Picard - general discussion [spoilers]

[Formless]

Seven and Raffi seem to have an on-again-off-again kind of relationship, is what I got from the show. When Raffi and Worf first arrived on the Titan, it was clear their breakup was amicable, but awkward, and I think Raffi's field assignment might have been the underlying cause. No point in dating when you're being sent undercover to investigate the mob for a possible Dominion connection.

[bilateralrope]

Also, I don't think Jack was assigned to the Enterprise as a special advisor, that's just the bridge position Seven gave him because he was, as he pointed out, multitalented even before joining Starfleet, so having him in the third bridge seat ready to help any of his other coworkers at their console and help formulate action plans based on what he knows outside of his Starfleet training makes a certain sense. Other characters have had a similar role on their ship as well: Chekov was technically the ship's navigator, but in practice they made clear he was an officer who could wear many hats despite his low rank, even advising Kirk on tactical considerations. Wesley could be the ship's pilot, but he was given a field commission specifically because The Traveler convinced Picard he was a genius and had indeed saved the ship already when the chief of engineering was clearly incompetent to do something as simple as reverse the polarity of a tractor beam. Harry Kim had no specific specialty like Tuvok, Paris, Bellana or the Doctor, yet he was one of the command staff at the rank of Ensign. Actually, in practice Voyager had three such people, because Tom was basically a jack of all trades in addition to specializing as a pilot, and Seven herself was quite literally a special advisor on Borg shit and the Delta Quadrant at large.

I think this kind of role is something Starfleet encourages captains to give ensigns on the command track who want to be a captain some day, because as Captain they will need to know a little bit about everything to begin with. We're told that Mariner could already have ranked up to Captain if it wasn't for her terrible attitude, and Freeman does indeed sometimes have her sitting in the third seat on her left. Yes, partially that's because of their relationship, but partly that's because Freeman realizes that her daughter specializes in problem solving rather than any specific field. And she does hope that eventually Mariner will shape up and realize her potential, so this is the best position for her when she's on the bridge. Jack doesn't have an attitude problem, but the ship already had a navigator, pilot, ops, tactical, and science stations covered, so special advisor to the captain and first officer? Makes sense. It gives him opportunities to have the conn from time to time without having to take night shifts like Harry was willing to do in order to get practice at command. And it makes more sense than giving the conn to someone like Dr. Migleemo...

Yes, there are plenty of examples of officers who can do other things when required. But in every case, except for Jack, they have a primary role on the ship. Regular duties to perform when things are normal. That is the oddity here.

[Formless]

Yes, there are plenty of examples of officers who can do other things when required. But in every case, except for Jack, they have a primary role on the ship. Regular duties to perform when things are normal. That is the oddity here.

No, he isn't. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that Harry Kim has literally no predefined role on the ship. His job title is "miscellaneous ensign." Sometimes he mans the science station, sometimes ops, sometimes he's helping out Seven in the fancy astronavigation room. Jack is not more special than Harry Kim. He just wears a different colored shirt.

[Crazedwraith]

Harry Kim was officially ops officer iirc. (Data's position on E-D) which does seem to involve a great deal of malicious scanning/communicating and science detail when Data did it. They don't seem to have science officers in the style of Spock in TNG era. (except when they do like Dax or T'Veen.)

Harry's prescence at senior staff meetings makes little sense but then they let Neelix and Kes in those meetings, Janeway was very lax about such things the requirement was 'has name in title sequence' basically. Voyager was hardly the ideal situation to see how Starfleet runs, unless we're suggesting all helmsmen have to moonlight as nurses.

Obviously not every newly minted command track Ensign gets to sit next to the boss.

[Crazedwraith]

eta: double post

Basically what Jack should be doing is the Lower Decks thing when he's on a rotation of minor duties with various departments to see where he fits best.

(It's not clear what regular duties aside from a trick on the helm command track officers do. They seem to leap from helm to first officer with nothing in between. Possibly away mission dogsbody)

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Yes, there are plenty of examples of officers who can do other things when required. But in every case, except for Jack, they have a primary role on the ship. Regular duties to perform when things are normal. That is the oddity here.

