Janeway was a female captain, but was originally surrounded almost entirely by a male crew at least before they were replaced and the Maquis joined.
The thing that bugged me about Janeway was that she always seemed like she had something to prove or compensate for.
Sure no Captain is the same, be that Kirk, Archer, Picard, Sisko, etc..... but Janeway's attitude didn't seem so much as confidence, but more like she always had to prove her pair were just as big as the rest of the boys..... to a fault.
Archer, Sisko, Picard and even Kirk would normally resort to combat only as a last resort and would usually talk a situation down to a compromise.
Janeway?
Besides the contradictions of heir loyalty to the Prime Directive, when she was stopped by an alien species for entering their territory or told to turn back, etc..... she'd give the diplomacy thing a go for about 20 seconds..... but even then it wasn't diplomacy.
The aliens would explain to her their situation and that they didn't want anybody crossing their territory. She'd tell them that they're going through regardless and toss them some sort of "deal"...... if the deal wasn't accepted, then it was
"BATTLE STATIONS!"
Then the fighting would go for most of the episode and near the end when Voyager has had enough and they're about to be destroyed, they discover something that turns the tides in their favor and then hails the aliens..... tells them what they can do and then tells them to either let them pass through their territory, or else.
Or they'd eventually come to a compromise they can all agree on and everybody is happy.
Other times, she'd just think up the most insane plan possible, tell the crew what they're going to do and regardless of opposition, even from her 1st officer..... nothing changes, and they're to carry out her screwed up plan which usually ended up leaving them worse then when they started.
Or something like this would happen:
"Captain, we've just picked up a strange anomaly on the sensors and it's coming from that strange looking nebula over there."
"Hmmm..... well that will take us a year off our trip in the wrong direction, there are readings in that nebula that are unknown, but we're out here to explore after all..... fly us right into the centre of the nebula Mr. Paris."
And then they spend the rest of the episode trying to figure out how to get their ship back out of the Nebula before it's crushed, or eaten, or twisted into a pretzel...... even though a number of her crew warned her about the risks.
Normally Sisko, Picard or whoever would send a probe first and see what happened to the probe before sending the ship in..... but no...... Janeway figured she'll take the whole damn ship in to see what's going on first and then figure it all out as they go.
Now don't get me wrong, there are times she does quite well with diplomacy, where she handled other species quite well and made decent relations with other aliens with the Federation...... but anytime anybody put her in a tough position, even in the slightest..... she'd raise that eyebrow, scowl, put her hands on her hips and give the speech about how she doesn't tuck her tail between her legs and run and she's basically right there with her finger on the Red Alert button ready to do some damage to them for their insolence and show them who wears the pants in the relationship...... and then when she's got them cornered, she'll hail with that omnipotent attitude of "Do as I say or be destroyed."
And when the above didn't work out, when her ship is virtually destroyed and most of her crew is dead..... does she learn from her consequences?
No.... she'll go back in time and make sure the second time around goes the way she originally wanted.
Talk about women always being right
