Poorly treated characters
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Yevetha
Commodore
Well, it can't be a novel, because it's only 25,000 words long, novella-length. If you mean to ask whether it'll ever be published as a physical book, I'm aware of no current plans for that, and it seems unlikely at this time. If there's ever an omnibus of the Typhon Pact series, it might be included there. Or if it sells well enough to warrant further original eBooks, there could eventually be collections of those as there have been for SCE and Mere Anarchy. But as things stand now, the only way to read this novella will be as an eBook.
Some movies are just over an hour long, and some are over three. Doesn't necessarily alter the ticket price at the cinema.
I'm not so sure I agree with this comment, especially if there are extenuating circumstances that can explain why the character makes those isolated decisions. If a character is pushed beyond the pale by a situation, he/she may act in a way that is totally out of character because of the pressure they feel. Most humans are capable of committing horrible atrocities when pushed too far, but that doesn't mean that they are, from then on, terrible people.
I admit that the writers didn't always make it clear why Janeway makes some of the decisions she does, but most of the time, there is justification. When Janeway discovers that aliens are treating her crew like lab rats and anticipating killing many of them (Scientific Method), she takes the ship through a binary star to force the aliens to leave them alone. This is not an action she would have considered taking under normal circumstances. And the admiral's actions are not the captain's; in fact, Captain Janeway was horrified by what her older self had done. She only acted on it because it was a fait accompli.
Letting those rare lapses in behavior have more influence than the "normal" character we see over seven years of the series is an unfair distortion and oversimplification. If your claim is true, then Sisko's actions to poison the Maquis planet should outweigh his other better qualities, and Archer's deliberate torture of a prisoner should also have more sway than his other better qualities.
And yet she never sounded like an adult woman, but rather a whiny teenager.
Yeah I was going to say the same about Sisko, and good point about Archer. With these leaders the lapses are seen as showing them to be human, giving them character. With Janeway they lapses are elevated to proof of her being a psycho.
In your opinion. To me, she was very believably sold as a mother who'd lost one child years before, had another miscarriage, and despite how irrational she knew it to be, couldn't bring herself to let go of another.
Yep, absolutely, in my opinion. Could hardly stand to read those parts.
But as I said already, that is not what String Theory: Evolution actually says. It says that she may rarely have mood swings for no apparent reason, but that her ability to command will not be compromised. So to say they "have more influence" is a categorically false characterization. It's made quite explicit that it would be a minor, infrequent variation in her normal behavior.
I actually don't have a particularly strong opinion about those particular moments in Janeway's character evolution. My objection is to the basic principle that aberrations in typical behavior should never be seen as outweighing the normal pattern.
That's often true, but it is not always true. Some aberrations in behavior should be given more weight, more importance, than the normal pattern. If you rape a child, you can't point to all the children you didn't rape and say that you shouldn't therefore be judged a child molester. If you extort money, you can't point to all the people you didn't blackmail and say you shouldn't be called an extortionist. Etc.
Does that mean that Janeway's questionable decisions should outweigh her normal behavior? I don't know. But I don't think we should throw out the idea that outliers from one's normal behavior are automatically outweighed by the standard pattern.
I'm not just talking about String Theory, although I didn't recognize Janeway in the character as presented there. I'm saying that the PB Janeway (and I've read all the VOY up to Full Circle) tends to exhibit those qualities that come from her more "drastic" decisions. She seems arrogant, egotistical (refusing to take advice), inflexible (unwilling to bend the SF rules), and totally lacking in humor or humility. The Janeway I saw on the screen was warm, funny, involved, serious, careful, and dedicated. She took the time to sit down and eat fruit along the way, as Harry reported in "Coda." She spoiled her crew by letting them take shuttles out to meditate, revisit near-death experiences to solve personal issues, visit Jupiter station to help heal Zimmerman, on and on. This kinder, softer Janeway seldom, if ever appear in the novels, and I can only assume it is because the editors/writers have chosen to focus on the stressed and desperate captain who made questionable decisions under duress.
she appeared in the comic first, i believe.
and it's no wonder no one liked it, a five year old could've done better art.
and it's no wonder no one liked it, a five year old could've done better art.
Yeah, Jast originated in the comic and was adopted for Avatar.
I thought that Admiral Willem Batiste from the Voyager relaunch got rather short shrift.
In my head I had rather lazily cast Willem Defoe as Batiste(see what I did there?)and had ,probably prematurely imbued Batiste with Defoe's wolfish charm.I had looked forward to a new dynamic in the Voyager realm,pitting Chakotay against the maverick Batiste.Unfortunately the character was rather hastily despatched in what IMO,was a rather implausible plotline.
Oh well,Voyager has it seems settled into it's usual female captain/Chakotay status-quo,proving that seven years of piss-poor television doesn't really teach many lessons.
In my head I had rather lazily cast Willem Defoe as Batiste(see what I did there?)and had ,probably prematurely imbued Batiste with Defoe's wolfish charm.I had looked forward to a new dynamic in the Voyager realm,pitting Chakotay against the maverick Batiste.Unfortunately the character was rather hastily despatched in what IMO,was a rather implausible plotline.
Oh well,Voyager has it seems settled into it's usual female captain/Chakotay status-quo,proving that seven years of piss-poor television doesn't really teach many lessons.