Janeway has always been a problematic character. She wasn’t much of a Captain, and her incompetence was legendary especially when it came to the Prime Directive. Her expertise was in the Star Trek sciences, with repeated mention of her time as a science officer and endless smug “look at me sciencing” scenes. This is clearly not someone on the command track.
Hell, she was such a terrible Captain they “promoted” her to Admiral when she finally got home primarily because the press would have eaten Starfleet Command alive. Voyager’s death march back to Federation space left her a broken shell of a person, and if she’d been merely unfit in Caretaker, she was an outright liability by that time. This was not a merit-based promotion. It was pure politics and PR. We see some of this in the finale, and according to people who have discussed it with her, Kate Mulgrew agrees.
As such, most of the issues with Voyager as a whole fall largely on some deep issues with the Janeway character. I liked Kate Mulgrew; I’ve seen her in plenty of other things, and she’s always been solid. She also refused to go along with the casting couch or mandatory nude scenes horseshit that was so prevalent back then, which I totally respect.
How do we make Captain Janeway work without defying all reason? How do we justify certain command decisions, especially regarding the Maquis?
We do a rewrite of Caretaker, with a few minor tweaks down the line.
First thing is we make her the XO instead of the Captain. Spock was both XO and a science officer, and he showed very little interest in being Captain; when given half a chance, he stepped down and gave Enterprise back to Kirk. Janeway’s backstory as a science officer totally supports this, so it would have made sense.
As for the Captain, let’s call him or her Captain Von Doomed because you bet your sweet chunk the character isn’t surviving the pilot. Doesn’t matter if they’re male, female, human, alien, or anything else. Hell, go totally exotic since the makeup people only have to do the effects for two episodes. The only real concern is that by making Von Doomed a man you’ll have idiots whining that “they’re saying a woman can only be Captain over a man’s dead body.” To which I say “I would probably kill myself if my life was so empty and sheltered that I considered something that petty to be a serious issue.”
So Captain Von Doomed is in the big chair when Voyager goes out to the Badlands, and he survives just like Janeway did originally. Once they get back from the Caretaker’s station, he puts Janeway – his best science officer – in charge of figuring out just what in tarnation is going on. From there the episode goes largely as it already had, with Von Doomed leading the away mission in Janeway’s place and shooting Neelix in the heel and leaving him and Kes to be torn to pieces by the enraged Kazon after he screws them all over by completely screwing up the negotiations. Similarly, we have the Captain in a few other scenes that required the Captain rather than a science officer.
Since we’re killing Neelix early on, we have someone else play him and cast Ethan Phillips as someone else on one of the crews; the guy can act, and Neelix was an awful character despite his best efforts to turn a steaming pile into something good. Let them recycle certain Neelix moments, but make him far less of an asshead. Going that route, he probably fits better as one of the Maquis; his “what, me worry?” attitude and reluctance to do things the Starfleet way could be carried over almost intact.
So really, mostly minor changes so far, mostly to show Janeway as a solid science officer rather than primarily command staff. This establishes her as the big brain on board for later episodes involving weird (even for Trek) science, and also shows nobody expected her to run a starship. Which is important when her incompetence rears its ugly head as it does so often down the road.
While all this is going on, you have the Kazon on the ground react completely appropriately to what looks to them like some random dude they never even heard of showing up with a known scumbag conman, promising them the water said conman owed them, then allowing this very same conman to screw the deal completely by shooting the water tanks as soon as he got what he wanted. Kazon commander calls in reinforcements with orders to aim for the eyes. Instead of one ship, they call in a small fleet – big enough that the viewers look at it and think “yep, they’re screwed,” but small enough that it doesn’t just show up and have a pre-peat of when the Vidians boarded Voyager and effortlessly harvested the crew’s organs.
Have a few scenes with the Voyager and Val Jean crews interacting to establish a certain level of trust between them, even if it’s only “hey, you Stafleet people are looking to arrest us, but we’re pretty sure those Kazon assholes are sizing us up for the full Inquisition treatment. For fun,” on the Maquis side and “sure, you’re terrorists, but you’re still Federation. How about we sort all that out after we get out of here,” on the Voyager side.
