Captain Janeway
- Thread starter Madea
- Start date
Janeway is the only female captain that starred in any of the shows. There's been plenty of female captains throughout the series and movies. Hell, Madge Sinclair played two of them.
two?
Yes, she played the Saratoga captain in The Voyage Home (who was the first on-screen female captain) and Geordi's mother, Captain Silva La Forge in "Interface."
ah, forgot Geordi's mom.
If it would really just be a question if Janeway as a captain should have a relationship with a fellow officer I can understand the choice that she sees it as something inappropriate. I don`t agree with it but I can understand the reasoning behind such a personal decision. And, yes, in that case it wouldn`t matter that Janeway is a female captain.
But Janeway went much further than that. After the turnaround when it was decided that the hint at a possible relationship with Chakotay might not have been such a good idea after all, everything that makes Janeway female was taken away from her. It already started with it that she suddenly dressed off duty more conservatively than my grandmother on old photos. If Janeway would have been a man, I think at the very least they would have allowed the odd “love affair for the week” that actually involves intimacy – as it was the case with Kirk. There was a two-parter in which Janeway lost her memory and with it she rediscovered her female side. But immediately afterwards she was back to her old self, if I am not very mistaken she was against it that a civilian she was attracted to might become more, even accompany her on her journey.
If the writers would have wanted it, of course they could have given Janeway an “appropriate” love interest in the form of a civilian. I am amazed how prudish the Voyager was: These people are far away from home for many years and there were only two children born on board and one of them was conceived before the journey began. The question of how appropriate relationships on board are should have been much more obvious throughout the series, not just the token couple B`Elanna and Paris.
Maybe I don`t remember this correctly but wasn`t the whole village considered to be populated by sentient holograms? That means Janeway`s annoying boyfriend would be, too.
But Janeway went much further than that. After the turnaround when it was decided that the hint at a possible relationship with Chakotay might not have been such a good idea after all, everything that makes Janeway female was taken away from her. It already started with it that she suddenly dressed off duty more conservatively than my grandmother on old photos. If Janeway would have been a man, I think at the very least they would have allowed the odd “love affair for the week” that actually involves intimacy – as it was the case with Kirk. There was a two-parter in which Janeway lost her memory and with it she rediscovered her female side. But immediately afterwards she was back to her old self, if I am not very mistaken she was against it that a civilian she was attracted to might become more, even accompany her on her journey.
If the writers would have wanted it, of course they could have given Janeway an “appropriate” love interest in the form of a civilian. I am amazed how prudish the Voyager was: These people are far away from home for many years and there were only two children born on board and one of them was conceived before the journey began. The question of how appropriate relationships on board are should have been much more obvious throughout the series, not just the token couple B`Elanna and Paris.
Maybe I don`t remember this correctly but wasn`t the whole village considered to be populated by sentient holograms? That means Janeway`s annoying boyfriend would be, too.
That was Workforce the 9th to last episode, which IMO is too close to the end of the show to have ventured into that territory with any depth. At this point it may be the fault of the novelists for not exploring that more. And of course who's to say they won't one day?
I would have been appalled if there had been more, because Voyager's precarious situation and abnormally high danger factor makes that a HORRIBLE environment in which to raise a child. I would hope birth control was what ruled the day, not baby making sexcapades.
I suppose that depends on how one defines sentient (a philosophical debate to be sure), but Star Trek defined it in that episode as more than simply knowing that they were holograms on a star ship. Which is all they knew.
That's Voyager for you. It was, IMHO, the show with the most promise of any Trek series, with the potential to combine the best aspects of DS9 and TNG and then add its unique flavor thanks to the concept... and then never fully lived up to it.
You are forgetting "Counterpoint" where Janeway falls for the inspector and sleeps with him. She did have some romance, but not enough. It is strange to me that she did always dress so conservatively, I would have thought that a women in the 24th century could wear something pleasant without worrying about losing face. They tended to play her more as the mother and that was the female side they played out with her. It is too bad because she was also a strong sexy woman. It would have been interesting to see them try to incorporate all of those parts to make a more whole Janeway. Maybe the upcoming books will do just that.
"Fairy Folk" was an abominably idiotic episode, but no, the Fair Haven characters were not sentient. If they were, then the entire village would essentially be entitled to the same rights as the Doctor.
I'm disinclined to agree. For the first few seasons, at least, the was the very real possibility that Voyager would become a generation ship, or that the crew would be forced to settle down somewhere and just accept permanent residence in the Delta Quadrant. In either scenario, children would be a necessity, though one could say the lack of reproduction was essentially a form of denial by the crew that their situation could be significantly more long-term than they hoped.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I attribute that to Jeri Taylor's departure and Brannon Braga's takeover. Taylor was able to write Janeway as strong and effective yet still feminine. Braga assumed he had to masculinize her.
That's true. This was expected to be a journey that would take 70 years at best -- they should've either done everything they could to convert Voyager into a viable generation ship or found some planet to settle down on.
Of course, there are plenty of things they should've done but didn't. For instance, they should've tracked down other Caretaker abductees and formed a caravan, sharing resources and defending one another. They should've established some lasting alliances with regional powers. But the powers that be were too insistent on having an episodic series, and that meant no lasting relationships, either between ships and/or political entities or between members of the crew.
No, they definitely were not sentient. In "Spirit Folk," their programming went awry so that they began responding to things they shouldn't have noticed, like advanced technology in use and changes to the programming of the simulation, but they were still reacting in keeping with their programming as game characters. Admittedly the episode was somewhat fuzzy on that point, but it was never actually stated that the holograms were sentient. A whole village full of sentient holograms would be immensely taxing on Voyager's computing resources; there would've been nothing left for running the ship. No, they were just sophisticated game characters programmed to respond interactively and simulate the behavior of real people, and their programming slipped so that they were able to respond to things they shouldn't have.
Settling down on a planet, absolutely I fully agree.
Staying on the ship however, I would only agree in the event that they accepted their fate and actively avoided dangerous situations with the idea that (well, we'll be here for 70 years what's another 2 added to the journey?) But Voyager was very aggressive in obtaining a route home via the absolute fastest means necessary, and that aggressiveness is what I feel put the ship in excessive danger and thereby made raising children (even for the purpose of surviving deeply into the future) unrealistic, because their goals weren't actually long term. And as you say that could be due to denial. But the Voyager crew didn't realize that it was about the Journey and not the Destination until the very end and even then they went with the most dangerous choice to get home now instead of later.
Well, there was Neelix and, ah... Neelix.
Yupp, that's true. She was the mother of 150 children and couldn't use any distraction. They often played her as being very committed and as if love doesn't fit there.
Of course, it's also that a male captain with many women is considered a hero while a female captain with many men is considered quite the opposite.
I just threw up a little in my mouth...Therin of Andor said:
Well, there was Neelix and, ah... Neelix.
Even if the vast majority of Voyager`s inhabitants would think that bringing up children on this ship is a very bad idea, I doubt it that there would never be any accident whatsoever about missed or wrongly applied birth control. I am sure, also in modern Star Trek unplanned pregnancies happen – there is for example Sisko`s youngest child.
When I watched the Enterprise episode E2, I was thinking THIS is what Voyager should have been like.
When I watched the Enterprise episode E2, I was thinking THIS is what Voyager should have been like.
We could see Janeway in a pink nightdress which looked really good on her but not after the turnaround I was talking about.
After all the contradictions and inconsistencies I don`t think it is easy to write Janeway. I think the books treat her the same so far as the TV series: There are books in which I actually like this character. In others, I certainly don`t and that includes “Resistance”.
