You're not even in the same universe. We're using the Trek universe as the baseline here.
In Defense of Janeway as a Captain
- Thread starter starlitegirl
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You're not even in the same universe. We're using the Trek universe as the baseline here.
I've just watched Picard pretty much lose it in a few episodes of TNG. So let's not say that only Janeway breaks down. It simply is not true.
Starship Captains are tested for insanity and moral weakness. If there's the slightest chance they're anything but true blue, they're weeded out at the lower ranks or don't even make it out of the academy.
Of course a few slip through the cracks.
...
They're fair comparisons Bill, because Anwar s pulling out lead characters for comparison, more so that Federation Starship Captains.
Crichton isn't a hero he's a punching bag.
Adama isn't a hero, he's a soldier.
Ones batshit and the other is pragmatic.
A Federation Starship Captain however is an idealist and a purist who in most ways is a Reverse-Machiavellian. Her job is to steward the enitre Universe backwards and forwards in time forever, which mostly requires Janeway to do as close to absolutely nothing when almost any action on her part will wreck pure fucking chaos and lay blame at the Federations feet.
I'm not describing Janeway am I?
Of course a few slip through the cracks.
...
They're fair comparisons Bill, because Anwar s pulling out lead characters for comparison, more so that Federation Starship Captains.
Crichton isn't a hero he's a punching bag.
Adama isn't a hero, he's a soldier.
Ones batshit and the other is pragmatic.
A Federation Starship Captain however is an idealist and a purist who in most ways is a Reverse-Machiavellian. Her job is to steward the enitre Universe backwards and forwards in time forever, which mostly requires Janeway to do as close to absolutely nothing when almost any action on her part will wreck pure fucking chaos and lay blame at the Federations feet.
I'm not describing Janeway am I?
The drunken mudwrestling with his brother?
Or yelling at Lilly about how they were all expendable?
He did see five lights.
Sobbing into Dee's cleavage.
I really don't see how a child like Deanna instantly earned his intimate consul? She was a third his age and still smelt of Riker.
Did we ever see them bond?
Or was their entire therapeutic relationship a leap of faith on Picard's part?
I suppose he did "chose" her for the ship, so she was more vetted than proven.
Though choosing an empath is cheating.
Would a non telepathic counsellor be allowed to sit next to him during missions on the bridge?
It's like she's a life preserver.
Water wings for danger.
Danger wings?
They're all shows about folks lost in space, I think they're fair comparisons.
But as I said before and will say again, Crichton was not a starship captain like Janeway, if he even had a captain rank it was for solo space shuttle flights, so he was never vetted or need to have the command skills the Janeway was supposed to have, so they are not comparable.
Dargo got made Captain eventually.
The argument I make for Janeway some-times is that she ignored what she was supposed to have learnt at the academy and did whatever she damn well felt.
She was a cowboy.
(Dee looked awesome in spats.)
It doesn't matter her education if she chose not to use it.
Level playing field.
The argument I make for Janeway some-times is that she ignored what she was supposed to have learnt at the academy and did whatever she damn well felt.
She was a cowboy.
(Dee looked awesome in spats.)
It doesn't matter her education if she chose not to use it.
Level playing field.
After Dargo became captain as well, did Crichton start getting called commander, my memory is kind of fuzzy.
Commander was his rank given by the "IASA". (NASA said that they didn't want their name associated with Muppets.) Pilot almost always called him Commander Crichton.
By Any Other Name: The Kelvans do it for them.
Q Who: Q does it for them.
The Nth Degree: The Cytherians do it for them.
Where No One Has Gone Before: The Traveler does it for them.
Caretaker: The Caretaker dies, and then Tuvok figures out how to use the array to get them home on his own.
In all the other incidents, the crew couldn't figure out how to get the ship home. They had to rely on the guy who sent them there in the first place. Tuvok displays an unprecedented sign of competence.
The premise of Star Trek says they go where nobody has gone before. They can't EVER go anywhere ANY one has ever been before because it would violate the premise. Every single episode is an unforgivable betrayal.
This one doesn't even make sense. First of all, why do we need "galactic significance" to have good stories? And how does not being famous or being attached to a flagship bar them from having an impact, especially since their status among Starfleet in the AQ would be meaningless to everyone in the DQ?Remember part of the early premise was that they were the only people in the DQ with technology like transporters. That would put them up a few "significance" notches wouldn't it?
There you go again, attributing imaginary complaints to imaginary people. You don't know this. You can't. Any argument that hinges on the phrase "no matter the reasoning" is automatically ridiculous.
TOS and TNG are "always moving" too.
No it isn't.
It always does, somehow. Even if you've never watched Farscape, you like it better than Voyager because you have double standards. Don't question it, Anwar knows what you're thinking better than you do.
What makes them "special" and "elite"? What precludes other crews from being "special"? Why do they need to be the flagship to have anything interesting happen to them?
When was the rareness of the Enterprise ever an important part of a story? What TOS episode wouldn't have worked if it had taken place in the TNG era where there are more than 12 starships?
