Janeway is one of my favourite Captains, but I have grown to increasingly dislike Voyager over the years. As Jonathan Frakes said recently, it was the product of Paramount greed. It has boring characters, particularly Paris, Kim and Chakotay and simply recycles TNG plots over and over again. DS9 - which I now like far more - at least tried to do something completely different.
I'm a huge Beatles fan. I'm not a memoribilia collector, but I am kind of a "fact" collector. I own just about every biography ever published, and have every every piece of music they released both together an apart. I also have dozens of unofficial releases. As a musician, I've studied their music, and the Lennon/McCartney songwriting dynamic extensively. I have also taught university classes on the subject of their music.
Several years ago, when the internet was fairly new, I discovered and joined a Beatles-centric forum much like this one. The forum was terrible. It seemed everyone was polarized. Instead of realizing how important each element was to the whole, people would put thier "favorite" (usually John of Paul) on a pedestal, and minimize or negate the contribution and talent of the other.
The point of this story is: I was sucked into it and it got so bad that even I, a person who knew better, took sides. Eventually I couldn't bear to listen to the music.
So, I don't care how your mind has been changed about Voyager. That's what happens when you listen to constant negativity. The things you wrote are a load of one-sided crap.
Chakotay, Tom and Kim are absolutely no more boring that Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. They are no more boring than Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi and Geordi LaForge. The difference is, each of these othr ensembles had
other characters that made the supporting characters more interesting. People tuned into TNG for Data and Worf.They certainly didn't tune in to hear about LaForge's visor, or hear him yell "coolant leak". These characters were interesting because of their intereaction with the more interesting characters, e.g Data and Worf.
Voyager did not have a Data or Worf character to balance the ensemble. I've written about this extensively here. Human characters like Chakotay, Paris and Kim are not going to support a series like this. The ensemble needed a Data and a Worf, unusual conflicted characters to support complex interaction with the other characters, and complex story lines. Instead they had Neelix and Kes. Neelix was a poorly developed, poorly acted and poorly cast character that will always be a "could have been", and enough has been written about Kes to fill a book. By the time they brought in Seven, which is exactly what I described, an unusual conflicted character that could support complex and interesting stories and complex interactions with the other characters, it was too late for many.
Re-read the above paragrah, and honestly tell me that TNG would have been watchable without Data and Worf. Put Miles O'Brien in Data's chair and leave Tasha Yar back there and tell me that you have a 7 year show. It was the Data show from day one, then the addition of Worf, and they gave the boring characters like Riker, Laforge and Crusher a solid footing.
I don't give a crap about Jonathan Frake's opinions or Paramount's motivations. I've got news for you... It's
always about money and profits. And the idea the stories were recycled TNG plots, again, a one sided opinion. How many TNG plots were recycled TOS plots? I can name 4 right off the top of my head. How many were used from the stalled TOS mid-70's reboot? You can't just ignore these FACTS while disparaging another show for the same thing. The Pulaski-Data dynamic was an EXACT rip off of the McCoy-Spock dynamic. What is your point?