A thread on the DS9 board wandered into discussing which female had the sexiest voice. One thing I've had to defend from Janeway detractors is criticism of her voice.
A friend of mine has seen smatterings of most of the Trek series and the first thing she said about Trek in our first Trek conversation was that she could not watch VOY because she "hated Janeway's voice."
Mr. Teacake used to say he couldn't stand Janeway's voice, he said he could hear it 2 rooms away "like a rasping saw". He would occasionally bark out orders he heard Janeway saying in his interpretation of her voice. He did say once though that when watching an ep rather than hearing it from the distance that it didn't bother him at all. (He doesn't watch Trek but has gotten sucked into VOY a few times when The Doctor was being funny).
And I've heard the voice criticism from others over the years.
Now personally I love Janeway's voice. I love a lower voice on a woman. I notice teh menz on some of the other forums here go nuts for soft, sweet voices of Trek women.. Hoshi, Ezri, and always Kes. I just don't find anything appealing about this, in fact Kes's voice was really off putting to me. Maybe this is part of why Marilyn Monroe was so popular, her soft little girl voice (which was much more extreme than the Trek woman I've mentioned).
When I hear Janeway's voice I hear.. CHARACTER. Strength. Pragmatism. I always loved Katherine Hepburn's voice too, at least in The African Queen which was the Hepburn movie I watched with frequency. What others hear as raspy, I hear as pragmatism, to me pragmatism has a raspy element.
I get rather upset that people dismiss or recoil from Janeway because of her voice. Maybe this kind of voice in females is so infrequently used now by Hollywood that people just aren't used to it. We probably hear far more diversity in people's voices just in everyday life than Hollywood gives us.
A friend of mine has seen smatterings of most of the Trek series and the first thing she said about Trek in our first Trek conversation was that she could not watch VOY because she "hated Janeway's voice."
Mr. Teacake used to say he couldn't stand Janeway's voice, he said he could hear it 2 rooms away "like a rasping saw". He would occasionally bark out orders he heard Janeway saying in his interpretation of her voice. He did say once though that when watching an ep rather than hearing it from the distance that it didn't bother him at all. (He doesn't watch Trek but has gotten sucked into VOY a few times when The Doctor was being funny).
And I've heard the voice criticism from others over the years.
Now personally I love Janeway's voice. I love a lower voice on a woman. I notice teh menz on some of the other forums here go nuts for soft, sweet voices of Trek women.. Hoshi, Ezri, and always Kes. I just don't find anything appealing about this, in fact Kes's voice was really off putting to me. Maybe this is part of why Marilyn Monroe was so popular, her soft little girl voice (which was much more extreme than the Trek woman I've mentioned).
When I hear Janeway's voice I hear.. CHARACTER. Strength. Pragmatism. I always loved Katherine Hepburn's voice too, at least in The African Queen which was the Hepburn movie I watched with frequency. What others hear as raspy, I hear as pragmatism, to me pragmatism has a raspy element.
I get rather upset that people dismiss or recoil from Janeway because of her voice. Maybe this kind of voice in females is so infrequently used now by Hollywood that people just aren't used to it. We probably hear far more diversity in people's voices just in everyday life than Hollywood gives us.
