Why was Kes written off the show?

[Gov Kodos]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Where else do you think kathryn Janeway could have lead us by example?

I can think of a few.

[spot_loves_data]

Gardener - now I get it, "ass over tea kettle" has its appeal. Too bad there will never, ever be a situation where I can use that without looking like I had just lost my damn mind.

Lynx - if you consider novels canon, then I can see your point. But unless the novel was written by one of the regular writers for a show, I consider it glorified fanfic. That doesn't necessarily mean its not worth a read. I still don't see how the Nacene database could have helped the Ocampa if the Caretaker himself couldn't manage to give them more than a bandaid solution.

I'd like to see a novel where the Ocampa take on the borg. Once they've reached Kes's stage of development (warping space, dissolving into light), they'd probably be impossible to assimilate, though the borg could still bombard their colonies.

[spot_loves_data]

[Sorry, double post]

[Guy Gardener]

Evolution is a reactive response to stimulus.

The Ocampa wanted for nothing.

A lack of stimulus and possible inbreeding left to retardation.

A physical attack by the Borg is not going to promote psychic abilities in the Ocampa.

Only if they are attacked by a race of telepaths who use telepathy as a weapon are they going to flex those long atrophied muscles.

[stj]

Regulars are more expensive than recurring characters. I do believe there were budgetary reasons for axing a character if they brought on a new regular. And I can see why they wanted to try a new character. Rewriting the characters in an episode (like turning Bashir from an ordinary if unpleasant physician into a genetically engineered physician) is not very good writing in a show that has any use for character consistency.
I believe this because to my eyes Voyager skimped an awful lot. We mostly didn't notice because one of the writers' main goals was to cover it up. (Between things like that and the number one priority of fitting in commercial breaks, is it really any wonder that the writing for network television can be so frustrating for the viewer?)

Yes, Dax is a good comparison. I loathed Dax, a loathing sealed by the episode Dax. I didn't loathe Kes because, let's face it, only because I liked Jennifer Lien.

Yes, Seven of Nine was a good bit of a Mary Sue. But unlike Kes, she didn't always win because everyone loved her and was awed by her native genius. She could at least be a suffering hero fantasy. Seven was a grotesquely schizophrenic character which gave her more variety than Kes. (Yes, that's supposed to be Janeway but that's just what the jutnobs say.)

Even psychic powers that were under control would have been bad for the show. For one thing, they would have been home by the end of the third season. That's bad, because, nothwithstanding fanboy/Ron D. Moore BS, the show wasn't a survivalist epic/Lord of the Flies clichefest, it was modeled on the Odyssey. The end of the story is getting home. The rest, is incident. (Vide Aristotle's Poetics.) For another, Kes winning everything isn't very interesting dramatically. And lastly, why does Kes hang around Voyager? Psychically superpowered Kes surely has better things to do!

And again, the Kes character, despite Lien's charm, had a gap. We don't know why she was there. Which is the sort of dramatic weakness that led me to speculate about dumping Paris (Gary Stu!) and Torres. We don't know why Paris is such a supposed bad boy or loser or rebel, especially since he's none of those things on screen. We don't know why Torres is so insane as to buy into Klingonism when Klingonism would put her down at the bottom.

Kim, as the male ingenue, may not be a fun figure for vicarious identification. And Kim, as the one delegated to piss and moan about being lost, may also not be fun to identify with. And he spent a lot of time as a cardboard cutout spouting the jargon to move the plot along. But on one level Kim has a distinct character with identifiable motives. You know who he is, even if you don't like to daydream about him. You could say the same sort of things about Tuvok and Neelix and even Chakotay.

But Kes and Paris and Torres were blank cardboard cutouts. Perhaps it fostered vicarious identification if you could project a little bit of yourself into the blanks. But I don't think it was good writing. And I do believe that it is hard to keep writing about characters while dodging around what they want, why they're where they are, where they intend to go.

