The absurdity of promoting Janeway to admiral

[froot]

Wow. What gives the impression that Janeway is bipolar? The fact that she has a vagina?

Am I the only one who took this as a jab at her gender and found it offensive?

No, most of the Voyager diehards here will claim sexism at any criticism of Janeway.


Since I agreed with the poster that made the comment, for me it has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with character inconsistencies.

I hate to play devil's advocate here, but I do wish we'd stop throwing sexism into the mix every time a thread like this pops up. It absolutely exists, but I doubt that it's at the core of this argument. I can think of two or three females off the top of my head who wish fervently that Janeway would die in a shuttle fire, and at least a couple males who like her just fine. I've never seen these supposed "inconsistencies" (save the Killing Game thing) and this "bipolar" thing that's been coming up for 15 years, but, you know, we all watch shows from a different point of view.

But, anyway, get over it, Picard fans. It'll be okay. You guys have about 294237946 TNG movies to watch. And if you're really feeling worked up about the little 2-minute cameo, you can crack open "Before Dishonor" and read about Picard slaying Janeway a few times until the anger is gone.

Let us VOY fans have our 2 minutes out of all the movies. It's the best we'll ever get.

 

[doubleohfive]

Suddenly I find myself wondering what the OP hoped to accomplish by posting this thread in the Voyager forum, where, presumably all the Voyager (and thus Janeway) fans would be hanging out. If it really is about the "absurdity" of Janeway's promotion, why not post it in the TNG or Movies forum where the OP might have more like-minded posters to discuss this with?

As it stands I question whether or not this is simply inelegant troll bait.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Enterprise inherited the Voyager Writing Room.

Archer is Janeway 2.0.

Archer is Janeway with a penis.

(For season one and two at least, until they actually tried to write a larger story where consequences and momentum started to influence growth and wear.)

His penis has never slowed my objections to his identical rationale to Janeway.

I have just about all the same problems with (early) Archer as I did with Janeway.

Although here's the subtle difference, it's because of Archer clusterfucking about insisting on the moral imperative that all the rules, directives and conventions had to be invented to stop Starship Captains form being Imperialist Godmonsters controlling fate and dragging earth into the wrong s... The rules were (eventually) made (after/later) to stop Archer from being Janeway, whereas (much later) Janeway could only degenerate into being allowed to enjoy an Archerlike lifestyle if she wanted to ignore and poop on 200 years of evolution and growth.

My point has always been that she is not a bad Captain, just a bad Starfleet Captain.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Suddenly I find myself wondering what the OP hoped to accomplish by posting this thread in the Voyager forum, where, presumably all the Voyager (and thus Janeway) fans would be hanging out. If it really is about the "absurdity" of Janeway's promotion, why not post it in the TNG or Movies forum where the OP might have more like-minded posters to discuss this with?

As it stands I question whether or not this is simply inelegant troll bait.

Talking to like minded people is like talking to yourself.

The thread title is very trollish but the actual post is well thought out and it's really asking if Janeway's skillset wouldn't have be more wisely applied into another direction like the DQ, Science or the Borg, which is a perfectly valid argument.

However.

Maybe Janeway was tired of the same old bullshit she had already mastered and wanted to try her hand at a new area? A new field, broaden her interests? Because lets face it, Janeway is not a specialist. She is a generalist. The Unknown smacks her in the face balls first and she rides it till it peters out and calls her momma. She might not have been a Romulan Specialist, but I always assumed that since she was so new to the Admiralty (thousands of admirals matriculating within and without a few buildings on Earth) that she was working with/for other admirals, delivering orders (You can't have even a Captain delivering orders to other Captains. Protocol. they need an admiral to pass on even the most mundane orders.)from dozens of admirals to thousand of Starship captain all over known space.

Kathryn was at the bottom of the totem again, it would have been a while (weeks? Months?) before they gave her a job where she was allowed to think (by herself without training wheels.).

 

[froot]

As it stands I question whether or not this is simply inelegant troll bait.

People coming in here to bait the VOY fans? Absurd! Such a thing has never occurred here.

 

[doubleohfive]

A couple more points to consider:

1) The original poster in this thread, Xerxes-something-or-other, hasn't bothered to post in this thread at all since starting this discussion, once again lending credence to the whole 'troll-bait' theory.

2) Psychology/sexism/accomplishments. A lot of people are citing Janeway's purported bipolar disorder or her accomplishments during the course of Voyager's journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. Some are even dragging out the tired sexism card. It's generally easy to find reasons to support or discredit each of these but either way we still end up with no definite answer or reasoning about the quarrel.

In short, there are some people who resent Janeway being an Admiral because she's a woman.

In short, there are some people who resent Janeway being an Admiral because she was gone for seven years on a tiny ship.

In short, there are people who resent Janeway because they buy in to this theory that she's got a bipolar disorder.

In short, these people who believe these things are fucking idiots.

