Online Petition Bring Back Kathryn Janeway!
- Thread starter Kathryn J.
- Start date
That you did. 
Re: You did WHAT in Public?
I see the point about Janeway's sacrifice being big news, but I wonder if Starfleet would perhaps try to cover it up? I don't recall how many people actually knew what was going on. I'm not sure how they'd explain away a Borg cube eating Pluto, though
I agree too about killing Janeway in a book where she isn't the focus. Having her a soulless Borgified puppet and then dead isn't the most dignified way to go.
By the way, Sisko's somehow human again and back on DS9 in one of the Typhon Pact novels coming out late this year or early next. Looks like his "death" wasn't permanent.
I see the point about Janeway's sacrifice being big news, but I wonder if Starfleet would perhaps try to cover it up? I don't recall how many people actually knew what was going on. I'm not sure how they'd explain away a Borg cube eating Pluto, though
I agree too about killing Janeway in a book where she isn't the focus. Having her a soulless Borgified puppet and then dead isn't the most dignified way to go.
By the way, Sisko's somehow human again and back on DS9 in one of the Typhon Pact novels coming out late this year or early next. Looks like his "death" wasn't permanent.
While I don't like how she was portrayed in Before Dishonor and thought her death to be pointless, I don't think they should bring her back. You can always have her in in series novels and flash backs.
At least her pointless contrived death did not occur on screen like Data and Tucker.
At least her pointless contrived death did not occur on screen like Data and Tucker.
Yes, I think there was. Some TOS fans might be irked at Kirk being killed off in a TNG film - and they'd be within their rights to say so - but there were definite stylistic differences. Generations made Kirk's death the climax of the film. It marketed the story under the tagline "Two captains. One destiny". The focus was very much on making Kirk's death a Meaningful Event. Even though it's primarily a Picard movie, part of the story is Picard's reactions to meeting Kirk and to Kirk's death. McCarthy's soundtrack gives us those elegiac strings to mark the passing of a hero.
I'd argue that most Trek (erm... I'll admit I don't know Ent) is pretty consistent in the in-universe attitude to main character deaths. From Spock to Kirk to Tasha to Jadzia to Data, it's a big frickin' deal. 'The noblest Roman of them all', and all that jazz.
In some ways, it's very corny. Perhaps even emotionally facile. But I'd argue it's in keeping with the general tone of Trek - escapist, idealistic, optimistic, celebratory of the hero. By contrast, Janeway being eaten by a floor while Lady Q taunts and belittles her is a very different kind of event.
As to the question of whether, having read BD, it could have been done better? My personal opinion is that if PD had had a greater attachment to telling Janeway's story, it wouldn't have sucked so hard. To my mind (YMMV) nothing that Lady Q says in their encounters prior to Kathryn's death ring true in the least as insights into the character of Janeway as we saw her in the series. They seem more like mean-spirited cliches thrown at any random 'admiral stock character'. Indeed, some of her taunts about free will, fate and faith could be as applicable to Picard as to Janeway.
Like I said, I'm only a casual Voy fan, but I didn't recognise Janeway in PD's portrayal. I didn't recognise her in Lady Q's criticisms. And I didn't get any character development to take me from TV Janeway to the Janeway whom PD killed off.
There's a line PD gives Lady Q - forgive me if I misquote, I'm not currently in the same country as my copy of BD - but it's something like "I wonder if, when you lose your soul, you'll even notice."
There's so much in that bit of foreshadowing. A Trek main character's story arc taking her to the point of losing her soul, possibly through her own hubris? That implies an epic journey. Yet PD doesn't take us on it. (Perhaps because in his mind, Janeway's nine-tenths of the way to not having a soul already?) Instead, the whole thing's squashed into a short B-Plot.
So I think if she'd been more recognisably characterised, or if her death had been afforded the gravity one comes to expect from a Trek main character death, or even if PD hadn't chosen to make her a tragic hero whose ostensible hubris he had neither the space for nor (apparently) the interest in teasing out with greater depth, these things would have improved the story.
Though even then, I'd totally still get the annoyance of it not happening in a Voy title. I mean, if Wonder Woman were killed off in a Batbook and DC said this was the one time death was sticking, I'd be spitting teeth.
Given what was transpiring in the Trek universe at the time of BD, is there any way the events credibly could have been spun into a VOY novel instead? Haven't read the VOY novels since it didn't sound as though I'd enjoy them...which is unfortunate.
And does the series-branding r...well, I guess to some people it does really matter, whereas to me it's all one big happy Trek universe...and I like crossovers.
And does the series-branding r...well, I guess to some people it does really matter, whereas to me it's all one big happy Trek universe...and I like crossovers.
