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Poorly treated characters

F. King Daniel

F. King Daniel

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Characters treated unfairly. Either intentionally or not. Spoilers ahead.

Scotty in Crisis on Centaurus
Poor Scotty is inexplicably retconned down into one of "The Twins", the Enterprise's famous miracle working engineering duo, along with a character named Alec MacPherson. Seemingly for no reason.

Janeway in Before Dishonor
Stupidly gets herself Borgified, leads crusade against Earth, eats Pluto, sort-of dies.

Brenna Covington in Homecoming
Abused by her stepfather for most of her life, she takes self-loathing to new extremes by Borgifying herself and then is killed by the Voyager crew. This is how Trek "deals" with child abuse?:cardie:

Picard in Ship of the Line
Picard watches "Balance of Terror" on the holodeck ...seemingly for about 50 chapters... and realizes Kirk was a better captain than him. Picard then goes into "WWKD?" mode.


Anyone else got any?
 
KingDaniel said:
Janeway in Before Dishonor
Stupidly gets herself Borgified, leads crusade against Earth, eats Pluto, sort-of dies.
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Unmistakeably, unambiguously dies. Her body is completely vaporized, and though her consciousness survives thanks to Q intervention, she's told point-blank that she's irreversibly dead and her "soul" is going on to some other phase of existence. True, it leaves a slight opening for resurrection if later stories end up going in that direction, but it is an actual death, at least as much as Spock's or Kirk's or Data's.

And you're leaving out the part where, despite being assimilated, Janeway's mind is able to draw on her love and loyalty to her crew to overcome the Borg's mind control and weaken them at a critical moment, playing a pivotal role in saving Earth and the Federation. Which is pretty much the same thing Picard did in "The Best of Both Worlds," except she heroically sacrifices her life in the process. I'm surprised how often people choose to gloss that over.
 
KingDaniel said:
Characters treated unfairly. Either intentionally or not. Spoilers ahead.

Janeway in Before Dishonor
Stupidly gets herself Borgified, leads crusade against Earth, eats Pluto, sort-of dies.

Anyone else got any?
Click to expand...

Borgified by getting SUCKED INTO A WALL. The borg act like Cartman's Trapper Keeper in that...book.

To lear more about Cartman's Trapper Keeper visit your local public library, or follow this link:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/152353/trapper-keeper-ready-to-absorb
 
Christopher said:
Unmistakeably, unambiguously dies. Her body is completely vaporized, and though her consciousness survives thanks to Q intervention, she's told point-blank that she's irreversibly dead and her "soul" is going on to some other phase of existence. True, it leaves a slight opening for resurrection if later stories end up going in that direction, but it is an actual death, at least as much as Spock's or Kirk's or Data's.
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Seemed more like Picard's death at the start of "Tapestry" to me.
And you're leaving out the part where, despite being assimilated, Janeway's mind is able to draw on her love and loyalty to her crew to overcome the Borg's mind control and weaken them at a critical moment, playing a pivotal role in saving Earth and the Federation.
Click to expand...
Doesn't undo the poor judgement shown in her getting assimilated, which parts of Full Circle read like an apology for.
 
KingDaniel said:
Seemed more like Picard's death at the start of "Tapestry" to me.
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Uhh... no. Aside from the Q visitation, they're nothing alike. First off, Picard didn't actually die. He was wounded and on the surgical table in sickbay. Q claimed that Picard was dead, but Q also claimed to be God, so obviously he's not a reliable source. The only thing we can say for sure based on the objective evidence is that Picard was wounded, Crusher was operating on him, and he was revived. Janeway, on the other hand, was completely disintegrated. There was nothing physically left of her but vapor. Whatever might have happened to her consciousness, it is indisputable that she physically died, no "sort of" about it. Hell, at least Spock and Kirk left corpses behind. Janeway's death is closest to Data's, in that her body was completely immolated in an act of self-sacrifice but there's a slim possibility that her mind may have endured in some form.

