Janeway's Convient Morals

[SpyOne]

Yes, this type of story certainly does seem to turn off the female audience:

"In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous."
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

Yeah, well they shy away from doing it to characters they've been getting us to like. Mostly the guys we like are shown avenging such wrongs, not suffering them.
Not that they have never explored the avengers getting ... more in touch with what it is like to be a victim. But I suspect that is done, in part, to emphasize that message that being victimized is not the fault of the victim; that there is no "kind of person" that kind of thing happens to or doesn't happen to.

Still, .... Tasha Yar appeared to have some experience with sexual violence. And Troi got mentally raped. So it's not like Star Trek never goes there.

 

[kimc]

The rub is that, as I said, Riker was shown to be someone on a meteroic rise to command. Riker was first offered a command in 2364, so to have Janeway not be older than Riker seems .... insulting, somehow. It suggests that she was on a similar meteroic rise.

Why would that be insulting?

 

[Guy Gardener]

I liked the idea that Janeway was a young, inexperienced Captain too.
Then, in season four's Revulsion, they told us that she finished her first command five years before getting Voyager (2365). (More precisely, that she first met Tuvok then, and has known him for "nine years", which offers a bit of wiggle room: perhaps it was more like 8 3/4, perhaps it was 2366.)
Still, that mission could have been for less than a year, and six years isn't a lot of experience for a Captain.

If the "Mission" was alleviating Tuvok's Pon far then I have used just all about eaxtly the same words, and almost the same Math you did up there, more than once to discuss the subject.

Considering her age, she would have been butting heads against Riker for every plumb mission and choice assignment to guarantee her captaincy before she was thirty, but I still think that she probably slept with Owen Paris whether that helped her career or not.

I loved it when Gideon met Lochlely on Babylon 5 and they just did it. No wishy washy for the greater good what will the plebs on deck 5 think, they just made babies and then went to sleep. I suppose the same goes for when Archer and hernandez zipped thier sleeping bags together in Enterprise... Though I still think Archer did it with G'Kar. Three days in a bathyshere the size of a toilet and then never got naked even once?

 

[SpyOne]

The rub is that, as I said, Riker was shown to be someone on a meteroic rise to command. Riker was first offered a command in 2364, so to have Janeway not be older than Riker seems .... insulting, somehow. It suggests that she was on a similar meteroic rise.

Why would that be insulting?

Well, because everything we've seen suggests she wasn't on that kind of meteoric rise.
I can't find the reference, but I recall Troi and Riker talking one of the times Riker was offered a command (and turning it down), and she mentioned that when they had known each other on Betazed he had wanted to be the youngest Captain in history. "There's still time ... " was his reply.
Now, even though that would have to mean that Picard wasn't a Captain in rank when he took command of the Stargazer, it suggests that getting a ship faster than Riker (had he taken the Drake instead of the post on Enterprise) is really really rare.
Janeway just didn't seem to have that kind of career. Unlike Riker, it did not seem like the hand of god had touched her at birth and said "This one is going to command starships." She may have been quite able at it, but it took a while for people to notice.
For her to have risen to command as fast as Riker did belittles his accomplishments. It suggests that anybody could have done that.

 

[SpyOne]

... but I still think that she probably slept with Owen Paris whether that helped her career or not.

Setting aside the inflammatory innuendo, there is reason to believe that Janeway had a few Flag Officers pulling strings for her. Not only did Captain (later Admiral) Owen Paris think she was going places, but her Dad was an Admiral, and died early in her career (2358). I have said before, I'm sure Daddy had at least a handful of colleagues willing to pull a few strings for "little Katie".
Just as I am sure that it helped Wesley Crusher's application to SFA that his dad had been in Starfleet, and had died in the line of duty. The only thing more helpful than having your parents' friends in a position to help you is if the relevant parent is dead (it seems to pass the obligation to help you to their friends as in loco parentis).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Dude, it's not the destination it's the journey. Data's been in Starfleet fro almost 40 years and he's... Why do I keep forgetting he's dead? Was he Picard's XO or Geordie in Nemesis? Well if Geordie wasn't in the beginning of the movie, he certainly was by the end.

Oh.

Worst joke ever.

Q: What do you call the guy who graduates with lowest marks in his class from medical school?

A: Doctor.

janeway came from a science back ground. Those sorts usually get promoted by accident while they're doing a good job. The Eddington argument.

