Captain Janeway

[Smitty the Great OneParticipant 1535]

worst Star Fleet captain EVER!!

Life is too long to play by someone elses rules....

[uchibenkeiParticipant 7965]

Agreed. Not because she was a woman either. That whole series was based on a dilemma that any other captain would have solved in 1 episode, 2 parter at most.

I bathe in the tears of single moms.

[OldBillParticipant]

Not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but here’s my two cents. I’ve a sibling who works in Southern California on the IT/software side of the film business and I once listened to Kate Mulgrew explain what went down on the Voyager set.

First, the production team at Paramount was creatively “tired” and dealing with various amounts of overlap between different Trek shows. First it was TNG for 7 years, then DS9, then Voyager, then Enterprise. They’d been at it for nearly 20 years, the well was dry, and it showed. It didn’t matter that new writers were shopping various ideas and scripts to the shows because those ideas/scripts were rewritten, “polished”, tweaked, directed, produced, and filmed by the same production team. The same people had been doing the Trek for too damn long and they’d gone stale.

Next, Voyager was a weak concept that Paramount frantically turned to when the TNG cast announced seven seasons was enough. DS9 was doing well enough, but Paramount was convinced they need another Trek show on their network. The lack of careful, lengthy pre-production work on Voyager showed and quickly turned it into the franchise’s red-headed stepchild. As time went on, Paramount was wrapping up DS9, trying to keep their crippled network afloat, and starting pre-production on Enterprise. That meant an already weak Voyager got even less attention and less care which brings me to my final point.

With the production team creatively tired and pulled in several directions, the scripts quickly became so awful and with so little continuity of characterization from week to week that the actors basically gave up. One who played a female alien simply quit the series after a few seasons. The guy who played the XO checked out mentally for most of the run but only after a couple initial years of fruitless screaming matches with the production staff. Most of the other actors mailed it in to varying degrees because no one really cared. And Mulgrew? She was a little more devious.

She’s a stage actress primarily. She had grabbed TV and movie roles for quick money between working in the theater. I attended a charity c~~~tail meet & greet with her several years ago while she was touring in a one woman play about Katherine Hepburn. It was a nice party, about 10 people all told, until one mouth breather simply had to ask her about Voyager. Much like Shatner’s famous “Get a life SNL appearance, Mulgrew apparently decided to scare the Trekkie straight.

She started by confirming the well known truth that once you do Trek your TV/movie career is pretty much f~~~ed. A few actors have been the exception but even they needed years to erase the stigma. She then explained that a TV series with a built-in audience like Trek was basically a lottery ticket for an actor. You’re going to get 100+ episodes, you will get reruns, residuals, DVD sales, etc. The money is there and, if you didn’t care about a post-Trek TV/movie career, it could be enough. She was and is a theater actor, so the loss of a TV/movie career wasn’t too much of a price for her. Besides, doing Voyager gave her f~~~ you money. Thanks to Voyager, she no longer had to take any job just to pay the bills. She could pick and choose waiting for the theater roles she wanted.

Then she gave the Trekkie both barrels. She told him that the Voyager scripts eventually became so p~~~ poor that any character continuity was lost. With each new script, the production team had the Janeway character reacting and thinking in a different manner than the script before. Mulgrew said she could have fought to make changes to impose some sort of continuity, but instead she thought it would be fun to play Janeway as a schizoid sociopath. So, Mulgrew followed the scripts and played Janeway slightly different with each episode because she no longer gave enough of a f~~~ not to.

Watching the Trekkie’s face it all I could do not to choke on my scotch.

Do not date. Do not impregnate. Do not co-habitate. Above all, do not marry. Reclaim and never again surrender your personal sovereignty.

[StargazerParticipant 12505]

F~~~ the caretaker… use the Array to go home. Have dinner, catch a nap, go out for some Romulan Ale and toast a good day at the office. End of series.

[The Skank SpankerParticipant 1372]

I’ve been a Trekkie ever since I was 16. Not sure if this topic is about her gender or acting-qualities. But to me she was one of the best Star Trek captains although she can’t be compared to Jean Luc Picard.

Although I could be pretty annoyed by her stubbornness and getting her crew in danger for stupid exploratory reasons, but that actually made the series worthwhile and adventurous. And ever since Seven of Nine came in, I was glued to the screen. That bodysuit was smoking hot.

Especially the Borg-episodes were pretty nice. I also really enjoyed Voyager because of the Doctor and his humour. The diverse personalities of the crew really gave extra depth to the series. I’m not surprised they made it up to Season 7. If they were really so bad, they would have been cancelled WAY back, but they didn’t. It was a commercial success regardless of reruns and similair episodes (Borg, Species **** etc). Too bad Neelix never really died, that f~~~er annoyed the s~~~ out of me 😀

This time im going to stick up for Janeway, whether it be a popular opinion or not 🙂

[Smitty the Great OneParticipant 1535]

As someone that watched all Trek, I always knew Voyager was the weak link. But DS9 was crap until they switched it from episodic to serial. Voyager was serial from the beginning which is something that had never been tried before with a Trek series. I understand that the Trek well was dry. There were a few good episodes of Voyager, and even interesting characters, but I have standards for Captains, and if she wasn’t going to do good work then she really deserves as much scorn as I can muster. Sisko had a s~~~ deal running a f~~~ing space station…. it didn’t move…. for the most part. A lot of the same plot devices were used in EVERY Trek series, and some of it worked simply because the actors made it work. Without Sisko put his own stamp as capt. on DS9 it was crap, one person CAN make a difference. Mulgrew didn’t deserve to BE the lead if she didn’t take care of the show. Original Trek only got 3 years, and without Kirk BEING Kirk it would have sank in 3 episodes.

