Why is the Trek community so negative about Voyager?

Was it? Felt like her 50th year in the position.

Either way, I'm talking about an XO, possibly newly appointed, who is out her depth, but really tries to raise to the occassion. Much more empowering than Janeway as she was.

 

Kirk's actions every episode never had repercussions either. He was always over whatever had happened in the past episode by the next episode. No one cared there.

And here is an interview Berman gave after he was done on ENT, it answers most questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HcSB9WDTQ

Ira Behr et all simply used Berman as a scapegoat. Berman never had any problems with any of them in terms of who was the show's boss, and he hardly even touched the show when it was the sole show on (seasons 1 and 2) which pretty much shuts down the "Berman messed with DS9" theory.

 

Anytime a link to an interview is posted, I shut off. There's nothing I need to know beyond the show itself. Everything anyone needs to say, should be in those episodes.

 

Not when it's on a network oppressed show, it's not.

It also would have been pretty unprofessional for them to take shots at UPN for their interference while the show was still on. Waiting for a few years and then coming clean is a common practice.

 

Well yes. My opinion can't really be argued here. Everyone has one. Everybody poops.

I hold the opinion that any good writer/showrunner can work with what they have and make it something special. So many shows have had network pressure before and still managed to pull it out of the hat. I don't think Star Trek as a whole should be any different.

 

The only two Trek shows that had real network pressure were VOY and ENT, the ones most picked on by the Fandom/Hatedom. Ron Moore could've been one of VOY's creators and it wouldn't have changed much.

 

Janeway was not cold blooded or selfish. There are no facts to hold to any of these statements. One or two incidences don't determine who you are as a whole.

No matter what, if you agree with the Tuvix decision or not the Look on Janeways face at the end showed about ten different emotions. None of them were "the SOB deserved it ". Maybe she should have broke down and wept over the hypospray? Pleaded for Tuvix's forgiveness? If Voyager was in the Alpha Quadrant the captain wouldn't have had to make a decision like that.

Also how is anyone to know if there were lasting repercussions we didn't even see what happened. I would think that the return home wasn't all hugs and kisses. It had been said often in the show about having to answer to someone eventually. Common Scense fill in the blanks.

When you start ranting without evidence it doesn't make what you say credible. In fact people stop listening.

 

Now is that really a logical reaction? Women are held to a different standard. Recognize it then judge accordingly. If at the end of the day you still don't like Janeway then fine and dandy. However, when she's criticized for the same types of behaviors and outcomes that are not criticized in the other captains (being always right, etc) then I for one have to say wtf?

Yeah, that would be the secret plan all along.

Christ on a crutch! If Janeway hadn't taken out that whiny bastard Tuvix I would have stopped watching. If I were one of two people trapped like that I'd rather have Janeway as my captain thankyouverymuch.

Have to give you "Endgame" though. You don't want to get me started on that one...

 

This is my point. My issues with Janeway's characterisation are unrelated to her gender. I just got sick of whenever I pointed them out, I got slammed as sexist, which couldn't be further from the truth.

I identify as bisexual and have been in a homosexual relationship for many years. I am no stranger to prejudice, which is why I get all the more offended if I am labelled a 'sexist'.

Okay, regardless of whether you liked the character or not, that's a pretty deplorable attitude. Just because someone is annoying does not mean they have any less right to live than anyone else. If that were the case, I would've loved to have seen Neelix blown out the airlock after the first episode.

Anyway, my opinion on "Tuvix" has evolved over time, but I'll leave my recent thoughts on the issue until my review of the episode, which just so happens to coming up in season 2 of Voyager, just to give you a reason to look at my thread </shamlessplug>

 

QFT.

The only time Janeway was cold blooded and selfish were in "Equinox" & "Endgame" but that was also the point in both scenarios. The purpose of "Endgame" was that the toll of her going through the DQ was going to eventually turn her into someone like Ransom. Janeway didn't wanna die a moral-less hypocrite. "Night" & Flesh & Blood" are also two examples of how Janeway had to deal with the consequences of her actions. "Living Witness" was one the results to Voyager exposing themselves to some alien cultures. Inviting the Maquis on board exposed the crew to someone dangerous like Suder & Seska. So we did see the results of many of Janeways actions & choices.

