Yet many fans praise him for "Doing what he had to do.".
When did the Janeway hatred truly start to coalesce?
- Thread starter Ragitsu
- Start date
Yet many fans praise him for "Doing what he had to do.".
Fans interpretation doesn't make that the correct one. The authors of the piece were not saying "war crimes are cool."
Fans are welcome to their opinion but that doesn't make it the intent of the authors. Not sure why fans interpretation matters here.
Sisko did bad, admitted it was bad, and moved on.
Janeway did bad, turned the universe upside-down, called herself a hero, and threatened everyone who disagreed with her.
Janeway did bad, turned the universe upside-down, called herself a hero, and threatened everyone who disagreed with her.
There are always going to be different reactions by different audience members. That's the whole point of telling a morally ambiguous story -- to pose the viewers with a challenging and difficult question and let them decide for themselves what side they come down on. The same goes for episodes like "A Private Little War" and "Tuvix." We weren't supposed to celebrate the captains' choices, we were supposed to join them in wrestling with the painful question of which was the lesser of two evils.
They are praising the writing and acting for going to a dark place that is rare for Trek. People do root for characters to cross the line and do bad things but only because that makes for compelling drama. It's fiction. People want their views challenged and want to look into the dark side of the human condition and society. War itself is all about moral compromises because it deals with death and destruction and treating human beings as game pieces for a bigger purpose.
We're STILL having a civil war (pre-2005 Trek vs. Kurtzman Trek).
Yeah, absurdity abounds.
I prefer peaceful coexistence. If you enjoy Kurtzman Trek, watch it. If you prefer older Trek, watch that. And if you can appreciate both, you're the luckiest of all. I hail from the days of "13 channels and only 5 or 6 of them worked", so let's enjoy the fact that those days are in the past.
I don't know how much this is a factor, but I do think that a lot of people have been watching reviews of "Voyager" with no context--and I don't just mean the context of the show being reviewed, but of the review itself.
Example: You may have heard of a snarky "Star Trek" reviewer named SF Debris.
SFDebris has some biting, and often hilarious, opinions about Captain Janeway and "Voyager"....along with all of "Star Trek." His interpretation of Janeway is a manic villain; he also suspects all of Starfleet and the Federation to secretly be a sinister totalitarian dystopia where artistic creativity is dead; and postulates that Captain Archer is just a crazy homeless man living in a box, hallucinating all of "Enterprise." I'm not saying SFDebris isn't harsher on some aspects of the franchise than others; but it really does seem like some people have only seen his "Voyager" reviews, and are taking all of his sardonic humor at face value.
It's often said that you shouldn't form an opinion on a show just based off of reviews, without seeing the show for yourself. But I'd add that you also need to know more about the source providing the review, and its context.
Anyway, I guess my point is that some amount of the Janeway hate comes from people cherry-picking reviews of the show to learn about it, without knowing anything about the source providing the review... or humor in general.
Example: You may have heard of a snarky "Star Trek" reviewer named SF Debris.
SFDebris has some biting, and often hilarious, opinions about Captain Janeway and "Voyager"....along with all of "Star Trek." His interpretation of Janeway is a manic villain; he also suspects all of Starfleet and the Federation to secretly be a sinister totalitarian dystopia where artistic creativity is dead; and postulates that Captain Archer is just a crazy homeless man living in a box, hallucinating all of "Enterprise." I'm not saying SFDebris isn't harsher on some aspects of the franchise than others; but it really does seem like some people have only seen his "Voyager" reviews, and are taking all of his sardonic humor at face value.
It's often said that you shouldn't form an opinion on a show just based off of reviews, without seeing the show for yourself. But I'd add that you also need to know more about the source providing the review, and its context.
Anyway, I guess my point is that some amount of the Janeway hate comes from people cherry-picking reviews of the show to learn about it, without knowing anything about the source providing the review... or humor in general.
You know, that's a good point. There's a long history of people mistaking parodies for the real thing. For instance, a lot of the public perception of William Shatner's acting style is based on comedians' exaggerated impressions of him rather than on the real thing. And there are people who have vaguely heard of the Saturday Night Live "Get a Life" sketch but missed the part where it was a scripted comedy bit, so they believe Shatner really went on an insulting rant against fans at a convention.
Not limited to Trek, either. There's a widespread perception that President Gerald Ford was a klutz, because Chevy Chase made that a routine part of his Ford impression on SNL, based on one or two times that Ford was caught stumbling on camera. Ford was really pretty athletic and coordinated, but the public paid more attention to the spoof than the reality.
Voy Latent Imagine is Janeway's DS9 In The Pale Moon Light.
The Doctor is wiggy before the episode starts, so Kathy rewrites his memories to forget the source of that wigginess, allowing Harry Kim to live, but Doc notices the wrongness in the world that doesn't make sense, goes a little batty, because every trusted friend around himself, is telling the Doctor that he's imagining a make believe sinister conspiracy to fight his selfworth, so the Doctor starts getting paranoid that he's either space crazy or there is a huge subterfuge working against him... Neither of which possibility removes tension from his hollow hololife.
