Janeway's animal guide is a lizard?!?

Obviously the gecko spirit chose Janeway, but why did the writing/production staff chose a lizard in "The Cloud"? Were you expecting something different or for the gecko to return?

 

Perhaps Janeway saved 15% or more on her starship insurance.

 

Go figure, I just rewatched this episode (alongside "Eye of the Needle") last night.

My memory on most of the series is pretty foggy so I can't say if it's ever expanded-upon again. I don't know why the lizard was chosen either. I don't know why it was chosen at all.

But I did get a kick out of Chakotay informing Janeway that Torres was the only person he'd ever known who tried to kill her animal guide!

 

Hey, every dollar counts 70,000 light years from home.

 

From wiki

Some are subtly patterned and somewhat rubbery looking, while others are brightly colored. Some species can change color to blend in with their environment or with particular temperatures. Some species are parthenogenic, which means the female is capable of reproducing without copulating with a male. This improves the gecko's ability to spread to new islands. However, in a situation where a single female gecko populates an entire island, the island will suffer from a lack of genetic variation within the geckos that inhabit it. The gecko's mating call sounds like a shortened bird chirping which attracts males, when they are around. This allows a female to reproduce with more genetic variation, by using sexual reproduction instead of asexual

NOW I understand why J/C was DOOMED from the start!

 

Obviously it was "Threshold" foreshadowing.

 

Huh. So basically you answered your own question without anyone else piping in. Guess this topic's over

Seriously though...does it really matter? The whole "spirit guide" thing, while intriguing and the kind of thing that would have made Voyager stand out as different from other Trek shows, was abandoned and forgotten in favor of bumpy-foreheaded aliens of the week and technobabble extraordinaire.

 

Hmmmm, so the gecko was trying to warn her.

 

Or show her what her future children would look like.

 

Lizards are cool.

 

Well, of course I would expect YOU to say that.

 

I too wondered why they chose a gecko. It's quite bizarre when you think about it and hard to believe that a four inch lizard is suppose to 'guide you'. I wouldn't want to pour out my heart and soul to a reptile thats for sure.

 

This is exactly how I take it every time I see it.

Also, I love lizards too.

 

I'm unbiased as the next reptile.

 

YOU LIZARDS ARE ALL THE SAME. FIRST YOU FEIGN INNOCENCE, THEN YOU GUIDE HUMANS.

 

Question is: guiding humans... where?

 

Now that is a frightening question!

 

This is exactly why we will never be at peace with the Gorn.

 

As far as I can remember it depends which tribe you come from but everyone is supposed to have 9 - 11 animal guides/totems (one for each direction (north, south, east, west, top, bottom, inner, outter etc)).

The guide is supposed to have similar personality traits as yourself, and to be there as a form of protection and help you learn etc.

A gecko guide means the following:

http://totem-spirit.blogspot.com/2008/01/gecko.html

It is pretty apt for Janeway I think.

 

^ Wow, that's incredibly interesting. Perhaps the writers did put a lot of thought into that choice since the description sounds like exactly what Janeway needed.

A shame they didn't do more to develop the spiritual side of Chakotay and his culture.