The REAL reason that Kes isn't a more beloved character...

[XCV330]

I don't consider it to have failed. Aged poorly, yes. DS9 has come into it's own over the years, and Voyager shown its cracks. But despite its poor writing, it was able to go out on it's own terms. As opposed to its successor, which had its plug pulled.

I think it started the ennui that prevented audiences from getting interested in Enterprise, combined with Enterprise's own bad first two seasons (yes yes, there are nice bit's of season 1 and 2.. why do people defending Season one of Enteprise sound like people defeinding New Jersey "but if you get down to Cape May, you know, s'not so bad, really.." I digress). Voyager didn't help.


Oh back to Kes. I guess I'm one of those few that actually liked Fury. I would have liked to have seen a far more unstable, dangerous, illogical but extremely useful Kes. I wish they had brought her back for more visits afterword's, especially a finale. Bryan Fuller had figured out the character when it was already too late.

 

[KennyB]

..and how she exemplifies everything wrong with voyager

This is my first post in this forum and so I'll start off by introducing myself. I was born in 1973 and grew up watching TOS on Saturday nights in the late 70's and 80's. I saw all the original ST movies when they were first released and watched TNG and DS9 on their first run. Just about all my family and friends were Star Trek fans to varying degrees and so it was just part of the culture in which I grew up in.

This post was inspired by both some recent conversations I've had with other 'old school' Trek fans from work and by a previous post (dating back to 2017) I happen to come across on this forum where someone offered their theory on why Kes wasn't a beloved ST character. The poster seemed to like the character and clearly had no idea whatsoever why most people rejected her. As such, their theory on why Kes was/is rejected (some nonsense about sci-fi fans not liking certain types of innocent or girl next door type characters) missed the mark by a country mile.

As one that did reject the character and who has heard their opinion echoed by many, many others, I think I can offer a much better explanation.

To get it out of the way, the reason that people rejected the Kes character had nothing whatsoever to do with performance of the actress, Jennifer Lien. Opinions of Lien range the entire spectrum. I happen to like Lien's performance. I never found her to be unpleasant in the least. If you don't like Lien, you can substitute in any actress you want. It doesn't matter. The problem is with the character. Lien just had the misfortune of being cast to play a character that couldn't work no matter who played her.

Voyager was, from its debut onward, the black sheep of that era of the ST family. It was the first ST series that I lost interest in during the first season (I only went back and watched the entire series years later online). Most people I knew were never interested in the series to begin with and it was the least favorite ST series of even my most die hard trekkie friends.

All the other ST series were plagued by many of the same shortcomings that plagued Voyager; bad writing, stupid and/or pointless episodes,wooden acting, annoying characters, underdeveloped characters, etc. But Voyager managed to get something wrong that those other series got right and made mistakes that those series managed to avoid.

And Kes was the personification of everything that Voyager got wrong all wrapped up in a single character.

We're introduced to Kes in the seasons premier and we learn that she is a two year old alien with a seven year life span. The problem is that she's clearly not a child and not particularly alien either. They would rather cast a grown woman to play a two year old than a child because child actors are notoriously difficult to work with. And so they cast a grown woman and get around it by saying she's an alien.

But then she's neither written nor directed to act as either a child or alien. She acts just like millions of normal human woman that are the same age as the actress. Aside from utterly baffling biology, she's easily interchangeable with a dozen other female human characters in the ST universe. Both the klingons and the vulcans were more alien than Kes.

And She's not going to last any longer on the series than seven years.

What this tells the audience is that the creators and the writers aren't going to stick to the premises Instead, they are going to cheat.

Just as she's not really a child, the crew of Voyager isn't really in any particular danger despite being stranded 70,000 light years from federation space. Almost every episode hit the reset button and all damage to the ship and expanded resources were restored. The series treated the severity of their situation with all the seriousness of Gilligan's Island.

Just as Kes isn't really particularly alien, neither is anything that they run into in the delta quandrant particularly unfamiliar. The Kazon were just ghetto klingons. Most of the aliens they encountered could have just as easily been human as any other race.




And as Kes has only seven years left to live, the series is going to last for seven seasons and they aren't getting home before that.

