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

[T'Cal]

CaptJimboJones said:
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.

I completely agree with your statement about Picard and Co. Between the writer and the director, I'm not sure who knew less about these characters. As for Janeway, let me start off by saying I enjoyed much of VOY. There weren't as many excellent episodes as TNG and DS9, but many were very good with ony a few clinkers. I liked that she was written and portrayed as a strong leader with the qualities of an intelligent person and the emotions of a woman. She came across as truly feeling for and caring about her crew as if they were her family.

I have two beefs with her appearance in NEM. One is that it didn't make a whole lot of sense that she would be a 2-star admiral so quickly upon her return. The second is that it was a poorly written scene, as many were in this movie. There was nothing that made me think that the lines were written especially for Janeway or for Mulgrew to utter them. Any character or actor could've said those lines. I almost would've prefered an unknown admiral or perhaps one that we knew only a little about, such as Admiral Jellico from TNG's Chain of Command 2-parter. In the New Frontier books, Jellico was promoted and that would've been a nice tie in.

 

[Sec31Mike]

Theres an old adage that says "Promote them until they're useless" In Janeway's case I think this applies. At the end of Voyager, I don't think they had any direction, so why not promote Janeway and get her out of the picture.

I don't think Janeway will ever be seen on screen again, so why not throw a Star Trek Captain a bone, and give her a last Hurrah.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

what's wrong with it is that Voyager was a bad show with bad writing, and Janeway was a badly written character.... and thus people get upset when Voyager and/or Janeway show up.


Err, at least that's my problem with it. It just reminds me of how shitty Voyager was. Wow what a wasted opportunity.

 

[Anwar]

Well what did you expect? The whole premise was just "Lost in Space, only not camp".

Hell, the only reason nuBSG is considered good is because of that silly shaky-camera thing, the people all act exactly like 20st century people do, and the lighting/sets are all dark/grimy. Even though their characters haven't really changed at all since the beginning, just like the VOY chars didn't. Hell, both shows even have beautiful blondes in sexy outfits only people think it's okay for BSG but not Trek.

 

[cardinal biggles]

^I'm guessing you're not a fan. I'm not a big fan of nuBSG either, but there's more to like there than just the cinematography. And in defense of Six, she was there from the beginning, she wasn't added to the show halfway through in an attempt to boost sagging ratings.

 

[Broccoli]

T'Cal said:
One is that it didn't make a whole lot of sense that she would be a 2-star admiral so quickly upon her return.

Just to counterpoint from another franchise.

In SG-1, Jack went from Col to 2-star general within a two year timespan and no one blinked.

Maybe Janeway has the same thing happen to her. Perhaps Starfleet was by and large pleased at what Janeway did in the Delta Quadrant given the circumstances and gave her a bump up. Also she did have nothing by first-contacts and more-or-less destroyed the Borg.

Or when she returned, maybe they wanted her for a specific position at SFC, but it requited a two-pipped Admiral. Have her at one-pip for a year, then give her another bump.

Or maybe she just shagged the C-in-C.

Point is, it's not out of the realm of possibility for her to be a 2-pipped Admiral by the time of Nemesis.

 

[Sec31Mike]

In SG1 Jack was a 1 Star General for 2 years. Then promoted to 2 star. Promotions for flag officers do not work the same way as line officers.

When it comes to Flag Officers (Generals & Admirals) the rank is usually dependent upon the specific position. You cannot become a flag officer without occupying a specific office i.e. Commander, 5th Tactical Wing or Deputy Director of Operations, Starfleet Intelligence.

 

[Broccoli]

Sec31Mike said:
In SG1 Jack was a 1 Star General for 2 years. Then promoted to 2 star.

Nope. Jack was a 1-star during season 8. When we see him in uniform at the beginning of season 9 (in "Origin," about one year from "New Order"), he is a 2-star.

Jack in "Origin"

When it comes to Flag Officers (Generals & Admirals) the rank is usually dependent upon the specific position. You cannot become a flag officer without occupying a specific office i.e. Commander, 5th Tactical Wing or Deputy Director of Operations, Starfleet Intelligence.

Which is what I was alluding too. Perhaps when Janeway returned, she was given a promotion to one-pip admiral and given a position that a one-pip admiral would have. Then, a year later, she was upped again for a different position they wanted her for.

My speculation was that Starfleet command wanted her for the two-pipped position, but they couldn't justify giving that much a bump in rank all at once, so they dragged it out.

Just a thought.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Have we ever seen a one-pip admiral on-screen in the TNG era? Obviously the rank should exist, but all we ever seem to get are two-, three-, and the occasional four-pip admirals. Maybe you just go straight from Captain to two-pip admiral?

 

[Timo]

It would be a good assumption that Kirk was promoted two steps during the three to seven years between his TOS captaincy and TMP desk jockeying for this very reason. Wouldn't do to hand over the position of Chief of SF Ops to a mere Commodore.

But Janeway was promoted from Captain to Vice Admiral, three steps in all, in what probably (but not necessarily) was a shorter time than with Kirk's promotions. And if Kirk could get a job as prestigious as that with mere Rear Admiral rank, would Janeway really need three pips?

Picard was going to be Academy commandant with just one pip in "Coming of Age". The Bolian in "Paradise Lost" held the position with two pips. And two-pippers have commanded entire fleets in wartime! However, the people bossing Picard around (Haden, Nechayev, and now Janeway) have always been Vice Admirals...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Steven Of Nine]

Star Treks said:
However, I seem to remember seeing (in several boards) people gripe about having "Admiral Janeway" in Nemesis. I didn't think much about it at first, but it has been starting to bother me, so I'll just ask: What's wrong with that?

