Ye, I’ve heard one of the biggest complaints people have is that they feel like she plays into the “hysterical/impulsive woman” stereotype, but I don’t really see it that way. She’s a captain who got thrown into the abyss and is trying to get her way out. I’ve seen people comment on how she threw out the prime directive almost immediately, or that she made decisions that made their trip home longer; compared to Picard who never makes a mistake. Sure, she made some dumb decisions, but comparing her to Picard (who’s basically perfect) isn’t remotely fair.

Picard is a highly decorated captain running the Federation’s flagship in possibly the comfiest position a federation officer can hope for; with a charisma strong enough to answer any conflict with “I think this was all just a big misunderstanding.”

Janeway is a captain of a small ship with a crew intended to hunt down insurgents before getting iseki’d to the delta quadrant, killing a large chunk of the original crew and forcing her to team up with the insurgents.

And yeah, of course she’s gonna throw out the prime directive; she’s going to throw out the entire book. Any good captain would immediately realize that Starfleet regulations work in “”“civilized”“” space, but the further into the unknown you go, the less the regulations make sense. Like, what, was she supposed to just sit there and wait for backup the moment they ran into a problem bigger than them? Yeah, that’s a great idea, we’ll just wait for Picard to swoop in and tell everyone it was just a big misunderstanding and then Janeway can be on her way. He’ll be here soon. Just aaaaanny day now…

Imo, Janeway is a very human (and imo, badass) captain and it’d be more fair to compare her to Kirk than Picard, Sisko or most other captains; and imo she did a much better job than Kirk. At least she wasn’t being a sex pest to everyone they met.

When Janeway wants something done, she gets it done, Jane’s way.