Characters / SF Debris - Star Trek: Voyager

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Janeway of Borg

"YOOOOU SHOULD EAT HARRYYYYY..." "That's a terrible idea! ....But at least you're thinking, keep it up."

Still crazy after all these years, the inimitable Captain Kathryn Janeway spent her childhood ducking her drunken father's lobbed beer bottles and clawing out of dry sand pits, contributing greatly to her resourcefulness as an adult. She began her Starfleet career as a "scientist" and Johnny-Come-Lately cyberneticist, but decided that a life of petri dishes and homicidal albino androids wasn't for her. After handing in her blueshirt, Janeway slept – er, climbed her way up the command structure, culminating in her hijacking of the USS Voyager. Her name soon become synonymous with slavery, genetic mutation, and destruction across the expanse of the Delta Quadrant. Her ship eventually did make it back home, though it was struck by a meteor while passing over the Golden Gate Bridge, so points for effort.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: Bizarrely Janeway's bloodlust winds up being a practical solution to many of Voyager's problems. Chuck notes that Janeway once resolved a paradox in "Time and Again" by shooting it — a feat that would probably leave The Doctor scratching his head in confusion.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Janeway is oddly forthcoming with her private stash, offering rails and cigarettes as refreshments. She encourages Seven to try some in "Dark Frontier" as part of her human education, and later Naomi Wildman — who despite a Plot-Relevant Age-Up is still only three years old – presumably as part of her general education.
  "Want some smack? (beat) How 'bout a whore? (beat) Feel like gambling? I played craps against Harry yesterday; he won, so I let him keep his hands."
  (...)
  "I like you, Naomi, you're shorter than me! Want some cigarettes?"
• And Now You Must Marry Me:
  • Through flashback, we learn that Janeway acquired a "fiancee" through the same methods that landed her a command: extortion. ("Shattered")
    Mark: (sobs) Why couldn't you have just blackmailed me for money?!
    Janeway: You can't put a price on those pecs. Now, slap my ass like you mean it this time!
  • Janeway presiding over Tom's wedding goes down about as well as you'd expect. "Not so fast. I have to deflower both of you first! (chuckles) It's the law of the Delta Quadrant." Note also Replicant-Harry seething with jealousy after he's made Tom's "best man".
    Chuck: Harry, it's a wedding, not a roast.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: This actually happens offscreen anytime Janeway gets her ass handed to her and/or perishes in an alternate reality. That is, in the real world, anyway; what viewers see at home is a fantasy caused by Janeway's last brain synapses firing. In "Coda", the crew gathered for a memorial service that lasted twice as long as Spock's funeral.
• Answers to the Name of God: In "The Omega Directive", a starry-eyed Seven of Nine creates a miniature big bang and tells Janeway she's "seen perfection." Quoth Janeway: "Heh! Well, I don't like to brag..."
• The Assimilator: Janeway loves adding people to her crew, but only if they've actively threatened to destroy Voyager in some way; she just can't resist an opportunity to meet new, interesting people, and break their spirits.
  Chuck: Getting a comm badge from Janeway is equivalent to having a dog pee around your house. It's a marking of territory, and probably shouldn't be taken as a compliment. (Janeway's Crew Bio)
  • Janeway's bitter vendetta versus Captain Ransom in "Equinox" isn't due to his torturing members of her crew, an offense she has forgiven and even applauded on numerous occasions ("Phage", "Memorial"), but fury over Ransom's resistance to being absorbed into the vast Voyager apparatus. This is what finally pushes her over the edge, causing Chuck to re-dub her "Captain From-Hell's-Heart-I-Spit-At-Thee."
• Ax-Crazy: There is virtually no episode in the Opinionated Guide where this isn't the case. Exceptions may include "Resolutions", where Janeway was left at the mercy of Chakotay endlessly reeling off legends about "his people", and "Coda" where she died temporarily.
• Bad Boss:
  • Her dream in "Waking Moments" was a nightmare because it featured the crew dying from old age, not due to her. This leads to moments of Hypocritical Heartwarming whenever an alien species tries to steal her prey (e.g., the crew).
  • The away team is replaced with replicants in "Demon", who lack the ability to survive in an oxygen-rich atmosphere. A curious Janeway offers to take the wheel:
    The Doctor: [piqued interest] Think you can find a cure?
    Janeway: Uhh? I thought they were expendable now. I always wanted to find out how far a human can fly in space powered only by a potato gun.
  • She abuses the Voyager's easily accessible self-destruct mechanism whenever she is in need of coffee or cigarettes in order to "motivate" the crew to bring them to her faster. ("Where Silence Has Lease")
• Bad Liar: Janeway is terrible. Half of the time, she panics and blurts out details of her latest pet science project in response to completely unrelated questions. ("Dark Frontier", "Bride of Chaotica") Even when she simply has to pretend to pander to Chaotica's ego she can't conceal the fact that she's taking measurements of his throne room to put in new carpeting!
• Big Bad: In the Voyager reviews she is the biggest villain on the show, a genocidal lunatic who lives only to torment her crew and destroy new life. In the coda for the "Tuvix" review, Janeway is overtly compared to another crazy female: GLaDOS.
• Bondage Is Bad: Chuck's Janeway is apparently a sub/dom fanatic, routinely tying up poor Harry Kim in her ready room. Interestingly, she prefers to play the submissive when fantasizing about fellow space captains —Even Amelia Earhart.
  "Oohh, yes, launch all vipers! LAUNCH ALL VIPERS, YOU DIRTY, DIRTY BOY!"
• Bond One-Liner:
  • She seems to have a fondness for these. "Make it so, dickhead."
  • "...And for the record, it's her legs." ("The Killing Game")
    Janeway: Welcome to Katrine's, here's your pipe, sir! Let me show you the house wine, it's a Gewehr 98/40; very fine vintage!
• Bullet Dancing: She's fond of Tuvok, and that's why she orders him to dance like a chimp at Neelix's party in "Homestead"... and doesn't pull out a phaser and start blasting the floor like she usually does. "Just remember, you only need six working toes to dance. So keep moving!"
• Bullying a Dragon: Janeway will taunt a mentally unstable psychopath who once killed a man for looking at him the wrong way ("Basics"), a Vulcan with three times her strength that's temporarily lost all emotional restraint ("Meld") the Borg ("Scorpion" et al), and a space-destroying Omega molecule ("The Omega Directive"), all because she refuses to let anyone take her status as most evil individual in the galaxy.
  Janeway: You're not the boss of me!
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • When you're Janeway, it's important to ask all passerby, "Have we offended you in some way?" ("Year of Hell", "Living Witness", "Friendship One")
    (going down the list) "Did I help the Borg assimilate your people, uhh, did Vidians I let escape murder your loved ones, or should I just mark this one down as miscellaneous?"
  • Due to all of those time travel shenanigans, the crew needs an actual database in "Fury" to keep track of her enemies throughout time.
• Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin':
  • Janeway has hinted that she knows she's facing a court martial when she returns to Earth; hence the scenic route. Luckily, she installed a subroutine in Starfleet's computers before she left which redirects all of Picard's letters of commendation to her file, promoting Janeway to Vice Admiral by the time Voyager gets back. (Nemesis)
  • Four solid years of Chakotay taking the Captain aside to issue an empty proclamation ("...but this time you've gone TOO far!") has become so routine, nobody takes him seriously anymore. ("The Omega Directive")
• Captain Crash:
  • Janeway's got a propensity for overruling subordinates, astrometric data, and sensors before hurtling her ship into obvious traps.
  • Chuck noted in "Body and Soul" that we never actually see Voyager return home (the series finale cut immediately to credits), and that for all we know, the ship got hit by a meteor over San Francisco, leaving Janeway as the only survivor. Picard shows that Seven and Icheb survived as well, at least.
• Catchphrase: Janeway's universal response to any attempt to give her commands, instructions, or friendly advice is, "You're not the boss of me!"
• Clark Kenting:
  • In "Bride of Chaotica", when Janeway has to pretend to be an evil ruler of the cosmos, with incompetent lackeys and an army of warrior cobalt tarantulas at her command... the only difference is that now she's wearing a dress.
  • In part two of "Workforce", a (supposedly) pacified Janeway is sharing a condo with her henpecked boyfriend—and, as expected, within minutes she's begun redecorating the place and filling it with wanted fugitives. "Just need to knock out that wall to make room for my cloning vats..."
• Character Exaggeration: Chuck lampshades at times that while he might attempt this with this version of Janeway and does succeeds most of the time, it is actually hard to always pull off, as the canon Janeway in some cases makes such mindboggling and weird decisions that it makes his "insane Super Villain" Janeway come across as the more rational one. For example, Janeway's behavior in "Spirit Folk":
  Chuck: People have asked me why parody Janeway seems to have grown more extreme over the years. Well, LOOK WHAT I'M UP AGAINST! THIS IS AN ARMS RACE OF CRAZY! SHE'S THE USSR AND I'M... FUCKING BELGIUM!
• Commander Contrarian:
  • The purpose of the Magic Meeting Room is to field suggestions from the crew, all of which Janeway purposely disregards to assert her authority. ("Alliances") For an encore, she goes on to prove that black is white and gets herself killed at the next zebra crossing. ("The Void")
  • In "Human Error", points out the hypocrisy of Janeway berating Seven for not stopping missiles from striking Voyager, while failing to realize the only reason they were in that situation was because she ordered them into a region that was filled with ship debris and deadly radiation, which turned out to be a Weapons Testing Area.
    Janeway: Let me make this clear, we all have a job to do. My job is to pointlessly put the ship into criminally hazardous situations on a whim. Yours is to bail us out if something goes wrong during that!
  • From the same episode:
    1996!Janeway: I hope you all see I was right in opposing an alliance with anyone! (in "Alliances")
    1997!Janeway: I hope you all see I was right in forming an alliance with the Borg!
  • Even when faced with someone of equal rank, Janeway will still find a way to remain the dominant captain. ("Equinox, Part 1")
• Crazy Is Cool: Janeway is complete and utterly mad. However, this does have the fortunate side effect of making Janeway a Memetic Badass almost on par with Sisko. She knows her way around a bat'leth even better than a Klingon does ("Unimatrix Zero"), and in Chuck's Gag Dub of 'Splashdown' she's willing to shoot down an entire fleet just to protect her stash of Romulan Marijuana.
  Janeway: Because you may be bigger, smarter, stronger, faster, but you will never! Ever! Be CRAZIER! ...Than me. ("Unimatrix Zero")
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: She punishes Paris for attacking a harvesting facility by giving him thirty days solitary confinement. Note that this is canon, so crazy Janeway ups the ante by telling him he should be grateful she didn't flay him. ("Thirty Days")
• Deal with the Devil: Janeway once let slip that she sacrificed the lives of everyone living on Omicron Theta (Data's homeworld which was attacked by the Crystalline Entity) to Satan in exchange for becoming a Starfleet Captain. The only caveat is that she's now compelled to slaughter everything in His name. ("Scorpion")
• Death Ray: She has one. ("Bride of Chaotica")
• Death Seeker:
  • In "Friendship One", her bizarre insistence to follow the plan to the bitter end – despite her crew's repeated protests to break orbit – as well as her blind faith that the aliens won't fire their missiles at Voyager, may have been because she was secretly banking on them firing and putting her crew out of their misery.
  • Wonders if she became so burnt out and racked with guilt after her time in the Delta Quadrant, this was the reason why Starfleet decided have her Kicked Upstairs into the Admiralty.
  • Invokes this in "Endgame", as the motivation that lead Admiral Janeway to decide to go back in time and alter nearly two decades of history of a "Dark Future", that absolutely no-one in her crew wanted changed. While stopping Chakotay and Seven from dying and Tuvok from suffering dementia was a side benefit, the real goal was to save her younger self from becoming a bitter old woman from the extra 16 years spent getting home from the Delta Quadrant.
• Decided by One Vote: As mentioned in "Once Upon A Time", no one puts up much of a fuss to Janeway, since she controls the oxygen supply in the ship.
• Deconstructive Parody:
  • invoked Although intended as a Purity Sue self-insert of writer Jeri Taylor, it's long been Chuck's opinion that the scripts cannot reconcile Janeway's behavior without her intentionally making her crew suffer.
  • For what it's worth, Kate Mulgrew herself believes something similar.
• Depraved Bisexual: She's had either explicit or inferred sexual desire for the following people: Chakotay, Seven, Torres, Captain Adama ("Launch all Vipers you dirty, dirty boy!"), Mark, Captain Picard, a couple of one-off characters like the inspector in "Counterpoint", and herself. As for the depravity, look at literally every other trope in this entry.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Murder a man for no reason on Janeway's ship, the most you get is a slap on the wrist and a few "don't do that"s headed your way, without even being put in some secure place so you can't do that again. Meanwhile, do something like defy Janeway's will, and if you're lucky, she'll have you flayed. If she's feeling merciful, she'll just throw you in a confined cell and deny you any social contact for an entire month. ("Thirty Days")
  • As a small bit of sympathy for the Maquis crewmembers being attacked in "Repression", she decides not to flog Chakotay for saying "your [Starfleet] crew."
• Dissonant Laughter: Her favorite comedian is Franz Kafka, whose books she is shown recommending on a few occasions. ("Latent Image")
• Emotion Bomb: Creates and detonates one to destroy a Dominion invasion fleet. Knowing the kind of person Janeway is, the other Starfleet captains assume that the device is Powered by a Forsaken Child; which Janeway denies. Amusingly, this makes her the hero of Operation Return, and quite possibly the savior of the entire Alpha Quadrant.
• Empress Scientist: Several decks are experiencing rolling blackouts due to Janeway centralizing the ship's power in her "giant spider terrarium" ("Demon"), which she justifies by promoting the spider to yeoman. Her other creations include a 'Rape Gorilla' ("Year of Hell") and something called Kes-kotay. ("Dark Frontier")
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When the crew rails against the holographic Krell Mosset, and the fact his knowledge came from horrific experiments, their pleas to Janeway just get blank looks from her. ("Nothing Human")
• Evil Mentor: Her uncharacteristic bond with Naomi Wildman (insomuch as Janeway is capable of kindness) seems to suggest the Captain is grooming the child to succeed her as intergalactic overlord. Granted, this is still Captain Janeway we're talking about, so her brand of parenting involves slipping Naomi narcotics, abusing her primary education for personal amusement ("scientifically speaking, dolphins aren't mammals; they're apples!), 'disappearing' her biological mother and replacing her with a hologram ("Bliss"). The latter is a wry reference to Brannon Braga's vocal dislike of using other writers' characters in his own scripts, despite sticking Naomi into nearly every episode.