Funnily enough, the same thing as in 1994/95 when fandom first found out the next captain would be a woman.

Fandom misogyny took over and haters came out. People just don't like Janeway, either because she's a woman, or they don't like her portrayal of a woman as it doesn't jibe with their interpretation of what a woman captain would be. Also, they don't like Voyager and Janeway suffers as its Captain character.

I love 'em both. But she was wasted in a cameo in the 2nd worst ST film made.

 

[McCoy]

Might the ranks have been thinned a bit by the Dominion War? Maybe by the time she got back there were more spots open than usual.

Combine that with her accomplishments in the Delta Quadrant with LITTLE OR NO SUPPORT from the Federation for seven years (not a situation that can be compared with any of the other series' captains, I mean come on errors in judgement would be inevitable and more likely to be forgiven), the fact that the general public would have regarded her a freakin' HERO (very few would be privy to the more sensitive details of what happened out there), and the fact that the PR generated by such a promotion would have soothed a war-weary populace...

A few years after NEM, hell, she's probably President of Earth by now.

 

[Broccoli]

cardinal biggles said:
Have we ever seen a one-pip admiral on-screen in the TNG era? Obviously the rank should exist, but all we ever seem to get are two-, three-, and the occasional four-pip admirals. Maybe you just go straight from Captain to two-pip admiral?

Good catch! I have absolutely no idea. I'm sure at least one has appeared...but I can't come up with any at the moment.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Are there any one pip admirals?

 

[Kolrad]

The scene does bother me, but not because I have a problem with Janeway being in the movie.

It just serves as a reminder to me of how the TNG movies took the easy road of little to no change for the main characters instead of shaking things up the way the original series movies did.

In those movies, we saw the main characters get promoted and serve on other ships (Chekov on Reliant) and in other roles (Spock teaching at the Academy, Sulu getting his own command). You can show those kinds of changes more easily in a movie series than you can in a TV series, and they have the benefit of adding realism (not to mention being more interesting).

Unfortunately, the TNG movies were stuck in a TV mentality of preserving the status quo for "next week." The crew are stagnant, still in the exact same places they were during the series. The only exception is Worf, thanks to DS9, and Nemesis ignored that. I think it hurt the plausibility of the Enterprise as a ship within a military (or military-like) fleet when its senior staff stayed at the same ranks and positions for over 10 years.

During the TV series, the Enterprise was portrayed as a posting that "the best and the brightest" competed over. It's hard to see it that way in the movies, considering that it's crewed by officers who seem to have no interest in advancement. It's totally reasonable for Janeway to be an admiral in Nemesis, but her presence just highlights how unusual it is for Picard to still be a captain-- he's getting passed up by captains with much less seniority.

I really think it would have worked better for Picard to be promoted to admiral at some point during the TNG movie series; it could have opened up some interesting story possibilities. Furthermore, I think Picard would have made a really good admiral, with his strategic mind and strong sense of ethics. (Goodness knows, Starfleet is short on admirals who aren't corrupt or insane!)

The advice that Kirk gave to Picard in Generations, "don't let them promote you," is spot-on for Kirk. The story of Kirk's character throughout the six movies can nearly be summed up by that phrase. But Picard is not Kirk-- and another weakness I see in the TNG movies is that they too often failed to realize that.

 

[Praetor]

Well said, Kolrad ! While I don't think I would have wanted Picard promoted during the series, having him promoted by, say, Insurrection, would have possibly made that movie all the more interesting.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

Maybe another angle would be that Captain Picard could be fighting promotion. Starfleet's telling him to accept promotion or leave Starfleet...

 

[Anwar]

The problem was that there was no real time gap in between the TNG TV series and the TNG movies, whereas with TOS there had been a 14 or so year gap between the TV show and movies that allowed for a lot of off-screen stuff to happen that the writers could expand and explore on, but they wouldn't have to have shown it all happening.

If they had waited a few years before making the TNG movies then it's possible they'd have been able to do stuff like promote Picard, give Riker his own ship, make Data the new XO, etc.

 

[Kolrad]

Yeah; I can certainly see that the long gap between the original series and the movies made it a natural choice to show that the crew had moved on to other things-- TMP was about getting all of the characters back into their familiar roles, really.

They also had more freedom in deciding how much time had passed since the last movie, because there weren't any other Star Trek series telling stories in the same time frame the way that DS9 and Voyager were during the TNG movies. The TNG movie producers and writers probably didn't feel like they could make a trilogy like Trek II-IV, where each story follows almost immediately after the last.

But even considering that, it would have been nice to take advantage of those 2 and 4-year gaps between the TNG movies by planning ahead a bit. They wouldn't need to show every change happening-- just realize that they can start the characters in more interesting situations than the same places we saw them every week on TV. You can do that in a way that serves the story you're trying to tell-- like how Chekov started TWOK on the Reliant; we didn't need to actually see how he got there.

I have to admit that I have thought of one example of a TNG movie doing this, if in a small way-- Data started Insurrection with the research team on the Baku world; he was "on loan" from the Enterprise, so that wasn't really anything a TNG episode couldn't have done, but it still made for a more interesting opening for the movie.

 

[Delta1]

McCoy said:
Might the ranks have been thinned a bit by the Dominion War? Maybe by the time she got back there were more spots open than usual.

Doubtful. Militaries usually shrink after the big knock-down drag-out fights, and wartime rank reverts to permanent rank. I think Patton, for instance, lost three grades after WWI. Janeway would probably come back to find competition for rank fiercer than ever.