I read an article stating that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Stacey Abrams are big fans of Star Trek Voyager.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reasons for liking the show are less obvious, having been revealed during an interview with her mother, but Stacey Abrams singles out her reverence for Janeway.
This is not exactly a “hot take” and no doubt this is going to come off as gate-keeping, but when people talk about Janeway being a great role model I question how much of the show they watched. Janeway was a criminal. She made questionable decisions from start to finish; decisions that violated her oath to Starfleet.
“But, she was in an unknown area. Far from home. Sacrifices had to be made.”
Yes. And that would have made for a great character concept, wouldn’t it? But what we get is a reckless captain who never reflects on what she’s done. She gets a bunch of people killed or condemns a civilization to die and it’s like “Eh… I’m the captain. Deal with it.” Sisko constantly wrestled with the questionable decisions he made, even at times resigning to the fact that he had sacrificed his morality for the greater good (See S6E19: In The Pale Moonlight).
Kate Mulgrew is great. She projected such an air of authority, but the writers just wizzed that show down their legs. Really she was the victim of traditional episodic television from a production company with too many pots on the stove. Most Trek series were written out of sequence season by season by a team of writers, only occasionally consulting with each other on what they were writing. And then the scripts are passed to a continuity editor who just makes sure there aren’t glaring problems.
Editor: “This episode features a character we kill off two episodes earlier and another character we introduce the episode after that.”
Writer: “Oh… can we just air it before the one is killed?”
Editor: “Sure, why not? Nobody will ever realize that we introduce this other guy twice. Fans are dumb. Especially Star Trek fans. They never worry about the minutia of the show.”
In the era of serialized television, or with a stronger voice, like Deep Space Nine developed, it could have been a bold tale of a captain having to sacrifice her humanity for the safety of her crew, and the effects this has on her as the story progresses. You can still do alien-of-the-week episodes, but every once in a while you butt in with a serious episode where we get to see the burden our heroic captain has to endure. That would have made for some epic story telling.
Nope. Instead she screws up the entire Delta Quadrant and they make her an admiral when she gets home.
If you need one episode that sums this up watch S2E24: Tuvix.
It’s a silly setup; Tuvok and Neelix get merged via a transporter accident into a new being called “Tuvix”. At first they think this is permanent, so Tuvix goes on living his life on the ship.
Finally they find a way to “separate” Tuvix back into the two others, except… that means Tuvix will cease to be. He is, of course, not cool with this. Janeway is like “Screw that, get in the transporter beam, murderer… that’s what you are because you killed my two crewmen to exist.” That may sound like a joke, but she literally makes this argument. Her logic is so obscenely bad here.
Tuvix basically begs for his life. He condemns the crew, stating they have his blood on their hands. Everyone is super uncomfortable with it. Even the doctor is like “Yeah, since he isn’t doing this willingly I am forbidden to cause him harm.”
And Janeway is like “I’ll do it, wuss” With barely even a sense of regret.
The YouTuber TriAngulum Audio Studios released a video discussing whether Janeway is a hero of a villain. It’s a great watch, I highly recommend it. He brings up points I’ve barely even touched on here and offers an alternate solution to the Tuvix scenario that salvages the character of Janeway.
…an admiral. They made her an admiral before Picard. Sisko barely made it to captain and he guided the entire Alpha Quadrant to victory against the greatest threat since warp travel was discovered (unless you want to go super deep into Trek lore and talk about the Iconians).
Armchair Screenwriter 