Author, Author" -- even if they did not necessarily always have the characters behaving in completely psychologically Realistic ways. That's part of the confusion, I suppose -- because ST has on occasion deviated from the Realism that has generally defined it, there's an impulse to combine that deviation with its general rejection of Naturalism to argue that ST is un-Realistic. On another level, then, we find the question: Is optimism Realistic? Is Star Trek's vision of hope for the future a vision that's incompatible with a strict adherence to Realism? A compelling case can probably be made that it is. Certainly, if we look at some of the most critically-acclaimed television programs of recent years -- Six Feet Under or The Sopranos, for instance -- we can probably make a strong argument that a commitment to Realism in characterization and plotting requires an acceptance that the world will always be very unpleasant and messed up and that hope for the future is fleeting at best. But a compelling case can be made for the opposite. If we look at, for instance, Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, we find a series with an absolute commitment to Realism/Naturalism -- and an absolute commitment to the idea of optimism for the future, of true idealism. That even though people are messed up, they can overcome it. Star Trek has certainly, at times, been about escapism. No one can watch "The Trouble With Tribbles" or "Q-Pid" or "In the Cards" and think that they weren't trying to have fun first and foremost. But by the same token, those episodes, again, are deviations. Most episode of ST have been Realistic in the psychological sense. TOS's definitive episode had Kirk having to sacrifice a woman he had come to love to save the future; TNG saw Picard getting into a fistfight with his brother while recovering from, essentially, having been raped; DS9's first episode saw Sisko forced to confront the death of his wife; VOY was all about people stranded far from home, trying to return. ST has always featured tragedy even as it insisted that tragedy does not define our lives. So to say that Star Trek should not, in principle, feature plot developments that are upsetting because it's supposed to be escapism and not Realistic -- that's just not a valid argument. At all. It means ignoring the vast preponderance of ST episodes and films. If Janeway's death didn't work for you, well, hey, it didn't work for you. That's subjective and a perfectly valid statement. But to say that Star Trek should on general principle never feature beloved characters' deaths? That's just hogwash.
Personally in all the discussion on this topic I for one have never stated that a beloved character should not die. In fact in an above post I gave the examples of Data and Jadzia Dax. Jadzia was my favorite Dax. She was a tough female character who was also beautiful and funny. But even at that had there been a chance to bring Jadzia (not Ezri) back I wouldn't have liked it. Same goes for Data. I thought his sacrifice to save Picard and the Enterprise was one of the better story aspects of Nemesis. What I claim is that when a beloved character dies, especially if you're going to kill one of the leads of a series and a captain, then it should be done in a way that said character dies well. And by some one who knows the character and who's inner voice they can hear. The Janeway in the beginning of the book was not the Kathryn Janeway we knew. She one dimensional. She was no more than the guest admiral with Janeway's name. Not only did the Borg rip her from the story but so did the author. Full Circle is my favorite Star Trek novel. I'll say it again...it's my favorite. Because the characters I knew and love were all there and I could hear their voice when I read them. The Janeway in Full Circle was the captain we all knew and loved from the series. The same with the rest of the crew. And it does something that Before Dishonor should have done. It explains her motive. In Before Dishonor Janeway goes to the Borg Cube because she was upset that Picard disobeyed orders. In Full Circle she went to investigate the Borg cube to help prevent her crew from having to suffer another mission to the Delta Quadrant. See the difference? If Kirsten had been able to write the story where Janeway dies then I would bet real money that it would a good death and serve a larger purpose. If in Before Dishonor we had seen more of the fight between Janeways will and Borg control then maybe it would have been a death worthy of a captain of Star Trek. But it was an after thought. So I'm not saying that a popular or famous character should not be killed. I am saying that it should have a hell of a lot more meaning than the one we are dealing with here.
I finid it interesting...to say that Janeway's death is meaningless (which I didn't think that it was even in 'Before Dishonor') but that Jadzia's was not seems odd. Jadzia was randomly killed. She didn't fight. She didn't die defeating an enemy. She was a captain and a main character who IMO was far more compelling than Janeway for much of Voyager's run (Janeway was my favorite character during the first season of the series - it was only after that the writers did major damage to her, also IMO)...yet her death felt random and pointless...which I applauded because death usually is in my experience. I do agree that I wouldn't bring Jadzia or Data back (who died in a truly horrible Trek movie) but personally, I think Janeway got a much more meaningful death than Jadzia, and in a much better story than Data - plus she's got a way back that I think is quite valid. I suspect the Q will bring her back someday, and I don't mind that at all - I'm not one of those that cheered when she died...but I love the stories they're telling about her death and how it's affected everyone and I hope it lasts for a long time before her possible return, which I'll also welcome, just as I dd Sisko before her. And if she stays gone...I'm fine with that too. I remember when the DS9 Relaunch began, I was worried that the opening duology would reverse all the changes made in the epic finale - that Odo, Worf, O'Brien, Sisko & Garak would all be back somehow - and thankfully they weren't. It wasn't that I didn't love those characters - I really love them a lot, I just felt that the story could be richer if it allowed characters to come and go as they naturally would...and I was right. (not that it was my doing or anything. lol) I'm tired and probably making lots of mistakes. Forgive me.
