I would argue that with the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the t.v. series of Star Trek ended.
No more spin-offs or series happened. You tell me anything different, you are a heretic.
Anyways, Joel has posted on Captain Janeway from some show called Voyager:
“So, could it be that Janeway, the leader, the strong female captain charged with leading a crew home, is actually being portrayed as the anti-feminist, in that she needs to escape”
For more, see Joel’s post: Janeway Lamda One: biblical womanhood in Star Trek: Voyager.
I also found it a bit odd at first that this was Janeway’s holonovel of choice. However, I disagree with Joel’s analysis.
Joel’s argument hinges on the idea that a Jane-Eyre-ish romance is what Janeway “really wants.” In another example of why I am not a Freudian, I do not believe that our fantasies are our true selves, hiding beneath the false front of our everyday lives. I believe that our true selves are what we build through a lifetime of choices and everyday actions (to quote from Batman Begins: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me”). Janeway’s true self is “Starship Captain Janeway,” not “19th-Century Romance Janeway.” Upon further thought, I can understand Janeway’s choice of holonovels. Captaining a starship (especially one lost in the Delta Quadrant) is a stress sandwich topped with stress-sauce and served with a side of stress, so why would she spend her free time doing more of the same? Why not escape into something that is utterly unlike one’s real life? Would it make sense for me to “escape” my life as a psychology professor by creating a holodeck fantasy in which I play a psychology professor?
Remember that Janeway is not the only Trek captain with a recurring holodeck fantasy. Picard often escaped into the holodeck to become Dixon Hill, a 20th-Century private detective. I don’t see anyone claiming that Picard is hiding his true calling to be a tough-talking hardboiled gumshoe.
A ha! Nice rebuttal.
You are correct, Charles, Picard didn’t want to be Kirk. Shame, because that is why is sucked as a Captain.
It was more than a fantasy, but one in which she became attached to in such a way as to as for her to feel guilty in having another guy, the holo dude, come between her and the real one.
The fact that she got caught up in the fantasy and it impacted her real love life doesn’t necessarily make it her true self.
My wife and I have an understanding. I don’t get jealous of her feelings for Spike the vampire, and she doesn’t get jealous of my feelings for Brienne of Tarth. This doesn’t mean that deep down she really wants to be a crazy-but-childlike psychic bloodsucker, or that deep down I really want to be a one-handed twincestuous kingslayer.