I'm a big fan of Voyager (it's my favorite Star Trek iteration) and I certainly don't deny that any of the flaws you identified exist. You're dead on about all of them.
However, just for the sake of playing the devil's advocate, I want to present a few storylines that show how the writers of the show were earnestly trying to embrace progressive feminism despite some of the dumb bullshit being forced on them by production's demand for tits and ass and all that 90s nonsense.
First, there's the episode "Blood Fever," where B'Elanna is the victim of the Vulcan equivalent of sexual assault. This episode should be commended for not shying away from the fact of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace. B'Elanna experiences a very believable trauma response from this event. And then when she contracts pon farr from her assailant and becomes UNSTOPPABLY HORNY as a result, the writers *could* have used that plot twist to make it into a 90s sexfest. There's even a point where the other male characters tell Tom Paris that the only way to SAVE B'ELANNA'S LIFE is for him to bang the shit out of her. (For readers unfamiliar with the show, Tom is kind of the requisite "hot dude who gets all the chicks" Star Trek character... and he's also secretly in love with B'Elanna.) Rather than seizing the opportunity to justify his long-desired dicking of B'Elanna Torres, Tom absolutely refuses to have sex with her because she's not in her right frame of mind and he's not convinced that she can truly consent. Even when she is very aggressively attempting to fuck him, he refuses because he insists that he will only bang a hot chick if he can be sure she's fully consenting, and that's not the case here.
Another example: There’s an episode in, I think, season 6 or 7 where Kes catches up with Voyager and returns as an aging woman to try to save her younger self by manipulating tachyons and traveling back in time to get her child-self off Voyager and back to her home planet. That episode does deal really well with the “Kes is two years old, lol” problem… I suspect that, as the show went on, more writers (and perhaps viewers) objected to the ick factor of Kes’s age. So her age and all the ethical problems it raises are addressed. It’s perhaps too little too late, but I appreciate that the writer’s room for Voyager felt the need to address it at all. That was quite a large step in the right direction for the late 90s, when so much social currency was placed on female youth.
Seven, despite being undeniably and quite obviously the sexpot eye candy intended to boost ratings, remained an incredibly complex character. The writers seemed to have seized control of her—if the higher-ups were going to force them to have a sexy female character, by god they were at least going to maintain control over her storylines to keep her complex and interesting beyond her surface appearance. Yes, most of the other male characters are attracted to her at one point or another. But virtually all that time, Seven doesn’t pay any attention to all those dumb boys unless her job requires her to interact with them. Her storylines remain focused on her self-discovery, education, and her ability to be a hero in her own right. Seven of Nine not only passes the Bechdel test despite her “skin-regenerating breast mounds,” but she kicks the Bechdel test in the nuts. She doesn’t give a fuuuuuuuuck about the dudes. She’s there to explore the galaxy and figure out how to be a human again, and apparently for her, being a human doesn’t involve romance or sex. (Until—spoiler alert—the weird thing with Chakotay right at the end of the show, which doesn’t even last, as if the writers realized it was a betrayal of Seven’s character and just couldn’t be borne.)
Anyway, those are my counter-arguments as a hardcore Voyager nerd, in defense of the writers, who I believe were earnestly trying their best to push back on the demands of 1990s TV’s gross misogyny. Cheers!
There a definitely some better episodes than others. In my thesis I talked more about other female characters in the show and how they were treated throughout, they just didn’t make the cut for this particular conference paper for length. I might write up the rest of my observations for a second post.
Oh my gosh, Voyager and its women. Entire books could be written about how fucked up it all is. I quit watching after the 'women saying they've been raped are either confused or lying' episode.
So absolutely spot on!!! The episode where kes thinks about having a baby was always uncomfortable to me. And then romance of kes and neelix was always realistic to me in a way that I hate. The cool, young girl who doesn't know better/and her older shithead boyfriend.
the first time i watched voyager all the way through was a few years ago. (my parents didn't like star trek when i was a teen so i'm a later in life fan). i found kes to have so much potential if she could just get out of the shadow of what men wanted from her. the whole thing with neelix still grosses me out. bringing her on the ship could have happened in so many different ways, and it would have given her more agency. i never really thought of her as a child bride until you mention it and now i won't think of it any differently.
as for seven, i'm glad to know that one of your arch nemesis' was upfront about her. but still uuughhh. anyway, i really enjoyed her story arc in picard, and saw her queerness as part of her journey in what it means to be human. i would watch the ish out of another series with her at the center, in this iteration.
anyway, great essay. i always think of the 90s trying very hard and yet many times is still too limited by the "sex sells" mantra. i'm also currently in a rewatch of voyager so great timing!
That was a fabulous essay! And having been a fan of the franchise from the very beginning exactly as I believed it to be…a great science fiction platform that used sex to sell it. And that was obvious in the original Star Trek. Every woman in those shows was sexualized and every alien woman Kirk met was an object to be conquered. Even the ones who were obviously highly intelligent, capable, and adept at their jobs.
