crimesolvin - Tumblr blog

crimesolvin · 24 days ago

Text

Okay. After like 3 years I’m finally posting that essay on leadership in the pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager that was a term paper for me during college. I was very hesitant to post and still am not due to quality, but out of sheer caution in regards to plagiarism software used in education nowadays. So PLEASE DO NOT COPY FOR BOTH OF OUR SAKES.

Thankfully, I am graduated now, so I have less resignations on the topic (but it is still in the plaigerism testing systems, so please don’t copy it, mostly for your own sake in academic writing).

It’s probably boring to a lot of people, but for anyone who wants to read it here you go.

A “Voyage” in Leadership

Wc: 3080

I. Introduction

“Space the final frontier”; these are the words that have been imprinted on viewers by the not so subtle branding of Star Trek (Star Trek,1966). While the original series surged television screens in the 60s, the 90s were flooded with a revitalization of the pop culture phenomenon. Until Voyager aired, the series that preceded it, like Next Generation, were very formulaic; they took place in known regions and dealt with pre-established alien species and conflicts. Voyager in its nature broke the mold by instating Star Trek’s first female captain and brought Trek to new heights with new moral dilemmas. The series takes the Voyager ship away from all command structures the crew has ever known. They have to make every choice and decision with little guidance but each other. Star Trek has always been about exploration and when referencing Voyager with that same lens, that exploration also applies to people. Each individual aboard this journey makes decisions that impact who they are as leaders and followers, some like Voyagers captain, Janeway, demonstrate several healthy leadership qualities, where others are just getting their footing in their leadership journeys. Within this paper I will be diving into the depth of Captain Janeway as a leader, the forming of the Voyager crew, and small choices the individuals make which define their character.

II. Description

The Maquis, a rebel group to the Federation, are sent through a shock wave to the other side of the galaxy, 70,000 light years from the solar system. Captain Katherine Janeway is sent on a mission to track down the Maquis ship. This mission includes standard starfleet personnel and the addition of Tom Paris, ex- Maquis doing time at a Starfleet Penal Settlement. En route to Voyager, Tom, meets fresh out of the academy, Harry Kim. Despite only just meeting Kim, Paris saves him from getting caught up in foreign schemes. We are introduced to the show’s namesake via Paris and Kim making their rounds checking in with the less than personable head of medical, the similar first officer, and finally a non-judgmental individual, Captain Janeway, as the ship disembarks on their journey. The same phenomena that launched the Maquis ship 75 years away, launches Voyager to the same location as the Maquis, each with substantial damage. Janeway leaves her position on the bridge to go and aid engineering in repairs. The entirety of the crew gets transported to the array, the ship of The Caretaker, which sourced the anomaly that brought them to the other end of the galaxy, also known as the Delta quadrant. They all awake three days later, each crew missing 1 person. For Voyager, that person was Harry Kim. Janeway and Chakotay, the Maquis leader, unite and join forces in hopes of finding their crew mates. Paris becomes especially upset at the loss of Kim. Kes, a local, informs them that Kim is with her species the Ocampa, a cave dwelling group. The Ocampa have been cared after by the Caretaker for generations. Kim attempts to escape to the surface and by the time the rescue team make it to the Ocampa, he had already left. With the Caretaker beginning to collapse the cave exits, the rescue team escapes to the surface, but not before Chakotay gets trapped and Paris goes back to help him. Upon returning to their respective ships, the Kazon, a local gang-like race, begin attacking Voyager in attempts to attain its technology whilst the Maquis ship holds them off so Janeway can speak to the Caretaker to send them back to the Alpha Quadrant, where Earth is and where they all began their journey. What Janeway discovers is that the Caretaker is dying and that he plans on self-destructing the array so the Kazon can't use it against the Ocampa. Before he gets the chance to, he dies. Janeway makes the decision to destroy the array to save the Ocampa thus truly stranding them all in the Delta Quadrant (Berman, 1995). The captain of Voyager is the epitome of the ideal leader, her followers are her crew, and her situation is nothing less than complex and ever changing as she must “navigate the ambiguity” within (Wheatley, 1999).

