My daughter has already started her own little boycott. We both used to read Peter David's "New Frontier" series, she has all of those gathered up, including her own hardback copy of "Imzadi" ready to at the very least hide in a box in the store room, but maybe to sell back to the used bookstore or in a yardsale. Brit
Hear hear! Even the term "rabid fan" implies there's no need to be taken seriously. Thank you for showing you don't need to be "rabid fan" to think the Janeway character was completely mishandled.
Who says Janeway fans aren't legion? If you have ever attended a convention where Mulgrew is appearing, you'll find the room is packed for her panel, just as they are for the other captains. And the lines are just as long for her photo and autograph ops as they are for, say, Avery Brooks. She is immensely popular as a captain and a wonderful ambassador for Star Trek. The problem is that the PB writers just don't understand the Janeway character. I wonder, at times, if they have watched the Voyager episodes in recent years or just work from some sort of "stereotype" Janeway that comes more from the novels than from the character on the screen. Someone paraphrased about Lady Q wondering about Janeway losing her soul. If any captain had a big heart and a large soul, it was Janeway. I just rewatched "Resistance" the other night on Spike and was blown away, once again, by the kind and tolerant way she treated the brave but mentally unstable Caylem (Joel Grey). Her compassion and emotion at his death reminds me of Picard's bittersweet experience in "The Inner Light." It's bad enough that the novel character is just not the one we knew and loved on the screen, but then they decide to kill her off because this "un-Janeway" was hard to write. Whose fault is that?
Let's not forget that the big hearted and large souled Janeway once thought a reasonable interrogation was locking someone in a room about to be filled with hostile aliens, and on a separate occasion when her CMO tried to relieve her of duty for valid reasons she told him to screw off. I'm not saying she -couldn't- be among the most nurturing of captains, but it bothers me to see her less nurturing moments whitewashed.
There are obviously several ways to answer this. 1) Its our fault, the fans. By not devouring everything Voyager the minute it was dropped onto our plate, (Voyager Launch books, Voyager relaunch books, etc.) we have suggested that we do not care for our Captain and her crew. Our standoffishness may have been due to displeasure with the quality of story writing/ obvious unfamiliarity with our crew ... (I didn't buy the 3rd Voy launch book years ago after sitting through 2 novels where the central point of trauma was watching poor Icheb wither without his regeneration chamber in a Starfleet prison while a Starfleet officer fashioned herself into a new BORG Queen. Of course, the mere fact that he's had NO NEED to regenerate since he gave his cortical node to Seven in the 2nd ep of the 7th season wasn't the only source of my displeasure, but I digress) ... the "LAUNCH story itself also created an immediate boredom in the fans. Afterall they had just finished THE BORG QUEEN as a threat to the Alpha Quadrant. Why did we need to see a "BORG Queenlet" as the central story in the new Alpha Quadrant version of Voyager? 2) Its TPTB's fault. Trektoday's article about the new movies has made me laugh. See the following ... Hmm. Damn, they are so freaking smart. Isn't that what we've been asking for, these last 9 years. I, along with many Voy fans, were invested emotionally in our little band of Voyagers. That was one of the prime reasons so many hate Endgame. Sure, our people get home... BUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Did Mom and Dad accept them back into their home? Did They adjust to the change? Did they have to face a court trial and be acquitted (Maquis for being Maquis, Janeway for being Janeway?) Sure, TPTB felt they answered those questions by showing the alt timeline Voyagers "future"... but that was different. I doubt Harry's parents were still alive when he got home after 23 years, and the same goes for Janeway and Paris. If TPTB wanted to attract new people to the franchise, they needed to think less like Star Trek and more like Sci-fi. I wouldn't hold BATMAN BEGINS up... I would hold up BATTLESTAR GALACTICA as the role model for reinventing a genre. They should tell great stories that allow people to fall in and out of love and in and out of like as needs be. They would learn that having an ADMIRAL around can be a GOOD thing (Yes I think WilliamAdamRulz! ). The could have told stories about ships (which is the straight jacket from which most Trek suffers ) and stories about Deep Space Stations, StarFleet Academies, and the Starfleet Admirality. They could have allowed our crew to populate Starfleet in all these platforms and wound the "Voyager" stories throughout all these venues. BSG SPOILERS! One of the things I loved about BSG was that Roslyn was President of the civilian govt and her domain was Colonial One. The Commander, and later Admiral Adama was King of his domain, and primarily was found on Galactica. They had to "go" to one another to let their friendship, and later their love develop. It wasn't by accident that she finally told him "I love you" on neutral ground... the Cylon Baseship. That is something I could see for "my" auburn haired Admiral... whether it was with my preferred consort, or some other. Voyager didn't need to "be" reinvented... it just needed to "be" unleashed from the rules of Trek writing. Want to bring in "new" fans to scifi/to Trek? Give them something they've never seen before.... or at least nothing they've never seen before in Trekdom. A Captain/Admiral that isn't "just" wedded to his/her ship.