Add on top of this the relationship between Kes and Neelix. The relationship is clearly wholly inappropriate, tarnishes the Neelix character and establishes him as a real creep right from the start of the series. This is done to a character that the creators and writers intended for the audience to like and be a comic relief.

And the tarnishing of Neelix is done solely through the premise, not by anything that we actually witness between Kes and Neelix on the screen. If we were not told that Kes was only two years old, we wouldn't necessarily think anything about it or even necessarily pay attention to it. They'd just be another odd alien couple to add flavor to the background. Which is what the writers apparently intended all along.

The writers clearly didn't think this out very good at all.

And just as the writers clearly didn't think through the Kes-Neelix relationship, they clearly had no consistent or unified idea of Captain Katherine Janeway. Much has been made of her waffling adherence to the prime director. Kate Mulgrew, the actress who played Janeway, complained herself on numerous occasions about the inconsistencies in the character she was portraying.

All attempts to salvage Kes only served to make the character worse. The more we learn about Kes, the more we learn how little thought and planning actually went into this character. She's remarkably skilled, mature and self confident for being only two years old. Like she has preprogrammed knowledge and experiences. She also has telepathic abilities. And she only reproduces once in her life and has to give birth to the offspring standing up.

Something like this could not evolve naturally in the real world. And there's nothing in the ST universe to suggest that they can naturally evolve that way in that universe either. The more intelligent races with greater mental abilities are longer lived, not shorter lived, than the other races.

A more likely explanation is that it's a genetically engineered species created for the purpose of slave labor. But that's never stated or even hinted at in the series. It's apparently only on accident that the occompa comes out looking like a genetically engineered race and not as a result of planning and forethought.

The reason that people rejected the Kes character was/is because the character concept itself shattered suspension of disbelief in ways that no previous reoccurring ST character had before. And in doing so, drew attention to things we're not supposed to notice or think about while we are trying to enjoy a story.

People don't necessarily expect a fictional universe to conform to the same rules as the real world. In fact, they rarely do. What people expect is for the fictional universe to consistently operate according to it's own rules.

The occompa broke the rules. And their presence in the series drew attention to all the other ways that ST: Voyager was breaking the rules. And they drew attention to all the other ways that Voyager hadn't been planned or thought out as well as what we might have hoped for.

She was a poorly thought out character and her presence in the series drew attention to all the other ways that the series hadn't been particularly well planned out.

And so a lot of people checked out of the series. Some people watched the pilot episode and never watched another. I got about halfway through the first season and checked out. Some made it a little further but still eventually lost interest. The trekkies kept watching but complained that the series was crap.

Despite the complaints that Voyager became the 7o9 show once she came aboard, I have never once heard or read anyone saying that the show was actually better with Kes instead of 7. What I have seen is plenty of articles about how Kes is a 'textbook example' of how not to design a character.

Again, none of this is intended as a criticism of Jennifer Lien. The character was doomed to the scrap heap from inception regardless of who portrayed her.

I've never thought that much about Kes...........ever.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I think it started the ennui that prevented audiences from getting interested in Enterprise, combined with Enterprise's own bad first two seasons (yes yes, there are nice bit's of season 1 and 2.. why do people defending Season one of Enteprise sound like people defeinding New Jersey "but if you get down to Cape May, you know, s'not so bad, really.." I digress). Voyager didn't help.


Oh back to Kes. I guess I'm one of those few that actually liked Fury. I would have liked to have seen a far more unstable, dangerous, illogical but extremely useful Kes. I wish they had brought her back for more visits afterword's, especially a finale. Bryan Fuller had figured out the character when it was already too late.

That's a sad thing to say. Fury was insulting and wasn't an appropriate approach for the character. Not mad at you, but... I'm struggling to understand why that episode was liked because of the unstable things going to extremes made Kes... useful???

 

[at Quark's]

^ I'm not sure either how Kes was useful in Fury. That said, the idea of a unstable, dangerous, illogical but extremely useful Kes could perhaps have worked, I think. For example a bit like she was in The Gift, but of course turned down a few notches (can't have the ship flying apart at the seams whenever she's near every week, and the show would be over soon if she could just throw Voyager 9500 light years every week, too). It just would have been a fundamentally different character from the Kes we got, though.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

What I'm offering is the perspective of (at least some) people that rejected the character and 'our' reasons for it, not an attempt at any kind of 'objective' evaluation of the character. If you didn't reject the character, then the reasons I listed obviously don't apply to you.

