Kathryn Janeway

Kathryn Janeway was the daughter of a Starfleet Vic Admiral. She was born in Bloomington Indiana on Earth and grew up on her grandfather’s farm.  Her birthday was referenced from 2332 to 2344 as perhaps she did not want her real birth date known.  Her father raised her to be a doubter and a skeptic so that she would look at the world with a true eye of a scientist.  An ancestor of Janeway who was involved in the Millennium Gate project inspired her to join Starfleet.  Janeway studied chromolinguistics, American Sign Language and gestural idioms of the Leyron but she struggled with basic Kingonese.

At Starfleet Academy, Janeway was known as the coffee loving “Night Owl” as she trained to be a Science Officer.  As a Junior Science Officer she always envied that a captain had the privilege of making first contact with alien species.  Her first command was the USS Billings. She had a reputation of getting results in the field as an Commander that would make field trips.  By 2371, Janeway had command of the USS Voyager.

The USS Voyager would make up the majority of both Janeway’s life and career after finding Voyager transferred 70,000 light years across the galaxy from a sprocystian lifeform known as the Caretaker.  The Caretaker had pulled Voyager and the Val Jean who Voyager was chasing into the Delta Quadrant in order to see if any crew member might be a compatible mate.  The Caretaker’s condition deteriorated and he died before the ships could be returned to the Alpha Quadrant.  After some interaction with the hostile native species of the quadrant known as the Kazon, the crew of the two ships banded together on Voyager to make the seventy year scientific learning trip home.

Upon return to the Alpha Quadrant, Janeway was promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral.  One of her last assignments was to direct Captain Picard of the USS Enterprise-E on diplomatic missions to Romulus.  This was a fitting climax to a Starfleet Officer that once expressed a desire to serve alongside Captain Kirk and his crew of the Enterprise when space seemed “a whole lot bigger.”