I know right! Every time I try and get a guy to drink wine of my shoes I get the same kind of bullshit.
R. Star, I think you just nailed how I feel about Neelix in the run up to these episodes. It's just extremely petty. And I really liked Paris, the fact he hadn't realised how he felt about Kes until that moment in the simulator. As someone who's been in a similar situation it felt great. Though his reaction to the Mess Hall scene was a bit over the top. And the plot may be a cliche, but the dialogue raises it over it. I've thought a few times that Voyager was becoming quite stilted, and until I watched this I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly. Apart from the Mess hall, of course. Though a little slapstick never hurt anyone.
Maybe Neelix represents the kind of guy that thinks he's God's Gift To Women, and that they'd better start treating him as such. But then he tries to put a guilt trip on her about all the sacrifices he made to rescue her, and how grateful she should be.
He is way in over his head with everything. Kes is much smarter than him and learning at a phenomenal rate. Voyager's crew is a disciplined military organization and he's used to living as a drifter. All the story telling bullshit he's gotten by on just fine is suddenly under scrutiny and he has to cough up something useful for these advanced people on this advanced starship who his advanced girlfriend is seemingly fitting in with rather well. And look at this starship's males with their nice smooth fur-less faces like Kes's own people, why she even looks like one of them.. He's freaking out all over the place.
That's in his head. Just because he doesn't feel worthy and thinks everyone is after her, it only means that he's a paranoid psychotic and not that his world is actually tumbling in on him. Kes barely notices how he's freaking out this week. You think he's being possessive? This girl used to be a SLAVE! She feels overjoyed not to be chained up to a wall and beaten to sleep. Her patience was infinite. After Warlord, we don't know what happened, but right now, I'm thinking that he ratified the false brake-up and she cried her heart out wondering what was wrong with Neelix and why their love wouldn't last forever when to was certinly supposed to... Otherwise she might not have given him a lung so quickly.
She's only going to live nine years, she doesn't need that lung. I assume the Ocampans must mate for life, since they don't live long enough to get sick of each other.. and she was probably at a loss as to how to break up with someone and what was required. I bet she took all her cues from the soap operas she watched in Future's End!
Well Kes is an idiot if she didn't get the 9 year old lung her doppleganger from Fury was using, even if it wa a little worn for wear. How come in Jetrel they turned back, went right off the sacred course home to find Neeix a cure for his space-cancer, but they were willing to take him all the way to Earth despite being confined to an iron lung and quite useless tot he mission months earlier when they were much closer one would assume to Talaxia? Hells, in Deadlock, why not harvest Neelix and Kes, and send their lungs over to the other Voyager that wasn't going to self destruct in the next 4 minutes along with Kim and the baby?
Kes has total recall on everything. Every second of every day with the same man for 6 or 7 years? Humans forget 90 percent of the unimportant stuff, and we still want to kill our spouses before the first year has rung out. She has the human equivalent of centuries worth of "life with Neelix" after only a few months.
I would have liked to have seen her divorce Tom after the baby was born. And then the baby can divorce Harry like 5 minutes later. Within the next two years the two of them run through half the males on the ship and no one can ever call them bad names about it because that would be speciest.
Kes outright states this in the episode. They mate for life, no jealously, infidelity nothing. The concept is beyond her. Which leads the Doctor to point out, "Your homeworld must have very dry literature." teacake, that's a great spin on Neelix, now if only the show actually used that instead of what we got.
Kes' father died when Kes was 1. Kes' mother gave birth to Kes when she was 3. Therefore... Kes' father was 7 when he knocked up Kes' mum, and 8 when she was born... Adjusting for shorter gestation periods of course, so dad could have been knocked up the mother, raised the daughter, and then died all during his 8th year of life. If we assume that this is normal. It's easy for a female Ocampa to mate for life if her husband is already on the verge of death when she meets him. Kes dating, bonding, and mating with men who will oh so very easily outlive her must upend her biological clock entirely, that between the ages of 4 and nine by her Ocampan assumptions, women should get to put their feet up on their husbands tombstone and tell their children that they better be mighty careful about thinking that they have any yen for babysitting at this late stage in their development... Which clearly now a fraudulent lifeplan.
It's kind of convenient to marry an alien because you can throw out all your social and biological conditioning but you're seen as incredibly multicultural rather than an outlier.
Persistence of Vision - A telepathic attack on the ship that originally feels like a "Is the Captain going nuts" episode. I liked it. It moved things along nicely. Kes' powers get another outing, and the Captain's willpower to be not only the first effected, but then the last to succumb barring Kes' abilities, was pretty damn cool moment for the character. Not too keen on the "Was I even here ending?" though. Though the fact they're all left reeling from the effects is a start.
Is that the one where the Neelix Impostor has what looks like shaving cream squeezing out of his face?
That's the one. Happens to Kes and I thought it was cotton wool, she projects it him and shaving cream flies off when he collapses.