Secondly, as I read through your post, it seems that every point you had to make agrees with everything I said in the OP.

And so I'm not entirely sure about what, exactly, it is that you disagree with.



No disagreement there. As stated in the OP and in a previous posts, rejecting the character had nothing to do with the likability of either the character or the actress. It had everything to do with the implausibility of the character. That was a hurdle that quite a few of us were just never able to get over.



Considering we are talking about a fictional character, I contend that it's absurd to say that's either 'right' or 'wrong' to accept or dismiss the character.

You don't exactly say anything in the rest of this post to explain 'how' it's totally wrong anyway.

And who is it insulting to? The writers? Maybe the writers need to be insulted. Maybe if they had been insulted more often while the series was still being made, they might have taken the message, got their act together and did a better job.



Agreed but it's the fact that they didn't correct those flaws that was the problem.



From what I understand about biology, humans are primates. But I know what you mean. You mean lower primates, like monkeys and lemurs and the like.

Anyway, that's assuming that their brains work roughly similar to humans.

Another alternative is if their brains worked significantly different than humans. They experienced time differently and process sensory input different, etc. Or they were a genetically engineered race with built in knowledge. I would have accepted either explanation but neither was offered.



I'm a lot less concerned about that than I am in finding an answer for how they came to be in the first place. According to my knowledge and understanding of real world biology and what information we are given about the ST universe, there's no reason to think that such a creature as we are actually presented with in the series could evolve naturally. In fact, it flies in the face of everything we know about both real world and Trekian biology.

And so, just like you can offer up a solution to the 9 year life span problem just like that, I can also offer up an explanation for their existence just like that; genetically engineered slave race.

And I'm not even being original. I'm borrowing the idea from Blade Runner and hundreds of other sci-fi stories that also came before Voyager. Hell, they did it in DS9 with the Jem H'dar.

So, yeah, we're in the same boat here. We expect more from experienced writers. Especially people that are being paid to write.



That works. Another answer is that there is a 'time dilation interference' (or whatever technobabble term you want to use) on the surface of the planet and so that time moves at ten times the rate as in the rest of the universe. Same answer and result in the end, just two different ways of getting there.

But yeah, the point is you and are two strangers just killing time brain storming and we're both coming up with better stuff than the crap they left us with.

.

Just say they are an engineered slave race. All that makes perfect sense if they were an engineered slave race and their creators wanted to keep control over them and eliminate them if they couldn't.

But as a naturally occurring race, it's completely implausible. That right there is why many of us rejected the character. It's because we didn't buy it. The Ocampa didn't make since in either the real world or the ST universe as we understood it. They were entirely too obviously and blatantly the invention of lazy writers that either didn't know what they were doing or didn't care.

Without the age 2 and 9 year lifespan crap right from the start, I would have just accepted the character at face value without any problem at all. Just another ST alien. No problem.

But they throw in the age and life span and instead of just accepting the character at face value, I'm wondering what the hell that thing is supposed to be. What the hell am I supposed to do with the information that it's only two years old? This doesn't match any of my experiences or understanding of reality or other people or how they understanding the world around them.

Without some kind of explanation for how it came to be and/or how it's brain works, I have no way of relating to or understanding this thing.

But on screen, she's presented as a young woman in her early twenties. The conflict between what we are being told and what we are seeing is so jarring that it takes us out of the story and draws our attention to the writing, the casting, etc. Things that the story itself is not supposed to be drawing your attention to.

The Ocampa are the ST character equivalent to 'It was a dark and stormy night."



The Ocampa broke the rules in that they didn't conform to any established standard in the ST universe. Introducing something new and known is cool but in doing so, they need to establish a frame of reference for how this fits in with the ST universe as we already understand it.

That's not the only way that ST: Voyager or any of the other series broke the rules. However, most of the time, the rule breaking happens off screen. For example, hitting the reset button to restore all expanded resources and repair all ship damage every episode.

This kind of rule breaking is allowed to a much greater degree because when you have a week between episodes, it takes a lot longer to notice and there's nothing to stop you from filling in the blanks yourself. If they don't say 'it' didn't happen, then it could have, right?