I don't think it's confusing. "People" want her back, in part because they believe her death should not have been so poorly written. If the death had been written in a more compelling or satisfying manner, "people" might not be so adamant about her returning, but that is a hypothetical.
Of course. But you asked a specific question about my thinking, and while I like Janeway well enough as a character, to me she's just one part of the larger tapestry that is Star Trek and the mass media. To me, this discussion isn't just about Janeway, it's about the entire trend of casually reversible death in fiction. I should clarify that I'm not saying a story about resurrecting a character can never be done well. I always reject such simpleminded absolutes. But at the very least, it should be a surprise. It's not the purpose of fiction just to give the audience what they already want and expect. Good writing should surprise the readers, introduce them to possibilities they never anticipated, challenge them to look beyond their assumptions and preconceptions. If the audience took it for granted that a dead character was gone forever, if stories of resurrection were rare, then such a story done well could, theoretically, be startling and powerful and meaningful. But conversely, if the audience not only believes but assumes that a dead character's resurrection is inevitable and obligatory, then telling another resurrection story is just going through the motions. There's no inspiration or wonder in it, no surprise or innovation. And that's the situation we're in now, throughout genre fiction. Resurrection is the routine, the cliche, the complacent expectation. So what would make for an interesting story would be to defy that expectation. Either you choose not to go for the cliche of resurrection at all, or at the very least you find a way to bring a fresh and startling twist to it -- say, have the resurrection create new problems and not be the simple wish-fulfilling reset the characters and the audience expected it to be. After all, stories aren't about people simply getting what they want. Stories are about crisis and complication. I think it encompasses both, but what I disagree with is the assumption that escapism means stories that have no actual pain or distress for the audience, stories where everything has a happy ending or an easy outcome. That's missing the point. A lot of escapist fiction is fraught with death and pain and loss. Look at the original Star Wars trilogy. That's about as escapist as you can get. But in the course of the first two hours alone, the hero loses the aunt and uncle who've raised him, sees his home burned to the ground, and then loses his mentor, while the heroine watches her entire planet get annihilated. Then the hero's friends get arrested and tortured, then the hero gets his hand cut off by the archenemy who turns out to be his father, and basically attempts suicide rather than joining him. Then the hero finally redeems his father only to see him die minutes later. And he finds out that the girl he used to make out with not only loves another guy, but is actually his sister. Yes, escapism is about respite from our real problems, but part of that is confronting fictional problems that are just as bad, or far worse. It's like riding a roller coaster -- we voluntarily seek out emotionally stressful situations when they're in a safe context, because doing so helps us face those emotions and practice coping with them. At the very least, it's a way of putting our own problems in perspective. "At least I didn't see my whole planet blown up." Absolutely right. That was Roddenberry's goal from the start: to create an SF show that approached its characters as realistically as any cop show or courtroom drama or adult Western of the day. He was frustrated by the cartoony, unrealistic characters of most SFTV, and wanted to populate fanciful space-opera situations with characters who would react to them as real people would, and thus make the audience believe in and care about the situations. Yes, yes, yes. It's also invalid to say that stories about death are incompatible with optimism. Death is always part of life. The permanence of loss and change is always part of life. Optimism and hope always exist within that context. They're about moving forward, recovering from loss, building something new and better out of what life gives you.
It's tough to really debate that issue with half the passionate BBJ posters here, as many stopped reading either when she died, or even before in some cases. Since most of the books SINCE Before Dishonor have really added a lot to the 'compelling' and 'satisfying' angles surrounding that storyline, tough to keep the debate going from that angle. The event was poorly executed, but the follow-through has been amazing. If you don't read that part, though, it's a pretty weak arguing position to tell people that the whole storyline sucks...
Well, sure, if someone argues that the whole storyline sucks without reading Beyer's novels, then I would agree that they aren't in a position to make that case. However, at least two of the BBJ posters commenting in this thread, and possibly others that I don't recall, have specifically stated that they have read Beyer's work and have even extolled those novels in certain respects. So they are not arguing from a position of ignorance regarding the aftermath of her death. Others may have only read Before Dishonor, but that is sufficient to comment on how the death itself was handled (though not on the whole storyline).
The various views of the people who want her back cannot be assumed to all have the same origin or desired result. Like me, for instance. Do I want Janeway back? Sort of. Why? Not really sure. A little bit of the various reasons, including the mediocrity of the novel she died in. Another person might think that killing off Janeway was the equivalent of murdering a close family member. I definitely disagree with this. I would rather they kill off every single major character than kill my mother.