What's so special about the half-breed science officer? Remember, we're talking about the premise, not the way it actually turned out. VOY's premise had a half-breed engineer. Why couldn't this have been just as "special"?
Odo's importance wasn't part of the premise. That part was written later (like how Tom and B'Elanna were later written to be the parents of a Holy Icon to the Klingons
). The premise of Odo was the same as Spock, Data, and the Doctor: "the observer".zar, awesome responses. I do think that 'going where no man has gone before' was meant as where humans. They had to change it to anyone because it was inherently sexist as are the original and TNG. DS9 improves, but only Voy really gets out of the patriarchal trap that started with the original. However, Voy is the closest to the original idea in that sense because they go to the Delta Quadrant, and though we discover a couple of humans along the way, it's pretty much unchartered by humans. Actually, it seems to be unchartered by most other native species they encounter as they generally stick to their territory and don't go much beyond that.
And yet they still got home. Janeway and co keep getting criticized for how they "stupidly lost their chance to go home" while none of those guys ever get criticized for letting themselves get dragged away in the first place.
And yet, again, Voyager is the only show criticized for this while those other ones get free passes for their similar premise failures.
What's more awesome and heroic:
- Saving the known Galaxy from powerful invaders and other major space threats (TOS and TNG)
- Fighting a massive war for survival against a powerful foe (DS9)
- Doing nothing but looking out for yourselves on your single-minded quest home and not getting involved in any local affairs or doing anything big and awesome because the premise won't allow it (VOY).
Maybe if it turned out Janeway was some prophesied Chosen One who was destined to destroy the Borg and change the face of the Delta Quadrant then maybe there'd be something all the writers could work towards, but they all ended up being insignificant. And whenever they DID do anything significant the reaction was always negative which shows that the audience didn't WANT them to do anything significant either.
Screwed either way.
Which amounted to nothing, within one or two episodes. And it's not like that would've ever been important anyways.
They still had the Federation to fly around and enemies of the Federation to run into.
Then there wouldn't be complaints over VOY's importance to the Vidiians, their actions in "Year of Hell" or "Scorpion".
Flagships, higher-up Fed personnel commenting on the importance of the crew and their achievements, flashbacks to awesome things they did, etc.
All that stuff I just said.
All those "We're the only ones in the Quadrant" stories, all those stories where they run into other important Ambassadors and Captains and Admirals that they befriended in the past, etc.
He's a half-breed, rare, a genius, he comes from an important family on his homeworld, we never meet others so his importance is clear, he has connections to enemies that humans wouldn't, etc.
And Torres DID turn out to be special: she was a living cure for the Vidiian Phage. And the audience hated it.
It became an important part of the premise and his importance/mysterious past was hinted at throughout the show until the Founder reveal.
OK, see, you're doing that thing again. You're making black-and-white inferences, putting words in our mouths, telling us how we would have reacted to nonexistent plots, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera... It gets really tiresome so I'm not even going to bother with it; from now on I'll just skip over those parts of your posts.Anyway...
The problem is you're confusing the premises with the specific episodes.
TNG's premise wasn't the Borg. DS9's premise wasn't the Dominion War.
The premise of TOS and TNG was exploration. The premise of DS9 was running a station next to a wormhole. The premise of VOY was a lost ship going home. You could describe any of those to sound boring like you did with Voyager:
- Doing nothing but exploring planet after planet on your single-minded quest of exploration, not getting involved in anything long-term because the premise won't allow it (TOS and TNG)
- Doing nothing but sitting around on your little space station and not getting out and exploring anything because the premise won't allow it (DS9)
You haven't shown why VOY's premise would inherently never allow it to be "awesome and heroic" like TOS, TNG, and DS9. All you've done is compare how the shows themselves turned out.
Okay... I don't understand what you're trying to argue here. You seem to have forgotten it yourself. You said VOY's premise wouldn't have allowed it to possibly do anything awesome. Yet here you are, using your imagination about something awesome that could have happened. You're contradicting yourself.
That was present, but by far not the focus. The majority of TOS and TNG episodes weren't about visiting starbases, or Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians etc. It was about non-Federation worlds and new discoveries. It was about "always moving" and never staying at any given planet for too long. What you're calling a fatal flaw of VOY's premise had already worked for 10 seasons of Star Trek before VOY came along.
No... all the stuff you said merely describes the effects of being "special". It does nothing to explain why other crews can't be that way, or why interesting things can only happen to flagships.
Are you saying Starfleet would consider Voyager low priority and thus staff it with nobodies? It was designed for exploration, just like Enterprise. And why does this so-called premise flaw apply to VOY and not DS9? There would've been no reason to prioritize that crew either, because they didn't know about the wormhole until after the station was already staffed.
Yet, those stories never actually stopped happening, so there goes that theory down the drain. In the TNG era they were still often "the only ship in range", which makes sense* because space is big. Really big.
*Except for that time in Generations when they were smack dab in the middle of Federation HQ.
And Picard had some high-up friends too.
