Janeway in Season 5

[jgdst]

Equinox with Chakotay in command:

"Akoochy moya... I am far from the lands of my people, locked in the ship's only toilet cubicle, because it is impossible for me to show any emotion about anything"

Wasn't there talk of Kate Mulgrew not renewing her contract round about the time of Equinox? I'd heard they'd even toyed with the idea of replacing her with Ransom if she decided not to renew.

Basically, what Janeway's inconsistency boils down to is she'd seen Sisko in For The Uniform and decided to just start shooting everything. That and pretty crappy writing for the remainder of the show.

 

[Seven of Five]

Ah season 5, Janeway was inconsistently written somewhat. This was also the season where B'Elanna had been depressed for months since she found out that all the Maquis had died, an issue that lasted for one whole (albeit quite good) episode.

I suppose that's the salt that Voyager comes with. I love season 5 - it's probably my favourite, and I know it sounds funny saying it in this thread, but it was the season with the most consistent quality in writing. It's a shame that you kind of have to look the other way when a character says they're going right when they've always been going left before. I think the thing is with Janeway and B'Elanna, we had Kate Mulgrew and Roxann Dawson giving excellent performances whenever was needed to help us get over whatever blip the writers came up with that particular week.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Well, given that Janeway is my favorite VOY character, it should come as no surprise that I felt the entire show started to go downhill around this time.

I can deal with some of the inconsistent writing - I think every Trek character has their moments when they do things outside their normal character under stress - that is just human. My favorite character in all of Trek - Sisko - had such a moment in For the Uniform. Although the good thing about DS9 is that the writers made it clear that he was obviously acting out of character because they wrote in the rest of the crew looking at him with one of those 'WTF??' looks when he poisoned the Maquis planet.

But the point is that everyone has their breaking point, and not all out-of-character writing is necessarily a bad thing. Sisko reached his breaking point in For the Uniform. Janeway perhaps reached hers in Equinox. I don't think there is anything wrong with showing a character reaching their breaking point. In fact, I think it adds texture to the character - makes them more human.

However, as time went on in VOY post-season 5, these out of character episodes became more and more frequent, until we reached my two least favorite Janeway moments - when she meted out no punishment to the EMH in Flesh & Blood (never has a character been in such desperate need of a good 'ole fashioned CTRL-ALT-DEL )...and that whole Endgame fiasco which I don't feel the need to go into since it's been discussed so often.

These characters are not robots. And I would much rather have a character with a breaking point (Janeway, Sisko) than one without a breaking point who never makes a mistake or has a lapse in judgment (Picard). Say what you will about Janeway and Sisko - they were alot more 3-dimensional and human than Picard.

That said, I do think the writers should have paid closer attention to Janeway post-season 5. But then, they were so busy turning VOY into the Seven & EMH Show that they probably didn't have time to give the writing for Janeway, the MAIN CHARACTER, the attention it deserved.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I think Eddington wanted to be stopped, and he told Sisko exactly what he had to do to stop him. A hero was never going to be able to stop a super hero like Eddington, so it was okay if Sisko let his inner bastard out because proving that the Maquis were the goodies and Starfleet were the baddies was the only way that Eddington would accept defeat so he'd better cowboy up and do what had to be done. Even in unequivicable victory, Sisko was still Eddington's bitch.

This is the problem I have when people talk about Janeway's inconsistent characterization, how she's not supposed to be a right monster or she lets the doctor get away with murder or there... That's who she is and it's glorious. Sum this: if she's consistently inconsistent, then that's who she is. A capricious mercurial mad woman. Kathy's not Picard and his "these are the rules and this is honor" claptrap, and she's not Sisko and his "we have to do bad things and then mope about it" angst. She compartmentalizes each mission on it's own accord, does whatever needs to be done and then backs herself into a mire of selfdenial and delusion to cope with her actions. pretending that she's always been a motherly mothering figure that never did no one no harm, but if she doesn't get her own way then Kathy acts out like a little child with all sorts of sound and fury until her antagonists are atomized or some suicide kick of hers failed to drag the crew and herself into the afterlife, so she has to plod on after all, and that's what I call entertainment!