 

The captain makes it clear that the number of torpedoes are limited and this is the case right into the fourth season before being forgotten about. How is it silly to be concerned about such big lapses in continuity?
This was a show about a ship alone years from home and frequently in hostile territory and it rarely made any effort in showing us a realistic portrayl of that situation.

By "basic continuity", I wanted
-Events of episodes would affect later episodes
-People would actually recall what had happened earlier, no one really even mentioned Kes's leaving, it was like she never existed. Its absurd, in other shows when a main cast member leaves or is killed off, it has an impact and people have to come to terms with it.
-The number of crew members wouldn't randomly increase despite a good 10 or so already dying!
-Characters would GROW- how many times did B'Ellana have to get over her anger issues or Seven learn the same lesson only for them to be the same the next week?
-Voyager's route through the Delta Quadrant would be more organic, meeting the Hirogen 20, 000 lightyears away from where they first encountered them was INSANE, and same with the Malon.
-Voyager would deal with the issues that you would expect, instead the writers decided that replicators should take on whole new powers.

UPN could have interfered tons for all I know, but its no excuse for the major lapses in continuity witnessed throughout the series. I LOVE season 4 and thats because it felt like things were actually happening and not being forgotten about. The development of the astrometrics lab would be mentioned in one episode and then be constructed in the next. And the Doctor being sent to the Alpha Quadrant actually had consequences.

Then season 5 came and along with a lot of good episodes, any feeling that this was a real crew and a real ship in a real situation was lost for me. It just became insanely episodic and detached, epitomised by "Dark Frontier" for me. An amazing episode but it makes no sense when the cohesive whole of season 5 is considered. It opens with Janeway talking about constantly having to avoid the Borg...but we haven't seen this and we thought we were already past Borg space. Would it have killed them to have dealt with the issue of running into more Borg for the previous couple of episodes?

 

I was worried there would be a lot of "Janeway is a woman, therefore people are sexist against her." when this thread started. Honestly, that offends me. I'm not sexist, in fact I'm way on the other side of that. When Voyager started, Janeway was probably one of Treks strongest Captains, definitely had a better start than Archer, a lot less random than Season 1 Kirk.

I grew to dislike Janeway once she became erratic over the course of the series, starting with Season 5. They did the same thing with Archer, they just did it better with him, growing that over the course of the series. It was a natural progression, not randomness.

Getting back to the point of voyager itself, it's easy to feel betrayed by Voyager, so much promise when it started. How they neglected so many of the characters, it was a betrayal of the audience who was with em from the start.

 

I have to say, re-watching season 1 of Voyager very closely, I remember why I was disappointed that I didn't like Janeway after a while, and it's because I really like her in the first season! I even recall my first reaction to Janeway when Voyager first aired, and I warmed to her much quicker than Sisko or Picard.

Where as Archer is a captain I didn't really like in the beginning, I felt he was adequate, but grew to like him as the series went on.

 

I think you can't really be surprised when folks get offended and/or defensive if someone basically comes out and says "the problem was that people just had an issue with the captain's gender," especially when they don't refer to any comments made OR cite any evidence for this view.


Now if someone on this thread had written "I had a problem with Voyager because I couldn't take the idea of a female captain seriously," and someone had justifiably pounced on THAT, we'd have a different scenario.

I've heard criticisms of Janeway from fans for being wildly inconsistent or making immoral decisions, but not for her gender. And incidentally, I think she's probably a more popular captain in Trek fandom than Archer and possibly Sisko. Speaking for myself, she ranks ahead of Archer and Picard, but behind Kirk and Sisko.

It was mentioned that the acceptance of strong female Trek characters in other roles doesn't count toward disproving sexism in fandom, because "they're not the captain." But I don't get that-we're talking about a fictional show, not a military captain you'd have to serve under. If they'd accept a female chief engineer or female first officer, why would they suddenly balk at accepting a female captain? The first officer is superior to every single member of the crew except one, the captain is just superior to one more member.

 

Only the people who are blind Voyager cheerleaders stop listening. The rest of us acknowledge the truth when it is told and move on.

Furthermore, that Berman interview was extremely self-serving..."don't blame ME...I'm just the messenger for the network..." That directly contradicts what Piller, Behr and Moore said contemporaneously to the time.