Yes! Thank you for this excellent analysis! We gave _Voyager_ four seasons, I think, before giving up in disgust (there were things we liked from the start but more things that we disliked, were irritated by, or bored by [Tom Paris boring & irritating]). In terms of Janeway, I could not stand that her holodeck recreation was playing a Victorian governess (grrrrr). With all that a holodeck could do and with all that male characters in other series did do with it (I cannot remember how, but I'm not sure that there were any ongoing storylines of female characters using the holodeck as opposed to male or ensemble characters), that was what they did with it! I also think that Trek as a whole (up until the time I stopped watching it which was ten minutes into the first episode of _Enterprise_) was totally unable to deal with older (sixty years or more) female characters in any but the most horribly stereotypical ways. I don't know if the recent ones are doing any better--I developed a bad case of franchise fatigue I never recovered from. (I saw ST:TOS when it first aired, was a major Trekkie for years, bought a television just so I could watch ST:TNG, and my favorite series of all was ST:DS9!).
In terms of ST:VOY: The other major flaw for both of us was that what we thought was an intriguing premise (strand two politically/ideologically opposed groups who have been in major conflict together and work out how they can cooperate/survive) just seemed to get waved away. And I would have liked to see a lot more/better development of Chakotay's character.
Thanks for saying what I've been thinking for the longest time. I'm a huge Trekkie. I've watched the whole franchise, accompanied by my two daughters, equally rabid fans. As three independent minded women we were entirely turned off by the Kes episodes. Although I admired Seven's character it was not because of her breast mound. However I now have new-found respect for Jeri Ryan as she had to squeeze into that ridiculous outfit. Besides everyone knows that DS9 is the best ST.
I was only ten or eleven when *Voyager* started, so a lot of the squick you bring up about Kes flew over my head at the time. Even as an early adolescent, though, I was well aware of the reason for Seven being costumed and marketed the way she was; she featured prominently in some of my early fantasies. I didn't yet have the vocabulary or perspective to understand that her character framing was problematic or why, though. The things I've read about how Jeri Ryan herself was treated by her husband at the time is a whole new layer of "seriously, fellow males, WTF?"
I enjoyed Seven's evolution in *Star Trek: Picard*, but I felt her queerness got stapled on, if that makes sense. I don't object to the fact that she's shown having a relationship with another woman, but to me, the framing felt like the producers were just using it to check a box on some "Hey, look, *Star Trek* is progressive!" checklist. The relationship between Seven and Raffi is hinted at with a shot of them holding hands at the end of Season One, but by the time Season Two rolls around, it's already a thing of the past. They get back together by the end, but then when Season Three rolls around, they're broken up again.
There is value in depicting a relationship marked by turmoil and periods of separation, but the show seemed more interested in emphasizing the conflicts between two driven, independent, emotionally guarded women than in showing us why they were drawn to each other in the first place. I'm not sure I'm expressing myself well in this, but the relationship between Seven and Raffi seemed to me to be something the producers decided had to happen, rather than growing organically from their characters.
I'll save all my OTHER problems with STP for a separate rant.
The constant faux conflict between Janeway being both a captain but ALSO a woman as if the two were at odds was maddening. Maybe it was a necessary concession for that era, maybe it wasn’t, but damn if it didn’t feel contrived and artificial. Just let her run the ship already.
I had already given up on the series when the press releases announcing the new “sensuous” character 7 of 9 for the upcoming season came out. My friends and I were rolling our eyes at how often that specific adjective was used. If I’m going to be cynically pandered to, it should at least be sophisticated enough I don’t notice.
I would still see the occasional episode. I think I missed Kes’s introduction, but after somebody explained her backstory to me I always found her creepy.
I couldn’t let this go when you said it’s a 90’s, 2000’s, 2010’s and 2020’s problem with hyper sexualization of women and children. I agree with you on that point but it’s actually been a problem not with a certain decade or century but it’s been a problem since civilization started. So many documented examples of historical sexual violence, assault, abuse etc. child marriages to form alliances seal treaties are plastered all through the millennia of human history. I realize you couldn’t pour all this into your thesis but I just wanted to make a clear point that the excesses of the Star Trek universe has a basis in the reality of human patriarchy that goes back into ancient Mesopotamia and beyond. By the way, a fine article Dr. Meredith and I still like all the Star Trek series regardless. I love Science Fiction even with all its flaws, what can I say? 📚📚📖👽🍿
Great article!
I'm a big fan of Voyager (it's my favorite Star Trek iteration) and I certainly don't deny that any of the flaws you identified exist. You're dead on about all of them.