III. Group Formation and Interactions

Although Janeway had never met Paris before, she is immediately very personable in their conversation and establishes a connection before even attempting to recruit Paris to join her team (Akin, 2020). She references working with his father before becoming a captain, and in the novel, Voyager: Mosaic, Tom’s father was the one who pushed Janeway to pursue command because of her strong leadership (Taylor, 1996). Tom and Janeway’s relationship immediately develops into one of familiarity and becomes strong with their commonality, which makes Tom feel more comfortable with his decision to go through with the deal to join Janeway on this mission. Janeway also eased the decision by providing Paris with a reward. Janeway is quite smart about this encounter because she lets him make the decision on his own and does not punish him if he chooses to not go through with it; it is clear she is using a variety of influence tactics in this conversation, like rational persuasion, personal appeals, exchange, and apprising, to get her goal accomplished (Curphy et al., 2014).

Paris meets Kim in a compromising position of blatant racism, but knows he is younger and less experienced in the ways of the galaxy, so before their introduction, Paris in fact saves Kim from danger of which, in the novelization, includes Kim thinking to himself: “I’ll never be that cool” in reference to Paris, putting him on some sort of pedestal early on in their relationship (Graf, 1995). The chief of medical and the first officer are put off by Paris because of his criminal record, that his new friend, Kim, still is unaware of. These crewmembers that they encounter are understandable in their attitude toward Paris given his past, but they each fail to recognize he is there on his own accord; they are still in the Newtonian mindset where they understand the individual parts, but fail to grasp the total situation (FOWLETT). Kim confronts Paris about his misdeeds and says, “I don't need anyone to choose my friends for me” (Berman, 1995). Their relationship is already so strong from this comment. Paris also notes that he took full responsibility for his actions involving his time with the Maquis, increasing the characters overall trust we as viewers give him (Akin, 2020). Though he was put in a penal colony for the actions, he still has the trust of those in authority, which is why he was chosen for this mission and Janeway knows he has potential to grow and get past that part of his history. Later in the episode, Paris is the one who notices Kim isn’t on Voyager .“The writers put a lot into their relationship being developed” actors Robert Duncan McNeil and Garrett Wang note, who play Tom Paris and Harry Kim respectively (McNeil, Wang, 2020). Down on the planet, Kim and the stolen Maquis crewman get to know one another in captivity; despite their different backgrounds, they try to understand their situation together and become mutual allies because of their situation. This demonstration of the group forming process is what leads them to team up and eventually escape back to their ships (McNutt et al., 2004).

IV. Captain Janeway as a Leader

Janeway takes everything she is dealt one moment at a time, although she has more than one thing on her plate at a given time in the episode, she somehow manages to keep things in order to deal with each one to the best of her ability individually and not get distracted. While Janeway is not always perfect, she is a prime example of good leadership in practice. Janeway has a great understanding of her duty as a manager which allows her to cope with the natural complexities of commanding a starship. If she needs things done a specific way, she is tactful and organized, but ends up getting her followers motivated to get things done (Kotter as cited in Wren).

When Paris and Kim finally meet Janeway for the first time in her ready room, Kim is even more stressed than meeting other members of the ship. Janeway sees this panic in his behavior and puts him at ease, but keeps the situation formal as she is still the captain. Janeway knows what she wants and how she wants it done; she uses precision and accuracy to deliver her message of trust to Kim. Janeway is a very adaptive kind of leader. Everything she does is a causality of what is occurring around her; she is constantly looking at the bigger picture and highlighting areas where problems occur (Grashow et al., 2009).

Janeway stays as level-headed as she can in the distress of her damaged ship, but is forceful getting things accomplished. She recognizes that many of her crew have died and she still remains calm, not allowing herself to mourn them until the ship is in a more stable position (Akin, 2020). Janeway leaves the bridge in the hands of the remaining crew there and trusts they know what they are doing and to continue performing admirably with her absence as she goes to assess and command in engineering, where she is more urgently needed(Akin, 2020).

When Janeway arrives in Engineering she provides insight and guides them to a solution to fixing the ship, but she still leaves the duty of actually fixing, to the crewmen. Janeway took control and got them on to a problem solving path and then let them fix it in the end, even though she could have (Akin, 2020).

