Virginia Press - Journal Entry 4 - On the Hero's Journey and Leadership
While simultaneously writing two different essays on Star Trek, details in my brain would phase between projects and I would lose track of my thoughts quite easily. As I wrote for leadership on Star Trek IV; The Voyage Home and for you, on Star Trek: Voyager, similarities did emerge.
The point I made about Captain (or in this case, rather, Admiral), was that while he was an attempt at writing a visionary, progressive leader, due to the predominant leadership studies of the time relying on Trait-based studies such as Great Man Theory, he ultimately struggled to realize that potential. Due to Implicit Leadership Theories, or rather, biases we have towards people in leadership, an audience's expectations of a leader must be fulfilled for them to buy in.
Star Trek has pushed these biased many time, to varying degrees of success. The Next Generation dipped it's toe in by making the Captain a foreigner, and Deep Space Nine took the plunge to put a black man in the Captain's chair. Whereas Campbell originally claimed no woman could ever be the archetypical hero, I have just written an essay to support how Captain Kathryn Janeway is written to be one. Star Trek: Enterprise subverts this continuum of progress deliberately as a marker of it's status as a prequel, showing the deliberate way in which these choices were made. More importantly however, all of these characters fulfilled the other expectations of a leader to a T, allowing them to become inspirational, or excused, or even empowered.
The newest era of Star Trek has struggled in replicating this success in the portrayal of their Heros. Commander Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin Green, is absolutely HATED by the fanbase. In some part, this is certainly due to forces of racism and sexism, but in a very real way, these bigoted sentiments are enabled by the failings of the writers. They drag her through a poor execution of the Hero's Journey and her own decisions and demeanor throughout do not continue the legacy of Captains like Sisko and Janeway. In the recent Star Trek Academy TV show, there's a female Captain being criticized because she doesn't sit in chairs correctly, something notoriously used to endear the audience to older characters such as Cmdr Riker on TNG.
All of this aside, Star Trek IV follows the Hero's Journey slightly well in its main components. Admiral Kirk, a renown, almost magically charismatic leader must Journey to an odd and unfamiliar world (San Francisco, 1986) to bring his followers from without (whales). This, of course, saves the world. He is trialed by the unfamiliar landscape and culture, he is led by various guides such as the man in the pawn shop, Dr. Taylor, and his closest officers, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. As amusing that it is that the one thing that can save them from Annihilation is whales, it's a pretty standard time-travel McGuffin story.
Anyway, this is all just to say I'm writing about Star Trek too much- Far, far too much, and these are my extra ideas.
The point I made about Captain (or in this case, rather, Admiral), was that while he was an attempt at writing a visionary, progressive leader, due to the predominant leadership studies of the time relying on Trait-based studies such as Great Man Theory, he ultimately struggled to realize that potential. Due to Implicit Leadership Theories, or rather, biases we have towards people in leadership, an audience's expectations of a leader must be fulfilled for them to buy in.
Star Trek has pushed these biased many time, to varying degrees of success. The Next Generation dipped it's toe in by making the Captain a foreigner, and Deep Space Nine took the plunge to put a black man in the Captain's chair. Whereas Campbell originally claimed no woman could ever be the archetypical hero, I have just written an essay to support how Captain Kathryn Janeway is written to be one. Star Trek: Enterprise subverts this continuum of progress deliberately as a marker of it's status as a prequel, showing the deliberate way in which these choices were made. More importantly however, all of these characters fulfilled the other expectations of a leader to a T, allowing them to become inspirational, or excused, or even empowered.
The newest era of Star Trek has struggled in replicating this success in the portrayal of their Heros. Commander Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin Green, is absolutely HATED by the fanbase. In some part, this is certainly due to forces of racism and sexism, but in a very real way, these bigoted sentiments are enabled by the failings of the writers. They drag her through a poor execution of the Hero's Journey and her own decisions and demeanor throughout do not continue the legacy of Captains like Sisko and Janeway. In the recent Star Trek Academy TV show, there's a female Captain being criticized because she doesn't sit in chairs correctly, something notoriously used to endear the audience to older characters such as Cmdr Riker on TNG.
All of this aside, Star Trek IV follows the Hero's Journey slightly well in its main components. Admiral Kirk, a renown, almost magically charismatic leader must Journey to an odd and unfamiliar world (San Francisco, 1986) to bring his followers from without (whales). This, of course, saves the world. He is trialed by the unfamiliar landscape and culture, he is led by various guides such as the man in the pawn shop, Dr. Taylor, and his closest officers, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. As amusing that it is that the one thing that can save them from Annihilation is whales, it's a pretty standard time-travel McGuffin story.
Anyway, this is all just to say I'm writing about Star Trek too much- Far, far too much, and these are my extra ideas.
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