Kathryn Janeway

During the development of Star Trek: Voyager, one of the actors considered to play the captain, before it was decided the character would be a woman, was Gary Graham.[1] Kate Mulgrew, Geneviève Bujold, Erin Gray, Patty Duke and Susan Gibney were all considered or auditioned during development, with Bujold being initially cast.[1]

The character was originally named Elizabeth Janeway, after the noted writer of the same name. However, after Geneviève Bujold was cast, she requested the character be renamed "Nicole Janeway". Bujold was initially very positive, saying in an interview, "This role is a challenge but it feels right."[2] Bujold, whose acting experience was mainly in feature films, was unprepared for the schedule demanded by television and was unwilling to do news interviews. After the second day of filming for the first episode "Caretaker", Bujold dropped out of the series.[3]

After Bujold's departure, Joanna Cassidy, Susan Gibney, Elizabeth Dennehy, Tracy Scoggins, and Lindsay Crouse were considered as replacements.[4] Erin Gray and Chelsea Field (wife of future Star Trek captain Scott Bakula) auditioned for the role.[5] Not only was shooting already behind schedule, but the episode had to be ready by January 1995.[4] It was not only the launch of series, but would also be the first program airing on the newly-launching United Paramount Network (UPN), and over $20 million was being spent on the pilot.[4] Kate Mulgrew, who had previously auditioned for the role, was cast on September 17, 1994.[6] She suggested that the name be changed to "Kathryn", to which the producers agreed.[7]

In October 2020, Mulgrew confirmed she would voice Janeway in the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.[8] Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman said of the choice, "We can think of no better captain to inspire the next generation of dreamers on Nickelodeon, than she."[9] In April 2021, it was revealed that Mulgrew would voice an emergency training hologram based on Janeway.[10] Though initially announced as a series for Nickelodeon, the show premiered on Paramount+ in October 2021, with later airings on Nickelodeon.[9]

The real Janeway first appears in the episode "A Moral Star, Part 2". Janeway is searching for her former first officer, Captain Chakotay, of the USS Protostar. She commands the USS Dauntless, which features a quantum slip-stream drive. The ship is based on schematics the crew of the USS Voyager obtained under Janeway's command in the Delta Quadrant of another USS Dauntless, a ship used to bait the crew into getting assimilated by the Borg ("Hope and Fear"). She tries to keep up with the Protostar and its protowarp capability. The kids, desperate for a means of explaining the situation to their pursuers without setting off the "living construct" booby trap, since using regular communications with the Starfleet ships would do that, attempt a telepathic communication with Admiral Janeway. In the attempt, the effort goes awry with the consciousnesses of the kids' leader, Dal and Admiral Janeway being inadvertently exchanged in their bodies. While this development allows Janeway to learn the full situation from the kids, Dal's struggles in Janeway's body leads to the crew to believe she had lost her sanity. The two manage to return to their bodies, but Janeway found herself in the brig with seemingly no one willing to believe her explanation of recent events, nor her warning of the Protostar's booby trap before it was too late and the Starfleet ships in the immediate area starting to attack each other out of the crews' control and that promised to be only the beginning of the destruction.

The events of "Supernova, Part 2" caused Mulgrew's primary role in the series to shift to Admiral Janeway. Within this episode, the holographic Janeway stays on the Protostar in order to enact the self-destruct to destroy a "living construct" installed on the Protostar threatening to obliterate Starfleet. Though she promises to copy herself so she can join her young protégés, she is unable to do so due to the vastly increased complexity of her program, meaning her program is lost when the Protostar is destroyed, something she makes sure the kids only discover when it is too late so they would not delay their escape arguing with her. When the kids reach Starfleet Headquarters, Admiral Janeway vouches for them and takes them under her wing as warrant officers.

Admiral Janeway also appeared in the Borg Invasion 4-D ride at the Star Trek: The Experience venue in Las Vegas, which closed in 2008. In the ride, Janeway leads Voyager to the rescue of ride participants who are ostensibly trapped first on a space station and later on a shuttlecraft that come under attack by a Borg Cube commanded by the Borg Queen. At the ride's end, Janeway tells the participants, "Congratulations. You've defeated the Borg with one thing the Queen can never assimilate: the human spirit. As long as we have that, resistance will never be futile."

Janeway continued as a major character in the Star Trek novels that depict the events in the lives of the Voyager characters after the end of that series. In Peter David's 2007 Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Before Dishonor,[18] which is set after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, Janeway is assimilated by a rogue faction of the Borg, and becomes their new Borg Queen. Seven of Nine, with the aid of Ambassador Spock and the Enterprise-E crew, manages to communicate with Janeway's consciousness, buried deep within the Queen's mind. During a brief moment of contact, Janeway helps them destroy the Borg cube, with all hands on board. Although Seven manages to escape, Janeway is killed. Her memorial service sees a vast turnout, and a tall gleaming pillar with a light burning atop it is constructed in tribute to her. The Q female appears to Janeway's spirit, and tells her that Q and the Q Continuum had taken an interest in her. Telling her that she has a destiny, Lady Q takes Janeway by the hand, and disappears with her into realms unknown. Writer Peter David explained the book was conceived by Pocket Books editorial as one in which Janeway would die, and that he was brought in to write it in order to give her a reportedly heroic send-off.[19]

In the 2012 Star Trek: Voyager novel The Eternal Tide by Kirsten Beyer, Janeway returns to human life with the help of young Q, who needs her assistance, and by the book's end resumes her admiralship in Starfleet. In the 2014 Star Trek: Voyager novel Protectors by Kirsten Beyer, Janeway goes back to Earth per orders of Starfleet Command; by the end of the book she returns to the Delta Quadrant, taking charge of the starships stationed there. She continues this mission in Beyer's second 2014 Star Trek: Voyager novel, Acts of Contrition.

In Cryptic Studios' online role-playing game, Star Trek Online, Janeway was physically added to game in January 2022 along with voiceover work by Kate Mulgrew as part of the game's twelfth anniversary.[20] Prior to her addition, Janeway was only occasionally mentioned in the game. She was also retroactively added to the game's 2014 Delta Rising expansion.

In 2015, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti – then serving aboard the International Space Station– dressed as Janeway for photographs in which she gestured toward an incoming Dragon cargo spacecraft. She posted a photo to Twitter with the comment, "‘There’s coffee in that nebula’… ehm, I mean… in that #Dragon," quoting a memorable line by the character from the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Cloud". The craft was carrying an ISSpresso machine and coffee for the crew.[34][35][36]

In 2019, a group of Bloomington, Indiana residents formed what is now The Janeway Collective[37] with the goal of building a birthplace monument such as the one existing for James T. Kirk in Riverside, Iowa.[38] Through attending local events and raising awareness, and with the permission of CBS, they were able to successfully raise funds through a crowdsourcing campaign on the platform Patronicity and received a matching grant from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority's CreatINg Place program.[39]

An official groundbreaking event took place on June 27, 2020, and the monument was unveiled on October 24, 2020, after being delayed from the planned date of May 20, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[40] Kate Mulgrew attended the unveiling virtually due to the pandemic.[41] The monument is constructed of a cast bronze bust with a limestone base with stainless steel plate, and was sculpted by Aaron Eby.[42] It is located on the B-Line Trail immediately next to the WonderLab science museum.[43]

On October 23, 2022, almost two years after the unveiling, Kate Mulgrew visited the monument in person, fulfilling the promise she made when the statue was unveiled.[44]