Just watched Shattered. Janeway therein clearly said that that was her first command. However she also kept citing the temporal Prime Directive, when earlier in Relativity she blamked and claimed to have never heard fo the tempopral prime directive and didn't either have the gumption to fathom out what a temporal prime directive is...

Methinks they were cherry picking adventures crosstime rather than linearlly.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Setting aside the inflammatory innuendo,

No.

Besides, I was more thinking that it might have been the greatest love story never told like Picard and Beverly or John and Delenn or, more so than anything seedy like sex for promotion which would describe accurately Seska's rise to power within the kazon hierarchy.

 

[kimc]

... but I still think that she probably slept with Owen Paris whether that helped her career or not.

Well isn't that how any woman gets anywhere? Seriously, knock it off.

Setting aside the inflammatory innuendo, there is reason to believe that Janeway had a few Flag Officers pulling strings for her. Not only did Captain (later Admiral) Owen Paris think she was going places, but her Dad was an Admiral, and died early in her career (2358). I have said before, I'm sure Daddy had at least a handful of colleagues willing to pull a few strings for "little Katie".

As I recall Riker's father was Starfleet too. Maybe some strings were pulled for "little Willie".

You seemed to take offense to Guy's comment but yours is almost as insulting. It seems a woman cannot attain any position of power without a man pulling strings - whether it's because he got sexual favors or be felt an obligation to help an old friend's daughter.

Gee, it couldn't be that even though Janeway started out on the science track Paris saw something in her performance (according to her background story in "Mosaic" it was while escaping from a Cardassian prison) that made him think she would be good command material. Even after that she would have still had to have gone through command school, etc. just like any other captain. Perhaps she earned respect along the way...

Nah, never mind. It was a silly thought! Obviously she was given special favors.

 

[Zameaze]

... but I still think that she probably slept with Owen Paris whether that helped her career or not.

Well isn't that how any woman gets anywhere? Seriously, knock it off.

Does this mean that no one can have an opinion on this fictional Captain Janeway character other than the approved kimc-Akiraprise opinion?

 

[exodus]

I know saying: "Jeri Ryan is a bimbo that slept with Braga to gain her status" doesn't get a second thought here.



".....but Lordy, you best not say nothin' bad 'bout Miss Jenkins!!!!"

 

[SpyOne]

You seemed to take offense to Guy's comment but yours is almost as insulting. It seems a woman cannot attain any position of power without a man pulling strings - whether it's because he got sexual favors or be felt an obligation to help an old friend's daughter.

If you had quoted just one sentence more, you would see that I said that Wesley Crusher had a similar benefit. It isn't a gender thing, it's a dead officer's kid thing. And an Admiral's kid thing (I seem to recall that Paris felt he had received some special treatment because of who Daddy was, and resented it.)

 

[SpyOne]

Gee, it couldn't be that even though Janeway started out on the science track Paris saw something in her performance (according to her background story in "Mosaic" it was while escaping from a Cardassian prison) that made him think she would be good command material. Even after that she would have still had to have gone through command school, etc. just like any other captain. Perhaps she earned respect along the way...

Okay, my point is that with this backstory, she should be getting her first command a bit after most of the gifted captains her age. They got training in the Academy that she had to go back and get later. They spent the first few years of their career earning glory in high-risk jobs where she was being a good science officer. Yes, once she got spotted as having command potential she would be rising quickly, but the others had a head start, and would likely stay ahead.
That doesn't mean she's not going to get a ship, it just means she's not going to get one before she's 30. Almost nobody gets a ship before they're 30, and she had a slow start.
As I said, 35 is much more believable. 35 is about when the average officer is just making Lieutenant Commander. 35 is about how old Ben Sisko was at Wolf359. 35 is how old Riker was at the end of TNG, and how old Worf was at the end of DS9. It is a fine age for a non-superstar Captain to be getting their first command.

I checked, and Guy's right about this: in Shattered (from the seventh season), the Janeway from just before Voyager left to chase Chakotay clearly says in reference to Voyager "It doesn't seem like my first command is shaping up the way I expected.". This is difficult to reconcile with fourth season's Revulsion where she says, "The first time I met Tuvok he dressed me down in front of three Starfleet admirals for failing to observe proper tactical procedures during my first command.". The best I can do with those is perhaps by the first she meant her first ship command, and the second was a reference to some Starbase assignment (such as Commander Sisko at Deep Space 9). That feels weak, but it does solve some of my problems, since it seems Starfleet is willing to put people in charge of a base who they aren't sure are ready for a ship command. (Perhaps a 30 year old Commander Janeway spent 5 years commanding bases before getting Voyager at 35.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

Remember when Picard became a little boy in rascals and Worf couldn't take him seriously when he tried to do his job business as usual?

