What I'm hearing is that Janeway is the best captain.
What are your opinions regarding Star Trek that are, shall we say, unorthodox?
What I'm hearing is that Janeway is the best captain.
Many people have said this.
I think we were strictly talking about the crew themselves and not the ship. Though considering the danger of spreading that disease that killed the Exeter crew, I suspect it was destroyed. (Much like the Lantree in "Unnatural Selection".)
She was the most inconsistent captain for sure.
Equinox aired last night and I'm having a hard time with Janeway and the moral high ground she takes in the episode.
Equinox was a small vessel that lost 39 of its crew (1/2) the first week they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
Ransom and the rest of the survivors had to resort to desperate measures to survive.
If that means breaking a few Starfleet regulations to get back home quicker, with less loss of life, I would be willing to live with the consequences/repercussions of my actions.
Equinox was a small vessel that lost 39 of its crew (1/2) the first week they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
Ransom and the rest of the survivors had to resort to desperate measures to survive.
If that means breaking a few Starfleet regulations to get back home quicker, with less loss of life, I would be willing to live with the consequences/repercussions of my actions.
They were shovelling people into the warp core as fuel.
Janeway literally dismisses Tuvok about raising objections around violating the Prime Directive in one episode.
Beat me to it...
It was an alien life form that Ransom and his crew didn't know were intelligent.
For decades we hunted whales for their meat and blubber and it has been shown that they are intelligent creatures and yet some cultures still do it.
"JANEWAY: I might believe that if I hadn't examined your research. These experiments were meticulous and they were brutal. If you'd felt any remorse, you'd never have continued.
RANSOM: Starfleet regulation three, paragraph twelve. In the event of imminent destruction, a captain is authorised to preserve the lives of his crew by any justifiable means.
JANEWAY: I doubt that protocol covers mass murder.
RANSOM: In my judgment, it did."
It's like polar exploration: when the chips are down and you're in a jam, you need a Shackleton. If everything is going your way and you like the taste of raw Husky, Amundsen is your guy. Nobody wants to serve under Scott. Peary is.. well.. Peary.
Janeway is Star Trek's Shackleton. She'll get you home no matter what (even if you're a stowaway). It will take awhile. But your odds are good.
If you don't mind braking some rules here and there and getting good marks for original thinking Amundsen is your Kirk under the best Kirk circumstances, until his luck ran out (in both cases). Then uh he's still Kirk.
If you you want to die meaninglessly and eloquently to prove a point in a mad dash to get there first, before you're really ready Archer is Scott. Archer at least had a more loyal crew.
If you want to get a lot of credit for things that probably didn't exactly happen the way its told, and develop an antagonistic relationship with your superiors, but not worry about too many losses, Peary is probably the closest to Picard.
And if you have to fix some of Picard's messes while getting along better with the natives, I guess The Sisko is Matthew Henson.
Janeway is Star Trek's Shackleton. She'll get you home no matter what (even if you're a stowaway). It will take awhile. But your odds are good.
If you don't mind braking some rules here and there and getting good marks for original thinking Amundsen is your Kirk under the best Kirk circumstances, until his luck ran out (in both cases). Then uh he's still Kirk.
If you you want to die meaninglessly and eloquently to prove a point in a mad dash to get there first, before you're really ready Archer is Scott. Archer at least had a more loyal crew.
If you want to get a lot of credit for things that probably didn't exactly happen the way its told, and develop an antagonistic relationship with your superiors, but not worry about too many losses, Peary is probably the closest to Picard.
And if you have to fix some of Picard's messes while getting along better with the natives, I guess The Sisko is Matthew Henson.
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In one of the blu-ray extras, Ron Moore tells a story about his script for the episode "The Bonding". According to Moore, Roddenberry objected to the orphaned child mourning his mother's death. In Roddenberry's idea of utopia, people, even children, would accept death as a matter of life and shrug it off. Like you, I absolutely love the utopianism of early TNG, but I'll concede Roddenberry might have gone too far that time.
I agree. I prefer Starfleet to be portrayed as scientists and diplomats, rather than soldiers. And I prefer the crew's disagreements to revolve around intellectual questions of ethics, rather than petty interpersonal grievances. I understand why that doesn't work on the Big Screen, but the formula should be ideal for televised series.
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There are plenty of movies that have done that on the big screen. Star Trek just chooses not to, at least not since TMP. But intelligent, thoughtful sci-fi that doesn't rely on huge action sequences can work. From 2001 to Contact, that has been shown time and again.
In fact, I would argue that TNG would have been more successful on the big screen if they had stuck to what they did on TV. The show was enormously successful -- in fact, it is the most success Trek has ever had on TV and the only time a Trek show really broke into the cultural mainstream during its initial run. But, of course, when they took it to the big screen, some Really Smart Person® at Paramount decides, no, we've got to have Action Hero Picard and boob jokes.
The dude cheated on one (unfair) test and stole a starship one time and now he's stuck with this reputation as a rule breaker. Meanwhile Spock stole the Enterprise at least twice as many times, and everyone thinks of him as being by the book!
And don't forget that in the former case, they actually gave him a commendation for his cheating and in the latter case, they ended up dismissing all but one of the charges against him and then handing him a new starship.
In fairness all Amundsen did was lie about where he was going (literally the exact opposite end of the planet, which i suppose technically makes it one of the most incredible fibs ever told), didn't tell anyone what he was doing and didn't check in with any news about Scott (not his fault really, as he didn't know how badly Scott had it) leaving people wondering. Kirk cheated on a test, violated numerous time laws he may or may not have known about, or were invented because of him, and stole a ship.
She can live with it.
Series Kirk and movie Kirk have different reputations.
He wasn't really a rule breaker in TOS. Rule bender, sure.
Movie Kirk is where he is more the rule breaker, namely due to ST III.
He wasn't really a rule breaker in TOS. Rule bender, sure.
Movie Kirk is where he is more the rule breaker, namely due to ST III.
"We'll all have moved past that" makes for lousy drama. Humans scoffing at alien emotions. You can put off grieving until you're alone, or the crisis is past, but not just go "meh" and pretend it didn't happen. One thing "And the Children Shall Lead" has in its favor is that children acting as though nothing happened after their parents have just died is seen as abnormal behavior.
The times he chooses to break the rules are all the more notable for their apparent rarity; he does so when it matters, not just because he can.
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Kirk definitely goes big on the rule breakers by far. Just a list, and going off of USN regulations or terms, and yes I know STARFLEET isn't the Navy but I don't think that makes these things lesser offensives.
- Disobeys a direct and lawful order
- Assault on security officers.
- Brig break.
- Conspiracy to violate lawful chain of command, with Scotty and Uhura disrupting their duties.
- Theft of Starfleet property.
- Violation of quarantine zone.
- Killing foreign nationals under a false flag of truce.
That's a lot of rules to break.
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