Eventually The Doctor Locks down the truth and says please don't wipe my brain again, but Janeway assures the hologram that he can't resolve the issue, they'd already spent weeks/months waiting for the Doctor to work through his trauma with therapy and meditation, so theoretically it could take him a million more years to soothe his sense of loss from narrowly missing the opportunity to watch Harry Kim choke out, which is time Janeway is unwilling to go without a Doctor, but fuck it, sure they'll give him another year or 5 to sort through his baggage, no skin off her nose, if Tom is the only medical professional on the ship to tend to their boo boos, and half the crew might die for lack of a real doctor any day now.
The Episode ends with a pitching muttering batshit crazy Doctor trying to calm his sad mental disorder, and Janeway nearby sitting on a rocking chair, reading a book waiting for her "friend" to go sane.
Cute.
In the brightest timeline, we are supposed to believe that Janeway sat there, by this automation's side for 15 months waiting for his space crazy haze to clear, and then every one went back to work, and all was good in the world.
Bullshit?
I don't buy it. Mostly because of Virtuoso where they replaced the Doctor with a copy after he abandoned the ship to be an Opera Singer, and never told the new Doctor that he was a duplicate.
Some noprizes...
1. Caring Janeway at the end of Latent Image was a hologram.
2. They sped the Doctor up to Wink of an Eye speed, or faster, and he spent 15 thousand years wrestling with his demons, until he was finally good with "it".
3. They copied the Doctor. 1 to work though the trauma and the other to live a brain washed life ignorant of his misery and depression. They could have left the broken Doctor running in the holodeck for years, and later when he finally got his shit together, they killed the copy. If one of them is a person, then they are all persons, or not, whatever.
4. The compassionate Janeway ending to Latent Image was false memories they implanted into the Doctor's subroutines. He was never given time to find grace, and Janeway never really sat with him for months, while he healed. He's a fucking machine, who is suppose to make their lives easier. The sooner he can grasp that truth, the sooner he can stop aspiring for person hood that he does not deserve.
The Doctor is wiggy before the episode starts, so Kathy rewrites his memories to forget the source of that wigginess, allowing Harry Kim to live, but Doc notices the wrongness in the world that doesn't make sense, goes a little batty, because every trusted friend around himself, is telling the Doctor that he's imagining a make believe sinister conspiracy to fight his selfworth, so the Doctor starts getting paranoid that he's either space crazy or there is a huge subterfuge working against him... Neither of which possibility removes tension from his hollow hololife.
Eventually The Doctor Locks down the truth and says please don't wipe my brain again, but Janeway assures the hologram that he can't resolve the issue, they'd already spent weeks/months waiting for the Doctor to work through his trauma with therapy and meditation, so theoretically it could take him a million more years to soothe his sense of loss from narrowly missing the opportunity to watch Harry Kim choke out, which is time Janeway is unwilling to go without a Doctor, but fuck it, sure they'll give him another year or 5 to sort through his baggage, no skin off her nose, if Tom is the only medical professional on the ship to tend to their boo boos, and half the crew might die for lack of a real doctor any day now.
The Episode ends with a pitching muttering batshit crazy Doctor trying to calm his sad mental disorder, and Janeway nearby sitting on a rocking chair, reading a book waiting for her "friend" to go sane.
Cute.
In the brightest timeline, we are supposed to believe that Janeway sat there, by this automation's side for 15 months waiting for his space crazy haze to clear, and then every one went back to work, and all was good in the world.
Bullshit?
I don't buy it. Mostly because of Virtuoso where they replaced the Doctor with a copy after he abandoned the ship to be an Opera Singer, and never told the new Doctor that he was a duplicate.
Some noprizes...
1. Caring Janeway at the end of Latent Image was a hologram.
2. They sped the Doctor up to Wink of an Eye speed, or faster, and he spent 15 thousand years wrestling with his demons, until he was finally good with "it".
3. They copied the Doctor. 1 to work though the trauma and the other to live a brain washed life ignorant of his misery and depression. They could have left the broken Doctor running in the holodeck for years, and later when he finally got his shit together, they killed the copy. If one of them is a person, then they are all persons, or not, whatever.
4. The compassionate Janeway ending to Latent Image was false memories they implanted into the Doctor's subroutines. He was never given time to find grace, and Janeway never really sat with him for months, while he healed. He's a fucking machine, who is suppose to make their lives easier. The sooner he can grasp that truth, the sooner he can stop aspiring for person hood that he does not deserve.
I don't hate Janeway. She's a TV character. I'd prefer to focus that level of emotion on more substantive matters.
I do think she was written inconsistently, and as a result in-universe comes across as possibly (probably?) pathological. I haven't watched the series in so long that I'm not quite comfortable saying that it's specifically worse later in the series than earlier, but it's certainly possible.