Maybe it’s unfair to call her the worst, but if what Old Bill says is true, and I have no reason to not believe him. Then she truly is the worst captain. By her own words she was just drawing a check, and if you’re the lead and you put no effort into making a good product….IT’S YOUR F~~~ING FAULT.

Life is too long to play by someone elses rules....

[Zuberi TauParticipant 10606]

TNG was my favorite.

[Cap285Participant 6007]

Who remembers the scene in Nemesis when Admiral Janeway is talking to Captain Picard? I shouted:

THEY PROMOTED HER DUMB ASS TO ADMIRAL!

Got some yucks from the crowd.

Fuck this planet.

[RoyDalParticipant]

I tried to like Capt. Picard, I really did. I watched all of TNG in spite of
* His inveterate habit of calling committee meetings in the middle of an attack complete with failing shields.
* How come he never told Chief Engineer Geordi to figure out a way to disconnect the holodeck in times of emergency? Even a ship-wide power failure couldn’t turn the damn thing off.
* Why didn’t he think of putting physical bars up in the ship’s brig? During a power failure, there was always a jail break. (Perhaps he should have stashed his prisoners in a holodeck jail. That way, escape would have been impossible.)

Capt. Janeway never reached the standards set by Capt. Picard. If I missed one of her shows, I didn’t bother with digging up a rerun. That said, I did not get tired of looking at the Borg Sexbot. Her scenes are happy memories.

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[Anonymous 11]

Smitty the Great One wrote:

worst Star Fleet captain EVER!!

I concur. Five minutes of Janeway Chinese water torture made me never watch that iteration ever again.

@oldbill: The last Star Trek movie was very good so there is life left in the franchise if it’s turned over to the proper hands. Who was the captain? That would be Kirk in his formative years.

[Big BossParticipant 4496]

OldBill wrote:

Not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, but here’s my two cents. I’ve a sibling who works in Southern California on the IT/software side of the film business and I once listened to Kate Mulgrew explain what went down on the Voyager set.

First, the production team at Paramount was creatively “tired” and dealing with various amounts of overlap between different Trek shows. First it was TNG for 7 years, then DS9, then Voyager, then Enterprise. They’d been at it for nearly 20 years, the well was dry, and it showed. It didn’t matter that new writers were shopping various ideas and scripts to the shows because those ideas/scripts were rewritten, “polished”, tweaked, directed, produced, and filmed by the same production team. The same people had been doing the Trek for too damn long and they’d gone stale.

Next, Voyager was a weak concept that Paramount frantically turned to when the TNG cast announced seven seasons was enough. DS9 was doing well enough, but Paramount was convinced they need another Trek show on their network. The lack of careful, lengthy pre-production work on Voyager showed and quickly turned it into the franchise’s red-headed stepchild. As time went on, Paramount was wrapping up DS9, trying to keep their crippled network afloat, and starting pre-production on Enterprise. That meant an already weak Voyager got even less attention and less care which brings me to my final point.

With the production team creatively tired and pulled in several directions, the scripts quickly became so awful and with so little continuity of characterization from week to week that the actors basically gave up. One who played a female alien simply quit the series after a few seasons. The guy who played the XO checked out mentally for most of the run but only after a couple initial years of fruitless screaming matches with the production staff. Most of the other actors mailed it in to varying degrees because no one really cared. And Mulgrew? She was a little more devious.

She’s a stage actress primarily. She had grabbed TV and movie roles for quick money between working in the theater. I attended a charity c~~~tail meet & greet with her several years ago while she was touring in a one woman play about Katherine Hepburn. It was a nice party, about 10 people all told, until one mouth breather simply had to ask her about Voyager. Much like Shatner’s famous “Get a life SNL appearance, Mulgrew apparently decided to scare the Trekkie straight.

She started by confirming the well known truth that once you do Trek your TV/movie career is pretty much f~~~ed. A few actors have been the exception but even they needed years to erase the stigma. She then explained that a TV series with a built-in audience like Trek was basically a lottery ticket for an actor. You’re going to get 100+ episodes, you will get reruns, residuals, DVD sales, etc. The money is there and, if you didn’t care about a post-Trek TV/movie career, it could be enough. She was and is a theater actor, so the loss of a TV/movie career wasn’t too much of a price for her. Besides, doing Voyager gave her f~~~ you money. Thanks to Voyager, she no longer had to take any job just to pay the bills. She could pick and choose waiting for the theater roles she wanted.

Then she gave the Trekkie both barrels. She told him that the Voyager scripts eventually became so p~~~ poor that any character continuity was lost. With each new script, the production team had the Janeway character reacting and thinking in a different manner than the script before. Mulgrew said she could have fought to make changes to impose some sort of continuity, but instead she thought it would be fun to play Janeway as a schizoid sociopath. So, Mulgrew followed the scripts and played Janeway slightly different with each episode because she no longer gave enough of a f~~~ not to.

Watching the Trekkie’s face it all I could do not to choke on my scotch.

Noyice. Props to Mulgrew.

[Author]

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