So what's wrong with "Admiral Janeway" anyway?

[Star Treks]

-Brett- said:

Jessica_Alba said:
Personally, men are threatened by seeing women in powerful positions. Just look at the public's reaction to Hillary Clinton running for president as proof.

When I saw the thread title, I wondered how long it would be before someone played the gender card. I can't help but notice how DS9 fans don't play the race card, or TNG fans the nationalism card. Personally I think that deep down Voyager fans know that the show was crap and crying sexism is all they can do to defend it.

I have to take major exception to that statement.

First of all, I am not a gigantic Voyager fan. I think DS9 is the best series, and because I grew up with TNG it will always hold the fondest place in my heart. I have an appreciation for every Trek series, but I recognize that Voyager is not the best Trek incarnation.

Still, I think calling it "crap" is way over the top. Compared to the finest seasons of TNG and DS9 - and compared with the best episodes of TOS - on average, Voyager is not as good. But, I still consider it an excellent television show, way better than most of the crap on TV.

I could go on for a while but the basic point is this: I don't think Voyager fans, including the die-hard lovers of the show (which I am not), do not know "deep down" that Voyager is crap, because it isn't. Pointing out potential sexism might be used to distract from other arguments, but it's also silly to think that a certain amount of gender bias wouldn't be there. Personally, I found Janeway as a character and Mulgrew as an actress in this show to be outstanding, and anyone who is vehemently anti-Janeway probably either just doesn't like the show for whatever reason or indeed does have some sort of issue with having a female captain.

 

[ancient]

VGR was mediocre. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, often derivative. My problem with Janeway was the same as my problem with several of the ENT characters. They were inconsistant, and often non-characters. I liked Janeway in Season 1 & 2 for the most part, but by season 5 she was totally annoying to me.

I didn't really mind her in Nemesis though. She was the least of that movie's problems. Plus she got rid of that damn helmet hair. That's also a plus.

 

[Anwar]

She should have had the hairstyle the incorrect version of her from "Living Witness" had, that was a good look.

 

[McCoy]

scotthm said:
And the less said about the Borg the better, IMO. This was one of the worst aspects of Voyager in that it took a mysterious, virtually undefeatable antagonist and made them wholly ineffective against a single starship in their own home territory, thus totally negating everything we'd come to know about the Borg from TNG.

---------------

Wouldn't this have had to have happened anyway though? The Borg had to be defanged at some point in canon, or they would eventually destroy Earth and the Federation.

TNG is over, and DS9 really isn't in any position to do it. So why not have Janeway do it, discovering chinks in Borg armour through Voyager's unique vantage point in the Delta Quadrant? Who else was going to encounter 8472 and use them as leverage over the Borg? Who else had an ex-Borg crewmember with valuable insights into her former people?

How else could we have seen the Borg threat handled by this point in time?

 

[Mordock]

McCoy said:
The Borg had to be defanged at some point in canon, or they would eventually destroy Earth and the Federation.

TNG is over, and DS9 really isn't in any position to do it. So why not have Janeway do it, discovering chinks in Borg armour through Voyager's unique vantage point in the Delta Quadrant? Who else was going to encounter 8472 and use them as leverage over the Borg? Who else had an ex-Borg crewmember with valuable insights into her former people?

How else could we have seen the Borg threat handled by this point in time?

I'm not sure I grant your premise that the Borg needed to be defeated from a story standpoint; why couldn't they be defined as a nuanced separate culture that still posed a military threat, like the other Trek antagonist races? Klingons, for example, were humanized over the latter-day series and even exploited for comedy, but they were still treated as dangerous opponents that the Federation absolutely wanted to avoid open war with.

Even as late as "Scorpion", Borg episodes were special because every encounter with a cube was depicted as a desperate chase/assault that Starfleet barely won, and even then with heavy casualties. But as VOY wore on, the Borg stopped having that level of thoughtful respect granted to them. The Borg couldn't lay waste to Voyager, to be sure, but neither was it wise to simply have them continue to show up in force during sweeps periods to get their asses handed to them because Janeway and crew always managed to find the two-meters-wide thermal exhaust port that was left unguarded.

Add to that the way the mystique of the Borg was undermined by all the rescued/escaped former Borg that popped up throughout the series, which both made Seven less special and made it seem as if breaking with the Collective was as simple as turning in your resignation, and the Borg became quite dull, which I don't think was necessary.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Picard turned down a promotion to admiral as early as season 1.

People don't like Admiral Janeway because they don't like Voyager. It goes no deeper than that.

 

[Jack Bauer]

-Brett- said:

Jessica_Alba said:
Personally, men are threatened by seeing women in powerful positions. Just look at the public's reaction to Hillary Clinton running for president as proof.

When I saw the thread title, I wondered how long it would be before someone played the gender card. I can't help but notice how DS9 fans don't play the race card, or TNG fans the nationalism card. Personally I think that deep down Voyager fans know that the show was crap and crying sexism is all they can do to defend it.

Doubtful that that's the case. Most Voyager fans don't know it's crap deep down...just the opposite. Many people who play the sexism card do it not because deep down they know the show is crap. They do it because the can't formulate an effective counterargument so they last out with the sexism card. I hear stuff like this on talk radio. A caller calls in, gives his points of view, the host does the same and they argue back and forth. The host is demolishing the callers point and then the caller lashes out "Well you're just a sexist idiot!" And hangs up. Why'd they do that? Because they couldn't refute the host's point and so they resorted to name calling.