  Naomi: Captain Janeway says moms usually flicker when they're happy!
• Eviler than Thou:
  • "The Thaw" – Janeway comes into confrontation with the embodiment of fear, and it is fear who is terrified.
    Clown: How are you? I'm fear incarnate, the living embodiment of terror stretching back over a billion years, the most base of all emotions.
    Janeway: Heh! I thought you'd be taller.
  • If Fear is out of her league, poor Doctor Chaotica really didn't have a shot at a date. ("Bride of Chaotica").
    "Don't flatter yourself, weekend warrior."
  • The Borg Queen suddenly finds herself demoted to Drone when she plugs Janeway into the hive mind, causing the Collective to automatically switch its allegiance to her.
  • And, as Chuck is quick to remind his critics, Canon Janeway frequently exceeds his own parody of Janeway. ("Year of Hell")
    Chuck: Yes, Parody Janeway is crazy, but there was always a method to her madness, while Regular Janeway feels madness by itself is just fine, thank you very much. She has stared into the abyss as it has stared into her... and the abyss said, "JESUS! "
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Janeway bought her voice with Marlboro Miles.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even though this version of Janeway is a megalomaniacal supervillain, she sincerely apologizes to Picard for causing him to lose what little hair he had left.
  • Parodied in "Latent Image", in which she's disturbed by her (canonical!) counterpart's order to purge all records of Ensign Jetal's existence to solve the Problem of the Week. Mind you, this comes about during a side-by-side comparison of Jeri Taylor's Captain Janeway and Chuck's parody version.
  • Parodied again in "Living Witness" – which invokes Poe's Law, in-universe – when she overhears Hologram Janeway's plot to use weapons of mass destruction on a civilization's population centers. She then admits she's also a little aroused by the idea.
  • In "Omega Directive", Janeway goes so far to destroy the Omega particles because even she isn't evil enough to mass-produce a substance that could blow up 1/8 of the galaxy.
• Fan Disservice: Every instance of Janeway fanservice is gleefully skewered as this, with some added Brain Bleach thrown in. Her taking command of Voyager, for instance, was earned not through merit, but by performing some deviant act on Admiral Patterson involving marshmallow peeps.
• Fictional Holiday: Celebrates "Condescending Bitch Day", a daily holiday where she finds one member of the crew and tries to make their life increasingly miserable. Her favourite target is Harry, but sometimes she branches out, with Tom being the victim in "Parallax".
• Flanderization: Applies to each of "Chuck's" characters, but particularly to his parody Janeway. The march of time has pumped up Janeway's villainy to cartoonish levels, to the point where she is now a power-hungry, trigger-happy lunatic.
• For the Evulz: A lot of her atrocities don't actually help further her goal of galactic domination in any way; many are just crimes of opportunity carried out because Janeway enjoys doing evil things.
  Janeway: Let me make this clear: We all have a job to do. My job is to pointlessly put the ship into criminally hazardous situation on a whim. Yours is to bail me out if something happens to go wrong during that.
• Functional Addict: Perhaps Janeway's only weakness is Folger's withdrawal, rendering her unfit for command – thus neutralizing her nastier impulses. By "Dark Frontier", she appears to be running on a steady steam of nicotine, caffeine, and snorting cocaine. In "Shattered", Chakotay comes across the Captain hacking her replicator to try and produce cigarette & rum flavored coffee.
• Galactic Conqueror: In "Demon", the Captain's Log does not begin with the stardate, but rather Janeway counting down the days until her ascent to Galactic Empress.
• Gambit Roulette: The review of Star Trek: Nemesis was interrupted with an almost three-minute tirade reframing the plot of the movie as an especially convoluted plan orchestrated by Janeway that would give her total control of the Federation and the Romulan Empire.
• Genius Ditz:
  • Janeway gives the impression of being a bit of a bimbo, but she often proves more cunning than her clueless TV counterpart. ("In the Flesh")
    "Of course we'll give you the information on how the only weapon in existence that can stop you from invading the Federation works! And after that, would like me to carry you back to Fluidic Space piggyback-style? ... Jackass."
• Good Angel, Bad Angel:
  • In "Year of Hell", Janeway, who is a little more unstable than usual, consults these for advice. However, given the fact she's...well, Janeway, she instead has a "Shoulder Devil" (whom she immediately dismisses due to her contempt for religion) "Shoulder Atom" (who suggests she sacrifices herself to take down her enemy), and "Shoulder Cowboy" (who has no idea where he is, what is happening, and just wants out of there).
  • He is soon replaced by "Alternate Shoulder Cowboy" (obviously the devil again, wearing a stetson hat), and a "Shoulder Spider/Demon" (who keeps urging her to eat Harry and proclaims it shall devour all creation.) In its next appearance, Shoulder Spider re-emerges wearing the Stetson Hat, causing Janeway to mistake it for Shoulder Cowboy. The Spider is now insisting that she eat Tuvok. ("Scientific Method")
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Outside of the Voyager reviews, Janeway is portrayed as the omnipresent, over-arching villain of the entire franchise, being a more significant outside evil even in series and movies she has no role or barely appears in. She's held responsible for everything from Shinzon to Lore (she previously worked as Dr. Soong's code monkey), while Picard's kill-crazy behavior in the TNG movies is explained by Janeway spiking his Earl Grey with testosterone. That's not including the X-Files connection; Janeway reminisces about dating Tooms in one episode.
  • She is implied to be behind the Crystalline Entity, having apparently given the souls of the people it killed to the Devil in exchange for becoming a starship Captain.
  • Her actions even resonate into other series, such as Natira from Farscape being one of Janeway's army of warrior cobalt tarantulas. Eek.
• Gun Nut:
  • Guns are the tools of Janeway's trade, after all. She's able to identify a World War II-era German infantry rifle by sight in "The Killing Game," and owns a Death Ray as of "Bride of Chaotica."
  • She has also been described as a "Connoisseur of deathtraps."
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood:
  • Life under Len Cariou's roof was no picnic. Witness her utterly alien reaction to Chakotay's birthday present. ("Year of Hell")
    "My father didn't believe in birthdays, he just threw me and my sister in a pit. And whoever crawled out first got a gift."
  • Glimpsed at a bit more in "The Killing Game", with Janeway responds to a Hirogen's threats with glazed eyes.
    "This is where you, armed with a gun, hunt down defenseless lil' ol' me down throughout the ship. Y'know what we called this growing up? Father's Day."
• Hitler Cam: Chuck notes the show's tendency to make Janeway and/or Kate Mulgrew seem taller than she really is in his review of the episode "Parallax", showing a montage of such shots as Alphaville's "Big in Japan" plays.
• Hollywood Atheist:
  • This is one Captain who doesn't set truck by religious tolerance, as seen with "Sacred Ground" and "Barge of the Dead." (Somewhat disingenuous, as Janeway has definitely dabbled in Satanism at one point.)
  • When Seven of Nine painstakingly invents a machine capable of analyzing Omega particles (Star Trek's equivalent of the God particle and the closest thing the Borg's culture, as logical beings, have to a spiritual icon), Janeway proceeds to crap all over her discovery and orders her research to be destroyed.
  • "She's not an atheist, though. She knows there's a God, and it's her."
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: One of Janeway's methods of recreation is hunting down crewmembers. Sometimes she even invites Chakotay along to make a weekend of it. ("Basics")
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • On hearing about Suder's new botany collection, an intrigued Janeway asks if he can kill a man with them. ("Basics")
  • At one point, Janeway (or a recreation of her) mentions a weaponised potato bomb. ("Living Witness")
• Insane Admiral: Understatement of the year.
  • Chuck is rather put out when he finds out that Admiral Clancy on Picard was originally going to be Janeway and how much he *really* wanted Janeway to drop an F-bomb on Picard and tell him to piss off.
• Insane Troll Logic: "Demon" gives us a glimpse into Janeway's thought process. On being told by Chakotay that they cannot beam down on the unhospitable planet, so they should take a shuttle, Janeway declares it's too dangerous for him to go down in a shuttle, since he might die... and therefore they should land the entire ship, thus putting everyone at risk of dying. And this isn't parody!Janeway's thought process either.
• I Reject Your Reality: When told by the Think Tank that every scenario against the bounty hunters leads to her defeat, Janeway retorts that those aren't her scenarios.
  Janeway: In mine, I win, wearing one of those glowing sun-god thingies on my head while I play electric guitar and-and sit on a unicorn named Professor Awesomehooves!
• Kicked Upstairs:
  • Unsurprisingly, he tends to agree with Fanon on the reason for Janeway's promotion to Vice-Admiral, name-checking this trope almost as soon as she's onscreen in Star Trek: Nemesis
  • ... followed by Chuck!Janeway explaining how she manipulated Starfleet computer systems before she left for the Badlands so that every promotion Picard receives is re-directed to her instead. Regular Janeway might have been kicked upstairs, but for Parody Janeway it is all just part of the plan.
  • In sincerity however, he wonders in "Friendship One" whether the real reason Janeway was kicked upstairs was due to her becoming so emotionally burnt out and racked with guilt after her seven-year-long exile in the Delta Quadrant that she honestly couldn't command a starship anymore and was simply too popular to retire.
• Kneel Before Zod:
  • Most of her speeches seem to begin with the phrase, "As you lay prostrate before me..." ("Timeless")
  • In "Blink of an Eye", Janeway learns that there are people on the planet surface who pray to Voyager like a deity. She immediately starts spitballing ideas for the design of her icon:
    Janeway: I can't decide whether or not I want the masses prostrate before me in awe, or just kind of cowering before me in terror. What do you think?
  • She breaks into the TNG:" Who Watches the Watchers" review to remind us that she deserves this treatment.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Compares her irritated frustration with the nature of temporal paradoxes in "Future's End" to her smug expression when Tom Paris was flummoxed by the exact same thing in "Parallax".
  1996 Janeway: The past is the future, the future is the past, it all gives me a headache.
  [Cut to a similar scene from "Parallax"]
  Tom Paris: How could we have been seeing a reflection of something we hadn't even done yet? Am I making any sense here?
  1995 Janeway: [Smugly] No, but that's ok.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Time Travel is treated with delicacy by Starfleet, so much so that its only legalized use — barring saving whales — was to wipe Janeway's memory and then sentence her to hard labor in a minimum security women's prison in 2014 A.D. Some might consider this poetic..
• Leitmotif: "Big in Japan."
• Long List: Starfleet is still pouring through each of Voyager's rule violations, to the point where the stack of PADDs topples over and injures a hapless ensign. ("Living Witness")
  Admiral: A'ight, hand me "Aardvark" to "Abacus." *grumble*
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Chakotay's predecessor, Cdr. Cavit, wasn't killed by the array in "Caretaker", but rather by Janeway herself for being "too uppity." ("Dark Frontier")
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Janeway is dissatisfied with her crew's dim future in "Endgame" — mainly, Harry Kim somehow being promoted to Captain. And anyway, if she keeps getting decorated by Starfleet with each incursion, she might become God Empress by the time this is all over.
• The Man Behind the Man: Janeway could be considered to be even more lethal than the Borg, the Dominion, or the Romulan Empire. In fact, she seems to be in charge of all three. (Nemesis)
• Mask of Sanity:
  • "Fury" opened on a closeup of the Captain surveying the empty void beyond her window, as many episodes should:
    "Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him, and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage... Oh hey, didn't see ya there! Ready for your performance evaluation, Ensign Whoever?"
  • Janeway seems to have trouble separating her rule-abiding, affable Federation persona from the monster within. ("In the Flesh")
    Janeway: If we do engage 8472, I don't intend to run out of firepower mid-battle! (straightens spine, voice goes quiet) "Directive 0101: Before engaging alien species in battle, any and all attempts to make First Contact and achieve non-military resolution must be made."
    Chuck: You, uh, might want to put a pause between those two sentences next time; It makes you sound kinda *gibbering noises*.
• Memetic Badass/Memetic Psychopath:
  • invoked In equal measure. It's taken for granted that the Captain, when presented with a list of solutions to a problem, will always pick the most insane, self-defeating, or reckless option. For this reason, ST:VOY "Scores" rarely suffer based on Janeway's behavior alone since all scores are relative to the show's overall quality — And mental illness is just part and parcel of the Janeway character.
  • In ENT's "Similitude", Chuck makes the observation that, for all Janeway's faults, her laser focus while under pressure is her greatest strength as a leader. It stands in unfavorable contrast to Archer, whose sweaty-palmed indecision under pressure is his greatest weakness as a leader.
• Meta Guy: Much like Deadpool or Joker, Janeway's insanity allows her brief glimpses outside of her own continuity.
  • Janeway routinely breaks into non-Voyager reviews to add her (usually unhelpful) two cents. Other characters have done the same, but it's usually restricted to character-relevant situations. Janeway does it just for the hell of it: (Who Watches the Watchers)
    Picard: You mustn't kneel before me.
    Nuria: You do not wish it?
    Picard: I do not deserve it.
    Janeway: [from out of nowhere] I do.
  • She and Harry Kim have the distinction of being the only characters to have interacted directly with Chuck. In the guide to Puella Magi Madoka Magica episode 12, Kim shows up because he's an expert in disturbing sexual fantasies; but Janeway's only there to needle Chuck and accuse him of homophobia.
  • She chastises Chuck for wasting time by playing a clip of Canon!Janeway saying something that Parody!Janeway just said in "Virtuoso."
  • Flemeth^note played by Kate Mulgrew briefly channels Janeway during the play through of Dragon Age: Origins:
    Flemeth: Dwarves, elves, mages, this Arl Eamon. This sounds like an army to me.
    Janeway: And I want in!
• Mirror Self: Granola Girl who is quick to offer diplomatic solutions. Still being Janeway, though, she does have at least one Berserk Button:
  Goateed Janeway: WHAT IN THE NAME OF MOTHER EARTH'S C*** HAPPENED TO MY BROWNIES?!"
  • Discovery's "Vaulting Ambition" retroactively makes a fairly solid case that "our" Janeway really is from the Mirror Universe. Given the above, it would seem that the two Janeways somehow switched places prior to "Caretaker;" leaving the Mirror Universe stuck with the annoying Granola Girl, and the prime universe stuck with the insane, ax-crazy, genocidal tyrant.