No, he isn't. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that Harry Kim has literally no predefined role on the ship. His job title is "miscellaneous ensign." Sometimes he mans the science station, sometimes ops, sometimes he's helping out Seven in the fancy astronavigation room. Jack is not more special than Harry Kim. He just wears a different colored shirt.

According to Memory Alpha, Harry Kim is/was Operations Officer aboard Voyager. As Janeway herself pointed out, because Seven of Nine had no actual rank he technically outranked her. And Neelix, who in addition to his main role as chef was 'morale officer, trade negotiator, "ambassador to the Delta Quadrant" and navigator'. Voyager's unique circumstances are what enabled such a thing to be possible in the first place.

[Formless]

You know, it's incredibly annoying that I can give a dozen examples of characters that fulfilled the same role in practice that Seven gave to Jack (especially given she never clarified what his duties as special counsel are) and you both cherry pick Harry Kim as the one who technically holds the position of ops officer. Janeway prided herself on sticking to Starfleet protocol and had faith in its power to see them safely home, so no I don't buy this argument that Voyager's circumstances explain why Tom Paris did more than just pilot the ship. The only one of his extra duties that is explicitly stated to be given to him in response to the emergency was his nurse training, but all the many other jobs he did were given to him based on his merit in those fields. Harry being higher ranked than Seven was treated as a joke, and at one point when she was made his supervisor for a task that had special knowledge from the collective (when they were dealing with the Omega Molecule iirc) he was berated by Chakote for disobeying her instructions just because he technically outranks her. In practice, she was treated like a warrant officer. Technically outranked by an ensign, but not really.

And there was the example I forgot to give: Ezri Dax. She is explicitly a psychological counselor even after the joining, but because Dax is capable of doing more, Sisko gives her the exact same privileges that it's implied Jack will have. Which, again, we still haven't seen him actually perform yet. For all we know he will be doing the Lower Decks style tour of different duties, except without the more menial tasks that Boimlet and Mariner keep getting assigned. In fact, it will probably look a lot like Uhura's job tour in SNW, except he already has a commission. End of the day, Starfleet works more like an Age of Sail navy than a modern one, where the Captain has final say about what duties are assigned to a given officer based on what they believe that officer is good at. I think the problem isn't consistency with previous series because you seem to have conveniently forgotten the old examples; I think the problem is that you're having flashbacks to Wesley getting the same special treatment when the audience doesn't see the same things in him that the writer wants us to see, because too much of season 3's screen time was was wasted on plot points that didn't go anywhere or help establish his capabilities.

[Formless]

You know, it's incredibly annoying that I can give a dozen examples of characters that fulfilled the same role in practice that Seven gave to Jack (especially given she never clarified what his duties as special counsel are) and you both cherry pick Harry Kim as the one who technically holds the position of ops officer. Janeway prided herself on sticking to Starfleet protocol and had faith in its power to see them safely home, so no I don't buy this argument that Voyager's circumstances explain why Tom Paris did more than just pilot the ship. The only one of his extra duties that is explicitly stated to be given to him in response to the emergency was his nurse training, but all the many other jobs he did were given to him based on his merit in those fields. Harry being higher ranked than Seven was treated as a joke, and at one point when she was made his supervisor for a task that had special knowledge from the collective (when they were dealing with the Omega Molecule iirc) he was berated by Chakote for disobeying her instructions just because he technically outranks her. In practice, she was treated like a warrant officer. Technically outranked by an ensign, but not really.

And there was the example I forgot to give: Ezri Dax. She is explicitly a psychological counselor even after the joining, but because Dax is capable of doing more, Sisko gives her the exact same privileges that it's implied Jack will have. Which, again, we still haven't seen him actually perform yet. For all we know he will be doing the Lower Decks style tour of different duties, except without the more menial tasks that Boimlet and Mariner keep getting assigned. In fact, it will probably look a lot like Uhura's job tour in SNW, except he already has a commission. End of the day, Starfleet works more like an Age of Sail navy than a modern one, where the Captain has final say about what duties are assigned to a given officer based on what they believe that officer is good at. I think the problem isn't consistency with previous series because you seem to have conveniently forgotten the old examples; I think the problem is that you're having flashbacks to Wesley getting the same special treatment when the audience doesn't see the same things in him that the writer wants us to see, because too much of season 3's screen time was was wasted on plot points that didn't go anywhere or help establish his capabilities.

