Star Trek: Voyager and Captain Janeway

On facebook, friend me at http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg/

I am in a Group titled Bring Back Kathryn Janeway, and some other Star Trek groups.

The Janeway group has a twitter account and on facebook has over 500 members.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=366418642046

I happened to think of the Janeway Group recently because a fellow found me on facebook who had interviewed me years ago about Spock's popularity.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000108289003

His article is now posted here:

http://mystartrekscrapbook.blogspot.com/2010/04/1976-article-spock-part-2-analysis.html

Click on the image and you can get it up to readable size print.

So as happens constantly, Star Trek is back in front of my nose, and I found myself thinking about Janeway.

If you poll an audience at a con panel about Star Trek: Voyager you get about half hating it and about half liking it or feeling it's "ok" but not the best of the bunch.

If you poll on Janeway as a character, the men reject her and the women like (if not adore) her.

What's going on there?

Star Trek: Voyager had an innate fatal flaw built into the very premise.

The flaw is the same flaw you often find in "SFR" (Science Fiction Romance) or PNR or Fantasy-Romance.

There is a GIANT PREMISE which is absolutely fascinating, energizing, and makes you anticipate watching.

The story starts, and something diverts attention from the premise onto a looming, maybe life-threatening problem, and then onto another problem, and another problem takes priority, and another problem explodes to top priority.

Meanwhile, everyone is waiting and waiting for the PAYOFF - the original primise to be advanced, woven in, and eventually evolve into a conflict that can be resolved.

It's a pattern you see in Time Travel Romance, for example. The author worldbuilds us a nifty time-travel device, accident, premise. One lover-to-be falls or leaps through into another time or universe ---- and never looks back.

We don't find out how the time-travel device works, why it works, how to make it work on purpose and take us where we want to be, or anything interesting. I mean lovers can meet and bond anywhere, anywhen, but there's only ONE Time-Travel-Device that defies physics as I know it. If the device is introduced first, I need to know all about the device, not about the lovers.

If the lovers are introduced first, and the device is a support to that.

For example: one lover is stuck in our time and invents the device on purpose to get to the other lover stuck in some other time - maybe with a plan of fleeing to a 3rd Time - then the way the device works doesn't matter to the story.

But if a device exists, (first before we meet any people), and a person falls through it by accident, then if that person is worth my attention, that person will not rest a moment or think of anything else or feel anything else until they've figured out how the device works and how to command it to take them "home" -- no matter the lure of the current time.

Likewise, with Voyager and Janeway. Here is this SPACE SHIP (wow, a Starfleet ship that isn't THE Enterprise! Bring it on!), and here is this Captain -- (wow, a woman Starship Captain - bring it on!)

Then all of a sudden, they are swept to the back side of nowhere.

They turn around and start trying to figure out how to get home.  And they don't. 

Then this happens, that happens, nothing happens, around and around, and they're on a 70 year trek to home with incidents (incidents mind you, not plot developments) along the way.

They forget about striving to get home through most of the episodes -- where they may be fighting for their lives or for Starfleet principles -- but essentially it's episodic so the Situation is returned to the status quo at the end of each episode. Net-net -- nothing happened.

Well, "nothing happened" is still interesting but only if SOMEONE CARES that nothing happened. Someone has to be frustrated, striving against the barriers preventing something from happening, trying schemes and plots and theories - maybe failing but continually trying. Never for an instant forgetting the goal. 

But that isn't how it goes through most of Star Trek: Voyager.

You have the same plot problem that creates boredom in STAR GATE: UNIVERSE.

In Universe the Ancient relic of a ship is stuck out there and they can't even control it -- OK, they can communicate with home, but still they go from harrowing situation to disaster to this and that and the other thing - and NOTHING HAPPENS with the original premise which was interesting.

In Star Gate: Universe - the premise was there's this Earth outpost that gets attacked and the humans there evacuate onto this relic ship via stargate. Then -- so what? They're stuck as passengers just facing harrowing situations to survive -- not to MAKE PROGRESS mind you, but just to survive.

It's not a story. It's not a plot.

Now they've brought in some vicious aliens who want the relic starship, and they're playing cat and mouse with aliens on their tale, unable to control the ship. Nothing happens.

So you see the recipe for how to kill a series the higher ups in the network hate.

Take a premise guaranteed to sucker in the very audience you want to destroy, ignore that premise because of one emergency after another, and the audience will just wander off to watch White Collar.

If you present a premise first - then work that premise TO THE BEATS - don't bore the audience.