• Misery Builds Character: Admiral Janeway (Janeway's father, not what Captain Janeway would become) was a big proponent of this trope, putting Janeway and her sister through torturous Death Traps as children. But it was all worth it to produce Starfleet's most balanced, by-the-book, and sexually regular Captain!
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Has engineered an army of warrior cobalt tarantulas who live in hives, possess wings, and have an insatiable hunger for ocular jelly.
  Janeway: ...My job is to fix it whenever nature makes an extraordinarily aggressive and terrifying tarantula and doesn't make it capable of flying up and latching on to your face.
• Moral Myopia: Comparing Janeway's arms build-up in "In The Flesh" to her staunch anti-war sentiments in "Warlord".
  1998!Janeway: It seems to me a battle is inevitable, maybe even war.
  Chuck: War inevitable? Are you sure?
  1996!Janeway: There are always alternatives to war!
  Chuck: Yes, it's always easy to offer shallow platitudes when it's not your fucking war, isn't it?
• More Dakka: In keeping with her policy of shooting things as a primary means of problem-solving, for Janeway, there is no such such thing as too heavily armed.
  Seven of Nine: Nineteen standard photon torpedoes and three class-10s armed with high-yield warheads.
  Janeway: More!
  Seven: ...And the planet-busting weapons.
  Janeway: More!
  Seven: ...And a little something I like to call 'The Galaxy Eater.'
  Janeway: MORE!!
• Multiple-Choice Past: Janeway has alluded to several different scenarios which lead to her promotion to captain: A Deal with the Devil sacrificing the population of Omicron Theta to the Crystalline Entity, an elaborate mutiny against her previous CO, and an unspeakable sex act involving marshmallow Peeps with an elderly admiral. Knowing Janeway, though, it's just as likely to have been some combination of all three.
• Must Have Nicotine: Janeway is the quite chain smoker, with a particular weakness for Marlboro. It is the reason for her raspy voice, and she gets quite irritated with she is not regularly supplied with them, routinely threatening to abuse the Voyager self-destruct mechanism if the crew fails to bring them to her quickly enough ("Where Silence Has Lease"). She has also attempted to (unsuccessfully) modify the ship's replicator to be capable of making coffee-flavored cigarettes and/or cigarette-flavored coffee ("Shattered").
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: After using Starfleet regulations to put herself above Ransom in the command structure, Janeway slaps down Ransom own quoting of Starfleet regulations — those actually applicable to their situation — giving a Captain the authorisation to preserve the life of their crew at any cost.
• The Napoleon: She insists on towering over every man on the show (using camera angles and even standing on chairs if need be).
• Neat Freak: In "Workforce", she enters her apartment and finds some bloody rags. This shocks her — because usually she's much more diligent about disposing of such evidence.
• The Neidermeyer: Chuck's overall take on Janeway's command style is that she's actively trying to kill her crew. Some of her motives include boredom, sport, or simply because she has hankering for the nachos served at their funerals.
• Never Heard That One Before: Harry Kim's fallen in love with a woman and declared his intentions to quit so many times, Janeway's no longer fazed by it. ("Virtuoso")
• Never My Fault: Janeway deliberately awakens the Vaadwaur to help them reestablish their empire in exchange for material aid in reaching Earth. When this predictably goes south, she immediately blames the whole situation on Seven for waking one Vaadwaur as a humanitarian gesture. ("Dragon's Teeth")
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Fury", it is revealed that at one point, Janeway had told "that bitch Daniels" to go annoy someone else, thus making her responsible for Archer's involvement in the Temporal Cold War.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Janeway isn't mad that Captain Ransom of Equinox was capturing and killing aliens to get home faster; she's mad that he let himself get caught.
• Noodle Implements:
  • Hilariously, her debriefing in "Living Witness" implies that an aardvark and an abacus were used in two separate atrocities.
  • The Marshmallow peeps.
• Once Killed a Man with a Noodle Implement: A "Stupid Neelix Moment" involves not him, but Janeway's expression after he shoves some hors d'oeuvres at her. "Never hand Janeway an object she can use to beat you with; that's a rookie mistake."
• Other Me Annoys Me: Postulates in the re-upload of "Deadlock" that the reason Janeway always argues with her alternate selves is because she's so overbearing, she can't stand being in her own presence for more than a few minutes.
  Admiral Janeway: Hey, I gave you weapons and armor that made the galaxy's greatest threat run away in terror.
  Captain Janeway: That was yesterday. What have you done for me today?
• Parrot Pet Position: "Shoulder Tarantula", who is arguably the true Captain of Voyager. He's achieved meme status as of "Omega Directve", thanks to some fanart in the main titles.
• Poe's Law:
  • "Latent Image" Broke the Rating Scale when the show's Janeway came off as being even crazier than his version.
  • Chuck jokingly suggests that "Author Author" is what happens if you write an episode based on one of his reviews.
• Principles Zealot: Janeway's take on the Prime Directive is that of a religious zealot determined to enforce the party doctrine, even if doing so goes against all common sense, violates basic human compassion and the end result would leave her crew worse off than when they started.
• Rules Lawyer:
  • In "Equinox", when the crew comes across another Starfleet vessel, Janeway cites an obscure bylaw — giving her authority over less-equipped ships during a "combat situation" — allowing her to strip it down like a chopshop. Sure, it needlessly wastes time and deprives Voyager of valuable backup while stranded in the Delta Quadrant, but hey, this way there's still only one Captain!
  Chuck: Why am I not surprised that your to-do list involved finding a way to pull rank even to someone of equal rank?
• Screw Yourself: Why is it that whenever there are two Janeways ("Relativity", "Deadlock"), they always argue with one another? The answer: Belligerent Sexual Tension! *cue Divinyls*
  Janeway: (Would the universe explode if I just....? Damn, I could rock on that back porch all night!)
• Self-Deprecation: Observes on a number of occasions Janeway's penchant for micromanagement and insistence on involving herself in tasks which, being a busy Captain/Evil Overlord, she really should delegate to her crew/minions. Janeway herself is not unaware of this bad habit, but only rarely gets a chance to candidly discuss the reason.
  Janeway: Oh, forgive me. It's just that, as a fellow ruler of the cosmos I often have to do things myself.
  Chaotica: Ah. Because of the incompetence of your inferiors, no doubt.
  Janeway: Something like that.
• Self-Made Orphan:
  • In "The Visitor", Jake looks to the Captain's Room for help in disproving his father's death. Bad idea.
    Archer: (raving) Me, too! He was killed by the Vulcans! They crept out from under his bed and choked him to death with a heart attack!
    Janeway: My father died, too, and I totally had an alibi and everything.
  • "Parallax" revealed that Janeway bases her commanding style on the time she smothered her stepmother in her sleep.
• Sincerity Mode: Chuck has a personal theory that in reality, Janeway by season seven was an emotional wreck who was wracked with guilt over all the crew lost and opportunities missed, broken by the strain of being trapped on the opposite side of the galaxy with only a seventy-year voyage to look forward to. Points to "Friendship One" as a scene where she shows deep personal regret combined with suicidal risk-taking, and theorizes that the reason she's promoted to admiral is that she was psychologically incapable of commanding a starship again, but at the same time was so popular after her heroic journey that Starfleet Command couldn't just retire her, so they bumped her upstairs.
• Small Girl, Big Gun:
  Chuck: With perfect timing, Janeway and Tuvok arrive down The Chute^TM—Tuvok with a phaser, and Janeway with the biggest fucking gun Voyager has that does not qualify as artillery.
• Space Pirate:
  • The bulk of VOY's storyline is driven by Janeway's search for resources to plunder or natives to exploit, all in preparation for taking over the Alpha Quadrant.
  • The rumor in the Delta Quadrant is that she raids Borg cubes just to alleviate her boredom.
• The Starscream: "Relativity" flashed back to Janeway's first day on VOY's bridge. She reminisces about committing mutiny on her old Captain – and sleeping with an octogenarian Admiral – to get where she today.
• The Svengali: Chuck suggests that one of the reasons she never refuses to let people join her crew is because it gives her more opportunity to break or bend them to her will.
• Talkative Loon: Manages to "free" Seven from the Queen's grasp simply by wandering in and talking about her tarantulas until the Queen gets weirded out and tells them to both go. ("Dark Frontier")
• Tautological Templar: Janeway's view of Starfleet regulations and the Prime Directive is that they must absolutely must be followed... when they agree with her. They can just be bent or flat-out ignored when they don't.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Believes that the Borg Queen blowing up her own ships was due to Janeway's influence.
  Janeway: (exasperated) You know what? Assimilate me. Give me an hour and I'll be running this place!
  • "She has stared into the abyss as the abyss stared into her, and the abyss said 'JESUS!' "
  • When Star Trek: Picard revealed that the Borg disconnect cubes that are severely fucked up, he theorizes the one in the show which happens to be somewhat near the Federation, and thus Janeway, the Borg abandoned them because they already wasted too many cubes on her.
  Chuck!Borg Collective: "Screw it! They're on their own!"
• Trademark Favorite Food: Oddly, his Janeway loves Mexican food. At one point she was delighted at the possibility of sending Red Shirts to their deaths because nachos are served at the wakes.
• Trash Talk: Janeway's a blackbelt at this. This is the Captain who told the Borg Queen to detach her head to "make it easier to kiss my ass." ("Unimatrix Zero")
• Trigger-Happy:
  • This Captain's first response to a problem is to blast it. Her contributing verse to the 5th Anniversary clip show was, "I love to shoot stuff!", which sums up pretty much everything you need to know about this character.
  • Unfortunately, her gun fetish often blinds her to more practical solutions (even shooting at a power reactor on the verge of overload). The shooting of the Caretaker's array can be traced back to this trope.
    "YEEEE-HAAAAW!
  • The All-Solving Hammer: Lampshaded in "Bride of Chaotica", where Chuck points out how many times Janeway's dealt with an anomaly (or suspected anomaly) by ordering the crew to shoot at it, only to give up after he realises he'd been listing every episode from "Caretaker" in order.
• Villainous Demotivator:
  • A hallmark of Janeway's managerial style. Thus far, she has rigged Voyager's consoles to electrocute their users on command ("Bliss"), attached a vice to Harry Kim's genitals ("Scorpion"), inventing fake holidays and high-level authorizations as an excuse to club people ("Parallax", "The Omega Directive"), monitored their bowel movements ("One"), destroyed Seven's groundbreaking proofs on Omega Particles ("The Omega Directive") and used her for stress therapy by snapping pool cues over her head. ("Latent Image") The abuse is localized but by no means exclusive to her gimp, Harry: He's been demoted so many times that the replicator outranks him. Hell, Harry now answers to the pipsqueak who served him drinks before Voyager left drydock!
  • That's not exaggeration or hyperbole – said pipsqueak is Nog, who by the end of Deep Space Nine was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade. Even years later, Harry Kim is still an ensign. Please also keep in mind that Nog, at the time wasn't even in Starfleet. That's right – he went through Starfleet Academy, graduated Starfleet Academy, fought in a war, and got a promotion – and he did all of this at least two years before Kim came home, still at the same rank.
  • This tosses a monkey wrench into Chakotay's rescue plan in "Workforce": stunning the Captain with a phaser is out of the question, as once she gets her memory back "she'll get creative with a bucket of scorpions and a funnel."
• Villainous Friendship: She got along quite well with Chaotica, sympathizing with his problems with incompetent underlings and desire to rule the universe from a nice throne ("Bride of Chaotica").
  Janeway: [Sitting in Chaotica's throne] Somehow, I feel comfortable here.
• Villainous Lineage: Invoked. Chuck himself laughingly suggested that stone-cold stormtrooper Aeryn Sun is one of Janeway's illegitimate children (as indeed she was, in Dragon Age: Origins). No word yet on Shiva Shepard though.
• Villain Protagonist:
  Chuck: Nothing confuses Janeway fans quite like telling them, "I love Janeway! She's my favorite villain!"
• War for Fun and Profit: In Star Trek: Nemesis, Janeway asides to Picard that she personally installed Shinzon as the Romulan Praetor, reprogrammed Lore into believing he was B-4, before chopping him up and leaving his remains for him to find, all in preparation for staging a war between the Romulans and Starfleet. The end result would leave the Alpha Quadrant Empire in tatters, turning it into a vehicle for promoting Janeway's personal brand throughout the known universe. Presumably, this was narrowly avoided by Picard's crew, but Vice Admiral Janeway remains at large. (Though "The Omega Directive" jokingly suggests that she was exiled to a 21st century Litchfield prison.)
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Like Chakotay's telltale oxygen-intake and emoting, a surefire sign that Janeway's been brainwashed is a distinct lack of screaming and blood spatter. The VOY crew swoops into action in response, fully aware that their Captain would want this situation remedied ASAP. ("Workforce")
• Weirdness Magnet:
  • Even Janeway can't keep track of her chaotic personal timeline; it rivals even James T. Kirk's voluminous temporal violations. When Chakotay finds himself warping all the way back to "Caretaker", Janeway admits he's the third time traveler she's bumped into since taking command, the first two being Seven and Braxton in "Relativity". ("Shattered")
  • To the extent to know, when dealing with unknown hostile individuals or vessels, to extend the line of questioning to four dimensions, knowing she's likely to have/will have/might have offended them... yestermorrow. ("Fury")
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": On one mission, a hostile alien accuses Voyager of planning to commit genocide. Janeway pauses, and asks him if he means genocide against his people, or just genocide in general. ("Friendship One")
• You Are What You Hate: In "Equinox", her irrational vendetta against Ransom is due to dumping on him all the times she has justified breaking the rules to herself. Chuck also posits that if Picard was in her position and ordered Voyager to be stripped for parts for the Enterprise-E, before threatening to remove her from command for giving bio-weapons to the Borg in "Scorpion", Janeway would have rebelled, stolen back her ship and gone on the lam, just like Ransom does.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Inverted with her future self, who after giving a talk to some academy students offhandedly tells a flunky that some of them were useful, and should therefore be spared, unlike the rest of their classmates. ("Endgame")
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Janeway of Borg, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Janeway's 'assimilation' or annihilation of every alien that crosses her ship's path. Also, "Unimatrix Zero" suggests that Janeway inherited this title from the Borg Queen after momentarily taking over the Collective.