[Crazedwraith]

It's not nitpicking to point out that your example is flat out wrong. You're the one who placed special emphasis on Kim.

Yes, there are plenty of examples of officers who can do other things when required. But in every case, except for Jack, they have a primary role on the ship. Regular duties to perform when things are normal. That is the oddity here.

No, he isn't. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that Harry Kim has literally no predefined role on the ship. His job title is "miscellaneous ensign." Sometimes he mans the science station, sometimes ops, sometimes he's helping out Seven in the fancy astronavigation room. Jack is not more special than Harry Kim. He just wears a different colored shirt.

This is flat out wrong. Kim has one role. It just happens to be one with a very broad remit. As I pointed out it's similar duties we see Data do.

Again, yes other officers do have extra roles assigned from their experience but as bilateralrope said, this in addition to their main duties not instead of them.

I agree that Ezri is a great example and it's closely analogous to Jack. Despite being a low ranking officer, she's brought to DS9 and utilised because she's the reincarnation of two of Sisko's best friends. But even then she's slotted into an actual position not some made up bullshit that puts her on the Captain's right hand for no apparent reason.

And the other characters are mostly likable and not doing their best impression of JJverse Kirk at his most obnoxious.

Can you imagine any of those other characters walking onto the bridge, barking out orders, sitting in the captain's chair, pretending like they own the place? and if they had would their captain indulgently bantered with them and then sat next to them in a senior officer's chair? Because I can't.

[Highlord Laan]

I have to say, so far, I don't mind Picard. To me it's Star Trek through the lens or more standard sci-fi fare and takes the route of humanity having a much rougher start in the age of warp travel than Roddenberry foresaw.

I consider this perfectly fine and in tune with the age. Gene Roddenberry made Star Trek in the postwar age where people were hopeful that we had, for all of our still extant faults, finally learned. It was time that looked to a brighter future, where humanity could finally do better.

Cue now, and Millennials and Gen-Z have very much learned otherwise, while Gene's generation and their children are happily burning everything to the ground because they can. The lessons? First, that there is no enlightenment, there is only repeated mistakes and the ever present need and requirement to make harsh examples of people while ramming what little progress we've made down the throats of our elders and their followers by bootheel and steel. The second is that people, leaders especially, can only be trusted when held at gunpoint. The third is that peace and love only work when backed up by war and hate. May as well skip the run-up and get to where we all knew things were going from the start, so say hello to my little friend.

Gene Roddenberry foresaw and preached a future of learning, understanding and acceptance. Current generations know all that for the pretty lies they are.

[Formless]

It's not nitpicking to point out that your example is flat out wrong. You're the one who placed special emphasis on Kim.

No I didn't, I simply said that he was in fact no more or less special than Jack. There is a difference. I am trying to tell you that there is no evidence that a crewman is assigned by Starfleet themselves to a given bridge duty, but rather that the Captain makes the call on who does what based on what they know the person is capable of. Or if the Captain can't be arsed to do it, they delegate to the First Officer. I would also like to point out that as you admit, the job of "Operations Officer" is incredibly broad-- but I would like to point out that its broad because its incredibly vague. What does an operations officer actually do, and why is an Operations Officer a member of the senior staff? Is it a managerial position? No, because they have their own console at the bridge (taking the place of what used to be the navigation console on the old connie bridge). But also yes because they are often seen coordinating tasks with Engineering and other positions like tactical or science. Why was the Enterprise's ops officer ranked Lieutenant while Voyager was given an ensign literally on his first assignment after graduating from the academy? Is rank important to being an ops officer or not?

