When I attended the Shore Leave Con panel on Voyager: 20 Years Later, I was shocked by the overwhelmingly critical tone. In particular, panelist Kirsten Beyer, author of the current Voyager novels asked, "Twenty years later, did Janeway make a difference?" The answer from the panelists and audience seemed to cohere around "No." I was stunned. As a young girl growing up in the '90s, Captain Janeway was an icon. I grew up watching Next Gen and reruns of the original series with my dad. I remember asking him, "How come there aren't any girl captains?" "There are girl captains," my dad replied. "It's just that the TV shows focus on the Enterprise , and Kirk and Picard happen to be men. There are lots of other ships out there too, and some of them have girl captains." This made sense. But I wished, I wished , that we could have a TV show with a girl captain. And so, when Star Trek Voyager was announced years later, I...
Life, Books, and SFF