Chief Religious Experience Officer Chakotay

Chakotay has always had a keen interest in… (*roll roll roll*) Boxing!

Embodiement of just about every Hollywood stereotype concerning Native Americans, even managing to invent a few new ones. Admittedly, he does not run a casino (yet). More or less useless outside of the ship, as he insists on not even scanning burial sites to avoid violating their "sanctity." Proves irresistible to the ladies for some unknowable reason.

---

• And There Was Much Rejoicing: For old time's sake, Admiral Janeway still enjoys gloating over Chakotay's grave and imagining his flustered pleas for caution.
• Backstory of the Day: Several episodes feature him having "always" been a big fan of whatever the crew's currently doing, represented by the writers picking his interest of the week with twelve-sided dice or a roulette wheel. Which inevitably peaked with, "Chakotay's always been into... *roll roll roll* —Seven of Nine!
• The Bore: "Have I ever told you about how a man does not own land?" This coming from a guy who joined a terrorist group to defend his land from the Cardassians.
• Butt-Monkey: Chakotay, who spends most weeks spinning out the same nonsense as usual from his Commander's chair, finally gets his chance to play the hero in "Workforce"! —And he spends the majority of the episode getting shot, or limping away bleeding after getting shot. He's eventually wheeled away screaming on an asylum stretcher once the writers realize their mistake.
  "Sorry, Chakotay, you've already had way too much screentime this story; time to get your brain scramble on."
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: "Resolutions" offered a perfect Hell for Janeway: separated from her warship, her minions, and trapped with the world's most long-winded Indian.
  Janeway: ENOUGH ALREADY! We have been here for months and you have had a story for everything that happens to you every moment of every day!!"
• The Dragon: He and Janeway even have an unspoken, prearranged signal for Chakotay to remove any signs of morale from the bridge. ("Scorpion")
  Janeway: *gestures at Harry behind them*
  Translation: Chakotay, shut him up or tighten his genital clamp.
• Fictional Holiday: He regularly invents religious holidays that are "sacred to his people" to avoid doing menial tasks. Rituals performed on said holidays tend to involve him being alone in a shuttlepod with plenty of booze and "lots of baby oil". ("Initiations")
• The Generic Guy: Our host once described him as the Helvetica of space. ("One Small Step")
• Hyperaffixation: Chakotay's Sacred [insert noun here]!
  [clutches head] "Agh! I shouldn't have drunk that Sacred Smoothie so quickly!"
• Hypocrite: Frequently spouts pacifistic messages, even once claiming that "a man does not own land"... despite being a former leader of a guerrilla army armed with forty gigaton warheads, who went to war with the Cardassians after they tried to take their land. ("Initiations")
  Chuck: Hey! Dances With Irony!
• Let Me Tell You a Story: Chuck once suggested that his real rank is Chief Religious Experience Officer. He can't so much as pass gas without... yep, you guessed it. "Let me tell you a story of my people!"
• The Load: Chakotay swearing a life debt to Tom in "Caretaker" is completely meaningless, as he ends up owning a "life debt" to everyone on the ship plus Seska. Seven jumps on the life debt bandwagon in "Demon".
• Magical Native American: Especially in episodes written by Michael Piller, where despite Chakotay having little proof and sketchy evidence to support his wild claims, his "Indian hunches" are always proven to be correct.
• National Stereotypes: Chuck points out that his background and religious beliefs were cherry-picked from various stereotypes of Native American tribes, despite most of them being separated by hundreds - if not thousands - of miles. These "facts" were also Based on a Great Big Lie provided to the Voyager writers by an Native American expert, who later was revealed to be a fraud and had absolutely no Native American heritage or expertise whatsoever.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: He once mocked the Discovery crew for missing the clues that their captain was from the Mirror Universe and evil, doing thing like recruiting criminals, forsaking every rule of Starfleet, being belligerent and stranding them far away from home while Janeway is nervously laughing in the background. ("Vaulting Ambition").
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Janeway is so used to Chakotay uselessly propping up her Ready Room wall that it took her a week to realize he died.
• Percussive Therapy: His love of boxing is due to having a serious need to deck someone after Janeway constantly emasculates him.
• Plant Person: When scanned by a tricorder, he registers as maple. ("Shattered", "In the Flesh"). Hence one of Chuck's pet names for him, "Sequoia."
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Instinctively approves of his Captain's every move, and will even offer up his own half-baked suggestions to make Janeway look smart by comparison. In "Demon", he immediately shoots down Seven of Nine's solution to a power shortage, not realizing that she completely ignoring him and going ahead with the plan anyway.
  "But that's Chakotay: By the time he's finished explaining why a new battleship wouldn't work, it probably would've been built and won two victories."
  • "You think the crew would mutiny?" Janeway poses that question every single morning and Chakotay always says no, but Janeway knows better than trust his unthinking word. ("Course: Oblivion")
  • The urge to be somebody's lackey is powerful, even when he's not on Voyager: Chakotay instantly becomes a nodding head to Annorax the minute he boards his spacetime-eating warship. ("Year of Hell")
  • To the point where he admits that he briefly considered staging a mutiny when Janeway started acting irrational and crazy ( more so than usual), only to refuse to follow through with it as it'd be "crossing the line". ("Equinox Part II").
    Janeway: Man, I've got you so pussy-whipped! Fetch me my slippers, you little bitch!
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Tuvok's debilitating brain disease in "Endgame" first presented symptoms around the same time Chakotay and Seven started shagging.
• Spotting the Thread: During the "Unreality Month", Chuck jokes that the litmus test for whether the story is taking place in reality or not, tends to be how lifelike Chakotay is acting. ("Waking Moments", "Human Error", "Worst Case Scenario", "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy") And something is especially wrong if he passes on an opportunity to tell one of his people's boring stories. ("Bliss")
  Chuck: You may have thought you could fool us, hallucination, but you make the same mistake all the other hallucinations have made. You made Chakotay too lifelike, a dead giveaway!
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Considering how jittery Chakotay is acting over Ensign Wildman's pregnancy, you'd almost think it were his! Which it's not. ("Deadlock")
  Chuck: I guess if [the baby] has a big waffle iron burn on its face, we'll know the truth.

