Janeway vs. Chakotay

[gamblore]

I watched Star Trek Voyager on and off for a few years, but lately I've made it my mission to watch the entire series, and I just finished season 4. First of all, I think it was a solid Star Trek series and doesn't deserve the hate that it gets.

However, one thing that bugs me is the interaction between Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay. Is it just me, or did Chakotay consistently come off as more reasonable, more level headed, and an all-around better leader? Nearly every time he butted heads with Janeway, I usually feel that he was in in the right and Janeway was in the wrong.

The most serious example so far has been Scorpion Part II, where Chakotay was right to not trust the Borg, and Janeway was dead wrong about expecting the Borg to honor their deal. Yet she never appologizes or even admits her error.

[Dirty Hazy]

JANEWAY IS A female dog and/or rude woman!

[Free Hat]

This video pretty much sums up Janeway's "leadership":



BTW this guy's reviews are also excellent and often hilarious. You should check them out.

[BorneAgain]

Yeah, SFDebris' reviews more or less expose Janeway as a deliberate sadist out to make the lives of her crew as hard and miserable as possible.

[Sir Woodrow]

Plus Chakotay had that bad ass tattoo.

[Back to being Cenanuff]

Random bridge member: Something's terribly wrong!
Janeway: Push a bunch of buttons!

I swear, main power on that ship must have been made out of paper mache, because it went down every 5 minutes. I think they tried to make her too much like Picard, and failed miserably.

[Wolf Hawkfield no1 NZ poster]

Oct 16, 2009 3:03:13 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Yeah, SFDebris' reviews more or less expose Janeway as a deliberate sadist out to make the lives of her crew as hard and miserable as possible.

Also Kate Mulgrew did state that Janeway most likely suffered from some sort of Bipolar disorder.

[Jay Peas 42]

Well, even Joss Whedon would have seen "Starfleet's First Female Captain" to be a lot less cool than "Spirit from GI Joe, but as a Starfleet officer." Well, you see, one of the reasons they started having First Officers with Next Gen was so that they could do the whole Kirk character as well as the "This is how 60 year olds handle situations now", and Chuckles gets a lot of that. Like how he seduces every female character on the show at one point or another, something the other men never get around to doing. The sad thing is, that the character was designed to be a mystic (see Spirit), whereas Kate was supposed to be the scientist, and there would be a contrast between the Starfleet and Marquis, and this was before DS9 pulled a Palpatine on them.

[Bobafett]

aaah the many problems with Voyager..

1 there seemed to be an inordinate amount of Maquis on the ship..the Maquis ship was more or less a large-ish runabout

2 it was supposed to be 2 crews rying to be one, but after a few episodes the Maquis were basicly so well integrated there was little difference, plus it didn't help they just decided to wear starleet uniforms, now if it was a Romulan, Klingon or Cardassian crew forced to co habitatewth the Federation it woulda worked better

3 the stories eventally were increasingly rehashed, not from other treks..but from earlier episodes of Voyager

4 Beltran and Mulgrew hated each other and that put the kybosh on a rpmantic storyline planned between em, she had Shatner syndrome, her Ryan and Picardo basicly stole scenes and demanded more time in general, Beltran, Tim Russand the guys who played Paris and Kim got to a point where they refused to care anymore (that explains why paris in particular seems to have a can't be assed look on his face andsounds more sarcastic than usual )

[ac89]

I LOVE Janeway & Mulgrew is my fav actress.

I always hated Star Trek, but Voyager was outstanding and most of that IMO is thanks to Janeway.

[Jay Peas 42]

Yes, Beltran has the best bash interviews ever.

Now, as for the substance of the argument, I'm torn. I mean, I understand why Star Trek became the Kirk and Spock show. Kirk and Spock were good characters, they were good actors, and they were the most popular. The rest of the cast, by comparison, were just human set pieces. I mean, I can see why, let's say, Uhura would recede into the background. Next Gen managed to share the spotlight, and the same could be said for DS9, with the exception of Jake Sisco, but to counter that, did entire episodes with secondary characters. Maybe that's the magic of Ronald Moore. Voyager, well, Janeway was the Star, so she should get more episodes than B'Elana, let's say. And Jeri Ryan's touching portrayl of a RealDoll was one of the most popular characters, and the actress has been employed in television for the majority of the last ten years, so I can't say, "More Harry Kim Episodes!" on that one. That leaves the Doctor, well, yeah. That was just silly. We get it, you can sing. And yes, your creator is dying, how sad. And no, Holographic Rights are silly, because we can not get an Android to say "can't", but we can make a sentient holoprogram who doesn't try to kill us? I don't remember having this type of debate with R2-D2, who was much smarter and much more likable than anyone else in Star Wars or Star Trek. So there is some merit in focusing on the characters the audiance likes, however, it might rob us of a Worf, who was a minor character in TNG S1, but grew into one of the most popular characters in the Franchise.

Also, we don't speak of Enterprise, except for the Mirror Universe Episode.

[silentrage]

It's awesome to see some of SFDebris fans here!

Janeway is nuts!

[Bobafett]

Janeway was the major problem, mainly because she was origionally supposed to beFrench canadian but the actress dropped out, Mulgrew was in and the character was changed

cos Robert Beltran said that the origional woman apparentlyin the pilotepisode when they destroy the caretakers base,shessupposed to show regret and its a reluctant order..but Mulgrew just stroms on the bridge "destroy the base"after having ap pious murmer on the station beforehand

[Free Hat]

Oct 16, 2009 14:24:07 GMT -5 Bobafett said:

Janeway was the major problem, mainly because she was origionally supposed to beFrench canadian but the actress dropped out, Mulgrew was in and the character was changed

cos Robert Beltran said that the origional woman apparentlyin the pilotepisode when they destroy the caretakers base,shessupposed to show regret and its a reluctant order..but Mulgrew just stroms on the bridge "destroy the base"after having ap pious murmer on the station beforehand

The decision to destroy the array was retarded, not because of all the Prime Directive bulls*** involving the Kazon and Ocampa, but simply because they could have easily had their cake and eaten it too. Just use the array to get home, but leave some timed explosives on board before you go. There, dilemma solved.

The biggest problem with this show was its writing, not the cast.

[darthalexander]

I liked Voyager but I admit it really ticked me off sometimes:

The horrible "Warp 10" episode where Janeway and Paris de-evolve into toads/lizards/whatever and end up mating.

I kept hoping Neelix would get his head blown off. He was one of the guys you'd cross the street (at 100 miles an hour) to avoid.

The episode where they got that special "warp system" that somehow made super big jumps possible - they had a 7 second window (roughly) where they would be safe and then it would be dangerous. They use it once and then never use it again or even mention it. You'd think they'd try again. Do short little bursts here and there to "hop" across the galaxy.

I didn't hate the show, I loved it and watched it every time it was on. Those things just bugged me.

What made me laugh though was the episode that ended with the Doctor suggesting Janeway use the holodeck as a "martial aid". He doesn't come out and say it blatantly, but the message was there. Like no one in the future ever used the holodeck for illicit reasons.

The writing is what got the show in trouble a lot. It was still pretty good though.

[Bobafett]

Yeah.. are you trying to tell my in the 24th century timedexplosives don't exsist, I mean they already established that the Kazon were technologicly inferior and hadn't beaming technology, so they woulda had to board the station and physically find the bomb to disarm it IF they could have

SURELY someone woulda pointed that out

Remember the episode whereSeven kept tryig to absorb all her info through her alcove bu her brain couldn't cope so it threw up wild theories about how Janeway strandingVoyager wasn't an accident, why would that have actually been amore intersting concept..maybe that Janeway coulda turned out to be either anagent of that backopslot that tried to recruit Bashir or at least blackmailed into it

I mean they couda heard rumors from the Cardassian shop about it and the blackops people planned to put someone there to findmore out n stuff

but no..

is it just me or did you get the vibe that Neelixwasorigionally supposed to be a Quark type wheeler and dealer,but they turned him into Janeways lil pet, I really wantedTuvoktokillhim and shoot his rotting corpse out a torpedo tube

but also, Chakotay..anative american,with a maori tattoo that he got that was based on one his dad got from a south/central american tribe???

as for how they made out oon the show the doctor was irreplacable and wereworried about losing him.. but couldn';t they have just copied the program, idon't buy this "its toocomplexe a prrogram ) they could easily have copied the basic program ( like what he was in the first episode ) and used that as a backup???

[erisi236]

I just wish they had more of a long journey feel to it, some kind of slow decay of the ship and the look of the crew would have been nice as opposed to everything looking just as Federation fresh the last episode as it had the first.

[gamblore]

Oct 16, 2009 14:59:29 GMT -5 Free Hat said:

Oct 16, 2009 14:24:07 GMT -5 Bobafett said:

Janeway was the major problem, mainly because she was origionally supposed to beFrench canadian but the actress dropped out, Mulgrew was in and the character was changed

cos Robert Beltran said that the origional woman apparentlyin the pilotepisode when they destroy the caretakers base,shessupposed to show regret and its a reluctant order..but Mulgrew just stroms on the bridge "destroy the base"after having ap pious murmer on the station beforehand

The decision to destroy the array was retarded, not because of all the Prime Directive bulls*** involving the Kazon and Ocampa, but simply because they could have easily had their cake and eaten it too. Just use the array to get home, but leave some timed explosives on board before you go. There, dilemma solved.

I didn't have a problem with this because the first part of the episode established that it was a very rough journey, to say the least. Voyager was considered one of the most advanced ships in Starfleet, and it nearly got destroyed and lost a good deal of its crew when the array pulled it into the Delta Quadrant. It's not hard to imagine that a still weakened Voyager could never have survived a return trip from the array.

[Lionheart]

On the pantheon of inspiring, effective leaders in the Star Trek universe, Janeway ranks somewhere below Nog.

[darthalexander]

Is Nog that little Ferengi? (Or however it's spelled). I remember seeing some little Ferengi guy as a Captain of a Federation Ship (in a time travel episode) and I can remember laughing like hell at this tiny little twerp in the Captain's chair. I don't know why I found it so funny, because I accept Yoda as is, but this just looked so stupid.

Not to blast Trek or anything, I just that moment was hilarious.