By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Star Trek is full of food and drink that can challenge the most adventurous palate. These include bloodwine, live worms, Yamok sauce, and the scariest thing of all: Riker's scrambled eggs. However, you could say this is only fair because many parts of Trek's unique storytelling are also an acquired taste. My favorite examples of this are the holodeck episodes. Some fans like these stories because they are usually light hearted and show us a new side of these characters. Others hatred holodeck episodes because they're silly little things that get in the way of exploring strange new worlds and telling killer sci-fi stories.
At the beginning of the entry Star Trek: VoyagerThe writers tried to do something different with the holodeck: that is, to use it to create familiar places for the characters to relax. Instead of one-off holodeck episodes like in The Next Generationthis new show had the cast members hanging out regularly at places like Chez Sandrine, a French bar. Fans generally loved that scene (it's like the classier Ten Forward!), but there was one holodeck show Voyager see hated. The show was “Janeway Lambda One,” and fans despised the captain's humble gothic fantasy so much that it was written out of the show entirely!
Holo Passion
Admittedly, “Janeway Lambda One” isn't the oldest holodeck title. Its story wasn't all creative, either. In this particular tale, Janeway plays for the two children of a rich king. The king is a widower, the captain is trying to help the children cope with the loss of their mother. Most of the time he spent his time getting close to these children by teaching them. While she wasn't spending time helping the children, she tried to learn more about the fourth floor of her master's house, somewhere she was surprisingly denied.
Originally, Janeway Lambda One was a way to give the Voyager captain his own holo-novel to explore, the same way Captain Picard liked to reenact his favorite Dixon Hill novels. Initially, the producers wanted to give Janeway a Western holo-novel where she would be a pioneer woman with her husband and children. However, that plan had two problems: Kate Mulgrew hated working with horses, and adding a holo-Western to the episode could cost an extra $100,000 per day of shooting. Instead, they pursued an inexpensive Gothic holo-novel in the literary style preferred by executive producer Jeri Taylor.
Humble and Lovely
Unfortunately, fans hated Janeway Lambda One so much that it was written out of the show, and we never got a solution to that mystery about the fourth floor. What did audiences not like about this holodeck show, though? In accordance with Captains' Logs Supplemental–The Unauthorized Guide to New VoyagesTaylor said the show was “one of those things… And, of course, “A lot of people aren't fans of … Gothic novels and haven't got them.”
What about “working position” complaints? Basically, when Star Trek: Voyager it came out, it was a big deal for the show to have a female captain. Therefore, he was not written as an overbearing or emotional character; instead, she was a tough-as-nails character who could make the tough calls with the same unflinching wisdom as male leads like Kirk and Picard. In other words, she was the ultimate feminist icon of the '90s. Fans who viewed her as an independent leader didn't like the idea of her spending her free time dreaming of being a nanny and a love interest for some rich guy who has a lot of power over her.
In real life, this is not a crazy idea: many strong and independent people in their professional lives enjoy submissive role-playing as a form of escape (just ask your local kinksters!). But that's an idea that 1) doesn't really translate well to Star Trek and 2) wouldn't have worked in the '90s, when it's the most tragic thing most audiences have ever seen. Secretary. So, “Janeway Lambda One” was written out of the show, allowing Janeway to explore a sexual adventure in a recent episode that began with those three words every man on the holodeck loves to hear: “get rid of the wife!”
