No thanks required. We're all in this together.
The Original Plan for Kes
- Thread starter GulBahana
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No thanks required. We're all in this together.
As you know, I am a fan of your work, I am bias, but has there been any ideas which have evolved since writing Kes? From your perspective what was Kes, and the Ocampa? Me, being a student of Lynx school of Kes, I'm leaning more to the theory these beings were part of the nucleus of special relativity and general relativity to create warp probabilities.I hate "waterworks"!
Such scenes either bore me to death or makes me wanna throw heavy things, if it's a character I like.
As I wrote before, Kes deserves a long, happy life with lot of adventures and exploring space!
As for now, I don't have any fantastic new ideas for Kes other than those I've mentioned before. My suggestions to save the character from unnecessary early death or unnecessary character destruction has been to give her a human lifespan, either by Q or Suspiria. Or maybe The Doctor could find something in her cellular structure which would give her a more human-like lifespan.
I hope that kes could keep some of the mental abilities she showed up in the series, like in "Persistence Of Vision" to use in self-defence and to help others in situations of danger.
As for the Ccampa, it's obvious that they once had great powers but they were lost during The Caretaker's rule over them and the planet. Maybe Suspiria's encounter with Voyager made her realize that it was time to save the Ocampa on the planet and maybe she could transport the array with Tanis and the other Ocampa to the place where the planet Ocampa is located.
Or maybe the Ocampa on the planet could save themselves. According to the book Caretaker by L.A. Graf which is based on the script for the show, Janeway persuaded The Caretaker to send his knowledge to the Ocampa before he died. Hopefully they got all the information and knowledge they needed to start evolving again and get rid of the Kazon-Ogla on the surface of the planet.
And with evolving into what they once were, they could prolong their lifespan as well.
As for your theories about "the Ocampa were part of the nucleus of special relativity and general relativity to create warp probabilities", I'm not sure exactly what you mean. With the knowledge from the Caretaker and by extending their mental abilities, I'm sure that they could at least start building space ships with warp capacity.
In order for Kes to send Voyager closer to the Alpha Quadrant she must've bend or manipulated the boundaries of space-time for it to happen.
Yes, but now we are discussing the events in an episode written by the only purpose to get rid of the character as soon as possible.
As I see it, her powers in that episode were ridiculous and served no purpose at all than to have an excuse to get rid of the character.
If we leave the events in the Gray Universe and the malevolent people there and try to find an explanation which fits the Star Trek Universe, we may assume that her contact with Species 8472 (why do I always forget the number and have to look in Memory Alpha for it?) may have given her temporarily strong powers, just like in Cold Fire where the presence of Tanis gave her temporarily powers which she lost when Tanis left the ship.
That might also have been a reason for her premature turning into an energy being, a state in which she stayed for two years before being brought back to a normal existence by Q (Kes story Coming Home).
I liked the idea of the shorter lifespan. But they didn’t fully explore the ways it would make her perspective on the world different. How knowing you have less time affects your view of the present. All they really touched on is “She can learn super fast!”
Simple: she becomes an Emergency Medical Hologram and lives forever.
No, the shorter lifespan was an obstacle to the character, something that even the writers seem to have realized early on since it was so seldom mentioned. They should have fixed it by prolonging it in season 2.
What they should have focused on was her personality. Her curiosity, determination, wits, will to explore and learn, being brave and her way to get her way by simply attacking a problem from a different angle if necessary.
Some of her best abilities could be seen in episodes like Caretaker, Jetrel, Persistence Of Vision, Cold Fire, The Thaw and many others.
Nah, that would have been an exaggerated solution. A prolonged lifespan could have solved most of the problems.
Why would it be an obstacle to the character? Speculative fiction is about making a what-if choice and examining all the interesting consequences that result from that, however unusual they may seem to the average viewer. So what if by Season 7 she’s old and dies? In addition to using makeup designed to suggest aging, the character could’ve been recast several times with age-appropriate actors. We’d want to see her mature more quickly and experience changing relationships with characters who’d remain younger.
The hologram option would’ve been one way to get out of the original plan while introducing a different set of writing limitations, without making it seem like the classic TECH-based backpedaling or retooling. Suppose that Kes, having spent all that time with the Doctor and having observed the evolution a hologram can experience, chooses to undergo conversion before she becomes too old? What would be the implications of being confined to the sickbay, or having to share the mobile emitter? Would she be able to reverse-engineer it eventually? Would more Ocampa be interested in that solution? What about research into physical bodies?
The hologram option would’ve been one way to get out of the original plan while introducing a different set of writing limitations, without making it seem like the classic TECH-based backpedaling or retooling. Suppose that Kes, having spent all that time with the Doctor and having observed the evolution a hologram can experience, chooses to undergo conversion before she becomes too old? What would be the implications of being confined to the sickbay, or having to share the mobile emitter? Would she be able to reverse-engineer it eventually? Would more Ocampa be interested in that solution? What about research into physical bodies?
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It's only an obstacle to the character if you are a writer with a lack of imagination who can't see character development beyond 1990s homo sapien normative status quo.
If you're a creative writer who can write scifi like scifi, it's an opportunity to explore an interesting perspective outside that of normal humans.
Like, the discomfort with dating someone whose chronological age would make them children if they're humans. They're not humans, they're not children, they're fully developed adults. Wouldn't it be a good story for one of the crew to be having the same uncomfortable response you and the audience do, and having to talk and work through it?
You can make analogies to young humans who are diagnosed with terminal medical conditions.