 

[McCoy]

Mordock said:
I'm not sure I grant your premise that the Borg needed to be defeated from a story standpoint; why couldn't they be defined as a nuanced separate culture that still posed a military threat, like the other Trek antagonist races? Klingons, for example, were humanized over the latter-day series and even exploited for comedy, but they were still treated as dangerous opponents that the Federation absolutely wanted to avoid open war with.

Even as late as "Scorpion", Borg episodes were special because every encounter with a cube was depicted as a desperate chase/assault that Starfleet barely won, and even then with heavy casualties. But as VOY wore on, the Borg stopped having that level of thoughtful respect granted to them. The Borg couldn't lay waste to Voyager, to be sure, but neither was it wise to simply have them continue to show up in force during sweeps periods to get their asses handed to them because Janeway and crew always managed to find the two-meters-wide thermal exhaust port that was left unguarded.

Add to that the way the mystique of the Borg was undermined by all the rescued/escaped former Borg that popped up throughout the series, which both made Seven less special and made it seem as if breaking with the Collective was as simple as turning in your resignation, and the Borg became quite dull, which I don't think was necessary.

I see your point. It all happened pretty quickly, and therefore unbelievably, but there wasn't much time left.

I'm not saying that was the intention of TPTB. I suppose you could call this a bit of a post-series fanwanking justification, but in the few seasons left to us in 24th century Trek, the Borg had to be tamed from what they were when first introduced ("a virtually undefeatable antagonist"), to arguably what they finally became by Endgame ("a nuanced separate culture that still posed a military threat"). In other words, I think Voyager did exactly what you said, albeit rather clumsily.

If that hadn't happened, the end of modern Trek would have left Earth and the Federation in a very precarious position.

 

[scotthm]

McCoy said:
How else could we have seen the Borg threat handled by this point in time?

I don't think it needed to be 'handled'. Let the Borg continue to be a threat.

There were plenty of opportunities to put Voyager in jeopardy other than to have them overcome odds that defeated entire fleets of starships in the past.

---------------

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Or perhaps the Borg weren't as "perfect" as they thought they were...
But perhaps that's a topic for another thread...
As for Admiral Janeway...

 

[scotthm]

Peach Wookiee said:
Or perhaps the Borg weren't as "perfect" as they thought they were...
But perhaps that's a topic for another thread...
As for Admiral Janeway...

You're right, she wasn't as perfect as she thought she was either.

---------------

 

[Anwar]

scotthm said:

McCoy said:
How else could we have seen the Borg threat handled by this point in time?

I don't think it needed to be 'handled'. Let the Borg continue to be a threat.

There were plenty of opportunities to put Voyager in jeopardy other than to have them overcome odds that defeated entire fleets of starships in the past.

---------------

They tried that several times over the series by giving them new antagonists but nobody watched it unless said enemies were the Borg.

 

[Praetor]

I don't find anything wrong with Admiral Janeway. I liked her on Voyager, even with her inconsistencies. I would say that she is more Kirk-like than Picard, and jumped into promotion to Admiral the first time it was offered, and probably like Kirk, would find a few years down the road that she wished she was still on the bridge of her ship. Picard simply benefitted from Kirk's advice and didn't leave his ship.

 

[WalkinMan]

I should qualify my earlier statement, by saying that I found not much wrong with the concept of Admiral Janeway. I do have serious questions about Admiral Janeway's breaking of the Temporal Prime Directive to bring VOY home early.

 

[Anwar]

That was the alternate Janeway who did that, and I figure she would've found a way to do it even if the whole crew was against her.

 

[Broccoli]

Star Treks said:
So what's wrong with "Admiral Janeway" anyway?

Nothing. Angry fanboys bitching. That's really all it amounts too. They would rather have another nameless admiral there instead of a quick nod to greater Star Trek canon.

I also call bullshit on anyone who claims they were in a theatre where everyone booed when Janeway appeared.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Broccoli said:
I also call bullshit on anyone who claims they were in a theatre where everyone booed when Janeway appeared.

I have no doubt that groups of VOY haters or Berman/Braga haters went to see "Nemesis", perhaps to heckle all the way through.

I've been in ST V screenings where everyone laughed when Scotty hits his head, and another where they jeered.

I've been in a ST III audience where we were anticipating Grace Lee Whitney's cameo - and thus a whole row cheered her, with others asking, "Huh? Who's that?"

A friend once set me an audiotape of ST III where people near her giggle stupidly when Kirk tells Sarek to "Come".

In the premiere screening of "Nemesis" I went to, the Janeway appearance was met with a collective "Ha!"

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Everybody has a different story to tell when it comes to seeing the movies in the theaters.

 

[SciFi75]

This is a good topic.

I'm in the category where I thought it was cool to see an Admiral Janeway. However, it didn't sit right with me at the moment that Picard was the one taking the orders.

But then I watched Generations and Insurrection. Including Nemesis there is an underlying issue of Picard coming to terms with his past and his future. He knows he's not getting any younger and his whole life has been for Starfleet. If you take at look at the scene in Nemesis where Picard is driving the Argo, you can see he has already made changes. This is someone enjoying a second life so to speak.

I sincerely believe that Picard has turned down several offers to become an Admiral and has taken Kirk's advice that being on the bridge of a starship makes the most difference.

As for Janeway, she did deal the Borg a major set back and the information she collected from the DQ alone would warrant her a promotion to the admiralty. It would have been an earned promotion.

So, in the end, I realized that the scene does make sense and there's nothing wrong with it.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Frankly, they handled Janeway's character well during her brief appearance, a lot better than the way they botched Picard and the rest of the TNG crew. Who were those people, anyway? Because they sure didn't act much like the TNG crew I followed for seven seasons.