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The "standard format" simply isn't going to work for this one. I've got too much to say. I think I'll start here: one of the complaints about Janeway that I've heard most often from fans of the show is that the writers took her character in too many directions. Specifically, they dislike how the writers responded to some viewers' distaste for her with attempts to reshape her character in a variety of ways, which were disliked for a number of reasons. Well, there was a certain schizophrenia to Janeway, and while it was no more pronounced than Chakotay's, she was a much more central character to the show. Let's begin by looking at a couple of the Janeway archetypes.
Janeway as a Female Picard
Janeway's not the only one to face this syndrome; since, in the early seasons, the writers were reworking scripts from TNG, we got some other character crossovers. Kes is one of the bigger offenders, often being the Troi stand-in, while one of the reasons that Chakotay fit in too well is that he seemed to be playing the role of Riker more often than not. The part of Janeway had more baggage though - the ship's captain sets the tone for the show, and as Trek's first female, headline character captain, Janeway had to fill some big shoes and make those shoes her own at the same time.
In the early seasons, I found it pretty easy to picture Picard saying almost every line that was given to Janeway. Now, I love Picard, but I also love Sisko and Kirk and Adama and Roslin and Sheridan and even Sinclair - and each one was his or her own person. Personally, I think it was important to distinguish Janeway from the start, and help give this show its own unique feel. The main argument I can think of against my position on this matter is that maybe the writers were trying to show that Janeway didn't necessarily have to be any different from the male captains we loved just because she's a woman.
Here's the problem with that argument, and at the same time the reason why I said "almost every line": the Voyager writers did try to woman-ify this version of Picard. It started at the most surface level with Janeway's version of the Dixon Hill holoprogram, her "gothic holonovel." It was not only a stereotypically female interest, but even the type of program was a terrible choice. Instead of an interactive problem-solving program, Janeway seemed to be playing a passive, scripted junk romance story. Why would an Amelia Erhart-obsessed female captain fantasize about being a helpless governess, enraptured by the strong man in her life? Once that element drove me nuts, as early as Cathexis, it wasn't hard to look back at other things, like Janeway's treatment of the Vidiians in Phage, and see more sexism at work in the writing. From this vantage point, at the end of the series, I'm a little more comfortable citing Hanlon's razor again and blaming incompetence, but at the time it just fueled the fire of my disgust with the character.
Janeway, Determined to Get Her Crew Home at Any Cost
The other Janeway I want to talk about is professional-almost-to-the-point-of-cold-Janeway, because this is the Janeway I've heard the most complaints about, and is also the Janeway I like the best. This is the Janeway of Year of Hell, the one who will dress the Doctor down for trying to relieve her of duty, and solo-pilot her ship towards a certain death (well, certain as far as she knew) in order to protect the timeline. This is also the Janeway who will make tough choices, who will have meetings in order to hear some other points of view but then shut the meeting down when it's clear that further debate will get nowhere. I felt that this Janeway was refreshing and unique in the Trek world, but didn't show up nearly as often as I'd like.
On the other hand, this Janeway did clash with Janeway, Champion of the Prime Directive and Federation Ideals to a certain extent. Most of the time, when people don't like cold-Janeway, the complaint seems to be that she's being inconsistent. Well, yes, I guess she is, but champion-Janeway wasn't such a great fit for the show she was on. A significant chunk of her crew were non-Federation personnel, and it didn't make much sense for them to follow someone like her. I accept that her behavior sometimes was inconsistent, but I'm willing to overlook it when it made her into a character that I was more interested in watching.
Janeway Doesn't Have to Be Good at Everything to Be Awesome
Janeway had an annoying habit of being an expert in whatever technobabble was the flavor of the week. Even if she did know more about metaphysics than a phd in the field (I'm thinking here of Good Shepherd), having her always feel the need to show off became grating very quickly. Either it was one-upsmanship unbecoming of a captain, or it came across as micromanagement. Sisko must've had some pretty serious engineering chops to help design the Defiant, yet he still left the major engineering decisions to O'Brien. Worse, it made the more specialized crew members look incompetent when someone who forsook their field for the command track would still have the technobabble answer more often than they would.
Heroic Acts Wanted, Inquire Within
In my Good Shepherd review, I opined that Janeway had no heroic acts to her name. Looking back now, that's not exactly true. Her most heroic moment, the one I talked about earlier is Year of Hell is overshadowed by the fact that the Janeway in the rest of the series didn't even know that she sacrificed herself to restore the timeline. That's a disappointment to the viewer, and kind of a cheap resolution, but I'll give her that one.
The other captains though, they have lots of heroic moments, big and small. It can be Picard putting his career on the line fore a enlisted crewman who lied on his Starfleet application, or Picard sobbing quietly in his room while he bears the burden of Sarek's emotions. It can be Sisko encouraging his son to let him go and live his own life, or Sisko setting aside his own ideals in order to help win the war for the guys who will let others maintain their ideals. It can be Kirk watching a woman he came to love die in order to restore the timeline, or breaking Federation law for just a shot at bringing Spock back from the dead.