Janeway is adamant about getting onemember of her crew and a member of her enemy’s crew back; Janeway shows remorse and declares she needs to get to know who her crew really is in order to get them home. This moment is very thought out as she has actively demonstrated her urge to create connections with everyone she meets, but because she has lost Kim, she is doubting herself; in this moment, her feminine attributes could be a downfall, but overall it allows her to care for her crew like they are family (Beggan et al., 2004). In her nature, being a female also influences her leadership style; she reaches out to crew members in time of her own struggle despite her being higher up in the chain of command than them (Beggan et al., 2004). In this moment of self-reflection, her security officer says, “The crew will not benefit from the leadership of an exhausted captain” and she snaps out of her head to get back on track (Berman, 1995).She knows that if she is to be successful in saving Kim, capturing the Maquis, or even getting them all home, she needs to detach her strong emotions, but remain connected to the tasks at hand and she has that switch in her brain accessible, not letting the sociology define her leadership too much (Beggan et al., 2004). As noted in the Leadership Encyclopedia, women tend to be more democratic and throughout this episode she is constantly aiding a variety of people of which in return she receives input and counsel from them without asking for it (Beggan et al., 2004).

Captain Janeway makes all of the crucial decisions away from her higher ups. No one can dispute her except her followers, and they don’t, in this grand decision to travel back to the Alpha Quadrant the long way home because they have trust in their leader. Janeway essentially breaks down the barrier of what is normal and from this point further, the ship is unlike any other in Star Trek history. The crew of the Enterprise and Deep Space 9 were all very close, but Voyager became a family. Janeway made sure that even she got to know every crew member(Gabriel 2018). Janeway is noted throughout various forms of Trek media for her leadership. From her interactions with individuals, knowledge of when to put on her manager hat v. her leader one, to tactics in influence and delegation.

V. Other Leadership Demonstrated

In servant leadership, an individual leads by serving others, meaning they are not necessarily the one in command of a situation, but they lead themselves as being part of the followers . Tom makes a daring move when Chakotay gets stuck in one of the tunnels; he returns to help him escape. While each still having residual feuds from Tom betraying the Maquis by working with Starfleet, this brave example of servant leadership does not go amiss. While servant leadership general doesn’t include risk of bodily harm, Tom uses it as such, he had learned from earlier in the episode he had to initiate things for himself and in this he chooses to risk his own safety to serve the goal he had made for himself, “the invisible leader”(Northouse, 2019). In this same scenario, even in the face of death, Chakotay’s leadership style is in full display as he tries to command a situation he is not in command of; he virtually argues with Tom the entire time he is saving his life and is a clear display that authority is a personality trait for him. Tom has grown from the first time we see him in this episode to this point; in the beginning he was very the follower that required the use of several motivation tactics to get work out of, but at this moment he has learned that his growth as a person is stemming from not necessarily being in command of a position, but serving those in those positions to the best of their ability(Northouse, 2019). Despite Chakotay’s near death experience and Tom’s clear display of servant leadership, Chakotay’s attitude does not change, but there is a clear shift in his heart and end goal as he is willing to die to save both crews. At every encounter, Janeway has tried to negotiate and ultimately, she dooms her and The Maquis crew because of her unrequited obligation and active servant leadership: “We never asked to be involved… but we are” (Berman 1995). Without consultation, Chakotay agrees to join the crews and strand themselves far from home because it will save the Ocampa.

VI. Conclusion

Since time began, species far and wide have been looking for good leadership. Star Trek is just a glimpse into the future stating that while thought processes may become more evolved and technology will advance, individuals will still have the same core functions that they have always had. There will always be want to develop strong relations, there will always be some hesitation to trust everyone, and at some point will return to where one came from. Voyager is the embodiment of leadership both good and bad, it stresses moral debates, ethical dilemmas that often leaves you thinking. No one on board is perfect, but it is clear they will grow on the journey home.

(I apparently wrote the following paragraph after my conclusion and forgot to delete it before I submitted. Oops, I think I meant to find a way to work it in during the main paragraphs, but obviously never did)

Janeway left the bridge with Tom having a look of disappointment due to the fact that he never received orders. He had faith that he had gained Janeway’s trust to aid in other ways than just being ex-Maquis, but it is clear that Janeway takes full consideration of his identity right now. This small interaction displays how his time as a criminal has heightened his need for more hands-on leadership than the rest of the crew needs, in the future he needs to follow the invisible leader or else he will be left continually disappointed as we see here (Hickman et al., 2004). By the end of the episode, Tom has a huge shift where he becomes his own invisible leader and takes charge of his own situation (Hickman et al., 2004).

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I really enjoyed writing this, however long ago it was.

#star trek voyager #janeway #kathryn janeway #seven of nine #7 of 9 #the doctor #chakotay #harry kim #tom paris #b’elanna torres #tuvok #voyager #leadership

7 notes · View notes