Like her or not, she's the main character. Again, I ask: wouldn't you pick up a TNG book (non character-specific, of course) expecting some Picard? Or a TOS book expecting Kirk? I haven't read any of the DS9s - but I must assume Sisko came back at some point. I'm supposed to pick up a VOY book and expect... Eden?! She's in the Big Five. Period. The series' figureheads are their captains, like em or not. I sure as heck wouldn't read a TNG book with some weird pseudo-Picard stand-in who almost looks like Picard but isn't. ^^^ This, a million times, this.
Just gotta pop in and say that Star Trek reimagined in the form of BSG would be the biggest disaster ever. People who like BSG should enjoy BSG, not try to make something else like Star Trek into it. Case in point: Stargate Universe, where Stargate tried as hard as it could to be BSG, and totally forgot that people enjoy Stargate for what it is (or rather, was). Fan reaction to SGU has made that quite clear. Batman Begins is far more apt a comparison for a film franchise, anyway.
Bring back KJ. She was a wonderful, insightful character. In the ol' book of Endgame, Janeway died. Before that, she was the borg queen. You can see why I did not result to reading it.
I understand that you feel this way, what I don't get is the understanding that we (Janeway fan's) feel like you (in general not you specific DonIago) are trying to paint her as black as possible. There are many of us that stopped coming to the Trek BBS, because of this attitude. This is the point I've been trying so hard to make, we are not whitewashing her but there are so many people here that would make her as evil as possible and expect the rest of us to lock step with them. I don't see any of the rest of the Picard fans or the Kirk fans or the Sisko fans or the Archer fans getting the kind of treatment that the Janeway fans get. You all may debate various points, but the feeling is with every other captain, the points of view are respected and I and many like me feel like we are not respected at all. Are there any Sisko fans that disliked his "death" and expressed the desire for his return, labeled "rabid Siskoites" as happened to us? We are accused of worshiping in the "Church of Janeway" and we don't deserve that at all. We are Trek fans, we love Kathryn Janeway. That isn't whitewashing, that's choosing to love a character despite her flaws, in fact we probably love her because of them, they are what makes her human. It's not whitewashing, it's acceptance. Brit
Sisko's human again and commander of DS9 in one of the Typhon Pact novels at the end of the year. From the blurb is seems he's back to stay.
Hi Brit, To be clear I am not necessarily that active on this board, nor have I necessarily paid a great deal of attention to VOY-related sentiments, so I should most definitely not be considered the voice of experience. I hope you will bear that in mind. I think a good start to repairing the rift that you feel exists would be to stop thinking of people in terms of "you" and "us", and instead in terms of "people who liked Janeway more" versus "people who liked Janeway less." Terms like "you" and "us" are divisive, and I think it might be more productive to approach this from the "we're all fans" standpoint. Granted some people are never going to be fans of Janeway, but to portray that as a fault isn't going to win you allies while possibly alienating people who would otherwise support you. You've also indicated that because of the persecution you feel Janeway fans have received that, even though you're aware that she has character flaws, you're not willing to give Janeway critics points by acknowledging that she has them. Again, I think you might benefit from making more of an effort to build bridges rather than standing firmly on your side of the river. To me, nobody trying to make a point loses credibility faster than by refusing to acknowledge flaws with their argument, especially one who -knows- the flaws exist but still won't acknowledge them. When one party is willing to moderate their opinion and the other is not, I think it's a foregone conclusion which side the general audience will tend to sway towards. Anyway, obviously you and I haven't seen eye-to-eye, but I think I understand a bit more now where you're coming from, and I hope what I've said so far makes some sense. I'm not aware of any number of Janeway fans leaving the board because of anti-Janeway sentiment, but I suppose it's possible. I wonder whether critics of the new film have abandoned the site as well. The best advice I could offer to those people is that in essentially any thread you see here there's likely to be a post you disagree with. In some cases you should just move on, in others you can manage a "We're trying to stay positive here, thanks" or a "I'm sorry you feel that way but..." In most cases the loss of a board member is a shame though, and I'm sorry they felt so persecuted. For myself, I haven't seen an anti-Janeway bias that's substantially worse than any other anti-captain bias, but maybe I haven't looked in the right threads at the right times as well. I -hope- you're wrong, but I can't say. In any event, anyone with such a bias really does need to reexamine the other Captains, as they all have their flaws. And thank god they do, because flawless characters get boring -really- quickly. I hope this message might serve to ease some of the tension between us and further illuminate where I'm coming from. In short, I guess I don't have a problem talking about flaws I perceive within Janeway because I'd do the same for anyone else in Trek, and I hope fans who are more pro-Janeway avoid making exactly the kinds of assumptions that the people they take issue with have been making. Thanks.
