#someone more eloquent than me make it better thank you Ilu

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S7's The Void is vaguely reminiscent of s5's Night, but they show Janeway in a much better mental state, and how much she has learned to ease up on the distance she maintains from her crew as captain.

The openings of the two episodes have a much different tone. In Night, there's a distinct lack of Janeway. She's MIA, and crew is anxious and antsy because of their situation and missing leader. In The Void, they open on a scene of the senior staff enjoying their time together. They're laughing and sharing a meal, teasing each other like a family. Then they're thrust into the anomaly. Both instances of "the void" lack stars, both are potentially long-term situations without a clear means of escape besides getting through it. Night has a tone of uneasy calm, but there are other ships and adversaries in The Void, adding an element of urgency.

When we finally see Janeway in Night, she is kicking herself for her decision making:

CHAKOTAY: We were faced with a difficult choice. We had the means to get home but using it would've put an innocent people at risk, so we decided to stay. JANEWAY: No. No, no. I decided to stay. I made that choice for everyone. CHAKOTAY: We're alive and well, and we've gathered enough data about this quadrant to keep Starfleet scientists busy for decades. Our mission's been a success. JANEWAY: The very same words I've been telling myself for the past four years. But then we hit this Void, and I started to realise how empty those words sound. CHAKOTAY: Kathryn. JANEWAY: I made an error in judgment, Chakotay. It was short-sighted and it was selfish, and now all of us are paying for my mistake.

In The Void, Janeway and Chakotay have a similar conversation, but she accepts her error and her support network with less resistance and less self flagellation. With the urgency of the other attacking ships, there is less mental space to become concerned with mistakes, but her dialogue shoes that it is still a thought that is ever present in her mind.

JANEWAY: Impulsive and self-righteous? Is that what you think? CHAKOTAY: You did what you had to do. JANEWAY: Still, I made a mistake. ... JANEWAY: Maybe not. But if I'd listened to my doubts in the first place, we wouldn't have lost the other two ships. ... CHAKOTAY: B'Elanna and the other engineers are working around the clock to build one. She thinks they'll be ready to test in a couple of days. JANEWAY: So everyone's pulling together to make up for my mistake. CHAKOTAY: They have to. It says so in the Federation Charter.

Granted, it helps that she has some rules to point to for accepting Chakotay's insistence that they're in it together, but the situation in The Void very well could have had her fall back into old patterns we saw in Night. One of the reasons she fights so hard to create and alliance and get the ship and crew out of their situation and back into normal space is because there is an "echo of the void." This time, she isn't as inwardly focused. She is listening to her crew, even when they're being critical. You can see the impulse towards blaming herself for the whole situation, but she's pulled out of her pattern of thinking much easier this time.

#desperately hoping someone else had already written about the parallels but a cursory search didn't turn up much #ok i threw this together very fast and i have more thoughts but i need to go be productive for a bit #star trek voyager #night #the void #my favorite dysfunctional found family #the two episodes always remind me of each other and they do have kind of similar aliens taken into sick bay #someone more eloquent than me make it better thank you Ilu