JarodRussell said:
Christopher said:
I'm surprised how often people choose to gloss that over.
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People gloss that over because eventually it doesn't matter.
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How does it not matter that her strength of will and devotion to her loved ones saved the entire Federation? Do you think Picard's ability to do the exact same thing in "The Best of Both Worlds" -- reassert his identity despite the crushing weight of Borg mind control and give his crew an opening to defeat them -- didn't matter?
 
I'm starting to think it's pointless to mention any of the good things about Before Dishonor. I didn't like Duffy getting killed off in Wildfire. It was down right heart breaking. I got over it and moved on.
 
Chistopher said:
There was nothing physically left but vapour
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Her conciousness lives on and that conciousness is last seen with an omnipotent being, for whom recreating her body or turning back time or ascending her to a Q or any number of other solutions would be nothing at all.
 
Daffyd ab Hugh's portrayal of O'Brien always seemed 'short end of the stick' to me, making his non-com status a bigger deal than anyone on DS9 ever did, and especially in 'Vengeance,' having him defer to Bashir on the virtue of Bashir being a commissioned officer. I know that it's that way on paper, but in practice, O'Brien was usually treated as a command officer on DS9.
 
KingDaniel said:
Her conciousness lives on and that conciousness is last seen with an omnipotent being, for whom recreating her body or turning back time or ascending her to a Q or any number of other solutions would be nothing at all.
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Which is beside the point. Spock's consciousness lived on in McCoy's head, and he was later resurrected physically, but that doesn't mean he only "sort of" died. His body ceased functioning; he was dead by any legal or medical definition. It's just that his death was reversed. By the same token, Janeway did not "sort of" die, she actually died. Her body didn't only cease functioning, it ceased existing. That is undeniably death, even if it does eventually prove impermanent.

"Sort of" dying is something like Kirk in "Amok Time," where he only appeared to be dead but wasn't really, or Picard in "Tapestry," where Q claimed he was dead but was probably lying, or Trip in "These Are the Voyages...," where we only saw a historical reconstruction of his alleged death and didn't even see a simulation of the actual moment of death. What happened in Before Dishonor was far more unambiguous.

Sure, there's some slim chance that she could be resurrected, although I'm sure there are more creative ways of doing it than just a Q snapping her fingers. But just about any character in SF can be resurrected, so if that's your standard for calling it "sort of" death rather than actual death, then no fictional death could ever meet the standard. They'd all be "sort of," and that renders it a useless distinction.
 
Don't forget Scotty's unseen exit (is he dead?) in Indistinguishable from Magic.
 
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KingDaniel said:
Brenna Covington in Homecoming
Abused by her stepfather for most of her life, she takes self-loathing to new extremes by Borgifying herself and then is killed by the Voyager crew. This is how Trek "deals" with child abuse?:cardie:
Click to expand...
Wow! Ok, goes to show how mind-numbingly tedious I found that book, as I either totally missed all that or have blocked it from my mind.
 
KingDaniel said:
Picard in Ship of the Line
Picard watches "Balance of Terror" on the holodeck ...seemingly for about 50 chapters... and realizes Kirk was a better captain than him. Picard then goes into "WWKD?" mode.
Click to expand...

That book also makes an error that part of the dynamic of the story rests upon - that is to say the author thinks that Chain of command happens before The best of both worlds.
 
This has actually been in the back of my mind since the latest eruption of anti-dead-Janeway sentiment, but I think what they should really be angry about is the end of the last "String Theory" book. Now, I've heard arguments up one side and down the other about Janeway's characterization and how consistent it may or may not have been, but that's no excuse for what happened here. Any character inconsistencies with Janeway in the last half of the show are explained as being because she's insane due to brain damage and the rest of the crew must never speak of it again, or else her brain will explode.

Okay, so having Janeway killed by the baddest mother to ever go after the Federation ever, complete with her fighting off the Borg from the inside is murdering the dream of female equality, but saying that her actions only make sense if she's mentally handicapped and everyone needs to humor her no matter how bad her decisions are because otherwise she'll die, well that's a-ok.

It's a shame that the forum doesn't go back that far. I'm curious about how the critics of that overlap with opinions in the great Janeway debate.
 
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