Now, back to Janeway herself.

Frankly, I think what "they" did to this character was the same kind of thing that was done to the show by tossing the premise aside.  They had a dynamite premise -- Kathryn Janeway, woman Starship Captain, Kirk watch out!  And they flipped it off and tossed it aside. 

JANEWAY as a character is exciting because of the potential she has for changing the Trek Universe, the politics and sociology of Star Fleet and interplanetary relationships.

The show's guardian angels recognized that potential, and cobbled onto the mess an ending that might have worked. They brought her back to Starfleet using new technology, time-travel, alternate-universe gimmicks, and she brought back data that changed things.

OK, that's good. So what's wrong with Star Trek: Voyager?

That ending was not INHERENT IN THE OPENING 5 EPISODES.

We were not sitting there anticipating that ending, knowing things the characters did not know, watching them figure it out, seeing their bravery, boldness, audaciousness, and heroism win the day. We didn't see them grow beyond all those heroic traits to bonding with each other despite the barriers to that.  We didn't see Love Conquering All.  We had no idea of what the "All" was that needed "Conquering." 

We couldn't see the overall shape of the VOYAGER story-line from the beginning because the writers didn't know it. The ending was not implicit in the beginning. That doesn't make for a surprise ending or a twist. It makes for a dull show with a deus ex machina ending.

The main character of this story is Janeway.

And that character only contributed to the "confusion" that drove half the audience away.

Yet look at all the Janeway-Chakotay fanfic -- (and other slashes and mashes!).

There's Trek magic in those characters, no doubt about it.

So why does half the audience shrug Janeway off as a non-entity? They don't "hate" her - that would be exciting! They don't even despise her. They think she's a bad Captain and a total wash out as a person.

Why do they think that?

Maybe a better way to phrase it is, "Why don't I think that?"

The answer is Kate Mulgrew.

Mulgrew was handed the short and very dirty end of the stick here.

Janeway was written to be one person in the first episode, another totally different person in #2, and opposite in #3, and skewed in #4, and different again in #5 and so on.

She was never the same person in two successive scripts.

Then as a weekly series must, the producers used different directors on different episodes.

So Janeway was directed to "be" different people - trying to "correct" the writing by directing and acting.

Little by little, Mulgrew created a character --

And that's why I love VOYAGER!

Mulgrew showed us what a real actor can do with an impossible situation.

Keep in mind STAR TREK: VOYAGER is "supposed to be science fiction" -- but as with all the other Treks, the fanfic shows us that it's not. It's really ROMANCE seen from another point of view.

Actually, that's the real difference between or among genres. Any story can be made into any genre by just changing the point of view character and sometimes the "narrative voice" (first person to third person narrative).

Mulgrew took the confused, conflicting, mutually exclusive Janeways she was handed and created a unified, whole, complete HUMAN BEING from the mishmosh.

She created a CHARACTER with depth, facets, inconsistencies that flesh out and illuminate the inner subconscious depths of character the way the very best classics show us character.

The one crippling lack in the material handed to Mulgrew was the lack of RELATIONSHIP. Kirk on-screen displayed relationships, but Janeway wasn't allowed to.

But the fans fixed that. The Fanfic shows us Janeway deep into complex relationships worthy of the complexity of character, the realistic complexity Mulgrew created from the contradictions.

However, Janeway was still a character in a TV show -- an anthology TV show not a really good ARC TV show like Babylon 5.

TV show characters are not allowed to be "classic" - rich, deep, multi-faceted.

Worse, Janeway was still a character in a science fiction TV show, and we all know science fiction is only for teenage boys who are squeamish around girls and basically nerds who will never be able to hold a relationship, right?

So despite the incredible job Mulgrew did, the accomplishment is unsung.

Now, just imagine if STAR TREK: VOYAGER were an actual SFR complete with rich, deep, conflict-ridden RELATIONSHIPS!

Imagine if the writers had actually had a plot for the series, as Babylon 5 had.

In that case, you might be able to see Janeway.

As it is, this gem of a character is encrusted and hidden beneath the rubble of failures of other creative people. All of those who worked on this show are, individually, not only talented but highly skilled and know better than to do this. But for some reason, upper management or whatever, they were not allowed to do what they know how to do -- or not inspired or properly rewarded.

So I say Bring Back Janeway - in another universe than the one we met her in, and let's see what happens with good writing, great directing, and an actual plot, some really Up In Space Romance (as opposed to Down To Earth Romance) and plentiful story-arcs like Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/