Lieutenant Commander Tuvok

Unlike most of the crew, he seems to be one of the few (including Tom Paris) to not accept Neelix immediately with open arms. This, of course, backfired on him by convincing Neelix to befriend Tuvok at all costs.

---

• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: "Dragon's Teeth" has him claim that four ships he reduced to debris have been "disabled", rather than destroyed. Chuck theorizes that it is probably some kind of code language Janeway has taught him to use.
  Janeway: Disable them, Tuvok.
  Tuvok: Yes, captain, targeting their warp cores.
  Janeway: Make sure they're unharmed.
  Tuvok: I'll bring you their skins right away, captain.
• Brainwashed: His brainwashing in "Repression" ultimately fails because Janeway has also brainwashed him, and in a contest between the two there's simply no comparison.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Notes that Tuvok's attempts to put the Maquis through their paces in "Learning Curve" makes him come off as a massive jerkass, especially when he makes them run a 10 kilometre lap, with full packs and the gravity turned up 10%.
  Chuck: A particularly nice sign of dickishness from a man who has over three times the strength of the people he's leading!
• Happy Dance: When Neelix finally leaves.
• Spy Speak: In "Learning Curve", he interprets Janeway's order to make the Maquis feel at home as "Break them!"
• Stockholm Syndrome: Suggests that the reason why the highly logical Tuvok rarely questions Janeway's crazy plans is because after years of serving under her command, she's almost completely conditioned him to never say no to her.

Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres

The best engineer the Maquis could muster, thus explaining their eventual defeat. A menace in Engineering, hopeless as a scout (even using a tricorder, she failed to identify manure.) Virtually anything she builds will result in catastrophe – the dreadnought missile she programmed to hit the Cardassians wound up in the Delta Quadrant, ignoring all other sensor data (stars in the wrong positions, non-Federation/Cardassian ships in the vicinity, etc.), allowing it to backfire on her own vessel years later.

---

• Can't Catch Up: Once the more knowledgeable and competent Seven of Nine shows up, Torres quickly ends up succumbing to obsolescence.
• Casting Couch: As Chief Engineer Torres has the highest amounts of justifying the mistakes that pass for plot, Chuck often jokes that the only reason she got this spot was by sleeping with the captain.
• Doom It Yourself: Most of her "Maquis Tricks" are highly questionable and so ridiculously unsafe, they should never work in any sane universe. For instance, attempting to beam someone via "Skeletal Lock" would be more likely to transport their bones onto the transporter pad, while leaving their body in a collapsing pile of goo still on the planet below.
  • Rather tellingly, Janeway is more concerned about the danger than Torres is:
    Janeway: It's been years since I've been a science officer, but don't they need their bones?
• Green-Eyed Monster: Suggests the real reason for her venomous attitude toward Seven of Nine isn't because she's a Borg or a wunderkind, but because Janeway puts her in charge of all the cool and fun things Torres used to do. ("Message in a Bottle")
  Torres: You order people around, you do things without permission, and whether you realize it or not, you come off as a little insulting. You don't even say "please" or "thank you"!
  Chuck: You broke a man's nose just for disagreeing with you, for God's sake! Who the hell are you to talk!?
• Inspector Oblivious: Torres don't know shit. Literally. ("The 37s")
  • More breaking news: Removing your clothes makes you cold! ("Course: Oblivion")
• Never Live It Down: Expect the "manure" story to be mentioned in any B'Elanna scene.
• Poor Man's Substitute:
  • A lack of any other experienced personnel was the only reason why Torres, an Academy washout was put in charge of coming up with the scientific solutions in early seasons with Harry. It's also the reason why she was almost immediately replaced when the more knowledgeable and competent Seven showed up.
  • Lampshaded in reviews which take place before "Scorpion", where Chuck jokes that Janeway will send Seven to do it, before correcting and reminding himself that at this point, these situations are dealt with by Torres.
• Reverse Psychology: In "Demon", Torres actually welcomes Seven sapping away her screentime, so long as it means the drone dies an agonizing goldshirt death in her place.
• Rule of Three: "Fix it", "Pissed off", or "Screw somebody" – the B'Elanna story trifecta.
  • "Barge of the Dead" introduced a fourth category "Meditate on it", due to its origins as one of Worf's cast-offs.
• Too Dumb to Live: Turns out Janeway and Chakotay had a little side bet going as to whether Torres would die by her own stupidity. Janeway lost. ("Barge of the Dead")
  Janeway: Looks like I owe Chakotay a Coke. He told me you'd never be safe aboard this ship so long as there was a sharp thing not covered in cork.

Tom Paris AKA "ibid"

"For some reason I was thinking of a doomed ship Captained by someone who thoughtlessly steered the crew into harm's way, causing a disaster so legendary all would remember it for centuries to come."

An ex-member of a chain gang for the gifted, turned acting helmsmen aboard the USS Voyager. Tom claims only his piloting skills but proves to be good at almost everything – He has acted as a commando, pilot, field medic, engineer, scientist, historian, and more. Also invented, designed, and built the universe's first Warp-10 reactor (discarded by Janeway in one of many plots to thwart VOY's return). Easily considered to be the third most competent person in Starfleet, which is excusable considering the first two are Kirk and THE Sisko.

---

• The Ace: Tom is the most-overqualified Helmsman in Starfleet history, and seemingly the only person aboard Voyager that can get anything done. He is the opposite number to Neelix, who claims to be proficient at everything but is perfectly useless. One clue to his replicant nature are the lieutenant pips on Tom, which were removed after he got demoted before "Course: Oblivion". But, as Chuck concedes, perhaps Tom's performance during Droit du seigneur was better than she expected.
• The All-Solving Hammer: By the time of "Demon" Chuck is starting to wonder is "TOM" is the only name on the active duty roster (ether due to a glitch or Janeway's carelessness), so whenever Janeway needs something done, she just assigns "TOM" to take care of it.
• Almighty Janitor: Within thirty seconds of "Year of Hell", Paris shows mastery of engineering and history, then is summoned to sick bay to conduct field medicine, "and none of these things are even his job!" Not only is it unfeasible for Tom to ever leave the ship (much less go on risky Away Missions), it's unclear how Voyager manages to stay aloft without Tom rushing between six different stations at once.
  • Within five minutes of appearing in "Distant Origin", Tom is shown to be more knowledgeable about engineering that Torres, the ship's chief engineer.
  • Shockingly, Tom's chronic underemployment seems to be a universal constant: He had the briefest stint of anyone in the power plant in "Workforce", getting fired before noon despite his blindingly-obvious qualifications and the fact that the planet is suffering from a crippling labor shortage. At least Tom takes comfort in the fact that, even when he fails at something, he does it in a bigger and more impressive way than anyone has before.
• Answers to the Name of God: Has the distinction of earning the only "Jesus of the Week" Award in all of The Opinionated Guide, having successfully raised himself from the dead in "Threshold" with no outside influence.
  Harry: I've even come back from the dead!
  Tom: (Chuck) Eh, we've all come back from the dead. You're no one special.
• Awful Wedded Life: There are frequent hints and innuendos that Tom's marriage is one of convenience ("If you die I don't get my deposit back!") to the point where Chuck, a married man, admits he's a gaping asshole for going down that road.
• Broken Ace: In "Persistence of Vision", Chuck speculates that Tom Paris' complex relationship with his father is the root of his need to be hyper-efficient at everything.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Field medic, quantum engineer, and commando... is there anything Tom can't do?! ... Oh, right. Please his father, an Admiral who is probably responsible for Tom's lowly rank in the first place.
    Owen: You need to climb, and you need to be sure the rope will slide in only one direction:
    Tom: I'd tie a guarda hitch knot!
    Owen: The fear of long words is:
    Tom: Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia!
    Owen: A picardy third is:
    Tom: Is when you suddenly solve a minor composition in major triad.
    Owen: The leg before wicket rule:
    Tom: Uh, in Cricket, the batsman's out because he... er, um, no. It's... the bowler is—
    Owen: Just as I thought, you're useless!!
  • In "Parallax", Janeway decides to make him look stupid and rub it in his face that he's not familiar with the finer points of Quantum Mechanics—despite Paris being the one who pointed out that her suggestion would make the situation worse only fifteen seconds earlier.
• Humiliation Conga: The unintentional theme of "Parallax" is Janeway's celebrating "Condescending Bitch Day" (a daily holiday) by seeing if she can find increasingly inventive ways to make Tom's life miserable or deball him in every scene.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Due to the show wildly swinging his characterization between this and the Butt-Monkey, Chuck's Tom Paris frequently portrays him as a sort of Great Teacher Onizuka IN SPACE!!
• Informed Wrongness: In "Friendship One", the episode keeps treating him like a misogynistic dinosaur for not wanting his heavily pregnant wife to be on the away team to the highly radioactive and post-apocalyptic wasteland. Even though he later meets a pregnant local woman who has suffered repeated stillbirths and a heavily mutated child, proving that he was right to worry that it would harm the baby.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: When Tom Paris is pronounced medically-"dead" in "Threshold", the EMH silently calls dibs on his belongings (pointedly, his Creed collection) then later refuses to give it back.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Chuck concludes that Paris was held in some special prison for savants. ("Year of Hell")
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Frequently lampshaded as part of a meditation on VOY's Economy Cast. Not only does Voyager depend on Tom Paris to fly the ship, but he's the choice pilot for the most important shuttle missions, and the field medic/assistant to the Doctor, with nobody left to fill in for him now that Kes is gone.
• Memetic Badass: Speculates that part of the reason Voyager is so feared in the Delta Quadrant is because various aliens have heard about Tom Paris and are afraid how someone so talented could only be a Lieutenant.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: In "Timeless" we learn that Tom Paris is such a multi-talented Renaissance Man, his middle name is "Ibid."
• One-Man Army: While the crew of Voyager were having their arse handed to them by the Kazon and being stranded on a barren planet, Tom Paris not only managed to win dog-fights in a broken shuttle, but fixed said broken shuttle and proceeded to raise an army to retake the ship ("Basics Part 1 & 2").
• Only Sane Man: Along with the Doctor and Seven of Nine, Tom comes across as one of the few sane, competent individuals on Voyager.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Torres once threatened to rip out her Hubby's tongue and wear it as a belt – thus explaining Tom's popularity with the ladies. ("Barge of the Dead")
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: As Chuck notes in "Revulsion", Janeway saw no problem with making Tom — a womanizing ex-con — a medic with access to a wide array of drugs for any possible situation. Nothing does, of course, but it helps to highlight Janeway's logic (or lack thereof).