We also give the Caretaker’s station some really nice point defenses. It keeps the Kazon from doing any real damage to the station, and also keeps anyone from destroying it with photorps no matter how awesome their magic treknobabble warheads are this week.
Now everything has hit the fan with the Kazon and Caretaker, with Janeway suddenly discovering the Caretaker is dying, what’s going on with him sending extra energy to the Ocampa, the Kazon can not be allowed to take over the station, etc. And now there are Kazon boarding parties crawling all over the Caretaker’s station. Urgency, don’cha know.
That’s when we have Captain Von Doomed beam over with the magic warheads. Voyager was already getting its ass kicked by the Kazon ships even with the Val Jean’s help in the original episode, so with them up against a fleet it’s even more plausible. Then have the Captain step down and tell her “get my crew out of here, Janeway. Congratulations on your promotion,” right before pulling the pin while squatting down right at ground zero. Last we see of Von Doomed is him holding off a Kazon boarding party with his phaser.
Unfortunately, the Caretaker dying and the firefight outside make the station incapable of sending Voyager back. Or maybe it can’t lock on because Treknobabble. Who knows. Who cares? We all knew they’d be stuck there from the outset – it was the point to the gorram show.
Instead of getting zapped back to Federation space, we have Voyager and the Val Jean running for it. Keeping the Val Jean intact causes problems going forward, so we let Chakotay have his awesome “how does the man walk with nuts that big” scene where he rams a Kazon ship, only this time around it’s to cover Voyager’s escape.
Boom. Explains her general incompetence and lack of fitness as Captain, while also giving us a much less ridiculous justification for not using the array to send everyone back. Specifically one that doesn’t come down to “so a Starfleet science officer and ship’s complement of scientists and engineers can’t figure out how to wire a gorram timer?! What exactly were the writers smoking?!”
Down the road, we have the same issues with trying to integrate the crews. However, this time we have Janeway’s lack of command experience as the reason she chooses Chakotay as her XO. She got her promotion fairly – I refuse to believe Starfleet would have given her the XO position if she was completely useless – but she also realizes her strengths are in the sciences rather than command. Having an XO who knows how to lead a starship crew, especially one made up of terrorists rather than well-trained Starfleet personnel, is a huge asset for her. Meanwhile, Chakotay knows damn well if he ever tries to arrange an accident for Janeway the Starfleet crew will keelhaul him. Between that and him being portrayed as a decent guy overall, it makes for a stable relationship.
Making Chakotay the command specialist also makes him much less of a fifth wheel as the series goes forward. Which is a nice change from every single Chakotay episode boiling down to “have we mentioned he’s Native? From no discernable tribe? Whose ‘authentic Indian beliefs’ are absolute horseshit to anyone who knows anything about Native Americans?”
We can use this relationship to make a lot of episodes more interesting, especially when Janeway is forced early on to trust Chakotay when it comes to making the Maquis behave themselves. It would add all kinds of tension if written properly, because she can’t really know – especially in the first season or so – if he’s on the level or just playing along while he stages a mutiny.
It also lets some of the worst filler episodes be replaced by “just wtf are the Maquis up to” episodes. Hell, with a full terrorist cell on board, Janeway now has a cadre of trained fighters whose life’s mission up until a few weeks ago was “win at all costs. Aim for the eyes.” Kazon show up and try to shake Voayager down? Have Chakotay beam a Maquis strike team over with orders to have fun.
And let’s not forget there is at least one full-on serial killer among the Maquis. Forget having Suder die in Basics. Let him skulk around the Jeffries tubes disappearing Kazon, then keep him around until the Hirogen show up. Once Voyager’s crew realizes what they’re dealing with, cut to Suder smiling as he tells Chakotay “huh. They fancy themselves hunters, do they.” Then we get an episode where some badass Hirogen realizes not every human is a docile as the average Starfleet member. Let the crew fully realize just what kind of monster they’re dealing with in Suder, and show that the only control they have on the guy is Chakotay and his few friends, and that’s based entirely on how much he likes them.
Personally, I think that would have made for a much better show.