The thing that bothered me the most about that scene was when that genocidal bastard walked out of that room unscathed.
Um there's nothing to suggest that he's commander of DS9 again from the blurb. All it says is he's returned to Starfleet following the Borg invasion. Here's the back cover text:
This incident is commonly mentioned to help justify an "out of control" Janeway. What is always forgotten in the process is that Lessing and the Equinox crew had just stolen a piece of technology that the Voyager crew had developed to help protect all of them from the alien attacks. They left Voyager to the wolves in order to put themselves first (they wanted to continue to kill and use the aliens to get home quickly). Baiscally, Lessing and the Equinox crew were guilty of treason and accessory to murder. A captain defends her crew, and Lessing was an enemy, no matter what uniform he was wearing. Her motivation was to save her ship and crew from the continuing attacks--and possible destruction. All of the captains have, at one time or another, lost their tempers and gone too far. In this case, because of Chakotay's interference, we don't know if she would have let Lessing be killed--that is pure speculation. She did, at least, later realize how close she'd come to becoming the same kind of monster Ransom was--and that is crucial because it shows that she learned from her mistakes. I assume that the other incident you are discussing is in "Year of Hell" when she goes into a burning deflector control in order to save the ship. If that is reason for relieving a person, then every hero who puts his life on the line should be considered insane. What she did wasn't that much different from Kirk's actions in "Generations" where he was killed (and taken into the Nexus) saving the Enterprise. However, this one decision in Season six and her heroic willingness to put her life on the line are hardly enough to justify the strange character that appears in most of the PB novels.
You joined in 2001, but if you didn't visit the Voyager forum during the run of the series, you probably wouldn't have seen the animosity that was expressed toward the series in general and Janeway in particular. Voyager fans left in droves, and most of them don't care to return. I was here under a different name and let my membership lapse when the board moved to a new server. I rejoined under a new name to differentiate myself from the person who had been vilified for my opinion earlier. You may be a less critical poster than some, but, trust me, there was a time when any poster who positive comment on Voyager would be laughed off the board as a Star Trek "lightweight." Just as an example, when I first heard that Janeway was killed in PD's book, I made a comment that it was a shame to kill off a character who was the first female captain and a role model to so many young girls who need encouragement to go into math and science. I was immediately castigated for calling her the "first female captain" because there were so many others--like Rachel Garrett of the Enterprise C, and other females briefly on the screen. The responders knew that I meant the first female captain star of a series, but decided to "play dumb" and show off their Star Trek knowledge, I suppose, while displaying my ignorance. As for the "role model" comment, they used the "f" word--just more "feminist" posing. I suppose they believe that Janeway isn't a role model for young girls, or that young girls don't need encouragement (or shouldn't try) to go into math and science. Mulgrew has constantly been told by female fans that her character was a role model. The point is that my post was not taken seriously and basically made fun of. Too bad they didn't run me off, no? When someone posts a positive opinion of Picard, are they called the Militant Fans of Picard the way Janeway fans are called MFJ? Are the Sisko fans called MSF? Nope. This is taunting and many times an attempt to bait the poster into saying even more than can be ridiculed again and again. It seems to me that the persistent and vocal outcry over Janeway's death should be a pretty obvious indication of her popularity, but it is, on this board anyway, largely considered to be a joke. "Ha, ha. Janeway's dead. Get over it."
If you're looking for people who actually left for this reason 9 years ago, I was one of them. I remember who posted here then, and I know that all of them are gone as well. Thread titles alone were usually set up as insults, to say nothing for the content. There were a lot of good debates, too, but they often got buried in a lot of nasty commentary. We're probably unfairly on the defensive most of the time, which isn't really fair to those with dissenting opinions, I realize. Sorry about that. Also, I didn't realize Kira was kind of the major player now, sans Sisko. To be fair, though, he was "killed" in the show, not so much the books. You go into the books knowing that.