Do you think the writers in voyager were closet sexists?

[exodus]

Oh, I'm quite aware of the difference in both style and substance. What I'm not aware of is how that relates to my point that a character can be as well developed in a 2 hour movie as they can be in 7 years of a TV show. At no point did I even mention sitcoms. That's all on you.

I expanded it here:

If you develope a character in only 2 hours in a TV show no show would last beyond one season. Character development over time is main element in keeping the audience returning. Exploring a character psyche is just as important to a veiwer as the story developing around them. It's art imitating life because the character grows and learns just as we do in real life. It gives the audience more of a chance to bond with said character(s).

A sitcom developes it's characters over one or two eps and the characters never change beyond that, just the situations they're in does.

 

[Bishop76]

Okay, so what? Of course slow character development and change over time is what brings people back week to week on TV. How does this relate to the point?

Remember this started when someone said that the character development of a TV show that lasts 4 or 5 seasons is superior to shorter shows or movies. My point was that this wasn't necessarily true because you can, in fact, create compelling characters in 2ish hours that are as interesting if not moreso than a character that's had 7 years of development. To use Godfather again, who's a more interesting, compelling character - Michael Corleone or Harry Kim?

 

[Guy Gardener]

There were 70 authors for a hundred and 70 episodes of Voyager.

They were shown the pilot and told, "okay write some more".

The reset button is totally in play for a series like Voyager where nothing is allowed to change because it will screw with the stories being written and screw with the audience who don't like to observe a different product they then chose to buy.

No matter what happens in the X-men comics, they will always end up back in the mansion being taught how to play soldier by Professor X in a wheel chair. Writers wreck that, currently they're living on a poontoon island because of a holocaust that decimated the mutant population and the professor is a walking outcast asshole no one trusts because of some conspiracy from the beginning came to light. This has happened before and it will happen again, but even though the mansion was rubbled they will return there and it will all be just like 1963 all over again for when the next guy wants to take over Uncanny X-Man authorship.

Voyager is the same.

The only lasting changes were Seven of Nine and the Delta Flier, maybe Tom and B'Elanna hooking up and Naomi. Other than that almost any episode could have aired in season one.

 

[Gotham Central]

Just going over this list again, let's think about coverage:

Ellen Ripley - Four movies, and in one she's a clone.
President Roslin - Four seasons, wonderful depth and coverage
Sarah Connor - Two films. Two short seasons of an alternate-timeline series.
Olivia Dunham - Three (?) seasons.
Zoe Washburne - Half a season.
Dana Scully - Nine (?) seasons.
Princess Leia - Three films.
Buffy - Seven seasons.
Hit Girl - Minor role in one film.
Xena - Five seasons.

So, in terms of coverage, that is to say, time spent with the character, I really think only Xena, Buffy, Scully and Roslin can really compete in terms of answering: Who is this person? What drives them? What do they like to do in their spare time? Who are their friends? How do they treat their friends? In other words, they are developed. I think Janeway was a fully realized character who was not defined by the fact she was a woman. I think Buffy and Scully can also be described in this manner. Xena, while great, was something of a pastiche, but I'm willing to agree that she can also be described in this manner. But what I'm saying is that in a list of ten 'better' female leading characters than Janeway, a bunch of them are actually not very developed. I loved Zoe, but I never found out much more about her than that she was Mal's kickass right-hand (wo)man.

Your analysis is based on the false idea that Janeway was herself well developed. granted she got more development than most of the characters on Voyager, but the reality is that she received significantly less development than most of the characters on this list. The writers on Voyager were not all that interested in character development which is in stark contrast to all of the shows on this list.

 

[froot]

The Star Wars movies were about character development?! Princess Leia was intended to be a fully-realized character?! Janeway is less developed than Princess H. Leia?! Pardon my overuse of question marks, but whaaaaaaaa?! Similarily, I love Zoe, but I'm pretty sure I learned close to zero about her in the few episodes we were given. Um...she was a badass and a good shot. Janeway was less developed than her?! How?

