I like Captain Janeway

[cosmic mouse]

I like her too... the first VOY eps I watched were from later seasons and I wasn't sure I liked her that much, but watching her character progress in earlier times gives me more appreciation. She's smart, tough and confident... seems like all qualities you'd want in a Captain.

 

[Odonna]

That was very well researched, I'm impressed I personally find it hard to fault Janeway so I'm sorry not to be able to offer much back but this made for interesting reading.

Thank you, Refuge! It wasn't "research" per se, but just episodes or moments that have bothered me from past viewings, and also from recent re-viewings. However, much of the time Janeway is quite solidly written, which then suggests inconsistent writers. Except, at least as I've noticed, her flaws tend to fall into consistent patterns. So there you go...

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Agreed. I think it was an excuse to bring in male characters. She had Chakotay's shoulder to cry on, Tuvok for wisdom and even Leonardo Divinci

Maybe you're right, indeed.
But more generally, I would have liked that producers & script writers bring as much "consistency" to the character as they did for Picard, Sisko and Archer, who really acted as bosses (hard with ennemies, strict with their crews and refusing that their actions and decisions are questioned by anybody -> the last two Captains were female XO and as far as I remember, neither Colonnel Kira Nerys and Sub-Commander T'Pol provided feedback so many times to often criticize - and frontally - the way their Captains acted as Chakotay did towards Janeway, and they weren't bad in their job, so far as I am aware). So what, because the Captain was/is a woman, she was/is unable to think wisely and make the right decision of her own. but was/is supposed to seek advice from the senior 2 (male) officers closest to her (Chakotay & Tuvok... and of course, the holo Leonardo) before taking decisions?!

Berman, who had nevertheless fought to impose a female captain for this new series to Universal and CBS executives, and his crew (co-producers and script writers) ducked underneath... and some viewers, who said to be great fans, didn't match the seriousness of the event, showing their prejudices : misogynist (with Janeway in 1994 and lately, after the annoncement of the 13th regeneration of Doctor Who, who will be a woman) and racial with the new heroin of the last episode of the saga Star Trek, who for the third times, a woman but black.

 

[Voth commando1]

Janeway took advice from her male confidants but she was more than capable of making her own decisions and going against her advisors if she felt the situation warranted it.

As for Chakotay-I don't think recall him being critical of Janeway that much-Equinox, Scorpion, and maybe a few other times. He may have not always liked her orders but he followed them most of the time.

 

[MindFlay]

strict with their crews and refusing that their actions and decisions are questioned by anybody

Apples to oranges. Janeway was stuck with a crew which numbers were running low. It's a different story when you can simply get a replacement if someone disagrees with your command.

 

[Lynx]

Me too!
Great character!
I admire her strenghth, compassion and the will to sacrifice herself if necessary for saving a crewmember.

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Janeway took advice from her male confidants but she was more than capable of making her own decisions and going against her advisors if she felt the situation warranted it.

The problem is not to see Janeway surrounded by male representatives but rather the fact that STV's producers felt the need to show her often seeking advices of her 2 confidantes before making a decisions. Did you see Picard, Sisko or even Archer doing the same thing?! Nope.

As for Chakotay-I don't think recall him being critical of Janeway that much-Equinox, Scorpion, and maybe a few other times. He may have not always liked her orders but he followed them most of the time.

Uh?! Sorry but If there has been cases of direct confrontation between Janeway & Chakotay, it was in Scorpion & Equinox :

- in Scorpion, Chakotay set, from the beginning, against any collaboration with Borg and took advantage of the first occasion where Janeway had his back turned, (in fact, she was seriously injured and had to have surgery quickly), to turn his back on this commitment she has taken. Action which earned him an serious admonition (and contrary to what many of you think, she didn't relieve him from office at this time, prefering to use him to connect with Seven via the joint mind - Unity 3x17 - under the Doctor's care!)