Yes, Lien was very charming in practically everything she did, because practically everything that was written for her was about how charming Kes was. The Darkling was catastrophic because we don't know why Kes stayed, nor do we know why Kes dumped Neelix, any more than we know why she took up with him in the first place. Cold Fire was pointless because we already knew that Kes had a perfect heart and couldn't succumb to the temptations of power. I really do see problems with writing for Kes and don't think the producers were just making pointless lies. I can believe that Ken Biller thought she was great, because I think Ken Biller is the biggest hack writer on Voyager.

And I will repeat, I think they would have fired Wang if the People poll hadn't highlighted the actor. Hiring a token was bad enough, but dumping on him would have been embarrassing.

[Lynx]

^^
I have to disagree with most of your statements here. I don't find Kes, Paris or Torres "cardboard cutouts". On the contrary, all three of them are unique characters with interesting background stories. Paris, with his troubled background who was given a chance to put everything right and took it. Torres, also with a troubled background, the woman who was at odds with everything but finally found her place as engineer on Voyager. And Kes who wanted to leave her drab homeworld to explore and learn. I think all therr of them are brilliant characters. In fact, Voyager had the most interesting characters of all Star Trek series.

If there were any "cardboard cutouts", then it was Kim and maybe Tuvok. Kim, the typical Starfleet character, in this case a more unexperienced Starfleet character but similar to most of them we've seen in most of the shows. Maybe Tuvok fits in her too in a way. Typical Starfleet and typical Vulcan (but definitely a great character who I really like).

As for "Cold Fire", it's my favorite episode. Kes was tempted by evil forces but she could withstand them and in the end she saved the ship. What's wrong with that? I find it a brilliant story where Kes's strong will and ability to withstand the power of evil forces clearly shows. And the good guys mostly win in those situations when you watch a series. It could have been Janeway or anyone. It's only in the current "doom and gloom" series where the evil forces actually wins in similar situations (which tells us a lot about the current trends in today's society).

Plus a personal request from me which has nothing to do with Star Trek. Could you please remove that avatar with the hammer and sickle, a symbol for a system which has murdered more people than even the Nazis did.

[Lynx]

spot_loves_data wrote:

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Lynx - if you consider novels canon, then I can see your point. But unless the novel was written by one of the regular writers for a show, I consider it glorified fanfic. That doesn't necessarily mean its not worth a read. I still don't see how the Nacene database could have helped the Ocampa if the Caretaker himself couldn't manage to give them more than a bandaid solution.

I'd like to see a novel where the Ocampa take on the borg. Once they've reached Kes's stage of development (warping space, dissolving into light), they'd probably be impossible to assimilate, though the borg could still bombard their colonies.

I used to regard novels as "canon" as long as they don't contradicted what could be seen on the screen too much and I was involved in a lot of discussions about it. If you look at the season 1-3 Voyager books, they are very easy to adapt to the ongoing Voyager story. There are some contradictions here and there but they are easy to ignore and continue reading.

But after the annihilation of Janeway in the recent books, I don't care about official Star Trek and "canon" anymore.

[Collingwood Nick]

So, why was Kes written off the show??

[Guy Gardener]

People Magazine.

[Collingwood Nick]

I'm starting to sense there is very little point in asking a straight question here

[Guy Gardener]

The answer is 39 pages long and counting.

But People Magazine is most concise answer available.

If you read 1/2 of the first page to this thread you would understand what People Magazine means and a few other angles to the hows and whys of Jennifer's firing.

After 39 pages, your only question is to repeat the original post in the thread?

I assumed you were trolling.

[Collingwood Nick]

I was hoping for a nice short summary. What you gave me was shorter than I was expecting

[Guy Gardener]

They thought up a Borg Characer.

So they had to fire someone to make room in the budget.

They said lets fire Wang, he's bloody useless.

However between the airing of Scorpion one and two, during the months long hiatus break, somehow Garret Wang was placed on People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World Yearly Poll, which back then was a really big thing...

They couldn't fire Wang now, and they still wanted to hire the sexy Borgette.

So they fired Jennifer.

[lurok]

Nice summation. Can I go home now?

[MacLeod]

Just click your heels together three times. :P