You bring up a point about writing relationships on Star Trek. Thinking back, I don't think that was ever a problem with all the shows imo. Sometimes when you had a guest actor as a love interest, either the story or actor chemistry just did not work. There was a DS9 episode where Dax falls in love with that guy from the planet which disappears for years. I remember watching that one with my wife and we both thought it just rang false. The pairing of Dax and that character just did not work. They didn't sell the love story at all.
I agree on that one. That relationship didn't work at all.
On the other hand, that episode Lessons and Picard's episodes with Vash worked. Riker's affection for Troi was always there but they never closed the deal. It was getting ridiculous, but Frakes and Sirtis definitely had great chemistry, and, in the very end in NEM, they finally got married.
I find
Lessons is quite boring and I haven't watched it in years, one of the few Star trek episodes which i mostly skip. However, you are probably right about the relationship. The relationship between Picard and Vash was OK and a bit funny too.
I agree with what you have written about Riker and Troi but there was a chemistry between them and I'm happy that they did get married in that otherwise weak movie.
Being a major TOS fan, of course you had Kirk hooking up every other episode. Sometimes it was too much, because, being an episode, it happened too fast for him to go head over heels for. Same with some guest star TNG episodes and the like. But you can definitely see that Kirk was attracted to beautiful women, the sexier the better (which was another thing TOS will always have over its decedents).
Kirk was Kirk!
The Kes-Neelix pairing, I'm sorry, but that will never ever look right to me. It was wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think that it was OK in the beginning due to the fact that he saved her from the Kazon. But they basically started to develop in different direction as persons as soon as they became crewmembers on Voyager and that relationship should have ended in season 2.
As for the "age thing", I don't look at numbers. Kes was equivalent to a 18-20 years old, Neelix was in his thirties. Not that big difference. I've seen worse, mostly in the entertainment business.
Troi-Worf, I thought, was an interesting development, but man, it came so late in the day for TNG. It didn't really have anywhere to go, especially when Worf appeared on DS9 and later hooked up with Dax.
I never saw any chemistry between Troi and Worf. It felt artificial, just like if they just had to pair off Troi with anyone , except Riker.
Worf/Dax was acceptable but not that good. To be honest, I'd rather had Bashir/Dax.
You're right about Chakotay-Seven, though. That was incredibly forced. There was no indication whatsoever that those two characters had any attraction and there was 0 chemistry. That was a bad bad call by the showrunners.
As for my dislike for Chakotay, I've been thinking about that. I've been reading Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove novels (reading Buffalo Girls now, read these books, they are classics), and I've found the Indian characters (I'm calling them that out of affection, I know they're really Native Americans) just so fascinating. For example, the Comanches and Apaches in the book are incredibly fierce and proud and are just better warriors and survivors than most of the white men. The Call character in the book realizes how much better they are in a fight. They can take out 3 or 4 white men, even Texas rangers, for every Indian they kill. And the stories, backgrounds, wisdom of these characters is just amazing.
I look at Chakotay and he's from a fake Tribe, and his treatment as an Indian character is so superficial. I've seen so many great Indian actors in the Westerns I've been watching lately. Beltran's Chakotay was just really boring to me. It's a huge let down on what could've been a great character and I think that's just a shame. It just seems like a complete mess up with both the casting and the writing.
Chakotay/Seven was downright insulting. A deliberate slap in the face to those who wanted a Chakotay/Janeway relationship. Sometimes I get the impression that those in charge of the show were deliberately out to insult certain fans at the end of the show.
As for Chakotay, I can mention that my father was a great fan of Wild West books, TV series and movies and he read and knew a lot about the American Indians and Wild West in common. That made me interested as well and I've also read a lot about the American Indians. I haven't read the books you are mentioning (yet) but I saw the TV series Lonesome Dove.
Unfortunately I ave to agree on what you write about Chakotay but it wasn't Beltran who screwed up but the writers and producers ov VOY. They could have come up with a great character but they totally blew it. What I've read somewhere, they had obviously hired some "expert" who turned out to be bogus and then they came up with that s**t about the "rubber tree people" and all that instead of creating a real tribe for Chakotay. Even me with my quite limited knowledge about American Indians could have come up with something better.
However, I do like the premise for Chakotay. He could have been the best First Officer ever in a Star Trek series and there were some good episodes with him in the first three seasons plus Nemesis in season 4 before they basically wasted him. Beltran did what he could with what he got but I can understand why he had a conflict with those in charge.
Harry Kim just came across as whiny and petulant. Never liked him.
Unfortunately he does sometimes.
But the character had premise too. He was supposed to be a computer whizz kid and in the Voyager novels from seasons 1, 2 and 3, he's actually doing more than being "young Ensign Kim" and the whipping boy of the series.
If VOY had had better writers, he could have turned out like tim McGee in NCIS who developed from something of a nerd to a skilled and reliable field agent.
Kes, again, was too twee for me. I felt the same kind of way for first season Deanna Troi, honestly, and with other touchy-feely characters like Adira, Gray, and Tilly on Disco. It has nothing to do with Ms. Lien's abilities at all. I think she showed off what she could do, especially in an episode like Warlord.
There are just some characters that you can connect with and you like and some of that is subjective.
I don't dislike Troi, a likeable character actually but I think that Kes had a lot more edge than Troi ever had. Kes was smart, brave, curious and strong-willed while Troi came out as quite whimpy now and then, not to mention her lousy relationships.
And comparing Kes with any DSC character is like comparing a top NFL, NBA or NHL team with some fifth rate teams in a beer-league or comparing Iron Maiden with some bunch of 11-year old kids who hardly have learned th play the riff in Deep Purple's classic tune "Smoke On The Water.
Of course, liking of characters
is subjective and I do have my special favorites.
Raffi is cool, don't understand why she is on that list.
Because she's a horrible character, actually worse than the DSC characters too.
A typical product of current "Gloom Trek".
She was highly unlikable in PIC and downright disgusting in a book I read.
, Chakotay-Seven.....not to mention Troi's weird relationships with different slimy characters like Devinoni Ral and Ambassador Alkar. Neelix-Kes was OK to start with, due to Neelix being a hero for Kes when he saved her from the Kazon-Ogla but should have ended much earler, already in season 2 and in a more realistic way than the weird scenario in the otherwise great episode Warlord.