The crime of the Ocampa is they did on screen and blatantly so and included one of them in the regular cast. If they'd only shown up for a single episode, we would have written it off as a stupid episode and they would've never been seen again. But they including one of them in the regular cast. And so week after week, we are confronted with a creature that doesn't fit our understanding of either real or the fictional ST universe.

And so, again, it draws attention away from the story in which they are present and toward the people writing the story. When this happens, it's because the audience has lost trust in the story teller. To keep the audience and once again engage them in the story, the story teller has to reestablish trust. In the case of the Ocampa, that never happened.



You are right. Most of the the mistakes and the ways they cheated had nothing whatsoever to do with Kes and would have and did go on with and/or without her presence in the story.

The same is true for all the ST series. And many other series across all genres.

We just usually don't notice it immediately but only over time and only on repeated viewings if the series is otherwise good.

The Ocampa, and Kes specifically, drew attention away from the story and toward the story tellers on a consistent basis. And once we were looking at the story tellers, we started to notice all the other ways that the story tellers were being sloppy and cheating.

IOW, Kes was a consistent reminder that the story tellers were being lazy and sloppy.



I agree with that. The reason they were able to get away with that for as long as they did was because their wasn't any consistent onscreen reminder that they were breaking the rules.

I think I had your solution. If I remember it right, it makes sense and doesn't actually conflict with any of the info we are given.



Again, it's an established trope within the ST universe that there are humanoid species all over the galaxy. But all them seem to have a biology and lifespan that is roughly similar to ours. Creatures with greater intelligence and/or greater mental abilities are (almost) always longer lived. (I put 'almost' in parenthesis because I'm not familiar with any that are not but there might be one I've never heard of).

With Kes, we get a two year old female with the body of a 21 year old of most other species, with equal or greater intelligence of that of humans and with higher mental powers. And who has a life span of 9 years.

This thing is completely alien to our understanding of humanoids, in both the real world and the ST universe.



It's setting her age at two that makes the whole thing so messed up. You're not really treating her like a two year old. Instead you're treating her like a woman that's the same age as the actress.

I think you rejected the character also. You just dealt with it differently. What you appear to have done is substitute your own character in for the one that was actually presented in the series.



Right.



It's because the production was giving up on the character. According to Ethan Phillips, a proper breakup scene was written for Neelix and Kes but it was never used in the series. I think he said that they shot it but it was left on the editing floor to cut time. I'm not sure when the decision was made to axe Kes from the cast but by midway through season three, it was definitely headed in that direction.



I never said that everything wrong with Voyager came back to Kes. I did say that Kes personified everything wrong with Voyager but by that, I mean that everything they did wrong with Voyager, they also did with Kes specifically and she was an on screen reminder of everything the production was doing wrong with the series.



I agree. The DS9 team had a much better grasp of what they were doing.

And It wasn't Kes and Kes alone and I never said it was. Again, it was a matter of she was on screen reminder of just how sloppy the writers were being.



You're definitely in a minority and the ratings of the show reflect that. But I'm sure if that even counts if you didn't watch the rest of the series.



I'm curious as to what it episode it was. I lost interest when Tom Paris went to warp 10 and mutated into a salamander. The whole episode was laughably bad and, if it wasn't before, it was perfectly clear from that episode on that the writers had no idea at all what they were doing. When I went back and watched the entire series in order, I skipped that episode.

That was so stupid that I'm laughing out loud right now just thinking about it.



Well, I never said that Kes was the only problem with the show. Again, it's more a matter of she was onscreen reminder of just how lazy and sloppy the writers were being.

Everything mentioned by you two above is why Voyager ended up in the pop culture doghouse, as shown here. And Lynx, you and this young lady with her Kes fan art are in the minority, as much as I hate to say it.

 

[XCV330]

I've never thought that much about Kes...........ever.

I do when I pass the mop section at my hardware store. I'm still not sure she wasn't doing the magic dance behind Bowie in Labyrinth.

That's a sad thing to say. Fury was insulting and wasn't an appropriate approach for the character. Not mad at you, but... I'm struggling to understand why that episode was liked because of the unstable things going to extremes made Kes... useful???

in terms of her character being more interesting, and yes, more powerful in a way that could have continued to get them home faster post-The Gift, even it just meant occasionally going homocidal on Borgs or draining other ships warp cores.

