If Genevieve Bujold had kept the role of Janeway. http://mentalfloss.com/article/89479/watch-star-trek-voyager-captain-janeway-who-almost-was Ok, BnB and the writing would still have almost made @Kyle kill himself
On a tangent to this, I'd love for the guys at Eric Rap Battles of History to do one with Janeway versus, say, Amelia Earhart.
CBS has blocked the second video, watch the first while you can. This just reinforces my impression that one thing Voyager had going for it was Mulgrew's presence. Janeway might have been written badly, but Mulgrew played her with the confident authority of a commanding officer.
I liked Bujold's voice and accent and her looks better than Mulgrew's, but Mulgrew certainly had the presence and demeanor.
Writing still would have been shit. Same as anyone coming up with their fantasy cast for ENT, like say by recasting Archer. It wouldn't have made any difference because of who was on the creative end of it.
I respectfully disagree. Nimoy, for example, was very protective when it came to what Spock would and wouldn't do. The Vulcan nerve pinch came out of Nimoy objecting to a scene where Spock was originally supposed to karate chop someone. And Avery Brooks managed to stop the writers from getting rid of Jake Sisko, and from sending Ben off to live with the Prophets forever.
The difference is, the people running those shows. Berman in particular was pretty inflexible when it come to input from actors and the like.
On top of which, both Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks managed to save some pretty awful dialogue in their days.
I've seen this clip before, and never much cared for Bujold's take on Janeway. The show had flaws to be sure, but I don't consider Muldrow as Janeway to be one of them.
The interesting part is Mulgrew herself admits to all but phoning in a lot of the time due to some personal issues in her life at the time, including a divorce. The acting in Voyager and OITNB or even Ryan's Hope where she got her start is like light and day. I gotta agree with Captain X overall. Comparing the two is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Britannic* in that Rick Berman let his ego get in the way and we still would've gotten the Seven of Nine Show regardless. *yes, the Britannic. No typo. And it's fitting, given how much it cribbed from TNG.
The writing on Voyager was beyond half assed. It was full on, full moon. Even worse was the horrendous way UPN promoted the show. Anyone remember a coming attractions trailer that featured a mere five second segment from an episode where Janeway (extremely briefly) pretended to be a prostitute? What boggles the mind is that anyone at UPN apparently thought things like that were the way to attract viewers to the show.
It was interesting seeing someone else as Janeway, if only briefly. Even though she didn't get the role, she could've played Janeway's mother via flashback at some point, or Janeway's sister, or cousin even. VOYAGER's flaws, which are legion, would almost certainly still be there regardless of who was cast as Janeway. The show decayed into "GILLIGAN's QUADRANT".
Well she was horrible. Worst actor on set even worse than the extras. And didn't she resemble a forehead alien of the week?
Bujold *did* get the role. But she quit three days into taping for some reason, so they called Kate Mulgrew up.
I never cared for Kate Mulgrew but at least she is anti abortion which earns her considerable points with me.
I remember reading somewhere once that Linda Hamilton was all but signed as Janeway but she passed due to her reluctance to commit to a TV schedule again.
Sounds reasonable. Most people don't realize how grueling a weekly one hour (actually 44 minute) tv show production is. A simple rule is that you have to work for one hour to produce one minute of usable footage so in order to produce an excess (you need extra for the director to edit and refine into a finished episode) it is routinely a 50-55 hour work week. And the thing is, those 50 hours are not continuous. Actors will tell you about getting to the studio early, sitting through makeup and wardrobe for three hours.......then waiting four or five hours until they are actually needed on set. And once they are on set all possible things can go wrong. Michael Dorn use to talk about a little trick that extras used to supplement their meager daily pay by getting free meals. The upside is plenty of free food is kept on hand at most times by the studio because they don't want to have to hold up shooting because the actor they need had to slip off to grab a bite to eat.
Having been an extra in Untraceable and a couple episodes of Leverage, it's a lot of 'Hurry up and wait'. The one scene I was in (filmed up in Vancouver), there was a lot of takes.