However, just for the sake of playing the devil's advocate, I want to present a few storylines that show how the writers of the show were earnestly trying to embrace progressive feminism despite some of the dumb bullshit being forced on them by production's demand for tits and ass and all that 90s nonsense.
First, there's the episode "Blood Fever," where B'Elanna is the victim of the Vulcan equivalent of sexual assault. This episode should be commended for not shying away from the fact of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace. B'Elanna experiences a very believable trauma response from this event. And then when she contracts pon farr from her assailant and becomes UNSTOPPABLY HORNY as a result, the writers *could* have used that plot twist to make it into a 90s sexfest. There's even a point where the other male characters tell Tom Paris that the only way to SAVE B'ELANNA'S LIFE is for him to bang the shit out of her. (For readers unfamiliar with the show, Tom is kind of the requisite "hot dude who gets all the chicks" Star Trek character... and he's also secretly in love with B'Elanna.) Rather than seizing the opportunity to justify his long-desired dicking of B'Elanna Torres, Tom absolutely refuses to have sex with her because she's not in her right frame of mind and he's not convinced that she can truly consent. Even when she is very aggressively attempting to fuck him, he refuses because he insists that he will only bang a hot chick if he can be sure she's fully consenting, and that's not the case here.
Another example: There’s an episode in, I think, season 6 or 7 where Kes catches up with Voyager and returns as an aging woman to try to save her younger self by manipulating tachyons and traveling back in time to get her child-self off Voyager and back to her home planet. That episode does deal really well with the “Kes is two years old, lol” problem… I suspect that, as the show went on, more writers (and perhaps viewers) objected to the ick factor of Kes’s age. So her age and all the ethical problems it raises are addressed. It’s perhaps too little too late, but I appreciate that the writer’s room for Voyager felt the need to address it at all. That was quite a large step in the right direction for the late 90s, when so much social currency was placed on female youth.
Seven, despite being undeniably and quite obviously the sexpot eye candy intended to boost ratings, remained an incredibly complex character. The writers seemed to have seized control of her—if the higher-ups were going to force them to have a sexy female character, by god they were at least going to maintain control over her storylines to keep her complex and interesting beyond her surface appearance. Yes, most of the other male characters are attracted to her at one point or another. But virtually all that time, Seven doesn’t pay any attention to all those dumb boys unless her job requires her to interact with them. Her storylines remain focused on her self-discovery, education, and her ability to be a hero in her own right. Seven of Nine not only passes the Bechdel test despite her “skin-regenerating breast mounds,” but she kicks the Bechdel test in the nuts. She doesn’t give a fuuuuuuuuck about the dudes. She’s there to explore the galaxy and figure out how to be a human again, and apparently for her, being a human doesn’t involve romance or sex. (Until—spoiler alert—the weird thing with Chakotay right at the end of the show, which doesn’t even last, as if the writers realized it was a betrayal of Seven’s character and just couldn’t be borne.)
Anyway, those are my counter-arguments as a hardcore Voyager nerd, in defense of the writers, who I believe were earnestly trying their best to push back on the demands of 1990s TV’s gross misogyny. Cheers!
There a definitely some better episodes than others. In my thesis I talked more about other female characters in the show and how they were treated throughout, they just didn’t make the cut for this particular conference paper for length. I might write up the rest of my observations for a second post.
Well, I did love this essay here! It’s spot on.
Oh my gosh, Voyager and its women. Entire books could be written about how fucked up it all is. I quit watching after the 'women saying they've been raped are either confused or lying' episode.
Yeah I could expand this article a lot 🤣
So absolutely spot on!!! The episode where kes thinks about having a baby was always uncomfortable to me. And then romance of kes and neelix was always realistic to me in a way that I hate. The cool, young girl who doesn't know better/and her older shithead boyfriend.
Two things:
So well written that I wanted to throw my phone.
Glad I'm not the only one who spent the Kes seasons screaming at the TV. THAT IS A TODDLER YOU GROSS FREAKS.
the first time i watched voyager all the way through was a few years ago. (my parents didn't like star trek when i was a teen so i'm a later in life fan). i found kes to have so much potential if she could just get out of the shadow of what men wanted from her. the whole thing with neelix still grosses me out. bringing her on the ship could have happened in so many different ways, and it would have given her more agency. i never really thought of her as a child bride until you mention it and now i won't think of it any differently.
as for seven, i'm glad to know that one of your arch nemesis' was upfront about her. but still uuughhh. anyway, i really enjoyed her story arc in picard, and saw her queerness as part of her journey in what it means to be human. i would watch the ish out of another series with her at the center, in this iteration.
anyway, great essay. i always think of the 90s trying very hard and yet many times is still too limited by the "sex sells" mantra. i'm also currently in a rewatch of voyager so great timing!