- in Equinox, while both commanding officers violently opposed on the way to act with respect to Ransom and his crew after Seven's removal & the theft of Voyager's equipment, Janeway decided to use some old technique of psychological torture to make him talk, asking her XO not to intervene, but Chakotay disagreeing with this approach, didn't hesitate to commit an act of insubordination in freeing the Equinox's Lt . For this intervention, she relieved him and I think that it was the only occasion she did it.
-> did she cross the line, maybe but in her defense, we know how protective of her crew and vessel she is. Here, she felt in war against Ransom and his crew...

About Lessing, I'm pretty sure that she would have stopped at the very last minute, as she tried to save Ransom in spite of all he has done and in spite of her given word to deliver the Equinox's Captain to aliens (the latter prefered to commit suicide in making explose his vessel). However, I'm not so sure that Picard, Sisko and Archer would have act like Janeway.. I mean that they would not have hesitated to deliver Lessing and Ransom if they had felt that they were a necessary sacrifice to save the crew and their vessel.

 

[Odonna]

Re: Scorpion – Chakotay did not immediately break the agreement with the Borg. Seven of Nine was changing the terms and demanding Voyager turn around and go quite a ways back into Borg space. [That would have been very foolish and dangerous for Voyager IMO] The Commander had a reasonable compromise to drop them off with the nanoprobes and let them contact a cube to come get them, but the Borg would not compromise. They were trying to take the ship, as I recall, when Chakotay blew most out of Cargo Bay 2. The lesson of that episode (after Janeway recovered) was that captain and first officer shouldn’t fight each other but combine their ideas in order to succeed.

Re: Equinox – a fissure had already opened into the cargo hold where Lessing was restrained. It was too late for Janeway to stop the creatures even if Noah had cried out when one came through. Any later and Noah would have been dead. But it wasn’t for Chakotay’s intervention with Noah that Janeway relieved him, but because he warned her he wouldn’t let her “cross that line” again.

And I disagree that Janeway’s uppermost thoughts were for her ship and crew in this episode. Even Tuvok had to warn her that her obsession “to get Ransom” was going to cause them to lose shields or the deflector a couple of times and expose them to the creatures. It actually was Chakotay whose first concern was to secure the safety of their ship before going after Ransom, and it was his ideas for communicating with the creatures [that the captain finally adopted] which ultimately gave them success.

 

[Odonna]

Maybe you're right, indeed.
But more generally, I would have liked that producers & script writers bring as much "consistency" to the character as they did for Picard, Sisko and Archer, who really acted as bosses (hard with ennemies, strict with their crews and refusing that their actions and decisions are questioned by anybody -> the last two Captains were female XO and as far as I remember, neither Colonnel Kira Nerys and Sub-Commander T'Pol provided feedback so many times to often criticize - and frontally - the way their Captains acted as Chakotay did towards Janeway, and they weren't bad in their job, so far as I am aware). So what, because the Captain was/is a woman, she was/is unable to think wisely and make the right decision of her own. but was/is supposed to seek advice from the senior 2 (male) officers closest to her (Chakotay & Tuvok... and of course, the holo Leonardo) before taking decisions?!

Berman, who had nevertheless fought to impose a female captain for this new series to Universal and CBS executives, and his crew (co-producers and script writers) ducked underneath... and some viewers, who said to be great fans, didn't match the seriousness of the event, showing their prejudices : misogynist (with Janeway in 1994 and lately, after the annoncement of the 13th regeneration of Doctor Who, who will be a woman) and racial with the new heroin of the last episode of the saga Star Trek, who for the third times, a woman but black.