For starters, regarding both the "accomplishments (or, depending on who you talk to, lack thereof)" Janeway made, that all rests solely on the shoulders of the writing staff of the show, which I'm pretty sure is commonly known to have turned over several times during the show's seven years.

I can't believe I have to spell this out but here goes: There is no Starfleet, no Starfleet Command or Federation Council out there in outer space making decisions about who gets promoted over whom or what particular episode dilemma is worthy of violating the Prime Directive over or not.

It's all the writers.

Even Picard contradicted himself on this one. (See: "Journey's End and Star Trek: Insurrection.) Once again -- this wasn't Picard's fault, it was the writers who did that. Similarly, it wasn't really Picard's choice to not be an admiral; it was the writers who didn't promote him because they didn't fucking want to. It's that simple.

Likewise, regarding the supposed "expert diagnosis" by a bunch of Star Trek nerds that Janeway was bi-polar: Sorry kids, I don't buy it. I've known people with bi-polar disorder and Janeway is far and away nowhere near someone with that crippling neurological disorder. And even if she were portrayed as such (once again, but those pesky writers!) it would still have wound up being through the lens of not only the tropes of television writing and network scrutiny but also through the extremely saline filter of 24th century Trek.

Nope, not going to buy it. I wonder if these same "experts" would see Kirk as being bisexual throughout TOS? (A recent thread this summer on that very topic was summarily disregarded and theories shot down by several posters in the TOS forum, yet the theories had evidence based purely on speculation -- just like this Janeway bipolar issue.

(Though, it would be an interesting experiment to re-watch the series, pretending Janeway was bi-polar and see if it changes anything. Likewise to re-watch TOS as if Kirk was bi-sexual.)

As for the sexist reasoning, well we sadly live in a world still where many people still think men can do things better than women, and while there are probably still some things men do do better than women and there are probably still things that women do better than men, the fact that it has carried over to the rank and position jockeying of two fictional characters from a now defunct continuity at the tail end of a now-revitalized franchise is nitpicking at its worst. Further, the inability of the OCD crowd to recognize the two minute cameo as anything more than what it was -- a cameo, for fun, for the fans -- just fuels the fire of that much maligned, much decried "Star Trek fan stereotype" that I'm sure we've all encountered and would rather not acknowledge anymore. And yet ... this argument keeps coming up.


So, to reiterate... it's the writers who made these changes and executed the decisions. Someone up thread made the very succinct point that they "took the cameo for what it was - a chance to see Janeway on the big screen."

That's what it was. Getting your Starfleet issue briefs in a bunch over it being for any other reason than a quick nod to the fans is overkill.

 

[zar]

I can't believe I have to spell this out but here goes...

Neither can I... in fact, I'm sure you didn't have to spell it out. Do you honestly believe that these people are not aware that Starfleet is imaginary? I think it goes without saying that when someone says "this should not have happened", they mean "the writers should not have made this happen". Folks tend to like stories that make sense.

 

[doubleohfive]

Depends. How long have you been posting here? I've been here nine years and I've come across some seriously inept people, who have very little in the way of common sense.

And before anyone goes apeshit and clicks the little triangle with the exclamation point, no, I'm not referring to anyone specifically, either here in this thread or anywhere else. Just recollecting from past experience.

 

[zar]

If you're not referring to anyone in this thread, to whose benefit did you spell it out?

 

[Guy Gardener]

There's a footnote on page 7 of the Motion picture (paperback) adaptation written Roddenberry where a student thinks that not only is Kirk Bisexual but that Kirk and Spock were lovers. Kirk chuckled, saying that he would like to think that he was smart enough to chose a lover who wanted to mate more than once every seven years. The conclusion of the footnote was that every one in the federation was bisexual EXCEPT Kirk.

Back to being mean about Janeway,

Biploar? Probably not.

Manic Depressive? Almost certainly.

Evidence: Night (no explanations required) and Year of Hell when the ship was broken and she thought taking a joy ride with out navigational shields was better than doing nothing for another second.

But her mental state doesn't matter because there's no reason she shouldn't have been promoted, and her Promotion was the cherry on the top of a public relations orgy exactly when the federation needed some heroes to cling to after it got so thoroughly pwned by the Dominion when reasonable people who had been paying attention should really have had very little faith in the command structure as it stood.

She was a distraction.

For all the horrors I claim this woman is responsible and culpable for, that are somehow invisible when viewed through the rose coloured glasses of half blind morons (sorry if that is offensive, but I just adore the quote.) one would have to assume that even Captain Ransom would have been promoted to Admiral if he got home first BECAUSE Starfleet needed a circus to keep the plebs happy.

That's an interesting thought?

If Ransom had gotten home first, and Janeway arrived home a few years later, would she have still been promoted or just be told that she's late and have her pay docked for arsing about?

Q: "No one cares about second place. Who the fuck remembers what the second man on the moon said for his first step?"

A: "What magnificent desolation."

 

[doubleohfive]

If you're not referring to anyone in this thread, to whose benefit did you spell it out?

Don't be coy. It was a disclaimer.