 

[Guy Gardener]

You know she loved her husband and if it came down to Wash or Malcolm being tortured... It would be Captain Reynolds having his fingernails removed.

It's a matter of confliction. The longer something runs the harder it is to not to make earlier proofs of character out of sorts with the latest additions to... I suppose you could call that growth? People grow. An in a TV show running for this long you would expect them to grow. However in the 5 and a half hours that Star Wars lasted, it was a fricking snapshot of the girl.

"No Jiggling in the Empire."

George can be funny sometimes.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

The Star Wars movies were about character development?! Princess Leia was intended to be a fully-realized character?! Janeway is less developed than Princess H. Leia?!

 

[exodus]

The Star Wars movies were about character development?! Princess Leia was intended to be a fully-realized character?! Janeway is less developed than Princess H. Leia?!

As much as I LOVE Star Wars, I agree.
Princess Leia wasn't as developed as Janeway.

I'm not even sure if we can say Ellen Ripley is a full developed character.
Do we know anything of her when she wasn't fighting Aliens?
If it wasn't for the directors cut of "Aliens", we wouldn't even know she had a daughter.
We don't even know how she knew Tom Skarrett, how she got a job in a mining operation on the Nostromo or one single detail of a personal life, family, husband/boyfriend. Not one.
Seriously, what do we know of Ripley other than being a former miner that understands how to fight Xenomorphs?

To use Godfather again, who's a more interesting, compelling character - Michael Corleone or Harry Kim?

The same Michael Corleone from the Godfather books by Mario Puzo, based on real life accounts of the Mafia turned into a screenplay compared to the ficticous Harry Kim based on nobody and created from scratch? So you asking who's more interesting due to development? A character based on real life whos part of the Mafia turned into a book, then a movie or fictional one made up for TV based on nobody?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

One mark of a really excellent show is that all the supporting characters are well developed IMO. This is one reason DS9 is such a standout, huge cast, very in depth and developed characters, even ones that only appeared sporadically.

Of course it has to be done well, believable and hopefully compelling. Chakotay had lots of background and a potentially hugely interesting story but it just never got off the ground. If you gave me that premise cold without my ever seeing VOY, "former starfleet turned Maquis to protect his own people must now integrate with starfleet crew in order to survive and oh yeah he is native american" I would have just about died from excitement. I love the Maquis storylines in DS9 and always wanted more of an exploration of them.. to have a maquis as a main character blah blah.. but it didn't work for whatever reasons. So instead you have a character with very unengaging development.

Then you have the Paris backstory which seems to have no connection to Paris himself. Paris was an okay developed character but quite different than the bad boy personality he was supposed to have. If you forgot about that (easy to do) he was the happy go lucky flyboy and that was fine.

I always liked Harry, his parents, his music, his youth, his girlfriend back home.. he didn't promise much so I guess there was no disappointment like with Chakotay.

VOY was a mixed bag as far as character development but I still find them ALL more engaging than the TNG characters who seem oddly bland to me. The humor element is huge too, that warms up a lot of characters on VOY.

Princess Leia was more of an archetype than a character. Padme Amidala had a greater story arc as far as choices that seem good but lead to tragedy, a struggle with duty.. she is a tragic figure even when young and happy because we know what is ahead for her.

 

[Anwar]

Chakotay wasn't an interesting character to begin with. He wasn't a traitor like Eddington, he was a principled man who formally resigned without betraying any secrets in the process and he didn't hate the Feds.

If he had never been a Fleeter, and was part of a Separatist/Independent movement that existed long before the Maquis then there's more to work with.

Plus, the main contention between the Feds and Maquis was the DMZ and the Cardassians. Both of which were now 75 years away, and without that there's no real sticking point between the factions.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Sure there is a sticking point, a lot of Starfleet resented the Maquis betrayals. How do we know Chakotay never "betrayed any secrets"? Even if me was Mr. Prim and Proper there were other Maquis who could have had darker pasts that brought resentment from Starfleet.