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I think it would have been interesting to see Kes's journey continue beyond what we got, but I also think that if in (or before) the end they found a way to extend her lifespan then it would be a cheat that might retroactively weaken the episodes where any big deal was made of her short lifespan. Why does everyone have to have a happy ending? We know Kes comes on board as a bit of a ticking clock, so why not play that out rather than short-circuit it as VOY short-circuited so many other aspects of its premise?
I would much rather see that Kes was at peace with her short life and determined to make the most of it. Perhaps Our Heroes find a way to prolong Kes's life, but there's a price tag associated with it, and Kes has come to love her 'family' to the point that she would rather live her natural life than endanger her family just to cheat death for awhile?
I would much rather see that Kes was at peace with her short life and determined to make the most of it. Perhaps Our Heroes find a way to prolong Kes's life, but there's a price tag associated with it, and Kes has come to love her 'family' to the point that she would rather live her natural life than endanger her family just to cheat death for awhile?
Why does death have to be a sad ending? What you mentioned is interesting and as many ideas on Kes should've been explored, but couldn't her short life simply gave them what the crew needed, hope. Just her living what she had left and embracing the unknown is what should've drove the crew to become closer and had a new purpose to reach home for her. Her essence and passion would live on with them as they journey the last, vast unknown. Of course the plots had to inject internal tension between the two factions while a Bujold* - type Janeway and Chakotay had to figure out paths to work things out. For this to work, ship conflict had to be the heart of the series, and I could see Kes as the person to mend differences because she was so young and an outsider.
I wouldn't mind a little Trek magic to show... possibilities that Kes.... could be... exploring the great unknown. "There are always possibilities", Spock said. Too bad VOY never saw them.
*There was no way in Pah Wraith's land the writers were going to make Mulgrew's Janeway a more humanistic personality; something I viewed with Bujold's version where I could vision strands of flaws which could be repaired and be improved upon in further seasons of the series.
I wouldn't mind a little Trek magic to show... possibilities that Kes.... could be... exploring the great unknown. "There are always possibilities", Spock said. Too bad VOY never saw them.
*There was no way in Pah Wraith's land the writers were going to make Mulgrew's Janeway a more humanistic personality; something I viewed with Bujold's version where I could vision strands of flaws which could be repaired and be improved upon in further seasons of the series.
Is it anything I really hate when it comes to TV series, movies and such, then there is long out-drawn death scenes and melodramatic drama.
There's nothing glorious or beautiful in death, just sadness and loss. If you had had a childhood in a family where there was at least one relative or good friend dying each and every year since I was five until I was sixteen, then you would see my point, especially when I've lost some family members and loved ones in recent years too.
I can accept death as a common factor in action series or movies, in historical dramas where we all know that King So-or-so will be executed when the rebels overthrow him or as a part of the plot in a criminal mystery.
But when it comes to favorite characters in series I like, then I get really touchy. I've stopped watching more series than Voyager due to the fact that characters I've liked has been written off and in some cases not even killed off because of off-screen reasons I find dubious and simply can't accept.
I watch Star Trek and other exciting series or movies to get some relief from the life in the Gray Universe and I consider Star Trek to be about adventures and exploring space, not some tear-wrenching out-drawn drama where a main character slowly dies. Spare that to the soap operas.
I see no reason at all to have Kes slowly killed off, unless Star Trek Voyager had been supposed to be one of those dystopian 2020-series where everything is dark and gloomy. In that case they can turn it into Stargate Universe II, kill off the whole crew one by one and bore the viewers to death too. But that would be without me watching it.
Well, that's my personal view of all this.
If I should go for a not so personal view, I see no reason at all to keep the silly nine-year lifespan and slowly kill off the character when the other opptions with a series which would have focused on the characters personality, her wit, courage, determination, will to learn and explore and ways to handle problems. Now that would have been more interesting, exciting and with more possibilities to make something astonishing out of the character.
As for Nicole Janeway, the truth about her can be found at The Kes Website under the link Voyager's mysteries-and how to solve them.
Kes's short lifespan, used properly, could have been a thing of terrible beauty, the timeless dance of life itself, squashed into a mere seven years. In her, we could have seen life unfold: innocence and youth, marriage, childbirth, motherhood, aging, and finally facing the end. Handled right, it could have taken Trek to a new level.
Placed in the hands of people who didn't even possess the cerebral capacity to understand that an ensign is supposed to make lieutenant... need I say more?
It's not. It's like saying humans are getting slowly killed off because their natural lifespans are shorter than Vulcans', Klingons', or Soong type androids.
I thought about editing my original post to note that everyone we see in Trek is effectively being slowly killed off, but you've covered that base for me now.
It took me awhile to place where I've seen this story, but that idea was actually done quite beautifully on, of all things, the Thundercats 2011 reboot, in an episode entitled "Song of the Petalars."
Because it would occur during the series and would as usual be presented in the most syrupy, sleazy, disgusting tear-wrenching way.
As I wrote before in a previous post, there's no beauty at all in aging and death, only sorrow and loss.
Those who are pretending that there are any beauty in it are only fooling themselves.
And if those who want "beautiful death" in a way it's presented in syrupy soap operas can watch such a soap opera or a movie like Titanic where all viewers knows what will happen and almost everyone in the movie dies. Oh, what a joy!
That may be so. But, there's a message in it. Dying might suck, but we can all expect to do it. So make the most of the time you have, whether it's 9 years, or 90, or 190.
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