I think you are overthinking things here. Star Trek isn't real, these jobs aren't real, and the story is notorious for having the named characters do everything even when it makes no sense. Not only shouldn't the captain be going on away missions, they also shouldn't be serving double duty as the ship's official diplomat and JAG officer. But Age of Sail stories had them do both of those things, so Captain Picard does both of those things, except IN SPACE. Wesley Crusher is too young to be piloting the flagship of Starfleet, but he did. There is no way Starfleet would give a crew of entirely Officer Cadets a Defiant Class warship to fly a shakedown cruise in, even with a commissioned Officer supervising them, but DS9 had an entire story about the folly of that decision. There are enough weird decisions in Star Trek I think its premature to jump to the conclusion that Jack was given his particular job because of nepotism when he specifically asked Seven which station she wanted him at, and she made the decision right in front of you. It explicitly wasn't Starfleet that did that, it was Seven. Because Star Trek logic allows a captain to seat whoever they want in the chair on their left. At least she didn't seat the ship's councilor there this time!

[Crazedwraith]

It's not nitpicking to point out that your example is flat out wrong. You're the one who placed special emphasis on Kim.

No I didn't, I simply said that he was in fact no more or less special than Jack. There is a difference. I am trying to tell you that there is no evidence that a crewman is assigned by Starfleet themselves to a given bridge duty, but rather that the Captain makes the call on who does what based on what they know the person is capable of. Or if the Captain can't be arsed to do it, they delegate to the First Officer. I would also like to point out that as you admit, the job of "Operations Officer" is incredibly broad-- but I would like to point out that its broad because its incredibly vague. What does an operations officer actually do, and why is an Operations Officer a member of the senior staff? Is it a managerial position? No, because they have their own console at the bridge (taking the place of what used to be the navigation console on the old connie bridge). But also yes because they are often seen coordinating tasks with Engineering and other positions like tactical or science. Why was the Enterprise's ops officer ranked Lieutenant while Voyager was given an ensign literally on his first assignment after graduating from the academy? Is rank important to being an ops officer or not?

Then you are arguing a point no-one made that can. Did Anyone say 'starfleet assigned Jack to be Seven counselor?' I don't think I did, I certainly didn't to. What I said was 'Jack's job is dumb' and I stand by that no matter who gave it to him.

(edit to add: apologies reading back Bilateralrope did specifically make the argument about starfleet and nepotism, I concede that.)

Now we agreeing aggressively that Ops is a broad, ill defined position but it's still the job Kim has. Like I corrected you on one point and added some thoughts. I didn't say 'you wrong on this and therefore wrong on everything'.

As to the rank issue most Ops officers seem to be low ranking. often Lt (J.g) in Disco iirc. So I've theorised in the past Data being it and having high rank is more to do with him being 2nd officer of enterpise than needed for Ops.

I think you are overthinking things here. Star Trek isn't real, these jobs aren't real, and the story is notorious for having the named characters do everything even when it makes no sense. Not only shouldn't the captain be going on away missions, they also shouldn't be serving double duty as the ship's official diplomat and JAG officer. But Age of Sail stories had them do both of those things, so Captain Picard does both of those things, except IN SPACE. Wesley Crusher is too young to be piloting the flagship of Starfleet, but he did. There is no way Starfleet would give a crew of entirely Officer Cadets a Defiant Class warship to fly a shakedown cruise in, even with a commissioned Officer supervising them, but DS9 had an entire story about the folly of that decision. There are enough weird decisions in Star Trek I think its premature to jump to the conclusion that Jack was given his particular job because of nepotism when he specifically asked Seven which station she wanted him at, and she made the decision right in front of you. It explicitly wasn't Starfleet that did that, it was Seven. Because Star Trek logic allows a captain to seat whoever they want in the chair on their left. At least she didn't seat the ship's councilor there this time!

Well thank you for explaining to me Star trek isn't real! That was an issue I was really struggling with!

Fair enough people complain overly much about Star Trek being mildly military and not being organised like the USN. That said the logic that 'starfleet did plenty of stupid things so that proves they didn't do this stupid thing... doesn't seem sound.'

Yeah, Seven made that decision and it's a stupid one. It blatantly obvious that it's special treatment for Jack in-universe and out-of-universe a 'main characters do everything' thing with barely a figleaf of reasoning. That's why I think it's stupid. Hey maybe the rest of the franchise did stupid things too but that's not an excuse.

[Crazedwraith]

eta: can't stop that double post.

[Formless]

(edit to add: apologies reading back Bilateralrope did specifically make the argument about starfleet and nepotism, I concede that.)