But we're getting off topic. If the reason the ship's status is important is so it can be the only ship in the area equipped to respond to some situation, then VOY pretty much has everyone beat in that department, since Voyager is the only Starfleet ship in the entire quadrant, and the original premise had them being the only people in the quadrant with higher tech, too.
Again, you're confusing the premise with what they did with it. The premise said that Odo was a mystery; that's all. VOY's premise didn't preclude the writers from adding similar importance to members of Voyager's crew. It was just as open-ended. It had 2 never-before-seen alien species in the regular cast.
I was pointing out how all the shows failed your premise evaluation, and yet VOY is the only one anyone pays any attention to when it comes to violating the premise.
Actually, since neither of those shows' premises say anything about leaving the Federation and never returning they had carte blanche to come back and tell stories about the same worlds, long-term recurring stuff. VOY's premise relied on them always being on the move and never doing anything long-term.
The premise contained the wormhole and "gamma aliens", which the Dominion are.
VOY's premise is about one long insignificant ship that has no support (from anyone) always on the move home. That means no alliances, no connections to the local areas and the local aliens, and never staying in one spot to do anything. It was much more constraining that DS9 and TOS/TNG. And whenever they tried to do anything exciting or new the reaction was always negative.
I'm saying that they should have included something awesome like that in the premise to begin with.
But it was still present. Which is more than VOY can say.
Yes, it was a weakling ship compared to the various Enterprises.
That's part of my point, in both shows they were able to do these sort of stories because of how important they made the ships and their crews. Not so with VOY.
Not as much as with Odo. If Kes had been some random slave who knew nothing of her species and they turned out to be immature Caretaker-beings (before they became energy beings) then there'd be something to work with.
And no one cared about Neelix to begin with anyways.
And like I said, they did try to make them important by having Torres be a cure for the Phage. No one liked it.
Sure. They could have. But for the most part, they didn't. Which means you can argue that VOY's "always on the move" concept doesn't work until you're blue in the face, and it won't make a difference; because we already have 10 seasons of TOS and TNG embracing that very concept as hard evidence that it can and does work.
I know. Which means you're contradicting yourself and agreeing with us. Because you said the existing premise eliminated the potential to do things like that. By suggesting that they should have included that, as opposed to replacing the existing premise with that, you are effectively admitting that it did have that potential.
Then please address my follow-up question. Why does this "problem" not apply to DS9?
Why does Kes have to be like Odo -- ignorant of her own species? Isn't it enough that it's a mysterious new species to the audience? That means it's a blank slate that the writers can fill with as much interesting stuff as they want.
zar;5109851Sure. They could have. But for the most part said:
They WEREN'T always on the move in the same way VOY was, and they also had tons of connections (personal and political) to all the things happening in the Alpha Quadrant. VOY had none of that.
I should have been more clear then: I think the premise needed more work and should have included something like that instead of making sure that COULDN'T be part of the show.
DS9 wasn't a starship at all, and it was important in being the only gateway point to a stable wormhole that didn't exist anywhere else.
No, having her be ignorant as well makes it a true blank slate. There was nothing interesting about the Ocampa as per canon. Make her someone unclear on her own origins and then there's something to work with.
For the third time: the vast majority of episodes didn't rely on any of this. Unless you're going to claim that all those episodes were hopeless endeavors and the only good ones were the ones that were based around the fact that they were within range of Fed space, you have no case to make here.
It didn't.
... Please, actually read the question before answering:
"And why does this so-called premise flaw apply to VOY and not DS9? There would've been no reason to prioritize that crew either, because they didn't know about the wormhole until after the station was already staffed."
As per canon? What? There was no canon. It was a completely new species. They had free reign to write any ideas about it they could come up with.
Did the audience of TOS know from the start about Vulcan mind-melds, nerve pinches, pon-farr, the status of Spock's father, and the link to Romulans? No, because not even the writers did back then. But they were able to add those ideas later, because the Vulcan race was a blank slate. Spock didn't have to be ignorant and "discover" these things himself in order for it to be a surprise to the audience.
** Makes popcorn, grabs beer, settles in to watch. **
** Gets smacked upside the head by an admin **
<sigh>
Okay guys, let's not get personal about this, blah blah blah...
Now that I have my beer and popcorn, I wonder what's on TV?
Federation matters and being on a mission for the Federation is what drove ALL those plots and episodes, and without that underlying force there's nothing driving VOY beyond "going home". Nothing significant.
It did, the premise was that they were going home, nothing about a destiny to affect the fate of the Delta Quadrant.
But Sisko was still a prophesied Holy Icon to the Bajorans and the Prophets (whom the Bajorans already knew about), Kira was still a Bajoran National, Odo was still an unknown, etc. Even without the wormhole the crew already had important people in it compared to other Fed crews.
If more of VOY's central cast were Delta Quadrant natives, like exiled Talaxian leaders or something, then they'd no longer be just a bunch of nobodies.
Yes, we knew absolutely NOTHING about them. Whereas right off the bat we knew that Kes was someone who'd die soon from some insignificant slave race rather than a total blank like Spock.
And when they tried doing that, by giving her psychic powers, a connection to the female Caretaker, "Warlord", etc, guess what happened?
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