 

That's because they use Berman as a scapegoat instead of doing THEIR homework, Behr and Moore have no idea what it's like to have to deal with UPN so they have no real say on the matter. Well, not Piller since he also knew the truth. He never blamed Berman for much and blamed the real culprits, UPN and Jeri Taylor.

 

Because it's easy to simply think "Well, they can just MAKE more torpedoes can't they?" instead of have the show spoonfeed us every little detail.

They weren't frequently in hostile territory, most of it was unclaimed or neutral.

Every little thing that happens to people every moment of their lives isn't of massive importance. A lot of it is just stuff that happens and then is left in the past.

Just because they didn't spend every episode for a whole season weeping over her being gone doesn't mean it didn't happen.

In real life, it takes several years to really truly change a person. It would be unrealistic for someone to become a totally different person with nothing in common with who they were a year ago to the point that aside from looking the same they are a totally different person.

This is the problem with "Journey home" shows, you invent a great alien species you can get a lot of mileage out of but thanks to the premise you can only use them like 3 times.

Of course, NuBSG had the Cylons keep showing up instead of being left behind and no one cared. Farscape had the Peacekeepers and Scarrans and other aliens keep showing up and no one cared.

It saved money, not having them show up in prior episodes.

 

Whats with all the negativity towards what the typical Star Trek fan looks like? I find your comment quite ironic in context of your question.

 

I think there are a lot of people that have problems with Janeway’s gender without realizing that is the actual problem. No one is going to say “I have a problem with Janeway because she is a woman.” That is completely politically incorrect and everyone knows it, but what a lot of us see is people, that don’t want to be misogynists, hampered by an attitude that is anti-female. She makes them uncomfortable, so they find reasons to dislike her, reasons that they think are unbiased. They think they are being fair and impartial when in all reality they are not, and are for the most part completely ignorant of that fact.

Most prejudices are carefully taught and learned and are so ingrained within the individual, that the individual doesn’t even realize their attitude is based in prejudice.

It is very important that Janeway is a female captain and that she commands a star ship. I know Kira is a strong woman and I also know that Jadiza (who incidentally is actually my favorite female Trek character) are strong women but they are not the “Captain.” I wonder why people cannot see that single fact. Janeway and only Janeway in the Trek series is in charge and in fact due to the distance from the Federation there is no one higher than her in charge either. You cannot say that about any other character in Trek, male or female. The difference is not who serves under her but who serves over her.

Sonak, the way you get to the point of having real female military commanders is to make the public at large comfortable with the idea, and the way you do that is by not ridiculing fictional female characters, or making them expendable.

Whether you want to acknowledge the problem or not, the problem is a real one. Girls and women need to be exposed to strong female characters, and to women in charge.

If this discussion was on the DS9 forum and the argument was about Sisko’s ability to command and the arguments against him were as undeserved as a lot of the arguments used against Janeway, for example (and there have been threads here on the BBS for this very subject) “I don’t like his voice.” There will be Trek fans that will assume the people using this argument are prejudiced against Sisko because he is black.

You can even mention all the other strong Trek characters that are black but that would not mean the same thing as Sisko being a black Captain, and in those fans eyes you will appear even more prejudiced than if you hadn’t mentioned the others at all.

Janeway is a female captain, there are no other Trek series with female captains as the lead actor just the same way that Sisko is a black captain and there are no other black captains as the lead actor in any of the other series. This is way she is important and equally why he is also, and for the very same reasons. They tell us that in the future a person’s race or gender will not stand in the way of their success. You can site all the strong character you want but they will still not be “The Captain.”

Finally female characters in general and in any media do not get the respect that they deserve.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/pushb...-i-just-dont-like-that-many-female-characters

This is a blog about the criticism against various female characters on today’s television, and Trek is not mentioned (Doctor Who and True Blood are). The criticisms here used against other female characters are the same ones I see used against Kathryn Janeway.

Brit

 

This. VOYAGER was slickly done, with a good cast and production values, but it often seemed very stodgy and old-fashioned compared to, say, BUFFY, THE X-FILES, and other genre shows of the era.

It simply wasn't state-of-the-art.

(Although I still think that the Doctor and Seven of Nine justify VOYAGER's existence.)