Not that I ever disliked her or anything like that; I just always heard some people being strong fans but I’d never watched Voyager, yet, and generally tried not to look too closely, for fear of spoilers. Funnily enough, I watched the first few episodes of Prodigy before I’d ever watched any Voyager.
But man; instantly liked her, right out the gate. Immediately engrossed by her character and her performance.
I…don’t know that there’s much of any real point to this post. I don’t know a lot of people who watch Trek and wanted to share, I guess.
Not to take away from your experience (seriously, I’m glad you enjoyed the episode), however I recently rewatched the first few episodes of Voyager, and I thought Janeway’s character (or at least the portrayal of her) had aged really poorly.
For example, there’s a scene between her and B’Elanna where they’re manically finishing each other’s thoughts on some technobabble, and all I could think was “the writers felt this conversation was necessary to show the audience that both these characters are more than qualified for their positions in spite of their gender.” It felt performative rather than empowering. I get a vibe from Janeway that’s more “this is a woman trying to be a male captain” than “this is a female captain” or even “this is a captain who happens to be female.”
Granted it’s not like the other main characters are necessarily much better (Star Trek, why you always gotta start off so rough?), but Janeway feels like she’s trying too hard to prove something, which would be fine if that were part of the plot/character description, but this is Starfleet, they’re supposed to be past gender issues. There are a lot of things that date the show, but I think Janeway is possibly the biggest example. Which is frustrating, because I really want to like her.
Those of us who were on the old social media boards of the day recall the outright hostility against a woman as a captain as the principal character of a show.
The number and toxicity of rants about ‘political correctness’ was extreme if less generally known outside fandom.
Personally, I loved the technobabble in Voyager — it conveys the process of engineering and science more authentically than in any other show in the franchise. At a certain level, it’s more important to have a realistic applied science and engineering process in a Star Trek show than to be restricted to what’s currently known in science or that can be extrapolated from limited current knowledge.
Voyager gave us nerds nerding out. What made it exceptional was not only was it two women with STEM expertise, but that they were enthusiastically supporting one another rather than competing.
We saw some of that positivity and STEM process with Geordie and Data in TNG, but Voyager gave us a captain who was an engineer who moved to command track. Janeway’s uncompromising work the problem dammit ethos is all engineer, and it made her the right temperament for the scenario of a ship lost in another quadrant.
As someone who likes her, I have to admit I accept the show as a product of its time. We’re about as far away from the 1995 debut of Voyager as it was from the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Later, in 1975 US military Academies accepted women for the first time. While it’s true a 24th century officer of the Federation should have little to prove regarding gender, 1995 general audiences definitely needed it to be explained to them for the same reasons that 1960s audiences needed Uhura’s position explained to them. It was very much still up for debate at that time. Sure, it can be jarringly anachronistic, but fans of classic sci-fi are well used to that. Moreover, it can and should keep happening until equal rights are established and accepted. That won’t happen in my lifetime or that of the next generation. Until then, I’ll happily grin and bear the occasional sections of condescending writing, because there are, as there always have been, people who need to hear that message put simply and on display.