Why was Mulgrew so polarizing?
- Thread starter Captain Worf
- Start date
Exactly.
Which is really a shame. I compare him with actors like Loretta Smitt who wanted off MASH because she had the opportunity to do Cagney and Lacey. They wouldn't let her out of her contract. Her acting didn't suffer for it though, imo.
By Fix, you mean neuter right?
Tom and B'elanna got maybe ten episodes in 4 years of being together, so it's apparent that these people didn't really understand how to "Tony and Angela", but I am really curious what would have happened if Seven and Chakotay had been given 6 or seven episodes as C stories in the background to fall in love as the crisis of the week occupied everyone elses time.
The staging of Trip and T'Pol was a vast improvement, once things actually eventually begun, but even that was still a pale shadow of Dax and her "men" or Sisko and the one time Maquis agent Cassidy, or the amazing marriage of Kieko and Miles O'Brien.
Pretty much. But he looked happier about it. lol
I think that I read somewhere that the Voyager writers didn't want to turn the series into a soap opera, and so they tended to stay away from relationship episodes. But that alway annoyed me, as it felt like an odd kind of justification to show even less character growth. Especially in a situation like Voyager's where people are bound to pair up and - it just felt like another wasted opportunity in a long line of them.
I agree. I thought the Trip/T'Pol relationship was very well played. It doesn't feel right at first, but then reasons are given. I loved how that developed slowly, and by the end of the series (discounting the truly horrid finale) it was one of the strongest elements of the series. Dax & her "men". lol. Keiko & Miles; love them, though they often came off as slightly bland; not sure why. Sisko & Kasidy Yates though; really brilliantly done. All that pomp about not having the Captain of a Trek series in serious relationship (to free them for mostly lame love interest of the week episodes) always irked me - especially when DS9 allowed it to happen and just hit it out of the park. I love the whole Sisko family.
I'm getting nostalgic.Given the sorry state of the rest of the crews' love lives I wonder what inspired the writers to allow the B'Elanna / Tom pairing at all? I'm not complaining. I'm glad they paired them; they work well together, I think, but I always felt bad for Janeway when she would run off to the holodeck.
I think that Jeri Taylor always meant to pair Janeway and Chakotay off but the change in leadership kind of put a stop to that but also I do think the Kate herself may have put a stop to Janeway having a relationship because of a casual remark made by Patrick Stewart at a convention that most if not all the starship captains attended. I've got that little bit of information saved on my hard drive if anyone is interested. This was a personal interpretation by someone that attended that convention and is acquainted with Robert Beltran and his brother Louie.
I also believe that the ill fated love affair between Robert Beltran and Kate Mulgrew which ended somewhere around the end of season four, maybe had something to do with the non J/C relationship too.
One thing is very sure, the producers and writers of DS9 knew how to write for strong women characters. I wish that they had been moved over to Voyager when DS9 ended.
If the C/7 relationship could have worked (and personally I have doubts of that) it had to have had some build up. There is a lot of problems with that relationship. One, the actors themselves didn't have a lot of chemistry. Chakotay was an adult male probably in his late forties. Seven was late twenties or early thirties, but the age difference was made bigger by the lack of social maturity on Seven's part.
I think this is kind of pointed out in "Human Error," Seven's attempt at learning how to form relationships with others fits the profile of an adolescent female. She has a "crush," and she fantasizes about that "crush" on the holodeck and that first "crush" is exactly the norm for most human females. He is the unobtainable and therefore "safe" person to experiment with.
So I don't think that any build up given could have made the paring any better because to most of us J/C were the two adults or Parents on that ship (and Tuvok was the Uncle). This couple spent years in obtaining their goal meaning the "easy life." They were almost there and what happens, the male half of the couple runs off with a young blond with large well you know. To a lot of adult female fans that looked like an infidelity not a romance.
Avery Brooks knew how it would look to a lot people if Sisko simply died and left Kassidy pregnant. He knew that it would look like just another black child growing up without a father, so he put his foot down, and we got the "I'll be back" at the end of DS9.
Kate Mulgrew should have know what the C/7 relationship would have looked like to female viewers. I don't know if she did or didn't, but she should have, and she should have put her foot down too.
I love Kathryn Janeway and I love Chakotay, but I don't care very much for Kate Mulgrew or Robert Beltran either for that matter.
Brit
I also believe that the ill fated love affair between Robert Beltran and Kate Mulgrew which ended somewhere around the end of season four, maybe had something to do with the non J/C relationship too.
One thing is very sure, the producers and writers of DS9 knew how to write for strong women characters. I wish that they had been moved over to Voyager when DS9 ended.
If the C/7 relationship could have worked (and personally I have doubts of that) it had to have had some build up. There is a lot of problems with that relationship. One, the actors themselves didn't have a lot of chemistry. Chakotay was an adult male probably in his late forties. Seven was late twenties or early thirties, but the age difference was made bigger by the lack of social maturity on Seven's part.
I think this is kind of pointed out in "Human Error," Seven's attempt at learning how to form relationships with others fits the profile of an adolescent female. She has a "crush," and she fantasizes about that "crush" on the holodeck and that first "crush" is exactly the norm for most human females. He is the unobtainable and therefore "safe" person to experiment with.