Ensign Harry "Dutch Elm Disease" Kim a.k.a. Poor Dumb Harry

"Help."

Starfleet's oldest Ensign. He claims to remember being in his mother's womb, and he tragically lost his dignity in his childhood due to an unfortunate accident involving a bottle of mustard and a wood chipper, and it just never grew back. Harry dies on an almost daily basis but is resurrected for more torments from a fun-loving universe. Originally served as the ship's expositor while displaying woeful ignorance on any subject, including his own planet (He once thought a '36 Ford truck might be an early hover-car and didn't have a clue who Amelia Earhart was.) It's just possible he might be sexually confused, but don't quote us on that.

• 20% More Dysfunctional: Is the namesake for two units of measure: "Kims" (as in deci-Kims), which is the measure of Harry Kim's sexual trauma applied per cubic meter/second; and the metric-Kim, which is a measurement of personal shame.
• Book Dumb: In contrast to Tom, Harry lacks even the vaguest grasp on history. In true Starfleet form, it's his assigned area of expertise. ("The 37s")
  (panicking) Uhh, umm... On behalf of Napoleon Bonaparte, first Pope and the ever-living Pharaoh, I have been asked to welcome you in His traditional greeting, that you ain't nothin' but a hound dog, barking all the time!"
• The Chew Toy: Janeway's to be precise.
  Harry: The aliens have destroyed my identity in an attempt to harvest the totality of my genetic material. But I guess it's just part of the job. Right, captain?
  Janeway: Who told you to stop dancing? Dance, you little bitch! Dance!
  • He was even once outsmarted by the three year old Naomi, proving that even small children are more competent than Harry Kim, and that Janeway's plan to groom Naomi into her loyal minion is proceeding exceptionally well ("Bliss"). He's so dumb that Tom has a harder time deceiving his own holodeck programs than he does conning Harry ("Meld").
• Depraved Bisexual:
  • Believes Harry is a whole mess of castration fears and sexual confusion, to the point where he can no longer tell if he's straight or gay anymore. Admittedly, he's been caught hiding a webcam in Torres' toilet more than once. ("Prototype")
  • His mind briefly short-circuits after learning the Doctor has uploaded himself into Seven's body, since if it had been Tom instead, all of his prayers would have been answered ("Body and Soul").
• The Dog Bites Back: Notes how Harry is far more willing to talk back, question insane plans, or just act plain subordinate towards anyone in authority who isn't Janeway, such as Tuvok ("Resolutions"), Seven ("The Omega Directive"), The Doctor ("Workforce") and even the Hirogen ("The Killing Game"). Presumably, this is because they don't rule him through fear.
• Dull Surprise: Before his Character Development set it, Harry spent the first season being "so wooden you could drill a hole and let out the sap", although Garrett Wang gets a free-pass because he was told to act like this by the producers.
  • Loser Son of Loser Dad: Jokes in "Before and After" that Harry's genes explain why his son in the alternate timeline appears to have been a graduate of the "Jake Lloyd school of Child Acting".
• Flat Character: In the "The Killing Game", Chuck lampshades the reason Harry was not involved in the main plot was because even the writers of the episode admitted to finding him so boring, they didn't want to deal with him. They ended up only expanded his subplot because the episode ran short.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Notes that the writers of Voyager later realised that when Harry actually grows a pair, he becomes a more interesting character ("The Killing Game"), but unfortunately, they decided to only have this occur in time travel plots which end with a Reset Button ("Timeless").
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Invoked in "Scorpion". Since Harry never really does anything important or interesting afterwards, being written out would have changed next to nothing about the show. Similarly suggests that his character could have been revamped in "Year of Hell", if he'd pulled a Heroic Sacrifice to avert that timeline but leaving him as the Shell-Shocked Veteran of a year that never was.
    Chuck: You saved Harry, that's fine. Do something with him!
• Geeky Turn-On: Just talking about a cluster of wormholes gives Harry a case of the vapors.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: In "Bride of Chaotica", his interest in wanting to see slave girls in the "Captain Proton" program is solely due to having rolled that with Chakotay's dice.
  • He constantly pines for... for Libby! Because dammit, there is nothing gay about this!
• I Hate Past Me: His canon counterpart in "Timeless" manages to overcome his depraved fantasies (this time directed at Future Chakotay and his wife) to actually do something useful. However, Future Harry winds up congratulating Past Harry for what Future Harry did, proving that even Harry Kim looks down on Harry Kim.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Being wounded by an attacking alien that has left him with an infection of the creature's malignant cells which are slowly and painfully killing him and forcing him to stay concious throughout the process is apparently only the third worst birthday Harry has experienced.
• Outranking Your Job: Harry is actually subordinate to an Ensign, having been demoted to the nonexistent rank of Ensign Junior Grade by Janeway, who also took away his chair. ("Unimatrix Zero")
• Panty Thief: He regularly raids Torres' underwear drawer.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Torn between his lust for Seven's catsuit (so like that of a dominatrix) and his neurotic, self-flagellating subconscious, and will only find peace once he undergoes that operation and is reunited with his one true love... Tom Pa- Libby!
  Chuck: I'm starting to get the feeling that Harry has a pathological fear of his own erection.
• Phrase Catcher: "Poor Dumb Harry".
• Really Dead Montage: Harry's life flashes before him on his deathbed, but since this is Harry we're talking about, it consists only of beatings. ("Scorpion") At least he got Enya to play him out.
• Sex Slave: It's occasionally suggested by Chuck that he is Janeway's bitch in more ways than one, given the fact she owns a "Harry Kim shaped strap-on".
• Smarter Than You Look: Even when ordered by the Captain to address her as "Kathryn", Harry's subconscious mind knows better and he instead spits out "Yes, ma'am!" The alternative would risk having to give Neelix bikini waxes as punishment for the rest of the trip. ("Workforce Pt. II")
• The Stoner: The reason he's so wooden at times is because after being lumbered as Janeway's gimp, he's resorted to taking copious amounts of weed simply to get through the day.
• They Killed Kenny: Kim's propensity for dying is lampshaded in "The Killing Game Pt. 2", when Janeway expresses relief at not having to reanimate him yet again.
  "I numbered the pieces, so the last couple of times have been a lot easier."
• Too Dumb to Live: Even with a containment suit, Harry's still the kind of loser who will drown himself in a puddle as soon as you turn your back (as seen in "Demon")
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Aside from the generic desire to return to Earth shared by the crew, the Telepathic Pitcher Plant took one look inside of Harry's screwed up mind and simply gave up trying to think up a positive outcome for him ("Bliss").
  "Well... could you settle for something a bit easier, like a four-sided triangle, maybe?"
• Took a Level in Badass: Temporarily grew balls in "Demon". As in, literally sprouted balls, one of Janeway's failed lab experiments. (The "containment field" on Harry's scrotum fails sometime between episodes and he reverts to normal.)
• Transparent Closet: Chuck spends a lot of time denying that there's anything going on between Harry and Tom. Especially in "Non Sequitor," where he struggles to describe the current situation in a way that isn't a double entendre, and gives up after three failures.
• The Unsmile: Chuck has commented that even Harry's "smile" looks contorted with physical pain.
• Why Did It Have To Be Ovaries?: Tom Paris, trapped in a WWII sim, holds him at gunpoint to test whether he's a Japanese solider. Stand back, everybody, Harry's got this. Any question posed by Tom—any at all—he can answer! Just so long as it's not related to the sexual behavior of a normal human being. ("The Killing Game")
  Tom: If Betty Grable came around that corner, what part of her would you be staring at?
  Chuck: And the answer is: None of the above. All he'd see is his grandmother, slapping him and shaking her finger at him for looking at girls, then her face splitting open and Janeway's head on a snake's body coming out and ordering him to remodulate her rug.
• You Need to Get Laid: Chuck once proclaimed Harry "the Mount Everest for psychologists." ("The Disease")

Seven, AKA Cybertits, AKA Silicone of Nine

Autistic Human who acts like a Vulcan, with a strange taste in catsuits. Nevertheless, she is one of the more competent mammaries –- er, members -– of VOY's staff. Able to use her vast array of Borg tricks to bypass firewalls and hastily fix problems the writers were too lazy to think of actual resolutions for. Inevitably, though, her work goes unappreciated amongst the flatfooted Starfleet types she must grudgingly work with. Tried to defect back to the Collective, but rethought it when the new Borg Queen turned out to be even more hazardous to her crew than Janeway was.

• Brutal Honesty: In a hypothetical situation about the crew trying to cure Harry's hiccups by scaring him, Seven manages it just by coldly telling Harry he'll die alone and unloved. ("Someone to Watch Over Me")
• Deus Angst Machina: Chuck has also pointed out several instances of Seven being forced by the crew (and by the show's writers) into situations that would be horribly traumatic for someone who was essentially raped, physically and mentally, by the Borg.
  (sweetly) "I'm sorry the utter annihilation of everything I ever loved has inconvenienced you. If you need me, I'll be over here trying to recover a happy memory the Borg didn't purge for being "irrelevant". See you in two months, ENSIGN!"
• Geeky Turn-On: The Borg's fetishization of the Omega symbol can be explained by its meaning, perfection — which in Borgspeak translates to "Dat ass!" ("The Omega Directive")
• Lady Drunk: Seven, they say, can really stick it away: half a crate of synthehol in just one day. ("Timeless")
  (being led away by the Doc) Ah'm Borrrg you... dammit! Prepare to be stimulated! Feudalism is resilience!"
• Lie Back and Think of England: Alluding to Seven and Chakotay's Last-Minute Hookup in "Endgame" by noting sarcastically that she clearly wants to hump his brains out some day.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Gets this treatment from Janeway and the Borg Queen alike. In "Dark Frontier," Janeway ignores Seven's requests to beam her father to safety until it's too late. As a drone, Seven's practical suggestions for easily thwarting the heroes fall on deaf ears.
• Speaks in Binary: In "The Killing Game", Noir!Seven introduces her next number as a classic Borg torch song... and it's in binary, with a hexadecimal verse.
  "This a love song that goes back in the history of my people" (clears throat) ......"1100100111001001...♫"
• With Friends Like These...: Janeway promises that Voyager can offer her something that the Borg never can: friendship. Cue a montage of her new 'friends' ostracizing and making anti-Borg racist comments about her. ("Author, Author") Borg drones themselves are comparatively genial when Seven returns to their ship; one half-expects there to be cake waiting for her in a break room! ("Dark Frontier")
  "Hey Seven, welcome back! You hear Three got promoted? Can Opener 1st Class! (Lucky bastard.)"

Chief Fry Cook and Ship's Gossip Neelix (née Shithead)

"Thanks for consuming our oxygen, Hedgehog."

Conceived when the universe ran out of joy, combining the irritation of Wesley with the repugnance of Ferengi. Wesley was an annoying know-it-all, but at least he really did know what he was talking about. Neelix claims to be an expert in every field, but events inevitably prove him to be a clumsy oaf. So obnoxious and so stupid, he makes Jar-Jar Binks look like Sean Connery in comparison, Janeway kept him on as a means of further maddening her crew.