 

[KennyB]

Everything mentioned by you two above is why Voyager ended up in the pop culture doghouse, as shown here. And Lynx, you and this young lady with her Kes fan art are in the minority, as much as I hate to say it.

Damn that Jeopardy clip was painful.......

 

[STEPhon IT]

^ I'm not sure either how Kes was useful in Fury. That said, the idea of a unstable, dangerous, illogical but extremely useful Kes could perhaps have worked, I think. For example a bit like she was in The Gift, but of course turned down a few notches (can't have the ship flying apart at the seams whenever she's near every week, and the show would be over soon if she could just throw Voyager 9500 light years every week, too). It just would have been a fundamentally different character from the Kes we got, though.

in terms of her character being more interesting, and yes, more powerful in a way that could have continued to get them home faster post-The Gift, even it just meant occasionally going homocidal on Borgs or draining other ships warp cores.

I still think Kes was an essence within the fabrics of space-time.

 

[at Quark's]

I still think Kes was an essence within the fabrics of space-time.

Come to think of it, Andromeda had Trance Gemini, a sweet, innocent looking but slightly odd girl, that later turned out to be much more as well. Kes probably would have been a bit more like her in that case.

 

[psCargile]

That sultry voice, though. "Sorry Kes, but are we still talking about hydroponics?"

 

[Dukhat]

I disagree to a certain degree. I think it was a huge problem for the character because she never came across as unique because of that limitation. It could have been a very interesting perspective, where she gets to age, and take a much different point of view that most characters on this journey, that ultimately she might not live to see completed. And, there are times where Kes does show that different point of view, especially in relationship to how people treat the Doctor. But, by and large, what makes her unique is really just there as a "Oh, you're an alien and only live 9 years. Oh, well, moving on." It's emblematic of VOY as a whole of "Oh, isn't that interesting. Oh, well, moving on."

That's what I find inherently silly about the concept, which as the OP stated, obviously wasn't thought through. Instead of an alien with a nine-year lifespan who would constantly age every year that the show was on, they probably realized that there was nowhere they could really go with that concept, so instead they just copped out and made her the same age for several years (apparently their new concept was that Ocampa immediately become fully adult by age two, stay that way until age nine, and then just as quickly grow old and die in the span on one year.) And in that regard, there was nothing really all that different or unique about the character, because we'd only be seeing her the majority of the time as a young woman. They had, what, maybe three episodes devoted to her age-related biological functions?

Actually, what I found far worse about Kes was her obviously forced relationship with Neelix. Neither the characters nor the actors who played them had any chemistry at all. At least they gave her character some redeeming value by learning to be the Doctor's nurse. Neelix had no redeeming qualities AT ALL. He was completely useless as a guide, he was rarely funny (and his role on the show was comic relief), and his job as cook made absolutely no sense when the ship obviously had unlimited power and they could replicate food just as easily as they could use the holodeck. Heck, Tuvix was a far better character than him. Janeway just let him stay because he had some paper-thin 'relationship' with Kes and that perhaps she just felt sorry for him.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

Come to think of it, Andromeda had Trance Gemini, a sweet, innocent looking but slightly odd girl, that later turned out to be much more as well. Kes probably would have been a bit more like her in that case.

Except that Trance was (probably) better written, and was not written as a person who would only live for nine years.

Damn that Jeopardy clip was painful.......

The young people shown in this clip had other concerns and spheres of knowledge in life besides Star Trek, busy at college as they were. That they didn't know the question shown proves that the show suffered due to the way it was handled, or the Star Trek franchise falling off in popularity after Next Generation as Dennis mentioned a while back.

 

[STEPhon IT]

That's what I find inherently silly about the concept, which as the OP stated, obviously wasn't thought through. Instead of an alien with a nine-year lifespan who would constantly age every year that the show was on, they probably realized that there was nowhere they could really go with that concept, so instead they just copped out and made her the same age for several years (apparently their new concept was that Ocampa immediately become fully adult by age two, stay that way until age nine, and then just as quickly grow old and die in the span on one year.) And in that regard, there was nothing really all that different or unique about the character, because we'd only be seeing her the majority of the time as a young woman. They had, what, maybe three episodes devoted to her age-related biological functions?