In the above list of Janeway-centric episodes, so many of the resolutions boil down to "Janeway had a trick, so she won." Sure, the story of the Kobayashi Maru is compelling, but it isn't the only story to tell. I'm happy for the good guys to win, even win a whole lot, but just winning on its own isn't heroic. There has to be some sacrifice, some way in which the person puts the good of others ahead of their own welfare; that just wasn't something that Janeway was very good at. Maybe that's at least something that made her unique, but it wasn't compelling for me.
Janeway, Always Right
An element of the previous issue is that the scripts very often took Janeway's side, no matter what her stance on the issue of the week was. If Janeway was championing Federation ideals, Federation ideals would be the key to saving the day. Alliances is a great example of an episode that was dragged down in the end due to this problem. Alliances was a great opportunity to look at a pragmatic approach to delta quadrant diplomacy fairly, but because Janeway didn't want alliances, in the end, every attempt at an alliance had to prove to be fruitless. Most of the episode is one of the better Voyager stories, but because of the lens that it was shown through, it turned sour by the end.
Well, there was one area in which Janeway could be wrong: the Doctor's rights. She was capable of being prejudiced against him, though she'd always learn her lesson every time and become a better person... which would make it that much more surreal the next time she'd act like he wasn't a full crew member. It's unfortunate that the one thing that Janeway could be wrong about was the sentience of the single most popular character on the show, though. Look at Pulaski, who was condescending towards Data, one of the big two on TNG, from day one. I consider that to be a large part of why there is so much Pulaski hatred out there; otherwise, aside from being a McCoy clone, she was a reasonably interesting character.
Condescension, a Janeway Problem or a Mulgrew Problem?
Janeway's belittling behavior, which was, in my opinion, her most aggravating asset, wasn't always in the script. An actor and/or director could have opted to play the lines differently, to give the characters some grace when they are being shown how right Janeway always is. Mulgrew's performances added a series of smirks and wan smiles that would have had half the crew submitting the transfer papers if they were in the alpha quadrant. Now, Mulgrew did routinely show that she couldn't make many other faces; any attempt to hold a look of genuine concern involved involuntary twitching due to the flexion of underused muscles. That's not a good defense, but it does kind of explain why she kept doing the same insulting routine over and over.
The Shakespearian-trained Trek actors (Stewart and, as it turns out, Shatner) brought a larger-than-life presence to their roles. We all know about the eccentricities of Shatner's acting, but even Stewart often (particularly in the early years) used his booming stage-voice at times when it was not strictly necessary. I often hear people complain about Brooks' over-acting as well, but all three were capable of lacing their performances with subtleties that shone all the more brightly due to their more bombastic baseline acting.
Mulgrew had none of the above. She had one tone (smarmy), one rhythm (flat), one stance (hands on hips), and no subtlety. Quiet, introspective moments were played the same way as tense negotiations. The way she would deliver what would otherwise be a poignant line could turn a Battlestar Galactica script into a Glee episode. At least grim, determined Janeway was often in the midst of action, and did not have the opportunity for bizarre poses and facial expressions. If the best praise I can muster is that sometimes she was too busy to try to act, then we've got big problems.
Final Thoughts
Janeway, as a character, is not the worst one in Voyager, but her importance to the show made her deficits much more visible. But while I'd rank Janeway above Chakotay and Beltran, I'd rank Mulgrew below them all. Mulgrew's acting alone brought more character assassination than any handful of poor writing decisions did. If she'd been cast differently, I imagine this evaluation would've gone a lot more smoothly.
I thought for a long time about including a section on whether or not a female captain was a bad idea in general. The idea that anyone could think that it was a faulty initial concept, least of all a Trek fan, is abhorrent to me, and I considered just leaving my thoughts on that as a footnote in my Cathexis review. However, considering that I've heard that line of thinking from multiple people, some even without the anonymity of the internet to protect them, I'll say it again here: women can lead. Janeway was poorly executed, for a number of reasons that I've gone into in this article, but that does not in any way prove that women are not suited for command or leadership roles.
I just wish I could point people to a number of other strong women leaders in science fiction. Roslin (of Battlestar) is the best I know of - distinctly feminine, and also a powerful and effective leader. Like all the other characters in the show, she has her flaws, but being a woman isn't one of them. Adair, of Earth 2, isn't bad. She's a reasonably effective leader, but the writers did use her motherhood to be the driving factor for the clouding of her judgment far too often. I've watched only a couple seasons of SG-1, so my knowledge of the Stargate universe is limited, so I cannot speak intelligently about the female leaders there. If we look to first officers, there are more options (including great ones like Kira and Zoe), but I'd still like to see some more women at the top in sci-fi.
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