Thank you.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Janeway prided herself on sticking to Starfleet protocol and had faith in its power to see them safely home, so no I don't buy this argument that Voyager's circumstances explain why Tom Paris did more than just pilot the ship.

Janeway did that at first, but as time went on her interpretation shifted:

Is often militant about enforcing the Prime Directive, Temporal Prime Directive, and any other regulations that strike her fancy, and will brutally smack down anyone who violates her interpretation of them. However, she herself can be very arbitrary in her interpretation of those same regulations and she frequently exercises a sort of Captain's privilege when she decides it advances her goals.

Spent much time, especially in early seasons, pontificating about how important it was for Voyager not to disrupt the balance of power in the Delta Quadrant, as per the Prime Directive. Then, in "Scorpion", she is willing to bargain with the Borg, stated as the Enemy Number One by Starfleet Command (Picard once got chewed out by Admiral Nechayev for passing up an opportunity to destroy, or at least severely damage them). Janeway is actually prepared to help the Borg, a menace to the Delta Quadrant and the galaxy as a whole, win a war with a more powerful alien race in exchange for safe passage through their space. Entire civilizations would later get assimilated as the Borg worked to replenish the drones lost during this war.
In "Endgame", in the future, after to returning to Earth, she has become an Insane Admiral, and decides to toss the Temporal Prime Directive out the window because three people she liked (Tuvok, Chakotay and Seven) did not get happy endings the way the timeline had played out and she wants to change the past to fix that (but not to the extent of saving any of the Red Shirts they lost earlier in the series).

[Crazedwraith]

Where's that quote from exactly, ES?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Where's that quote from exactly, ES?

TV Tropes, I didn't fancy rewording it over a relatively minor detail about Janeway's character! Especially as that section I quoted was next to the word "Hypocrite" It does illustrate how she became less by-the-book between "Caretaker" and "Endgame".

[Formless]

Well you couldn't have made a less convincing argument if you tried, then.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well you couldn't have made a less convincing argument if you tried, then.

Well, you shouldn't have any trouble addressing it then.

[Formless]

Dude, its TVTropes. Anyone can edit the fucker, no one is required to cite sources, I know the website and its flaws very well. Moreover, I watched Voyager from beginning to end, and Janeway was quoting Starfleet regulation all the way to the final season. When she was asked by the Captain of the Equinox whether she had ever violated the Prime Directive, she told him no, she had bent but never broken it. She conveniently omitted that whole incident about the Omega Directive even though he would have been briefed on the same, and understood that it was an example of where she would have been legally allowed to ignore the Prime Directive, but I guess she didn't want to say anything in the presence of his crew or something. If you look up Starfleet regulations on Memory Alpha and search for Voyager citations, as late as season 6 the writers invented a particularly important one that has been quite influential on subsequent series: Directive 010: "Before engaging alien species in battle, any and all attempts to make first contact and achieve nonmilitary resolution must be made." That's from "In the Flesh", and has been repeated multiple times since Discovery was written. And that was in an episode where the species in question was Species 8472 the very same species Janeway helped the Borg to fight off, believing them to be the greater of the two evils! Yet here she decided to go with protocol and make peaceful contact. Again, in season 6.

Don't quote TVTropes at anyone who has actually seen the show you are talking about. Any show.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Dude, its TVTropes. Anyone can edit the fucker, no one is required to cite sources, I know the website and its flaws very well. Moreover, I watched Voyager from beginning to end, and Janeway was quoting Starfleet regulation all the way to the final season. When she was asked by the Captain of the Equinox whether she had ever violated the Prime Directive, she told him no, she had bent but never broken it. She conveniently omitted that whole incident about the Omega Directive even though he would have been briefed on the same, and understood that it was an example of where she would have been legally allowed to ignore the Prime Directive, but I guess she didn't want to say anything in the presence of his crew or something. If you look up Starfleet regulations on Memory Alpha and search for Voyager citations, as late as season 6 the writers invented a particularly important one that has been quite influential on subsequent series: Directive 010: "Before engaging alien species in battle, any and all attempts to make first contact and achieve nonmilitary resolution must be made." That's from "In the Flesh", and has been repeated multiple times since Discovery was written. And that was in an episode where the species in question was Species 8472 the very same species Janeway helped the Borg to fight off, believing them to be the greater of the two evils! Yet here she decided to go with protocol and make peaceful contact. Again, in season 6.