I would like to comment on the comparing of Captain Janeway to other male Star Trek captains, as it is an interesting topic. You give the examples of Picard, Sisko, and Archer acting as “bosses”, never asking for or excepting advice. I’m not sure that is always true (I don’t recall those series in detail), but it would not be a very good captain who never sought data and opinions from his/her senior officers. Certainly in Original Star Trek, Captain Kirk often asked for input from his first officer, CMO, Chief Engineer etc before making decisions. His XO Spock or CMO McCoy often gave the captain opposing opinions. Sometimes Kirk would take the advice, sometimes not. Many episodes ended up showing that Spock’s advice or theory was actually the right one, much as Chakotay is sometimes shown to have been right in Voyager. In the episode “Obsession”, Spock and McCoy together confronted Kirk about his behavior or decisions they thought unusual. And in the infamous last episode “Turnabout Intruder”, Spock is court-martialed for mutiny because he believes Kirk has been taken over by someone else. So the idea of a captain’s decisions or even authority being challenged by a first officer, or the captain sometimes being wrong, has a long history in Star Trek and need not have anything to do with gender.

Having said that, I also don’t think our expectations should be the same between Janeway and Picard or Sisko due to the fact that Voyager was not a normal Starfleet cruise. IMO Janeway shouldn’t be leading with as authoritarian a style as she could closer to home and under the chain of command. Myself, I really wish a large segment of the crew would have slapped Janeway upside the head (figuratively speaking) at some point and made that really clear. I would feel this way no matter what gender the captain was.

First of all, the Maquis served on Voyager as Starfleet crewmen because Chakotay asked or convinced them to. One might see the combining of crews as a type of peace treaty. I would guess there was still a lot of loyalty in the Maquis to Chakotay. People don’t follow a captain due to rank alone, especially clear across the galaxy. There’s that saying, “Rank is something you wear. Respect you have to earn.” And many in the Maquis likely came to respect Janeway. Nevertheless, when Janeway relieved Chakotay in “Equinox”, I would have loved for a good portion of the Maquis to go to Janeway and say, “I’m sorry, but that is a deal breaker. He goes, we go.” Now maybe the crisis was all over before many knew what all had happened, but I would have liked to see some evolution in the ship decision-making structure due to its unique journey.

In my opinion, the captain and the senior officers of Voyager made a lot of decisions too much in a bubble. Janeway did many risky things supposedly for the sake of getting the crew home. But were the risks worth it to most of the crew? Did the parents of children, for example, or those who would like to become parents on board what they believed to be a generational ship—would they want to risk getting their kids killed by aliens who didn’t want them crossing their space, or assimilated by the Borg? Not even the Starfleet crew signed on for a lifelong/generational kind of cruise. IMO, the crew needed to demand more input. Not in day to day running of the ship, of course, but in the big decisions about their route. At those times when they were currently safe, the senior officers could have requested input from the crew—where there is a choice of adding months or years to the journey vs trying to sneak through hostile space. Or when Janeway wants to go slay Borg dragons or something. This isn’t unheard of. Capt Janeway did ask the crew to decide if they wanted to stay on the planet of the 37s. Now, maybe she can inspire them to take the risks with her for the shortcuts, but they should be consulted IMO, given the nature of their journey at that point.

 

[Voth commando1]

I don't think the Maquis crew members really realized what happened in Equinox until after the fact. Given the pressure Voyager was under I can't imagine them going up to Janeway and saying "get rid of him and you'll have to do the same to us." Sure if he mutinied which he threatened to do a lot of them would support him and perhaps even Tuvok and Seven of Nine would have forced Janeway to back down(she threatened Tuvok as well).

As for advice-Picard and TNG are famous for their captain meetings where people pitch in ideas and debate options. Picard would usually weigh the best option in line with his principles and what was best for everyone.

Sisko basically off-loaded sciencey stuff to Dax as that was her specialty. Sisko really had close friends and cronies who wouldn't really challenge him. Except for Bashir in In the Pale Moonlight even he obeys but it's clear he's not happy about it. Dax rarely told Sisko he was in the wrong, Kira would have fits and would occasionally bristle at orders she was given but she was too respectful of her emissary to really challenge him.

Archer-I'd say he listened to T'Pol even if he disagreed or he knew she was wrong((time travel). He also made a point to listen to Phlox, Tucker, and Reed whenever they had useful imput.

Kirk-well he had Spock and Bones who largely completed him in a Freudian personality sense. But they did challenge him when they felt him in the wrong on quite a few occasions.