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Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of action?

jibrilmudo

Lieutenant
Red Shirt
Okay, I'm a bit new. I just started watching ST this year while excercising on Netflix and seen them all except TOS (I don't care for b/w). I'm now rewatching bits and pieces of eps I liked since I usually don't watch things twice over if I don't have to. I liked them all in their own right (even Enterprise) except Voyager I liked the least. Many things bother me.

One of the biggest is that Janeway seems intent on very impractical or downright suicidal courses of action and justifies it on Starfleet principles.

Two examples from Season 5:
In "Drone", where 7's tech plus Doc's mobile emitter accidentally create a 29th century drone. Janeway refuses to pull the plug, loses the Doctor (mobile emitter) on this experiment and she relies fully on the new drone's loyalty (they have earned in what? A few days?) to not fall in borg hands. Of course, the outcome validated the methods (TV logic, not my own), but such a drone in the hands of the borg would have been devasting not just humanity but the whole galaxy. Basically if this child chose otherwise, we'd be seeing the Borg Milky Way. I don't understand how individual rights go into it, it was just batpoop insane.

In "Course Oblivion" which I thought was one of the best Voyager episodes, we see Duplicate Janeway stubbornly keep going towards the Alpha Quandrant when it's obvious to everyone else that it's the wrong course of action. Granted, there was no good course of action, but Chakotay finally gets an episode where he really gets a backbone with her and fully disagrees. I think if he sensed they had more time to do something, it would have turned into a fullblown mutiny. But it took his death for her to see reason. The only positive thing they did that episode was seek a Y class planet from which they were ultimately turned away. They never tried but the very end to locate the original Voyager even though logic would dicate that at the very least they'd try to map the same/similiar course.

I'm not saying they need to go the way of the Equinox, but sometime it seemed they went the opposite extreme and had 0 self-preservation instinct and somehow survived in spite of it...

I can think of a counterpoint, like the Tuvix episode, where she did the right thing (despite people dissing her for it), because it was utterly practicaly. I think she only got flak for it, not just the decision itself, but the inconsistency of her practicality.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

TOS' first unaired pilot is in black and white. 2 years later they made a second pilot in colour with a new script and new cast. Half way through season one, the original pilot was colourized and spliced into a courtroom episode where the original footage was submitted as evidence.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Hmmm, unless Desilu (original studio before being bought by Paramount) invented time travel, traveled forward to the 1980s and borrowed Ted Turner's colorization computers, I'm sure that The Cage was shot in color.

As for Janeway's often erratic behavior, we have to chalk it up to inconsistent writing on the part of tptb. The needs of the story outweigh the needs of the Janeway. I hate bringing gender into this, but I just don't see the kinds of mood swings given to Picard or Sisko, that are ofter associated with Janeway.
Now Archer definitely suffered from poor dialogue, but even he wasn't shown as going back and forth like a tennis ball the way J seemed to have treated.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Yeah, all I saw was the b/w pilot when I went "no."
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Hmmm, unless Desilu (original studio before being bought by Paramount) invented time travel, traveled forward to the 1980s and borrowed Ted Turner's colorization computers, I'm sure that The Cage was shot in color.
The process of editing the pilot into "The Menagerie" disassembled the original camera negative of "The Cage", and thus, for many years it was considered partly lost. Roddenberry's black-and-white 16mm print made for reference purposes was the only existing print of the show, and was frequently shown at conventions. Early video releases of "The Cage" utilized Roddenberry's 16mm print, intercut with the color scenes from "The Cage" that were used in "The Menagerie". It was only in 1987 that a film archivist found an unmarked (mute) 35mm reel in a Hollywood film laboratory with the negative trims of the unused scenes. Upon realizing what he had found, he arranged for the return of the footage to Roddenberry's company.[4] In some fan circles, this is disputed and alleged (incorrectly) that the black-and-white 16mm footage was simply colorized.

So the unaired colour pilot was misplaced for a while, and the black and white emergency back up of the pilot still trundling around in syndication today, is just all they could find at the time?

The more you know.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Okay, I'm a bit new. I just started watching ST this year while excercising on Netflix and seen them all except TOS (I don't care for b/w).
WTF? It was shot in color. One of the problems they had was when they had Vina portraying an Orion dancer - the actress had green body paint all over her, but the color was gone when they watched the dailies. Turns out that one of the technicians thought the green color was a mistake and kept taking it out and making Vina "normal". Roddenberry and the others didn't know this at first, and said, "PAINT HER GREENER!"

But if you're that much against black-and-white, you'd better avoid the episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"... :rolleyes:

(it's a shame that people deliberately refuse to watch b/w shows and movies; they miss out on some fantastic stuff)


Janeway was more like Kirk than she ever wanted to admit. Bluffing and reckless actions saved Kirk on numerous occasions, but unlike Kirk, Janeway actually was put in the position of having to follow through with destroying the ship.

Besides, by that time in Starfleet history, they'd have been aware of multiple universes, dimensions, alt-history... and probably figured, "Well if WE don't make it, it won't matter so much - somewhere there's another version of us and they DO make it."
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Basically because they artificially create scenarios where she has to make the tough call because she's the captain, even though most of the time they do this, she does something boneheaded. I think the Voyager staff, Jeri Taylor especially, were sensitive about Janeway's command presence being the first female captain and had to create scenarios to validate her being in command for some reason.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Janeway throws coffee in the face of death!!

In the original unaired pilot, the Emergency Human Doctor (Jeff McCarthy) gives Janeway a caffeine enema. UPN rejected it.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Janeway throws coffee in the face of death!!

I'm actually surprised she never did that to an intruder one episode. It seems so obvious in retrospect. :p
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Janeway would never throw away her drug of choice. Though, if Neelix ever gave her decaf, she might have him boiled alive in it.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

It's definitely the coffee.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Star Trek (original series) is in LURID color, which I love.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Funnily enough, I always thought Janeway did have a suicidal streak, an actual one. I always took it that the reason she was so driven was her obsession with getting the crew home after stranding them there. I think part of her wanted to be "punished" for that almost, hence multiple suicidal actions (some of which succeeded - pesky alternate timelines).

Could be that I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think so.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Any time you're driving around and see a bunch of people standing in line at a Starbucks, odds are good that one of them is an ancestor of Janeway.
 
Re: Why does Janeway seem so often intent on suicidal courses of actio

Okay, I'm a bit new. I just started watching ST this year while excercising on Netflix and seen them all except TOS (I don't care for b/w).
WTF? It was shot in color. One of the problems they had was when they had Vina portraying an Orion dancer - the actress had green body paint all over her, but the color was gone when they watched the dailies. Turns out that one of the technicians thought the green color was a mistake and kept taking it out and making Vina "normal". Roddenberry and the others didn't know this at first, and said, "PAINT HER GREENER!"

But if you're that much against black-and-white, you'd better avoid the episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"... :rolleyes:

(it's a shame that people deliberately refuse to watch b/w shows and movies; they miss out on some fantastic stuff)

B&W just like colour has good films/TV shows and bad films/TV shows. I've happily sat through B&W films/TV shows because I was engaged by the story. I've even got a few B%W films in by Blu-ray/DVD collection.

I wonder if a dislike of B&W is a generational thing. i.e. those under a certain age say thirty. Who might not have grown up with re-runs of some of the old B&W TV shows, and these days B&W films are a bit rarer on TV.
 
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