 

[Guy Gardener]

B'Elanna tried to blow up a planet.

the rest were very agreeable and accommodating except Suder who was Crazy.

Okay here's a point.

The Maquis have always been willing to get along.

Being oppressed or treated like cattle didn't get them down.

They purely wanted to be the federations friend.

It is Starfleet and the federation et all who are the assholes.

So the lack of truth to the series wasn't that the Maquis were not portrayed as cut throat mercenary bastards but that the Fleet officers were not still complete assholes.

Janeway was too "nice".

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I'm sure the Maquis would have attracted some mercenary and renegade types, people who had suffered losses at the hands of the Cardassians during the Dominion war and wanted revenge.

 

[Anwar]

I'd rather the other crew were Romulans, with Beltran playing a Romulan Captain. THOSE are guys who'd have issues with the Feds and bring something new and worthwhile to the table.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

That would have been a very intense and interesting show. However I do not see the Romulans willingly throwing in with a Federation ship. I suspect they would commandeer a vessel as the first port of call and take off on their own.

 

[exodus]

Chakotay wasn't an interesting character to begin with. He wasn't a traitor like Eddington, he was a principled man who formally resigned without betraying any secrets in the process and he didn't hate the Feds.

I think you're missing the deeper side of Chakotay.
He claimed he was a man of peace but if you check his actions, he was always rebelling and angry.

His father tried to teach him peace & culture, he became angry and rebelled against it.

He was on his way to a modest career in Starfleet, gave it up to unleash his anger and join a rebellion.

In "Scorpion" he didn't believe in Janeway's plan, he rebelled against it.

He rebels against the idea of settling down and all his relationships are with cheap women.

Yet to spite all this, he spends his time alone meditating w/ his spirit guide seeking inner peace.

Chakotay could have been a very interesting character due to his inner turmoil.
Emotionally, he's Wolverine.

 

[exodus]

That would have been a very intense and interesting show. However I do not see the Romulans willingly throwing in with a Federation ship. I suspect they would commandeer a vessel as the first port of call and take off on their own.

No, they're Romulans.
They'd mutiny, take over the ship & kill the Starfleet crew.
They're military minded, they're not going to give up a tactically superior ship such as Voyager. They'd kill themselves before giving up that ship.

 

[Guy Gardener]

And there's the tension!

There were a few episodes of TNG that seemed to suggest that despite the hardliners in charge that the Federation and Romulus would soon be fast friends which would have been especially culturally significant considering the fall of Communism in the real world.

Anwar.

A gay bajoran Captain and the crew of the Star Ship Odyssey are trapped behind enemy lines in the Andromeda galaxy after being forced to weaponize their extragalactic stardrive to collapse a stargate which a vast armada of bastards was funnelling through to colonize the AQ. The hot (remarkably hot considering these actors were just kidnapped strays form a convention) lady Romulan advisor on board is promoted to First Officer because she's awesome. Odyssey is a spinoff from Hidden frontier which began last century and some of the characters/actors were inherited from the parent show.

http://www.hiddenfrontier.com/episodes/indexody.php

 

[Anwar]

The Tal Shiar operatives held captive by the Dominion were willing to work with Cardassians and Federation prisoners to escape, and one sacrificed his life to save the others. Also the Romulans in "The Chase" were the most open-minded ones of the lot of aliens chasing the Precursors' secret (aside from the Feds), and the Romulan Captain from "Face of the Enemy" was pretty non-hostile as well.

I'd say there is plenty of evidence showing that they could work with a crew of Feds in the name of survival, while their differences would also make the show more interesting. It would be a "We may have both been wrong about the other" situation.

Plus, if there's 120 Feds and 30 Romulans, they'd think twice about trying to kill them all and steal the ship. And you could just have the Fleeters pull a sacrifice in the premiere that makes them think "Okay, they DID sacrifice to save us, so let's not immediately try anything."

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

He rebels against the idea of settling down and all his relationships are with cheap women.

Seska's not cheap, she's damned pricey. And that was no relationship.