• Always Someone Better: In "Demon", when the Doctor tries to scare off Neelix with a barrage of jargon and invasive tests, Chuck places his bets on the Doctor being the one who breaks first. Sure enough, Neelix is soon running the show in triage while the Doctor seethes in a corner.
  "Trying to be more annoying than Neelix is like challenging the sun to a staring contest."
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: At the end of "Homestead", the entire crew lines up to give Neelix a salute — and to make sure he doesn't back out of his decision to leave.
• "Ass" in Ambassador: "Friendship One", which canonized his unofficial (and self-appointed) role as "Voyager's ambassador". Neelix spends the story trying to go over with his captors while dismissing the humans as a bunch of slave-driving monsters.
  Chuck: Now, I'm not gonna say it definitely made things worse, but clearly he accomplished, at best, nothing.
• Attention Whore:
  • Neelix's Mandatory Line in most episodes is "WOOooow!" or telling a Talaxian proverb whenever something meaningful happens, as though he can't stand not being the center of attention even for a second. His ubiquitous presence at every command meeting has conditioned Chuck to expect him to chime in with his usual blather whenever the show gets too interesting. In fact, it's gotten to the point that Neelix's absence from a high-level briefing nearly knocked Chuck out of his chair. ("The Omega Directive")
  • His penchant for butting into other peoples' matters is immortalized in a Stupid Neelix Moment ("Resolutions") whose summary is, "ALL Business is My Business."
  • He moonlights as Travel Agent in "Course: Oblivion", flogging his "exotic" holo-programs to Tom and voicing disapproval on his choices. "Y-you—?? You do realize he's not taking you, Neelix, right?"
• Authority in Name Only: Neelix routinely tacks on "Chief" to whatever his current duties are. He was previously Chief Salvage Operator on his one-man junker.
  • And when nearly thrown out of the magic meeting room for not being a Senior Officer, he quickly promoted himself to the Senior Talaxian in order to stay.
  • He turned Janeway's dining room into a "galley" without permission and, appointed himself "chief morale officer" — after having made up the position of "morale officer" specifically so that he could promote himself. (The crew only eats his toxic slop because there is no other option.) He's ignorant of basic nutritional needs, and even lacks rudimentary cooking skills since he believes higher temperatures equals faster cooking time.
    Chuck: To the majority of human cultures, bugs are considered a food source; they're very rich in protein. And I'm rather surprised that Neelix's "survival skills" wouldn't recognize that fact. Why, it's almost as if...! He was FULL OF SHIT!
  • This may be his species' "Hat" as of "Homestead". Bonus: Voyager manages to dupe all the remaining Talaxian refugees in the Quadrant into exiling themselves on a barren asteroid mine. Because appointing oneself to an imaginary position of authority and clinging to it for dear life is what a Talaxian does best.
• Ax-Crazy: Dubbed a 'paranoid psychopath' in Parturition after he attacks Tom Paris in what can, without hyperbole, only be described as a jealously-fueled psychotic break.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Neelix is qualified to serve as an ambassador to a quadrupedal species because he has had sex with many sheep ("Bliss").
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Becomes insane with jealousy at any man who so much as looks at Kes, to the point of stalking her throughout the ship ("Parturition"). While his jealousy of ladies man Tom Paris is somewhat justifiable, the same can't be said of his jealousy towards the Doctor, a hologram who initially lacked any genitalia altogether! ("Elogium") He also gets paranoid about the fact Kes can remember where on the ship various crewmen's quarters are, even though he knows she has a photographic memory ("Twisted").
• Con Man: One of his first acts was to lie to VOY's crew so that they would help him rescue Kes. This aspect of Neelix was phased out by the second episode, but Chuck contends that it never actually left his character. When "Live Fast and Prosper" brings this back into his characterization (specifically, explaining that Neelix started off by conning them and grew out of it), Chuck actually admits Neelix seems like less of a shithead for it.
• Consummate Liar: Admits that, of all countless areas and skills Neelix fails at, his one true talent is his ability to convince this brain trust that he's has mastered all of them.
• Dismotivation: Why Janeway continues to inflict him upon her long-suffering crew. ("Initiations")
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Chuck's "happy ending" for "Endgame" has him muse that, upon Voyager missing the scheduled check-in noted in the first half, Neelix decides to fly over and check up on things... right into a nest of now stranded and leaderless Borg cubes.
• Drunk with Power:
  • Torres, no soup for you! ("State of Flux")
    "We finally see that Neelix's despotic expansion is complete. He's moved from coffee to total control over what people eat. And in a mere six episodes. From creating his galley, to god-king of the kitchen. Honestly! If someone dares to ask for soup without "ass" as the secret ingredient, the iron-fist chef will unleash all wrath. Because if someone wants their own mushroom soup, where will it all end?! Next they'll be demanding croutons! CROUTOOOONS!!"
  • Coffee Martial Law: "Shattered" opens on Chakotay hurriedly retrieving his bottles of spirits from a fake cargo container. This confirms what we all already knew: Neelix insists on controlling what everyone eats and imbibes.
    Chuck: Shouldn't you be rolling tanks into a Wendy's right about now?
  • While everyone else aboard VOY dreams of awards, marriage proposals, and professorships waiting for them back home, Neelix believes he's going to land a Federation ambassadorship on a quadruped planet. With his past experience in molesting farm animals, there can be no better candidate. ("Bliss")
  • His appointment as Naomi's godfather is an excuse for another power-trip, bubble-wrapping all sharp corners in her quarters and proposing sticking her in a hazmat suit filled with styfofoam peanuts.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Gives Neelix due credit when he makes an astute observation about Janeway's most recent plan to throw Voyager into a suicidally dangerous situation for no good reason. ("The Cloud")
  Neelix: You don't "care a great deal about your crew" and introduce them to the specter of death at every opportunity.
  Chuck: You know, he may be a shithead, but he's got a point.
• Failed Future Forecast: Paramount's prediction that, "like Quark, [Neelix] is a meddling scavenger predicted to be Voyager's breakout character." ("Caretaker")
• Fate Worse than Death: Seeing flaming, sulfur-ridden gateway to Gre'Thor (the Klingon Hell), Chuck gasps that he can't imagine a worse fate than this. That's Voyager's cue to summon its "Ambassador to the Recently-Deceased", standing over a smoking bed of hot coals. That's right: even in the afterlife, Neelix somehow manages to outrank you. ("Barge of the Dead")
  (venomously) "I shoulda known. The only thing in Hell more terrifying than Pinhead... is Shithead."
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Several days stuck on a shuttle with Neelix causes Tom, Chakotay and Harry to band together in a pact to murder him. The plan fails because they all fall over one another trying to be the one to actually do it. ("Memorial")
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • One sign that the "Year of Hell" was so daunting for the crew is that Tuvok actually agreed to Neelix's constant nagging to make him a Security Officer.
  • "Course: Oblivion" has the situation on Goop!Voyager get so bad that Neelix is appointed as the new Doctor, even though he's likely to cook up whatever he scoops out of his patients.
• Grave Robbing: All Neelix has to do is keep 150 people fed in the middle of a vast nothingness. How hard could it be! ..Apparently tougher than he lets on, because Neelix is constantly caught trying to snatch dead bodies to recycle for grub. This is referenced both in "Relativity" and "Demon", the latter of which had Janeway frantically trying to hide a severed thumb before Neelix adds it to a stew.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Chuck laments that one of the few recurring elements on Voyager is that Neelix is insanely jealous of any man who so much as breathes in Kes' direction. In "Parturition", he becomes so paranoid that Tom is trying to steal Kes from him that, when Tom actually tries avoiding her at lunch by sitting with Harry and Harry gets called up to the bridge, Neelix assumes that the two of them sitting back-to-back is just an attempt to fool him nothing's going on and throws food at Tom. And when Tom responds in kind, Neelix tackles him and the two get into a fight, with Neelix screaming that he'll kill him. And this was after "Elogium", where Kes said she wants Neelix to be the father of the one and only baby she'll ever be able to have.
  Chuck: Now, how many of you thought I was using hyperbole when I called him a paranoid psychopath?
• Hoist by His Own Petard/Reverse Psychology: In "Homestead", the crew reaches a silent understanding and bands together to dump Neelix on an inhospitable asteroid, playing off his one weakness: lust for power. Kim and Chakotay puff up his credentials, Tuvok points out the need for a strong "leader" in an an "ancient conflict", and Janeway waives the Prime Directive since Neelix isn't part of Starfleet and can thus ignore it.
  Janeway: Rules are like bones: they're meant to be broken...by me.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": "Our Littlest Crewmember."
• I Can't Believe I'm Saying This: In "Homestead", the Talaxian colonists tell the VOY crew to leave at once—all except Neelix, he can stay. The first time in history that those words have been arranged in that order.
• It's All About Me: Even when Seven confides that it was her parents who delivered her to the cosmic horrors that plucked out her little baby eyeball, Neelix can't resist turning the topic back around to himself. ("Dark Frontier") The subtitle of this Stupid Neelix Moment?
  "You know who didn't get me assimilated? MY family!"
• Lethal Chef:
  • Even Gordon Ramsay would run screaming from this kitchen. A running gag in the VOY reviews is Neelix recycling by-products from the ship's galley, cadavers, and his own secretions into badly-conceived dishes (such as a cupcake made of gristle and grease). This invariably ends up flooding the galley with food poisoning, the symptoms of which outrank most STDs. ("Message in a Bottle", et al.)
  Doctor: Ever seen a man having diarrhea through his nipples? It's not a pretty sight.
  • Neelix serves up live, squirming Gagh during Torres' traditional Klingonfest, neglecting to mention that he would've had to replicate it. As the replicator can't create living matter, this means he replicated dead Gagh, then reanimated it, causing Chuck to label it "Frankenfood". ("Barge of the Dead")
  • One Stupid Neelix Moment, dubbed "We're All Out of Ebola", played over the clip of him offering breakfast to Torres just after he admitted to infesting Harry with intestinal parasites. ("Workforce")
• Miles Gloriosus: Neelix spends years harassing Tuvok to make him a deputy. When the Voyager crewmen of past & future ("Time Avengers Assemble!") unite in their fight versus Seska, Neelix is, mysteriously, the only no-show. ("Shattered")
• The Millstone:
  • Neelix's cooking is entirely capable of destroying Voyager... such as the the incident where Neelix almost destroyed the ship with Cheese. Not the Crew of Voyager, but the ACTUAL SHIP!
  • Neelix has no concept of the "buddy system". He constantly wanders off on his own and leaves others to fend for themselves. This usually results in someone in need of rescue... or a funeral.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • ("Tattoo"), ("The Disease"), ("The Void"), and ("Living Witness") are episodes without a Stupid Neelix Moment.
  • In "The Disease", Neelix even manages to be useful for once. Of course, this might be because Harry had already long since used up all the episode's supply of shame.
• The Pigpen: Neelix is infested with no less than 3 species of lice. Remember that when you pass by the powdered doughnut display. ("Author, Author", "Fury")
  • And his cooking once gave the ship fleas! ("The Voyager Conspiracy")
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Neelix's career arc is as follows: draft-dodger > trash collector > self-appointed "morale officer" > barista > short order cook > soup nazi ("State of Flux") > "survival expert" > "ambassador" > commando ("Warlord"), "engineer" (tinkering with Seven's Borg alcove in "Dark Frontier"), "Co"-Security Chief ("Year of Hell"), Chief Medical Officer ("Demon"), and finally, Hell's last circle: Bridge Officer. ("Unimatrix Zero")
  "What did these poor people do that was so wrong that it demanded that they be made subordinate to the fry cook?"
  • Ultimately overturned by Janeway when she promotes him....off her ship. Neelix, hand-picked Ambassador to a clump of barren rock.
• Slave Collar: Following a drought of S.N.M.'s from Season Five onward, Chuck thanks the VOY crew for finally putting a shock collar on him. ("Workforce Pt. II")
• Small Name, Big Ego: In the space of only a half-dozen episodes, he takes over the Captain's Private Dining Room and converts it into a Galley without permission ("Phage"), refuses to serve Janeway any more coffee despite her replicator rations ("The Cloud"), to finally declaring full dictatorial control over the kitchen and refusing to let people prepare food how they want, despite them finding the ingredients and cooking the meal themselves ("State of Flux").
• Snub by Omission: Neelix's people are the only species other than Voyager's crew who manage to cross Borg Space unscathed. Assuming the Talaxians didn't bumble into a wormhole by mistake, the likely answer is that a few were assimilated, but the Borg remarked, ".....you know what? That did not move us closer to perfection in any way", and gave the Talaxians a wide berth.
• Sympathy for the Devil:
  • Chuck gave him a pass in "Tattoo" on account of the stupidity happening all around the character – not to mention getting pecked by wild birds in a cringeworthy Eye Scream scene.
    (Christ, you know it's bad when I feel sorry for Neelix.)
  • In "Demon", Neelix and Tuvok get into a spat over carry-on luggage. Faced with a choice between a petty, pointy-eared bureaucrat and Neelix's sound complaints, Chuck has no alternative but to side with Neelix—but not before ordering the extras off the set so they won't hear him defending "Shithead".
• Taking You with Me: Duly notes that Neelix – who was indignant at being told to wear a safety harness earlier (expert climber that he is) – immediately grabs onto Torres' legs when he takes a tumble, nearly killing both of them.
  • Chuck muses that he always imagined Neelix would go to the mattresses and defend his kitchen to the death if Janeway tried to evict him. ("Memorial")
• Taught by Television: Actually, he meant that he's a fan of Survivor. ("Basics")
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Neelix's entire career arc involves weaseling into any position of authority he can find under the pretense of "helping", before proceeding to dig his heels in and refuse to relinquish that power afterwards, until everyone else is forced to capitulate and let him get his way.
• Too Dumb to Live: He repeatedly disobeys direct orders from superiors officers, which once resulted in his lungs being stolen by Vidiians. By pretending to have "survival skills" that didn't really exist, he got two crewmembers killed in "Basics". In fact, what got the first Ensign killed was Neelix forcing him to go fetch sun-bleached bones in the desert without help or backup. (He specifically wanted them for – what else – cooking purposes.) Despite his boasting about being a survival expert, he routinely does things that survival experts would never do, and snubs things that they would. The crew still trusts his 'credentials', even though, as Chuck points out, his actions have led to the deaths of other crew members as well as getting his own lungs ripped out. He complains that safety equipment "takes the fun" out of rock climbing, only to moments later fall and nearly get both himself and Torres killed. Thus in later scenes, Chuck justifies Neelix's presence on away teams as "Neelix has conned the rest of them into thinking he's a survival expert." With Tom (the only nurse on Voyager) on an away mission with the Doctor in "Dark Frontier", Chuck wonders who's in charge of Sick Bay and suspects it's Mr. "Toilet Brush" himself. What follows is a short scene with Neelix claiming he is fully qualified to be a doctor because he watered some plants once... after accidentally setting off the galley's sprinkler system. He then prescribes his patient some "blue stuff".