Don't quote TVTropes at anyone who has actually seen the show you are talking about. Any show.

You do realise you can say the exact same thing about Memory Alpha, right? Besides, the passage I quoted actually does cite the relevant episodes which you'd have noticed had you bothered to read never mind address it.

In "Scorpion", she is willing to bargain with the Borg, stated as the Enemy Number One by Starfleet Command (Picard once got chewed out by Admiral Nechayev for passing up an opportunity to destroy, or at least severely damage them). Janeway is actually prepared to help the Borg, a menace to the Delta Quadrant and the galaxy as a whole, win a war with a more powerful alien race in exchange for safe passage through their space. Entire civilizations would later get assimilated as the Borg worked to replenish the drones lost during this war (Hope and Fear).

In "Endgame", in the future, after to returning to Earth, she has become an Insane Admiral, and decides to toss the Temporal Prime Directive out the window because three people she liked (Tuvok, Chakotay and Seven) did not get happy endings the way the timeline had played out and she wants to change the past to fix that (but not to the extent of saving any of the Red Shirts they lost earlier in the series).

In "Equinox" Janeway tells Ransom that she's never broken the Prime Directive, just... "bent" it on occasion. Which is overshadowed by her going off the deep end and how she then risks Voyager's safety to embark on a personal vendetta by her own admission, no less, against captain Ransom and employs ever more extreme methods to further that goal. How very professional.

Is she a by-the-book hardass, an empathetic mother over her crew, a loose-cannon with a tendency to give in to her emotions and curiosity, a moral victor who upholds the ideals of the Federation in a savage galaxy, or a pragmatist who is very willing to play dirty to get her crew home?

[montypython]

I have to say, so far, I don't mind Picard. To me it's Star Trek through the lens or more standard sci-fi fare and takes the route of humanity having a much rougher start in the age of warp travel than Roddenberry foresaw.

I consider this perfectly fine and in tune with the age. Gene Roddenberry made Star Trek in the postwar age where people were hopeful that we had, for all of our still extant faults, finally learned. It was time that looked to a brighter future, where humanity could finally do better.

Cue now, and Millennials and Gen-Z have very much learned otherwise, while Gene's generation and their children are happily burning everything to the ground because they can. The lessons? First, that there is no enlightenment, there is only repeated mistakes and the ever present need and requirement to make harsh examples of people while ramming what little progress we've made down the throats of our elders and their followers by bootheel and steel. The second is that people, leaders especially, can only be trusted when held at gunpoint. The third is that peace and love only work when backed up by war and hate. May as well skip the run-up and get to where we all knew things were going from the start, so say hello to my little friend.

Gene Roddenberry foresaw and preached a future of learning, understanding and acceptance. Current generations know all that for the pretty lies they are.

Gene's view of the future wasn't as rosy as some of the Star Trek optimists would have liked, as both TOS and the pilot episode of TNG mentioned the post-atomic horror that was also only briefly mentioned in First Contact, and as Shatner himself had said, Trek was only the promise of a brighter future if people didn't completely screw things up (rather than a guarantee of positive outcomes). If anything, Andromeda was much closer to Gene's own view of how things would be in the future (which Discovery also happened to emulate as well).

[Batman]

The vision as presented assumes we WOULD get our shit together and NOT completely screw things up, which is pretty damned rosy if you look at our history.

[montypython]

The vision as presented assumes we WOULD get our shit together and NOT completely screw things up, which is pretty damned rosy if you look at our history.

Which is why Andromeda is closer to Roddenberry's own personal view of how the future would play out rather than Star Trek, but the latter was simply the more popular franchise.

[Formless]

You do realise you can say the exact same thing about Memory Alpha, right? Besides, the passage I quoted actually does cite the relevant episodes which you'd have noticed had you bothered to read never mind address it.

Again, not true. Memory Alpha requires citations; TVTropes explicitly says in their policies that they do not. They also have a history of users making overly broad statements that have required them to redefine tropes over time as their utility was called into question, or to rope off an entire category of "tropes" as related more to an audience's reactions than what is actually in the text, and therefore need to be listed on the YMMV part of a show's page rather than the general Trope page, etc. The problem I'm trying to highlight is the community, not just the site.