The novels have been going crossover-crazy in the last few years. Before Dishonor features the TNG crew, Janeway, Seven and Lady Q from Voyager and, somehow, Spock (I can't for the life of me remember why he was there at all). It seems the lines between the novel series' may be being slowly broken down.
A risk for what end? BD was a badly written book, choppy and full of terrible characterizations.. it was not some moving and intense novel about the borg in which the death of a main character was a risk that made it an epic read.
Maybe it was a risk taken for what would follow the death.. perhaps they were counting on the drama of Janeway's death being important for the following books in relaunch. So what have we gotten.. Chakotay having a near endless emotional breakdown and everyone else reflecting sadly once a chapter. Treklit is pretty fail at this kind of drama and I have found much of the Chakotay arc very very tedious. He's pining for someone but there's no romance there because SHE'S DEAD.
The risk got them no where. They lost a major and unique (older woman) character and reduced an already sometimes vague character to nothing but the role of the Traumatized One that because of Treklit's inherent poor emotional writing only serves to hold up the actual story line for pages and pages of waffle. The death sucked and the character development of those left behind because of the death has sucked.
The new woman admiral, Eden, is fine--I like her a lot. But she also has a story line that takes her into the Delta quadrant and can easily and potentially leave her there
because she actually comes from there and is being called home.
This argument would only work if I were arguing that "Before Dishonor" was poorly written, now I've been told by several that it is, but I will fully state that I haven't read the book and cannot judge the quality of the story. However I can and do make decisions all the time about what books I will and will not read based on the plot lines. I don't read Dead Janeway fan fiction, if I won't read it for free, why should I pay for it with either money or time. I can tell you based on the plot line that I will not like the story, and I can also point out that I want a different kind of story, one that includes Kathryn Janeway.
Would you want to spend your time reading my fan fiction? Or have you already decided that you will not like it in the first place?
Brit
The "we killed off Admiral Janeway because there was nowhere for her to go as an Admiral" excuse often used by the writer has to be the lamest excuse ever - and only reflects the lack of talent and imagination of the writer. One can only guess that the author did it, not for literary acclaim (very average author) but for self-notority and attention seeking to fuel threads and discussions such as this.
Never read much Trek lit - it's not cannon (just ask the owners of the Franchise) and as such, never been interested. What I have read isn't very well written, the stories are increasingly put together like a "dog's breakfast" and not that imaginative.
Never read much Trek lit - it's not cannon (just ask the owners of the Franchise) and as such, never been interested. What I have read isn't very well written, the stories are increasingly put together like a "dog's breakfast" and not that imaginative.
I believe Peter David was instructed to write her death. You can't blame him for it, but the TPTB at Pocketbooks.
Ummm, bust her down in rank like Kirk. But we're past that point. The only way I can see to bring her back is Alt Reality Janeway, Q or Future Janeway somehow escaped dieing in End Game. But I would prefer to leave it as is.
Much of the Trek lit I've read has been way better than anything shown on TV or film.
Now THAT is a new one on me!
I see the point about Janeway's sacrifice being big news, but I wonder if Starfleet would perhaps try to cover it up? I don't recall how many people actually knew what was going on. I'm not sure how they'd explain away a Borg cube eating Pluto, though
Starfleet command doesn't have to say that the cube that ate Pluto and nearly ate Earth was directed by an assimilated Janeway. Like Kirk said in "Where no man has gone before" ....
KIRK: Captain's log, Star date 1313.8. Add to official losses, Doctor Elizabeth Dehner. Be it noted she gave her life in performance of her duty. Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, same notation. I want his service record to end that way. He didn't ask for what happened to him.
Despite Lady Q's opinion, neither did BD's Janeway.
Hmm... I read somewhere that he requested to write her out because he didn't like the character. I think it was on this board in the BD discussion thread.
Stuff like that is exactly why we're so upset. How would people feel if the situation was reversed and Picard was killed in a VOY book because the author/TPTB didn't like him? It would be really awful for the fans. Heck, that'd make me just as mad. Picard's too cool for that. Like I said, it would have been okay if Janeway died in a way appropriate for her character by someone who liked her. She had a giant "MARTYR" sticker on her back through the whole TV series; there were ways to kill her off that would have fit (IMO, like if she had been at the BQ's lair in Endgame instead of the Admiral, for example.) And I'm pretty sure she managed to die on screen more than Harry Kim. (Someone should do a death tally.) Janeway would walk through hell and back for her people.
I'd still be reluctant to read any VOY books without her, good death or no, but at least she could have bowed out with some dignity.
Janeway fans aren't legion like the other captains, but it would have been nice if they would have thought about us, too. We buy the books as well. There are a few Trek characters I don't care for, but I wouldn't write a book about them, much less a book about making them look dumb and killing them off.
I didn't much dig Data's death, either.