Kimc, I say every thing for a reason, did you ever watch Seaquest DS9? In season 2 or 3 a hot new crewman came aboard who Captain Bridger wanted to play down periscope with, there was no illusion, he yearned for her, and he knew it was wrong, because he was almost three times her age, but the feeling inside him couldn't be stopped and even persisted (for several episodes) after she announced the he used to fumble around with her mother who remembered him to be excellent between the sheets and suggested that her daughter should try him out for sport some time.

Riker and Pulaski's relationship should have been weird-ass after he found out she was almost his step mother because they enjoyed crumpling up clothes together at the foot of her billet. And Wesly obviously thought of Riker as a Fatherfigure, so what about when that Trill Odan was using Rikers sex organs like meat puppets to get the boy genius's Mommy off? Mommy and daddy were together and nothing should break up his new happy family this time? The kid probably spent time thinking that Picard killed his father to lay his mother. He should have had some serious psychological issues having a MILF that smoking. And then she danced! Tap is so hot.

You don't think the Graduate is hilariously uncomfortable and riveting? As soon as Janeway had babies with Tom, it became artistically ten times more possible that the friendship she had with his father, the grandfather of her children, turned out to be have been some insidious tryst because of the drama that that revelation would rought upon unveillance.

But, Star Trek is sexless.

Sorry, modern Star Trek is sexless.

Actually this isn't modern Star Trek (Bermanian Trek? PreAbrams trek?) any more.

(I include enterprise as being the same (Oldschool? Really? it's there own fault for using the same overview model as TNG. Auto-old.) genus as voyager, but that new movie and the movies to follow are a completely different animal which has stolen the specimen label from it's distinctly desexed predecessors.)

Seven of Nine is boning Q.

Is that inflammatory? Or is Jery Ryan playing the role of Corbin Bersin's (Remember Deja-Q?) new Girlfriend on Psych?

Sex happens.

People have sex.

Janeway has had sex.

Possibly more than once.

Why not with a dynamic man she respected, admired and worked with closely for years, unless her bunk buddy during that point in her life was some one else entirely, but the point "is" if her only reason for being so sexually unobtainable (after Mark or just forgetting he exists a little. What happens in the Delta Quadrant stays in the Delta Quadrant?) during her Voyager years (Something she might have learnt from Owen or because of Owen) because she believes that a Captain has to distance herself from her crew, what did her sexual politics look like when she wasn't Captain? When there was no moral obstruction from the lady making her way through as much or as little crew as her heart contends? Was her rank just an excuse for Kathy not to insult her incredibly slight libido, or is she keeping a vicious monster in check with an firm mode of conduct? How horrible is it to suggest that she would take a lover, hypothetically or otherwise, when we only know two things, she only "dates" subordinates and civilians. Her few choices for a mate while serving as Owen's Science officer (Remember when Lwaxana Troi psychically roughed the cast of DS9 and Dax tried to get Benjamin purring on fours atop his desk?) was either the XO or a Captain or some possibly nonexistent civilian crew... Do you think Riker knew that all his so called conquests where just pip junkies settling for second best because Picard doesn't respond with his penis to groupies? And how did Kira's assortment of relationships over the years detract from her character in any way?

We know enough to admit that JC is impossible, yet the relidiculous zeal with which the coupling is championed is fantastical and addictive because it would be kinda cool if it were true, which is no less true than Paris finding love letters from his father to Janeway at some point some how because it's a good and messy yarn about people giving into to being stupid, who then got to say things like "So did you wait till my mother was dead, or did you mount him during her funeral?"

Without Tom no one would care if she knocked boots with an old captain she served with, it wouldn't be worth the time of day to speculate about even if it did happen. Without Tom it wouldn't have been wrong, and wrong is barely the only sex I care about to take an interest in.

If Janeway were his step mom briefly without Turkey Platter even knowing about it, that would make his own children, his lizard babies also his own brothers and sisters and their own uncles and aunts. SEE! This quirk needs to have happened for so many reasons.