In "Scorpion", she is willing to bargain with the Borg, stated as the Enemy Number One by Starfleet Command (Picard once got chewed out by Admiral Nechayev for passing up an opportunity to destroy, or at least severely damage them). Janeway is actually prepared to help the Borg, a menace to the Delta Quadrant and the galaxy as a whole, win a war with a more powerful alien race in exchange for safe passage through their space. Entire civilizations would later get assimilated as the Borg worked to replenish the drones lost during this war (Hope and Fear).

To quote the Borg, this is irrelevant. Her ass was never chewed out by Necheyev, so she doesn't have Picard's specific orders to harm the Borg; and the fact that the war could be beneficial to the Federation was brought up in an argument with Chakotay, so it isn't like the writers forgot. They just really, really wanted to sell Species 8472 as the greater threat in that episode, because of the show's overall "Janeway is always right" syndrome that only lessened when they had Seven of Nine there as a counterbalance, a member of the crew who isn't completely pussy whipped like Chakotay (remember, he essentially apologizes to Janeway at the end of Scorpion!). After Scorpion, Janeway goes right back to being a stickler for Starfleet regulation. Thus, you can't cherry pick this episode as a sign of character development. With the exceptions of the Doctor and Seven, Voyager was where character development went to die.

In "Endgame", in the future, after to returning to Earth, she has become an Insane Admiral, and decides to toss the Temporal Prime Directive out the window because three people she liked (Tuvok, Chakotay and Seven) did not get happy endings the way the timeline had played out and she wants to change the past to fix that (but not to the extent of saving any of the Red Shirts they lost earlier in the series).

That was future Janeway. Our Janeway actually managed to convince her to compromise with her on destroying the Transwarp hub and sacrifice herself to deliver that stupid Borg virus. If anything, Future Janeway is proof that Voyager is where character development goes to die and that our Janeway remains a stickler for Starfleet protocol. This, remember, is after that one guy with the ship disguised as a Starfleet ship showed her the consequences of helping the Borg defeat Species 8472, so there is in-universe reason to think she changed her mind about that being a good idea.

In "Equinox" Janeway tells Ransom that she's never broken the Prime Directive, just... "bent" it on occasion. Which is overshadowed by her going off the deep end and how she then risks Voyager's safety to embark on a personal vendetta by her own admission, no less, against captain Ransom and employs ever more extreme methods to further that goal. How very professional.

Is she a by-the-book hardass, an empathetic mother over her crew, a loose-cannon with a tendency to give in to her emotions and curiosity, a moral victor who upholds the ideals of the Federation in a savage galaxy, or a pragmatist who is very willing to play dirty to get her crew home?

If you had watched the episode in question, and I have, you would know the conflict between her and Ransom started because she used a technicality in Starfleet protocol concerning her ship being tactically superior and not beat to crap as a way of pulling rank on someone who has the same rank as her. Yes, she is a douche, but she's a douche within the rules of Starfleet. It isn't until she attempts to torture one of his crewmembers in that episode that it becomes clear she's made it a personal vendetta and is willing to break the rules to follow it. And after this two-parter, everything is forgotten because Voyager... say it with me... is where character development goes to die.

Which is why Andromeda is closer to Roddenberry's own personal view of how the future would play out rather than Star Trek, but the latter was simply the more popular franchise.

Considering that Roddenberry was dead and they were working off his notes to develop the show, plus all the weirdness going on behind the scenes with Andromeda especially with Kevin Sorbo being a dickweed, its hard to say exactly what Roddenberry actually intended with Andromeda. From what I have seen of it, it seems likely he meant for the show to go in a similarly optimistic rout as Star Trek, showing civilization rebuild under the banner of an anachronistic but idealistic guy and his ideals... you know, kinda like how Star Trek itself says that humanity managed to not only survive a nuclear war, but somehow come out stronger for it rather than the far more realistic Planet of the Apes scenario.

Yeah, I think no matter how many contingencies you put on Roddenberry's view of the future, he was always presenting an optimistic front that we will get there... somehow. You can't blame people today for not quite sharing his optimism.