Actually, what I found far worse about Kes was her obviously forced relationship with Neelix. Neither the characters nor the actors who played them had any chemistry at all. At least they gave her character some redeeming value by learning to be the Doctor's nurse. Neelix had no redeeming qualities AT ALL. He was completely useless as a guide, he was rarely funny (and his role on the show was comic relief), and his job as cook made absolutely no sense when the ship obviously had unlimited power and they could replicate food just as easily as they could use the holodeck. Heck, Tuvix was a far better character than him. Janeway just let him stay because he had some paper-thin 'relationship' with Kes and that perhaps she just felt sorry for him.

How interesting it could've been if her focus being the Doctor's assistant was to not just learn biological functions but also explore and discover her own? I wish there was a path to this angle on Kes' medical career than making an amateurish attempt in getting Tom Paris closer to her.

 

[Oddish]

What I'm getting here is a symptom of just how Voyager was: a lot of characters with intriguing premises, but very sloppily written. Imagine a pro football team building a top notch training facility, getting the best uniforms and equipment available, securing the best players they could afford, and then hiring a washed up pee wee football coach to take the helm. They might be sort of effective if the players are good enough, but they'll fall far short of their potential.

 

[Lynx]

Living life at its fullest should've been the prime essence of the character for me and any further development should be an extension to her character. What your missing about the intrigue of Spock, Garak, and Odo was the struggle, each of these characters had an internal struggle about themselves which made them interesting. Kes would just be a walking, talking Barbie doll without it, her struggle is something which is internal to every human being on Earth. It should've been explored despite how much you loathed it, I thought her character could've related to people who struggle with immortality and terminal diseases.

Her character and her struggle, as much as you disliked it, had something to encounter if the showrunner was willing to go there. There's tons of short life expectancies in the lore of Star Trek and dealing with the rigors of a space adventure series comes with the territory, just observe a random crewmember getting killed off in every episode from every series of Star Trek, but with Kes it was something an audience member couldn't and shouldn't just brush off because she's a beautiful woman who's sweet and kind and witty and could solve mysteries. How about Kes trying to solve the biggest mystery? Herself. To me, it was a fascinating concept which I thought the series had a canvas to explore.

Well, personally I have had more than enough of deaths and tragedies in my family so every time I encounter some tearfilled soap-opera where we have a long, boring series of episodes of someone who is about to "solve the biggest mystery", then I switch over to another channel.

If I want to watch such events, I visit a funeral or start working in a hospital instead of watching Star Trek. As it is, "The Gray Universe" has more than enough of tragedies.

As for Kes, once again I must state that there were much more interesting things to build stories around when it comes to her personality and her way to handle problems, conflicts and dangerous situations.

Other great characters like Quark and Garak didn't have to be involved in some gloomy "I'm going to die soon" scenario to be exciting and interesting. Their personalities were good enough to build good stories arond them.

I think it started the ennui that prevented audiences from getting interested in Enterprise, combined with Enterprise's own bad first two seasons (yes yes, there are nice bit's of season 1 and 2.. why do people defending Season one of Enteprise sound like people defeinding New Jersey "but if you get down to Cape May, you know, s'not so bad, really.." I digress). Voyager didn't help.


Oh back to Kes. I guess I'm one of those few that actually liked Fury. I would have liked to have seen a far more unstable, dangerous, illogical but extremely useful Kes. I wish they had brought her back for more visits afterword's, especially a finale. Bryan Fuller had figured out the character when it was already too late.

Personally I don't understand how anyone can like that piece of crap. I hate it and will continue to do so. And if I ever meet Brannon Braga or Rick Berman over a cup of coffee and having a nice conversation with them about Star Trek in common, then I would tell them very nice and politely how much I hate that episode and question toe decision to make it in the first place.

Kes could have been used in more dangerous situations without being ruined and humiliated as a character. Cold Fire and Persistence Of Vision are such episodes where Kes actually saves the ship too.

Everything mentioned by you two above is why Voyager ended up in the pop culture doghouse, as shown here. And Lynx, you and this young lady with her Kes fan art are in the minority, as much as I hate to say it.