  Chuck: Meanwhile, eighty percent of the crew has succumbed to gangrene...

  • This is why Q goes to Neelix for advice on how to get on Janeway's good side, apparently under the notion that no-one could willingly put up with someone that irritating unless they were being blackmailed in some way.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Wonders why they couldn't have had Neelix sacrifice himself to kill the Telepathic Pitcher Plant at the end of "Bliss" and replace him with Qatai, since as the gruff outsider able to lead them through a region of dangerous space, he was precisely what Neelix was supposed to be before they turned him into odious comic relief?

The Doctor

Voyager's hologrammatic Emergency Medical Hologram, and one of the few people on the ship with no major personality disorders to speak of. If only because by comparison his lack of bedside manner is nothing compared to the rest of the crew.

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• Amnesia Loop: By season 7, Janeway has edited the Doctor's memory so much that he thinksVoyager's trip through the Delta Quadrant has taken 14 months. ("Author, Author")
• Dr. Jerk: When Tom is put in solitary confinement simply for defying Janeway's will, the Doc is blithely unconcerned and uncaring for Tom's mental well-being. ("Thirty Days")
• The Dog Bites Back: He eventually gets revenge on Janeway erasing his memories back in "Latent Image" when given access to memory-altering tech of his own. ("Memorial")
• Only Sane Man: One of the very few people with common sense aboard the ship. Also the least gullible ("Parturition").

Ocampa

• Servant Race: Chuck reasons the Ocampans' life cycle only makes sense if they were genetically-engineered sex slaves of some evil race. They reach the appearance of full maturity within months, keep their youthful looks until just a few months before their death, the chances of knocking them up accidentally are slim (since their mating routine is an very complicated process and they can only have one child their entire life), and they deliver their newborn while standing up, ensuring that - if they are unassisted during birth - the baby will drop 5 feet to the hard ground – probably headfirst. ("Before & After")
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Believes that Kes' descent into madness in "Fury", would have been far more tragic if we'd learned that she'd returned home to find out that - due to witnessing the psychic potential of her species in "The Gift" - the Borg had assimilated them and left her as the last of her kind.

Lieutenant Alaya, aka "Extra Man"

• Suddenly Voiced: "Basics Pt.2" Extra Man Speaks!
  • Mundane Made Awesome: He jokingly used this as the teaser for the next video, as if it were incentive to watch.
    Chuck: He says, "Yeah"... but it's a good "Yeah!"

Lieutenant Joesph Carey, aka "Off-Brand Chief O'Brien"

• Back for the Dead: Hypothesizes that the writing staff of Voyager kept bringing Joe Carey back in flashback episodes, because were under the mistaken impression that he was dead. Realising that no, he was actually still alive, Chuck speculates that they decided to bring him back in Series 7, one last time, in order to kill him off. That way, they were sure.

Seska

• Audience Surrogate: Regularly questions Janeway's moronic decisions, advocates pragmatic alliances to help the crew survive, and despises Neelix for the power-mad fry cook that he is ("State of Flux").
• Genre Savvy: Allows her to sabotage the ship more than three years after she died by modifying a holodeck training program to subvert most every action that logically should lead to a resolution of the program's central conflict ("Worst Case Scenario"). Her plan only fails because she underestimated the extent of the Voyager crew's reckless insanity.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Seska's reason for why Voyager should ally with the Kazon (and her later defection) is because they're in a dangerous region of space, surrounded by hostile species and have absolutely no backup. She believes that if they go it alone and stick to Janeway's principles, it was going to get them all killed. Chuck comments that it's hard to argue with her logic.
  Chuck: What is scary, is that Seska seems to be the character most in line with my way of thinking. Given that she's already messed with Neelix's head... I may be in love.
• Only Sane Employee / Surrounded by Idiots: The reason she becomes such a threat to the crew of Voyager is because she was one of the few competent people on the ship and the only competent villain amongst the Kazon.
  • Sadly, it is also this that helps doom the Kazon in terms of effectiveness, as they only really start becoming a threat not because they are some strange, far-from-home-unusual threat, but because of a Cardassian... something the audience has seen before. Seska is the only reason for the Kazon threat. Without her, they're just a bunch of gangbangers in space.
• Too Dumb to Live: While having some Mooks was not a bad idea, the Kazon are so incredibly lame that even the Borg don't want to assimilate them for fear of detracting from their perfection! From their first appearance the reviews did sort of note that they were kind of a stupid species. Since Seska and Janeway were already Surrounded By Idiots, why magnify the problem? Just upgrading the Kazon ships to keep up with Voyager for the long haul, and keeping the goons flying in the right direction, was likely to lead to death from sheer aggravation! Wasn't one useless local (i.e. Neelix) bad enough?

Captain Braxton of "Relativity"

• Meta Guy: Rather than suffering from Temporal Psychosis, his Sanity Slippage is the result of having to constantly deal with Voyager, whenever Janeway decides that she's more important than the integrity of the timeline (which is often). His nefarious plot is simply to RetGone the crew and prevent the show from ever existing!

Samantha Wildman

• Missing Mom: Her daughter Naomi appears far more often on VOY, leading Chuck to wonder if Samantha is even alive after early Season 5.
• Projected Man: Janeway replaced her with a hologram.
  • Hologram Projection Imperfection: She flickers, which Naomi is lead to believe means she's happy.

Naomi Wildman

• Tyke-Bomb: Janeway killed her mother and replaced her with a hologram so she could raise Naomi to be a loyal minion ("Bliss").
• Overlord Jr.: Janeway needs a successor, after all.

Seamus Driscol ("Fair Haven")

• Serial Killer: Begs the Doctor, playing a Catholic priest, to hear his confession after breaking the Fifth Commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill'...again.
  • Karma Houdini: The Doctor lets him off with ten Our Fathers.

Captain Ransom ("Equinox")

• Accidental Innuendo / Freudian Slip: Most of his dialogue with Seven, such as his desire to teach her "other ways to explore her humanity" and giving the order to "strap her to the table" *Cue Porno Music*.
• Dirty Old Man: His Heel–Face Turn is motivated entirely by his desire to get into Seven’s pants.
• The Scapegoat: Janeway's irrational hatred and vendetta against Ransom is due to her projecting onto him all of her self-loathing, as well as every time she's rationalised away crossing the line over the past five years.

Species 8472

• No Sense of Direction: the only way that Chuck could reconcile Species 8472 being able to know things about Starfleet command so intimately that they could mimic the groundskeeper's mannerisms near exactly, yet didn't know the range on their communications or transit speeds, is that they are incapable of reading a map ("In The Flesh").
  "My god, their fleet could be here any moment! Earth is only three inches away!"
• Selective Obliviousness / I Resemble That Remark!: Their goal is to infiltrate Earth, install their agents in the highest reaches in Federation government and have created covert operative training facilities to achieve that end. Despite this, they are morally outraged to discover the crew of Voyager had the audacity to spy on them!

Mark (Janeway's fiancé)

• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Janeway is extorting him into marrying her, due to her obsession with his pecs ("Shattered").
• Stealth Insult: The real reason he gave her a copy of "Dante's Inferno".
  Mark: I thought about being married to you and for some reason picked out the story of a man who journeys through the eternal torments of the damned.

Starling ("Future's End")

• Hollywood Hacking: Voyager's futuristic computer technology is no match for him pressing random keys.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Claims to have learned everything he could from the time ship, yet we clearly see that he's done absolutely nothing with the revolutionary warp and transporter technology at all. This either means he's too stupid to patent it or too stupid to figure out how it works, both of which make his trip to the future to steal more technology rather redundant.
• Stupid Evil: He can't see the practical uses of the 400 years worth of medical knowledge available after he captures the Doctor, preferring to just torture him for information. Made worse as he hacks the Doctor enough to make him feel pain so he can carry out the torture, rather than simply hacking him to make him compliant.
  • After Rain blabs about discovering a UFO in orbit, Starling orders his minions to eliminate her, completely oblivious to the fact that her sudden disappearance would only serve to make her wild claims be taken more seriously and throw unwanted suspicion onto him, as her employer.
    Chuck: You know, for a man who became master of a technological empire... you're an idiot.

U.S.S. Voyager

• The Alleged Car: The cutting edge of Starfleet technology - painful and dangerous to the touch. It's held together with "semen and wet bits". Eventually it gets to the point that Chuck wonders if it was made just to fulfil an election promise.
• The Dreaded: The captain raids Borg cubes for fun, and their most skilled crewmember is a mere lieutenant. Aliens are terrified of this vessel and its dark reputation.
• Place Worse Than Death: In "Demon", Harry has to be chided to stop farting around on the Class-Y planet and return with the Away Team. "Yep. A planet that combines an oven with a gas chamber is preferable than going back to the hell that is Voyager."
• The Soulless: Like her captain, small, smart and devoid of a soul ("Relativity"). Ordinarily this wouldn't be something you'd need to specify about a starship, but when Starfleet and Janeway are involved...

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