That was a fabulous essay! And having been a fan of the franchise from the very beginning exactly as I believed it to be…a great science fiction platform that used sex to sell it. And that was obvious in the original Star Trek. Every woman in those shows was sexualized and every alien woman Kirk met was an object to be conquered. Even the ones who were obviously highly intelligent, capable, and adept at their jobs.
Yes! Thank you for this excellent analysis! We gave _Voyager_ four seasons, I think, before giving up in disgust (there were things we liked from the start but more things that we disliked, were irritated by, or bored by [Tom Paris boring & irritating]). In terms of Janeway, I could not stand that her holodeck recreation was playing a Victorian governess (grrrrr). With all that a holodeck could do and with all that male characters in other series did do with it (I cannot remember how, but I'm not sure that there were any ongoing storylines of female characters using the holodeck as opposed to male or ensemble characters), that was what they did with it! I also think that Trek as a whole (up until the time I stopped watching it which was ten minutes into the first episode of _Enterprise_) was totally unable to deal with older (sixty years or more) female characters in any but the most horribly stereotypical ways. I don't know if the recent ones are doing any better--I developed a bad case of franchise fatigue I never recovered from. (I saw ST:TOS when it first aired, was a major Trekkie for years, bought a television just so I could watch ST:TNG, and my favorite series of all was ST:DS9!).
In terms of ST:VOY: The other major flaw for both of us was that what we thought was an intriguing premise (strand two politically/ideologically opposed groups who have been in major conflict together and work out how they can cooperate/survive) just seemed to get waved away. And I would have liked to see a lot more/better development of Chakotay's character.
Thanks for saying what I've been thinking for the longest time. I'm a huge Trekkie. I've watched the whole franchise, accompanied by my two daughters, equally rabid fans. As three independent minded women we were entirely turned off by the Kes episodes. Although I admired Seven's character it was not because of her breast mound. However I now have new-found respect for Jeri Ryan as she had to squeeze into that ridiculous outfit. Besides everyone knows that DS9 is the best ST.
I was only ten or eleven when *Voyager* started, so a lot of the squick you bring up about Kes flew over my head at the time. Even as an early adolescent, though, I was well aware of the reason for Seven being costumed and marketed the way she was; she featured prominently in some of my early fantasies. I didn't yet have the vocabulary or perspective to understand that her character framing was problematic or why, though. The things I've read about how Jeri Ryan herself was treated by her husband at the time is a whole new layer of "seriously, fellow males, WTF?"
I enjoyed Seven's evolution in *Star Trek: Picard*, but I felt her queerness got stapled on, if that makes sense. I don't object to the fact that she's shown having a relationship with another woman, but to me, the framing felt like the producers were just using it to check a box on some "Hey, look, *Star Trek* is progressive!" checklist. The relationship between Seven and Raffi is hinted at with a shot of them holding hands at the end of Season One, but by the time Season Two rolls around, it's already a thing of the past. They get back together by the end, but then when Season Three rolls around, they're broken up again.
There is value in depicting a relationship marked by turmoil and periods of separation, but the show seemed more interested in emphasizing the conflicts between two driven, independent, emotionally guarded women than in showing us why they were drawn to each other in the first place. I'm not sure I'm expressing myself well in this, but the relationship between Seven and Raffi seemed to me to be something the producers decided had to happen, rather than growing organically from their characters.
I'll save all my OTHER problems with STP for a separate rant.
The constant faux conflict between Janeway being both a captain but ALSO a woman as if the two were at odds was maddening. Maybe it was a necessary concession for that era, maybe it wasn’t, but damn if it didn’t feel contrived and artificial. Just let her run the ship already.
I had already given up on the series when the press releases announcing the new “sensuous” character 7 of 9 for the upcoming season came out. My friends and I were rolling our eyes at how often that specific adjective was used. If I’m going to be cynically pandered to, it should at least be sophisticated enough I don’t notice.
I would still see the occasional episode. I think I missed Kes’s introduction, but after somebody explained her backstory to me I always found her creepy.
Kes was not only creepy but just fucking annoying. I was so glad when she left the show, ha ha.
Yeah, there was that too. But by that time I was not a regular viewer. Her character did not entice me to come back, I’ll say that much.
I couldn’t let this go when you said it’s a 90’s, 2000’s, 2010’s and 2020’s problem with hyper sexualization of women and children. I agree with you on that point but it’s actually been a problem not with a certain decade or century but it’s been a problem since civilization started. So many documented examples of historical sexual violence, assault, abuse etc. child marriages to form alliances seal treaties are plastered all through the millennia of human history. I realize you couldn’t pour all this into your thesis but I just wanted to make a clear point that the excesses of the Star Trek universe has a basis in the reality of human patriarchy that goes back into ancient Mesopotamia and beyond. By the way, a fine article Dr. Meredith and I still like all the Star Trek series regardless. I love Science Fiction even with all its flaws, what can I say? 📚📚📖👽🍿