Primitive Culture is a Trek.fm podcast dedicated to a deep examination of the connections between Star Trek and our own history and culture. In each episode, Duncan Barrett and his guests take you on a fascinating exploration of how our world inspires the franchise we love—and how that franchise inspires us.
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episode 52: Reader, I Reprogrammed Him
Gothic Fiction in Star Trek: Voyager.
Even starship captains, with the whole galaxy to explore, need a bit of mindless escapism from time to time. While Jean-Luc Picard donned his fedora and trench coat to live out a holographic fantasy life as the surly gumshoe Dixon Hill, Kathryn Janeway’s choice of entertainment might seem—at least on the surface—even less in keeping with her “real” personality. In three early episodes of Star Trek: Voyager—“Cathexis,” “Learning Curve,” and “Persistence of Vision”—we see her indulge in a holonovel that appears to combine elements of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), and Rebecca, the 1938 novel by Dame Daphne du Maurier. In her holographic escape from life in the Delta Quadrant, Janeway played the role of a wide-eyed governess who finds herself at the heart of a sinister gothic mystery.
In this episode of Primitive Culture, hosts Clara Cook and Duncan Barrett take a look at the literary influences on Captain Janeway’s Lambda One holonovel, considering questions of female agency, repressed sexuality, and the apparent value of low-brow entertainment to Starfleet’s high-ranking officers. We also question whether a show as bright and cheery as Star Trek: Voyager can ever truly accommodate Gothicism.
Chapters
Intro (00:00:00)
The Birth of the Holonovel (00:07:00)
High Tech, Low Brow (00:17:30)
Turning to Screwing (00:22:50)
Janeway Eyre (00:36:55)
Delta Quadrant Gothic (00:54:35)
Infinite Diversity in Limited Combinations (01:06:25)