So I don't think that any build up given could have made the paring any better because to most of us J/C were the two adults or Parents on that ship (and Tuvok was the Uncle). This couple spent years in obtaining their goal meaning the "easy life." They were almost there and what happens, the male half of the couple runs off with a young blond with large well you know. To a lot of adult female fans that looked like an infidelity not a romance.
Avery Brooks knew how it would look to a lot people if Sisko simply died and left Kassidy pregnant. He knew that it would look like just another black child growing up without a father, so he put his foot down, and we got the "I'll be back" at the end of DS9.
Kate Mulgrew should have know what the C/7 relationship would have looked like to female viewers. I don't know if she did or didn't, but she should have, and she should have put her foot down too.
I love Kathryn Janeway and I love Chakotay, but I don't care very much for Kate Mulgrew or Robert Beltran either for that matter.
Brit
They had to table Tom, before he defiled the Virgin Borg they brought on board. She could hardly have sexy adventures with Aliens of the week if she was moon eyed following the helm boy around everywhere like a love sick schoolgirl.
Seven had been on board for a whole 5 minutes before a hickup in the B/T dynamic saw tom planning on using the Borgette for revenge sex to make the Klingon cry in Day of Honor.
to *some* female viewers.
I, for one, don't buy the argument that Seven is a child. I liken her to a friend of mine who was in an arranged marriage, then widowed, and then decided to start dating in her late 30s. She was most definitely tentative about dating, unsure what was expected and how she should act, and she confessed that she spent a lot of time rehearsing in her living room.
Although unsure of Western dating practices, IMO she was no adolescent.
Was your friend in a coma for 20 years?
Oh. coma = marriage.
Seven is obviously not written as a child, but we suspend disbelief to a degree.
Consider Uhura.
Her mind was wiped in the Changeling, but she was probably in a "relationship" of some sort a couple weeks later because all the blokes that frakked up their one chance with her the first time around suddenly had a mulligan.
Oh. coma = marriage.
Seven is obviously not written as a child, but we suspend disbelief to a degree.
Consider Uhura.
Her mind was wiped in the Changeling, but she was probably in a "relationship" of some sort a couple weeks later because all the blokes that frakked up their one chance with her the first time around suddenly had a mulligan.
She may have been married at the beginning of Voyager, that I'm not sure of, but appearently she and Beltran had a relationship that ended either just before or as a direct result of her involvement with Tim Hagen, whom she later married.
This is all pretty common knowledge in the J/C fandom.
Brit
That might be why I never heard of it.
It does explain the chemistry, then.
I just wikipedia'd Kate and she was married to Robert Egan until 1993 and then married Tim Hagan in 1999. So she was indeed single in the period involved. I wonder how she got involved with Hagan, or what triggered the end of her relationship with Beltran? I wonder if that in turn contributed to Beltran becoming miserable working on the show and what some perceive as a quality decline?
I mistakenly recalled Kate still being married after VGR premiered but I now recall reading a TV Guide article where she was talking about the difficulty of raising two boys by herself.
Random Mulgrew factoid of the day:
mulgrew's and beltran's romantic is more speculation than fact. she's never publicly admitted it while he's only made innuendos. the rumor is that a romantic relationship didn't go far at all and ended as quickly as it began. but, based on this interview from people magazine, i have my doubts.
That might be why I never heard of it.
It does explain the chemistry, then.
I just wikipedia'd Kate and she was married to Robert Egan until 1993 and then married Tim Hagan in 1999. So she was indeed single in the period involved. I wonder how she got involved with Hagan, or what triggered the end of her relationship with Beltran? I wonder if that in turn contributed to Beltran becoming miserable working on the show and what some perceive as a quality decline?
I mistakenly recalled Kate still being married after VGR premiered but I now recall reading a TV Guide article where she was talking about the difficulty of raising two boys by herself.
Random Mulgrew factoid of the day:
as for her pro-life views, she's an active and practicing catholic so that view of her's shouldn't be totally surprising.
I personally and this is an entirely personal opinion, think that both of them were actors first, both of them have large egos so I don't believe the relationship had a snowballs chance, well you know where. Beltran apparently always has female companionship (that's from my friend Margie). She has a picture she caught, of Kate and Robert hugging at one of the Galaxy balls after the breakup.
In the J/C fandom there are Robert fans that don't care to much for Kate and there are Kate fans that don't care to much for Robert and like I said I really don't care for either of them as real people. I can look at Robert Beltran all day long, in fact I do as I have Voyager stuff in my cube at work where I am known as "The Star Trek Lady", but I really don't care if I ever meet him or not.
Brit
Yeah, sometimes it's better to like the character and keep the actor separate. The actor is of course ultimately human, and they do often tend to have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and often end up being a disappointment from the character.
Maybe Mulgrew/Beltran was just a fling of convenience and Beltran's alleged unhappiness was all based on wanting more to do.
Maybe Mulgrew/Beltran was just a fling of convenience and Beltran's alleged unhappiness was all based on wanting more to do.
very true. but, i've read interviews with her where she has stated about being raised catholic and to this day (granted 10 years ago) her faith and religion are still very important in her life.
I thought she did a marvelous job when Janeway was well-written; when Janeway was badly written, no actress ever born could have pulled it off.
I tend to think controversies are mostly over the character - because of incredibly uneven writing - rather than the actress.
I tend to think controversies are mostly over the character - because of incredibly uneven writing - rather than the actress.
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