 

[zar]

doubleohfive: I'm being sincere. I don't understand why you would feel the need to point that out here unless you actually believe one or more of the people in this thread are too ignorant to already understand it themselves.

Guy Gardener: In mine, the footnote is on page 22.

 

[doubleohfive]

I see. Once again though, I was simply pointing it out in case some of those common-sense-challenged persons do happen upon this thread, because they do tend to glom on to topics such as this, and based on some of the extraordinary lengths some have already gone to in this thread, it seemed worth including.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But, no one, and I mean no one likes the truth.

It was explained to me well that promotions in the military are not for doing a job well, because if you don't do your job well then you're demoted, but they promote you when they believe you're ready for something either more complicated or with greater responsibility. What ever your job is, that's exactly the rank required to staff that position and it's a waste to put a higher rank in there and dangerous to put a lower rank in...

There was no grander adventure possible or left for Kathryn as a Captan.

 

[demvoices]

You know, all these years later I still don't understand why some Trekkies' underpants get all bunched up over this topic. I've tried to hypothesize, on occasion, as to why and I never seem to come to any conclusive decision.

Why is the fact that Janeway was promoted to Admiral so absurd?

Is it because Janeway's a woman?

Is it because she wasn't the captain of the Federation flagship?

Is it because you think Picard should have been promoted instead, as if Janeway somehow was competing for the admiral's bars with him and won?

And even if it is because of any of these things, so what? What's wrong with Janeway being promoted to admiral? Nobody seemed to mind Kirk being an Admiral, then a Captain, then an Admiral again ... and then a Captain again in the TOS films. Nobody seemed to mind Sisko being promoted from Commander to Captain. Nobody seemed to care when Riker was captain of the Enterprise for an episode. Why is it that Janeway's admiralty is such a polarizing, flickerpiss=inducing topic?

For fuck's sake, it was a cameo. A tip of the hat to Voyager fans who would go see the movie, lending some continuity to the thing and otherwise rather harmless in the grand scheme of things.

In short - stop thinking so hard about minor, trivial tidbits like this. You just wind up spending more time not liking it than anything else. And lord knows, we already have enough Trekkie assholes who excel at not liking stuff as it is.

Kirk's promotion was well deserved. Janeway's command was LOST for 7 years- what did she accomplish that deserved a promotion? That's what people are upset about.

 

[Triskelion]

She turned an admiral's wayward son into a fine officer of the fleet - and then brought him - and a daughter-in-law and grandchild - home from the missing in action. Surely this earned her Adm Paris' commendation for the evaluation committee.

Kate got the promotion because she apparently approved of the offer. JL obviously has not sought it, preferring to remain a captain (no doubt for similar reasons Kirk advised him to). What's the problem?

For all we know she was Admiral of the Reception Desk relaying all orders for a certain area. I mean - fill in the blanks to your own satisfaction. On the bright side she didn't get fat and try to shoehorn as her younger self into the central viewpoint character of some holonovel of the events.

(Though who's to say Archer's Future Guy wasn't in fact, Future Gal)?


First, a large thank you to anyone and everyone who ever contributed to the production of Star Trek and other sci fi entertainment. Sincerely. On behalf of my butt.

In defense of fans - obviously people care enough about the franchise to post on a message board about it. Count it as a vote of success that your creative project didn't go down the drain of obscurity like so many others have. The fact that someone takes the trouble to invest in a "world" - sometimes better informed than some writers-of-the-week, or cynical showbiz suit - should not be misconstrued as anything more than people sharing their thoughts about the good and bad around a work of art.

It's not that your project is that central in people's lives - it's that people like sharing their responses to experiences. It's gonna happen. It is possible to simultaneously be entertained by a story or, failing that, its execution. And also - it's not offending the fantasy that upsets people; its not caring enough to get it right after you have asked people to invest their own time in a franchise. Production flaws are easily overlooked. Contempt for the audience? Not so much.

So if you can't take the heat - stay out of the galley.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I remember when I was watching Nemesis with my brother. He's not quite as into Trek as I am. And he asked the same thing. "Why was she an admiral and he wasn't"? I told him there were instances in the show where it was offered to him and he turned it down.

I've read some rumors that the higher ups in Starfleet promoted her to keep her where they could keep an eye on her. Because they did consider her a maverick.

 

[soornge]

Why on Earth was Janeway put in a position to give Picard strategic orders regarding Romulans?

What happened to the Enterprise's old boss the nice Admiral Nakamura?

Why did they promote Janeway into a Necheyev like operations position against a threat power? Did Janeway have vast experience with Romulans?

Why would she choose a command admiralty position given her career history of coming up through the sciences? Surely Starfleet had a division dedicated to exploring and researching the Delta quadrant, why was she not offered a position there?

my guess is after archer kirk sulu picard sisko starfleet was just tired of good commanders and captains

 

[soornge]

really can not defend any of janeways command decisions : the do not even have an interior logic to the character : the character is just badly written

 

[Guy Gardener]

What about that time she slowed to 3/4s impulse?

That was rough.