 

[PKTrekGirl]

^ But see, the problem with that approach is that the writers wanted it both ways - or seemed to want it both ways. You have Janeway going on and on about Starfleet Regulations and Federation Principles, and how we had to cling to them, Even Out Here...but then she'd go and do stuff that flew in the face of what she just got done saying.

That's not a character who is being intentionally and diligently written as a person who easily compartmentalizes. That is a character who is simply being sloppily written.

I could have bought the compartmentalization argument if that was what the writers intended. In fact, I would have loved the whole moral-values-are-a-big-gray-area thing - it's one of the reasons why I'm a huge fan of BSG. The premise of BSG is "We are out here fighting for survival...so all of those nice principles and that military discipline we had back on Caprica? Well...all bets are off. We gotta do what we gotta do to survive, and damn the principles. When we have a really good day on Galactica, we might get to live by our principles for 15 minutes. But most of the time we ain't gonna have that luxury."

But VOY is very, very clear about the fact that Janeway is determined to stick like glue to Federation Principles and Starfleet Regulations. The writers set that up for her - and set it up very clearly and with much fanfare...and further, reminded us of it at every opportunity.

But then they have her do shit that is not in keeping with the character they just got done telling you she was. And that was mostly not intentional - it was just plain sloppy.

Bill Adama 'compartmentalizes'. Sometimes he does some morally questionable stuff - but it works because they never told us otherwise - they never said that Bill Adama was a character who was determined to stick to his principles, no matter what. In fact, in the mini-series - the very first episode of BSG, what does he do? He frakkin' ABANDONS that part of the civilian fleet which is not equipped with jump drives. He just leaves 'em there to die a horrible death at the hands of the approaching Cylons. Women, children. Everyone. Galactica took who those who could keep up and got the hell out of Dodge. And the weak were left to fend for themselves against a force that could crush them like a bug.

So much for Colonial Principles.

If the writers intended for Janeway to truly be a leader who was able to compartmentalize and rationalize her actions, then they never should have made such a huge effort to emphasize over and over how dedicated to Federation Principles she was....and how dedicated she intended to remain.

If they had just left that out of the mix, then we would be judging Janeway by a completely different yardstick - the same yardstick we judge Bill Adama by. And we wouldn't be having this conversation.

But they didn't do that. They told us very clearly what the yardstick was - Federation Principles and Starfleet Regs. That was Janeway's self-selected yardstick.

And then they proceeded to have her do all manner of things that were inconsistent with a dedication to that yardstick. They set up the yardstick, and then they didn't write to it.

At least from season 5 onwards.

That is why I think it was just sloppy writing. Not good writing intended to portray her as one who could compartmentalize.

They didn't do that nearly as much in the early seasons. Only after the writers became fixated on Seven and the EMH did this all-over-the-board writing really switch into high gear.

She wasn't intentionally written that way with the idea that this would be a good character. She was written that way because the writers were focused on other things and just didn't care about the character as much as they once did.

Good conversation, by the way. Sorry I'm not buyin'.

 

[Guy Gardener]

A long time ago I counted how many writers worked on this show. Over seventy writers for around a hundred and 70 episodes. Expecting some sort of consistency is like trying to find a clean tea towel in a male student flat.

When I say compartmentalize. I do mean that she locks those boxes of life shut and throws away the key because there's no way that she revisits her feelings on anything because Kathy is returning to first principles the next week no matter... I've already compared Voyager to Casper the friendly Ghost once this week.

The other argument, which was actually used to explain away (convincingly and accurately) all the disjointedness in year of Hell is that the beginning of the show was already in a different timeline than the end of the previous weeks adventure.

We can't be certain how splayed sideways in time each consecutive episode is from one another can we?