In her defense, she was put in circumstances no Starfleet captain before her had ever likely had to grapple with, and she at least handled it better than Ransom (mostly), but that doesn't excuse some of the hypocrisy she exhibited seemingly without recognizance either. By which I mean, it's okay for characters to evolve and change their mindsets, but there should be acknowledgment that they're deviating from their own precedents.
Off-the-cuff, I'd question her decisions in "Tuvix", "Year of Hell", "Equinox" and most egregiously "Endgame". On a more petty note, I'd love to hear her justification for never promoting poor Eternal-Ensign Kim.
As much as TNG gets knocked for "The Romulans have fired disruptors at us; let's go to the conference room and discuss how we should respond..." in VOY's case I would have liked to see more dialog between Janeway and Chakotay where they disagreed, and sometimes Janeway acknowledged that Chakotay's ideas were better than her own.
I do think she was written inconsistently, and as a result in-universe comes across as possibly (probably?) pathological. I haven't watched the series in so long that I'm not quite comfortable saying that it's specifically worse later in the series than earlier, but it's certainly possible.
In her defense, she was put in circumstances no Starfleet captain before her had ever likely had to grapple with, and she at least handled it better than Ransom (mostly), but that doesn't excuse some of the hypocrisy she exhibited seemingly without recognizance either. By which I mean, it's okay for characters to evolve and change their mindsets, but there should be acknowledgment that they're deviating from their own precedents.
Off-the-cuff, I'd question her decisions in "Tuvix", "Year of Hell", "Equinox" and most egregiously "Endgame". On a more petty note, I'd love to hear her justification for never promoting poor Eternal-Ensign Kim.
As much as TNG gets knocked for "The Romulans have fired disruptors at us; let's go to the conference room and discuss how we should respond..." in VOY's case I would have liked to see more dialog between Janeway and Chakotay where they disagreed, and sometimes Janeway acknowledged that Chakotay's ideas were better than her own.
Last edited:
I consider it her ANTI-Pale Moonlight. It's the episode where she chose moral principles OVER the greater good. "Tuvix" and "Nothing Human" were her Pale Moonlight moments.
Sorry, I didn't see this post before making my previous one. 
It's telling that in "The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway", the only mention of the affair is that Janeway's last act as captain of Voyager was to promote Harry to lieutenant. The author never even tries to justify why it didn't happen earlier, because she knew that no rational justification exists. It is nice that, in her version of canon, she at least tried to right that particular wrong.
She also mentioned that Tuvix's death weighed heavily on Janeway's conscience for many years, which I think made sense.
It's telling that in "The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway", the only mention of the affair is that Janeway's last act as captain of Voyager was to promote Harry to lieutenant. The author never even tries to justify why it didn't happen earlier, because she knew that no rational justification exists. It is nice that, in her version of canon, she at least tried to right that particular wrong.
She also mentioned that Tuvix's death weighed heavily on Janeway's conscience for many years, which I think made sense.
It's interesting when only a few series go in that approach, but the method becomes white noise when every new Star Trek series is doing it.
Well put. I honestly struggle with the recent demand of perfection within heroic characters. Maybe I grew up with the wrong heroes but the heroes I enjoy are not always perfect in their decision making. Kirk and Pike were highly introspective. Captain Bridger from Seaquest very reflective as well.
But, at least from where I sit, the reaction to flawed heroes is one to immediately dismiss it as "too dark" when the heroes struggle. That if we don't 100% agree with the heroes all the time then they are wrong, and worst of all, not real Star Trek. I'm always baffled and left with the question "When did struggle of the heroes, and them making poor decisions make them lesser in our eyes? When did I suddenly have to agree with everything the hero does?"
Back on topic, with Janeway, I never hated her, but always found the inconsistency to be too jarring to fully engage with the character.
That's because "dark and edgy" is the norm for TV nowadays. Back in the Berman Trek era, not so much.
I like Janeway, but I think everyone can agree that she's inconsistent. Mainly due to the writers making her that way. Like I said in an earlier post; Janeway is tip of the spear/edge of the knife for all decisions, actions and missteps Voyager takes in the show. Things worked out for her, because the script said so. The writers weren't about to make the first female lead of Star Trek look "foolish" with her bad decision making.
What I enjoyed about early season 5 was Janeway beginning to fracture from the pressure she was under. The herculean task she set for herself in Caretaker was beginning to break her. I want to say that after Timeless, this goes away. But this was a good change.
By season 7 Captain Janeway had broken the Prime Directive so many times, that even her future Admiral counterpart was telling her to just ignore it.
Again, none of this is the character's fault. The writers and producers just stretched the initial premise of the show way past it's limits and compromises had to be made.
What I enjoyed about early season 5 was Janeway beginning to fracture from the pressure she was under. The herculean task she set for herself in Caretaker was beginning to break her. I want to say that after Timeless, this goes away. But this was a good change.
By season 7 Captain Janeway had broken the Prime Directive so many times, that even her future Admiral counterpart was telling her to just ignore it.
Again, none of this is the character's fault. The writers and producers just stretched the initial premise of the show way past it's limits and compromises had to be made.
Last edited:
