LogFAQs > #933178317

39. Kathryn Janeway
Blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than Hell itself That is coffee.

Kathryn It is Insane that I Reached Admiral Janeway. If I was going to actually pick out every insane or illegal action she takes during the series, this writeup would be as long as the top ten combined. She is that crazy. Kate Mulgrew herself directly stated that she played Janeway as schizophrenic because there was no other way to justify her behavior.

Janeway is the worst captain, both as a character and as an actual professional captain. Archer has some problems, and well get to him, but Janeway is a whole different situation.

I can imagine the writers sitting down to hammer out this character and immediately running into a problem: whats her shtick? Kirk is adventurous and relies on cunning and bluffs, Picard is philosophical and relies on diplomacy and renown, and Sisko is more of a warrior. Whats this new captains skill going to be? They obviously settled on science, which creates two problems: first, it obviates the need for Harry Kim (the science officer), second, a smart person can write a dumb character, but a dumb person cant write a smart character, and the writers of Voyager were very, very dumb. Spock and Data are how you do science characters right. Jadzia Dax is how you do science characters okay. Science isnt about spouting technobabble, its about puzzling through possibilities until you arrive at a solution. There was no better comparison to science in all of Star Trek than Spock referencing his ancestor Sherlock Holmes, because detectives are the nearest fictional equivalency you can make.

The writers of Voyager disagreed with me, however. Janeways science skills consist of two things: technobabble and analogies. What I mean by analogies is that whenever Janeway runs into a science thing, shell make an analogy, then solve it by using the analogy literally. That dimensional rift is expanding like a balloon! Now we just have to make a pin and stick it into the surface to pop it. Thats Voyagers understanding of science, and no one suffers from that more than Janeway, because shes both the science character and the main character, so shes given the largest possible number of opportunities to prove herself to be a complete moron.

Then you have Janeways sketchy morality. Sometimes shes so unfailingly loyal to the ideals of the Federation that she wont budge on the smallest details; early on she meets the whatever species who can send her all the way to Earth, and offer to do so if shell give them a floppy disk with all of Earths literature, and she says no because its against the prime directive, but she sure as hell has no problems. Another time she wont kill alien organ harvesters to save Neelix, but still another time she kills Tuvix to save Neelix and Tuvok (possibly the most upsetting moment in all of Voyager). Shes super inconsistent with her logic in a way thats designed to create tension for the viewer, but does so only by making her completely unreasonable.

I guess I should mention the topic of romance. I feel like her being a woman is the reason the writers were so awkward about it. Kirk, Picard, and Sisko sure as hell had no problems with getting romantic, but with Janeway, it gets weird. In the first episode, shes established to have a fiance, which is the reason she doesnt get together with anyone as the ship travels. Later she contacts him and hes like lol I thought you were dead, heres my new wife, so shes back on the prowl and has one awkward scene with Chakotay.

The only thing Janeway ever did well was her relationship with Seven of Nine. Feeling sympathy for a Borg and wanting to help her reexplore her humanity (even to the point of refusing to let her return to the Borg) is an interesting idea, and its too bad that even this was done better by the Doctor. Its also worth noting that Kate Mulgrew wanted Jeri Ryan removed for being too fanservicey, as if thats the actress fault, and according to everyone was extremely rude to her.

To sum it all up, I think Janeway is probably the single greatest contributor to Voyagers failure to engage audiences. Even if the writing had been equally terrible, a decent captain would have at least made up for a little.

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Started: July 6, 2005