Crew Bio: Janeway

Janeway, Kathryn
Rank: Captain
Nickname: Captain Crunch
Place of origin: Indiana, Earth
Primary Responsibility: Devising convoluted rationalizations for really stupid and dangerous plans while veto-ing any opposition
Psychological Disorder: Manic-depressive, delusions of grandeur, caffeine addiction

There are several points of view on the character of Captain Janeway and its acceptance by viewers of the program. One is such vehement hatred that it often turns into bashing of actress Kate Mulgrew, who plays her. I grant that she is naturally responsible for that voice (more accurately, I think a carton of Marlboro's a day are responsible), but for the most part some of these people go way too far. Kate Mulgrew doesn't do a bad job of acting on Voyager, she's just acting out the part of a character whose intolerable. Attacks on her are uncool; bring in the writers, producers, and directors if you're going that route.

On another end, you have Mulgrew herself, who stated in an interview that she believes that fanboys weren't ready to accept a female captain. I can't speak for the entire male populace, but as far as I'm concerned that's rubbish. I couldn't stand Neelix either, but it wasn't because I'm prejudiced against cast members of Benson (I quite like Odo, actually).

There's another group, like the Comic Book Guy, who find Janeway sexy. The less said about this, the better.

So, if it's not sexism, what is the reason for the loathing? Well, let's talk about the launch right out of the gate. Janeway was grating from the first moment. Picard was similar (coming off as a bit of a grouch), but Sisko was quite a pleasant individual in the first episode when it didn't involve Picard, and we knew why that was. But Janeway was micromanaging everything, and everything seemed tainted with smugness, even down to the insistance that she only be referred to as "captain." I've got no problem with her being captain, or even with wanting to always be called "captain," (although it sounds pretty damn insecure when you think about it), but she seems to just relish the thought of reminding these two yahoos that she's the captain and they are a couple of peons she can send down to the lava planet to see if the situation is dangerous enough to warrant spacesuits. I practically expected her to get on the communicator and announce to the whole ship "I'm the captain! MEEE!!! I hold your lives in my hands! My every whim is law, I'm the god, I'M THE GOD!!!" But of course, we have to save that for future episodes.

But perhaps the best example of what was completely wrong with her the first episode would have to be the ending. That would be how they wound up stranded in the Delta Quadrant, when Janeway blew up the Caretaker's array that they could use to get home. The problems with this are numerous. First, as Tuvok points out, there's a little thing called the prime directive, which says that her interfering in the Kazon-Ocampan conflict that was emerging was a no-no. Second, she wasn't just stranding her crew, but Federation citizens who are not compelled to follow her orders and whom it's her job to protect (even if they are criminals). Third, hasn't anyone heard of a timer? Christ, if John Conner can get ahold of one, I'd frickin' hope that a brand new Federation starship would be able to find something like that.

Further confounding the mix is that Janeway is a Mary Sue. If you don't know, a Mary Sue is a character that exists as an idealized version of the writer. In this case, Janeway is not only captain, but she knows everything. And yet, of course, she's still a sensitive person because even though she verbally castrates every member of her crew, she confides privately of her devotion for every single one. Pardon me while I puke. Let's take a look at the second episode, Parallax. Tom Paris, being only a pilot and not schooled in advanced Starfleet bullshit dynamics, is completely torn down by Janeway when he offers to fly her to the bullshit crack in the event horizon. Granted his tone could be construed as a little smug, but she insists that only someone schooled in high-level quantum balderdash should make this trip, "and unless you've been hiding your credentials, that's not you." Paris must have been thinking: "Gee thanks, you know my morale had dipped a bit finding out you stranded me out in the middle of nowhere cause you're too f**king stupid to use a fuse, but that de-balling just picked me right up. Why don't you just make me Neelix's assistant and complete my total humiliation." However arrogant Paris might have seemed, Janeway comes across as having an ego that threatens to have an event horizon of its own.

One great thing to note throughout the series is that Janeway has all the moral empathy of a tarantula. What do you do if someone steals the lungs of your crewmember? Obviously you let them keep them, because it's wrong to take away someone's vital organs, even if they rightfully belong to someone else. Now, what do you do if they want to punish a member of your crew by having them relive being murdered constantly for the rest of their lives? Answer: Let them! You don't want to interfere. Now, if someone won't tell you what you want to know, what do you do? You risk killing the prisoner as you interrogate them, because they are clearly the evil ones, and you are morally righteous in what you do. And this woman had the gall to pass judgment on Capt. Ransom? Based on what I've seen of Janeway, I think she's developed the Prime Directive Mark II, which is "We cannot interfere in internal affairs of other races, unless it will make our lives miserable."

There are two running gags in Voyager. One is their limitless supply of shuttles, often remarked throughout the web. The other, which doesn't seemed to be noted much outside this website, is that Janeway loves to add people to the crew. She hands out comm badges to people like they were Tic Tacs, and apparently the only requirement to getting one is to fire on Voyager or be a certifiable nut. Getting a comm badge from Janeway is equivalent to having a dog pee around your house: it's a marking of territory, and probably shouldn't be taken as a compliment.

Here's another great example of Trek logic in action: if you were a science officer, you are automatically an expert on everything. Okay, I can see why she would be schooled in the science of made of Trek physics when it comes to black holes, but she also knows everything about engineering, biology, nanotechnology, and anything else you might come up with. She even assisted the Doctor in brain surgery! How many times does Picard take over Engineering? How many times does Archer take the helm? How many times did Kirk get into a fist fight.... okay, bad example. And Sisko? He was too busy changing his hair styles to do whatever the hell he used to do.

Janeway has her proponents, of course. I've no doubt some of them will be outraged by this description and will take the time to write and explain to me how wrong I am and how obviously threatened I must be by a woman in command. Let me just say this: I worked in a project run by a woman that required as long as twenty-hour work days, would go literally weeks without giving a day off (including weekends), and expected perfection from all of us. Yet she never, not once, pulled any of the kind of crap that Janeway would pull on her crew weekly. In fact, if Janeway was running our project I'm sure she would have been thrown out back and handed over to an angry mob while the police turn a blind eye. "Do what I say" is not leadership, especially when you're responsible for condemning your crew to exile, and if any of my bosses had ever done that to me, then no matter what their gender, I'd have kicked their ass when it got around to my turn in the "kick the dumbass boss" queue.

Captain Janeway is the only character we've seen past the ending of the final episode of Voyager. In any sane universe, she should have, at best, been formally reprimanded, and at worst imprisoned. Instead we find she has been promoted to the rank of admiral, and we actually see her order Jean-luc Picard to the Romulan homeworld. Janeway, who couldn't search for a group of terrorists without screwing it up, is ordering around a man who almost single-handedly prevented a Borg conquest of Earth, revealed the Bluegill conspiracy, and helped halt the Klingon Civil War. Janeway isn't worthy to order his "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" from the replicator, nevermind his ship. If there were any justice in Trek, she would be confined to a mining colony with the important task of turning big rocks into small ones.