 

[Zameaze]

Yes, this type of story certainly does seem to turn off the female audience:

"In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous."
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

Yeah, well they shy away from doing it to characters they've been getting us to like. Mostly the guys we like are shown avenging such wrongs, not suffering them.

OK, you probably haven't watched SVU.

Olivia Benson, female star of SVU: Her mother was raped and she was the product of that rape.

Olivia Benson went undercover in a women's prison to find a rapist and was almost raped herself. Afterwards, Olivia developed a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In Abuse Olivia becomes involved with a child who was neglected by her parents that way Olivia felt neglected by her mother.

Olivia’s boyfriend, reporter Nick Ganzner, had rape fantasies that he wanted her to act out, and when she refused, he got revenge by leaking sensitive materials about an open case to the press.

Another boyfriend turned out to be gay, and was murdered. He had HIV at the time of his death, and thus Olivia had to be tested for the disease.

Outside of Star Trek, the gloves are off, and they go for the pathos grabbing abused woman script more often than not.

 

[SpyOne]

Yeah, and it is pretty clear that Stabler's hatred for pedophiles is colored by having been molested by his priest. That's why I used words like "mostly".
And why, in the part right after the part that you quoted, I said

Not that they have never explored the avengers getting ... more in touch with what it is like to be a victim. But I suspect that is done, in part, to emphasize that message that being victimized is not the fault of the victim; that there is no "kind of person" that kind of thing happens to or doesn't happen to.

In god knows how many years on the air, only a handful of episodes cast the detectives as victims.

 

[kimc]

... but I still think that she probably slept with Owen Paris whether that helped her career or not.

Well isn't that how any woman gets anywhere? Seriously, knock it off.

Does this mean that no one can have an opinion on this fictional Captain Janeway character other than the approved kimc-Akiraprise opinion?

There's a difference between having a negative opinion about a fictional character and insinuating that a woman cannot get anywhere without sleeping with or being seen as a "daughter" of a man.

I know saying: "Jeri Ryan is a bimbo that slept with Braga to gain her status" doesn't get a second thought here.

Another one with the "women sleep their way to the top" nonsense!

Imo, the expression "Don't shit where you eat." applies equally to men and women.

 

[Zameaze]

Well isn't that how any woman gets anywhere? Seriously, knock it off.

Does this mean that no one can have an opinion on this fictional Captain Janeway character other than the approved kimc-Akiraprise opinion?

There's a difference between having a negative opinion about a fictional character and insinuating that a woman cannot get anywhere without sleeping with or being seen as a "daughter" of a man.

Are you saying that no fictional woman has ever gotten ahead by sleeping with a man? If not, I think you owe Guy Gardener an apology, because it is fiction we're talking about. We should be discussing the characters, not being rude to one another.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This is civil.

Who said that the ONLY reason Kathryn got her job, or that any woman gets their position in life was via nepotism and trading sex?

Ryan didn't sleep her way to the top, she got to the top, and then slept.

Janeway's a capable woman. An awful captain, but a decent person and full of gusto and skill. In Shattered she had a replicator pulled to pieces and like a watchmaker screwing in the delicate cogs and sprockets of a timepiece got the bugger working because it was about as uncooperative and rundown as Michael O'Sullivan before she took screw driver to him too.

Seska spent two years trying to pry the secrets of replicators from Voyager because she was too short-sighted to keep a database away from Voyager which is stuff Janeway has in her head that with enough time and luck she could mass produce using maybe even early 20th century technology, which puts her on par with Spock.

I was over joyed that she came from a science background but we hardly ever saw any evidence of it. It seemed for the most part that she came by her chair though security for all the glaring threats and violence she managed to manifest.

 

[Saquist]

This has gotten rather degrading.
How is Janeway's sex pattern relevant to her courtmartial for her actions in the Delta quardant.

Janway has made one or two questionable decisions and I have a hard time calling a pact with the Borg one of them but I guess it is.

THe biggest no no Janway has done was her tirade against Ransom's ensign in Equinox. everything else I would have understood or approved of.....

Minus of course her meddling in the time line in Endgame but then Harry Kim, Chakotay, and Kirk have done that blatantly enough.

 

[exodus]

Another one with the "women sleep their way to the top" nonsense!

Imo, the expression "Don't shit where you eat." applies equally to men and women.

First: Try reading what's actually written.

Second: When have you known me to ever support any such idea?

The answer would be: Never.