And do I care? No?
Did the people of Estonia care when they wanted independence and the Soviet leaders told them that they were only 1,5 million people and a minority in the Soviet Empire and that their opinion didn't matter? No!

They knew that their struggle was fair and justified.

And so do I.

it doesn't matter if it's about the freedom of a small country, an ice-hockey team, a rock band or a fictional character in a series. If you are involved in something which you really like, then you stand up for it when necessary.

 

[Lynx]

What I'm getting here is a symptom of just how Voyager was: a lot of characters with intriguing premises, but very sloppily written. Imagine a pro football team building a top notch training facility, getting the best uniforms and equipment available, securing the best players they could afford, and then hiring a washed up pee wee football coach to take the helm. They might be sort of effective if the players are good enough, but they'll fall far short of their potential.

That was one of the best comments I've read.
It perfectly sums up everything which was good and bad with Voyager

 

[Oddish]

That was one of the best comments I've read.
It perfectly sums up everything which was good and bad with Voyager

Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Much appreciated. I was just watching the Voyager retrospective, and Kes was envisioned as having less than ten years, but seeing the value, the gift, of every day of her short life. They could have done something amazing with that.

 

[susannah]

Everything mentioned by you two above is why Voyager ended up in the pop culture doghouse, as shown here. And Lynx, you and this young lady with her Kes fan art are in the minority, as much as I hate to say it.

The Jeopardy! clip is sad not only because the contestants clearly had no love of ST, but also because the questions were pretty dull. The fan art is terrifying.

As for Kes, once again I must state that there were much more interesting things to build stories around when it comes to her personality and her way to handle problems, conflicts and dangerous situations.

Other great characters like Quark and Garak didn't have to be involved in some gloomy "I'm going to die soon" scenario to be exciting and interesting. Their personalities were good enough to build good stories arond them.
[...]
Kes could have been used in more dangerous situations without being ruined and humiliated as a character. Cold Fire and Persistence Of Vision are such episodes where Kes actually saves the ship too.

Completely agree, well said.

Personally I don't understand how anyone can like that piece of crap. I hate it and will continue to do so.

This.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Well, personally I have had more than enough of deaths and tragedies in my family so every time I encounter some tearfilled soap-opera where we have a long, boring series of episodes of someone who is about to "solve the biggest mystery", then I switch over to another channel.

If I want to watch such events, I visit a funeral or start working in a hospital instead of watching Star Trek. As it is, "The Gray Universe" has more than enough of tragedies.

As for Kes,

Exactly, because as much as you can't face it; this was something at least for the crew of writers should've set the ground works on. I don't particularly want to see something like what you mentioned on Star Trek but could there have been something more? I don't believe death was the outcome for Kes but I did believe she would be the crucial part for Voyager getting home. Probably this is too much for you to understand, I thought VOY abandoned the mystery of her manipulating space-time and I thought this element of the character was a clue the 9 year existence was a misunderstanding and was something more and be explored. Kes just being a pretty faced Barbie doll and being sweet and nice makes her bland, what was given allowed her to branch off and experience things a lot faster than another person had too, but also there's something interesting about a person and how valuable they are when they're around.

That was one of the best comments I've read.
It perfectly sums up everything which was good and bad with Voyager

There are many VOY fans who undoubtedly believe the addition of Seven of Nine was the improvement over Kes. Kes for many Voyager fans was the bad. I don't believe this but there was something about the addition of having a younger looking counsellor Troi type for fan boys to ogle over felt like the genesis of the character of Kes. Eye candy for the male navel gazers.

 

[XCV330]

Personally I don't understand how anyone can like that piece of crap. I hate it and will continue to do so. And if I ever meet Brannon Braga or Rick Berman over a cup of coffee and having a nice conversation with them about Star Trek in common, then I would tell them very nice and politely how much I hate that episode and question toe decision to make it in the first place.

Fair enough. I liked it because thing's don't always work out, or at least not all at once. After her ascension Kes was a new person in some ways. It's not unreasonable to think that things could have gone wrong, or at least not the way she'd hoped, and that might turn to rapid negativity. They usually show Godlike Overpowered Beings in trek to have their dangers and instabilities, and Kes was no exception. Having said all that, Fury needed a sequel or two.