Without 7, how would Kes have saved'em every week if she'd stayed?

[Guy Gardener]

If she could?

Y'Know, if week to week they suffered through nearly exactly the same adventures with Different Blond girls keeping the blokes thrilled.

 

[Akiraprise]

Kes' newly enhanced mental abilities would have likely been used like Seven's nanoprobes to solve the crisis of the week.

 

[Triskelion]

Good question Guy Gardener!

Hm...
Reanimating Neelix...check
Tutoring the Borg children...check
Reliving false memories of a surgical violation...check
Messing with Omega...check
Befriending the Bubble natives...check
Getting drunk and telling the crew that she and the Doctor "are as one" - check.


But...
Singing to Nazis...
Exploring sexuality with a Chakkygram...
Being embodied by the Doctor
Harassing Janeway...
Conducting intrusive research into the crew's personal lives...
Being seduced by the Borg Queen....

That's Annika.

 

[Lynx]

I don't think that Kes should or would have saved them every week.

The point with Kes was that she wasn't a super-hero character. She was an ordinary alien girl with some interesting but limited mental abilities who had the luck of coming on board that ship with its advanced civilization and advanced technology and she was doing her best to be a good crewmember and contribute as much as she could, no matter if it was about growing vegetables, helping The Doctor or use her powers in difficult situations.

To have her save the ship every week would have been wrong. There were other characters who could do that as well.

The problem with Seven in this case was that the whole thing was over-done. All of a sudden she became the main character who could solve every problem with her Borg probes, Borg knowledge and Borg technology, even bring back people from the dead or run the whole ship all by herself.

I mean, Voyager wasn't supposed to be a super-hero show, was it.

By the way, I love that "Don't mess with Kes" avatar. Can I use it on my website?

 

[KimMH]

an irony here is that Seven would have been ideally suited to solving problems as part of a group and NOT super saver out to save tha day by herself. Kes's abilities might have meant that learning to trust other, lesser mortals sometimes is a necessary risk. it seems the bag of tricks each character brought to the show got mixed up in the changeover.

 

[Tachyon]

Kes wouldn't have done it every week. Also B'Elanna, Chakotay, Tuvok, Harry, and Neelix would have contributed more. Even the good old Doc as well.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But hat would mean that they were holding back? Letting Seven do all the heavy lifting.

That's not very gentlemanly or chivalrous, because we would have to assume, since they're not all complete bastards that seven had to save the ship week after week by herself because no one else could.

 

[Triskelion]

I'm really surprised Seven was as assertive as she was. It seems to me someone taken from a collective like that would have to be told every little thing, and would have very little will - rather than the opposite. She may have been more pliable and impressionable than Kes, and thus, more duplicitous and dangerous and also, generally inept at innovating, creating and concluding - and more likely to just spout unexamined stereotypes and platitudes and assumptions. She would have been a wreck not recognizing where she was in the universe, and she would have had far more coping crises and anxieties. At the very least, she would have been inept at some of the most basic tasks, like self-grooming and understanding the crew's subtext.

 

[Anwar]

Well, as former member of a Collective she wouldn't have been as much being told what to do as simply being unified in thought and action with the rest of her group. Thus when separated she'd act more assertive because she couldn't hear the others thoughts or the group action and would have to rely on her own (being "raised" Borg her thoughts would be considered the best and only options) and not consider what others would think since, hey, they aren't united with her in thought and actions.

So to her, since her own thoughts were all that were left of her Collective mind they'd be the best ones to follow and not those of outsiders (from her POV, everyone else on Voyager).

 

[mackula]

Kes would have been able to woosh enemies away about 9,000 light years.

 

[Lynx]

^^
Not with her normal powers, those she had in seasons 1-3.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Another thing you're all not considering about the girl is that as she got older she got more mature. We can all agree that harry was a Child when the show began and Harry was a child when the show finished, but Kes was getting smarter and more talented and cunning as the hours ticked by at a superluminal velocity compared to ploddy humans and stolid Vulcans, that on the ship by the time she was 5, she should have been able to out Kirk anyone on the ship and smile down on the lot of them as children, yes even Janeway, who are really trying their best and it's just amazing that they can walk upright.

Episode to episode Kes would have been the same woman like B'Elanna was the same woman season to season... You know if the writers had chosen to keep her maturity apace with her dwindling lifespan, in the same way that some one twice janeway's age, Neceyev or Picard would seem to be more capable on paper just because they've been doing the same job for a considerable amount of time longer, that equivlently Kes can learn and master any task, skill or discipline a thousand times faster than a human.

Caretaker must have been putting thorazine in their food to keep possibly millions of people just like this content living in a box under a desert with no relief.

y'see, Seven an Kes could have come to have both known just about everything, except that Kes had put her shoulder to the wheel with curiosity that kept pace with her retention, unlike Seven who was raped in the brain until it was loaded down like a data mule with unwanted cybernetics and information, which on the off chance just happened to be useful after the fact.

 

[Fish1941]

Isn't this thread irrevelant? Seven never saved the crew every week. This accusation seems like another case of fan exaggeration in order to bash the show. How typical.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well I was hoping for some substitutions, like how Kes would have had the brain surgery and invaded Ransoms horney Dreams in Equinox, or how dark Frontier would have been about the Queen trying to assimilate kes' Godlike powers or Jennifer Lien kicking the shit out of the Rock would have been funny as hell.

 

[Akiraprise]

Jennifer Lien kicking the shit out of the Rock would have been funny as hell.

That would have been awesome.
Kes could have used some wicked PK Fire on him or telekinesis.
The story potential for Kes makes me wish she hadn't left the show even more.

 

[Guy Gardener]

PK fire is for pussies.

You can't tell me that Tuvok wasn't teaching her Vulcan Kung Fu to help centre her telepathy... I recall a VERY young Sharon Stone talking about how much it hurt to kick and punch Arnold in the behind the scenes for Total Recall.

Shoulder rolls and Judo chops!

 

[Lynx]

I have to disagree with some suggestions here.

As I've written before, Kes was never supposed to be some "action character". One thing I find very likeable with Kes was that she actually was a contrast to more typical female action characters, the point that Kes mostly used her wit and smartness to solve difficult situations.

OK, she had certain powers which she used when she was in real trouble, like in "Persistence Of Vision" and "Cold Fire" but it was never overdone in seasons 1-3. What happened later on is irrelevant since it was only about the attempt from the writers to destroy the character.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We adapt to our environment.

The nature of this question was supposed to be about how would the later seasons have changed Kes if she was faced with exactly the same threats it needed a icequeen to handle the first time around? Could sweetness and light still won out the day instead given the same opportunity and spread? Or would the equivalent skill set of a 19 year old human be different from the equivalent skillset of a 30 something human and young Kes would be different from middle aged Kes?

Lynx, you didn't like how they grew her into a doddering old crone in Fury, but what if she became an older version of exactly what she had been gradually and incrementally? Whatever that really means? Wouldn't that have been a nice journey? but then Voyager was never about the Journey, it was about the destination.

Then as well how would she might have ruined the day as much as save the day as Seven did the first time that we saw?

Would she have awakened the Vadwaar or handed over the species 8472 to the Hirogen for trophy bones? Would kes have been able to withstand the space oddity bullshit that left Seven alone? What relationship would she have taken on with the Borg Children and One? What about omega? Would she have brought Neelix back to life? How many times? Imagine a story where she's bring him back for the next ten thousand years along side her own space goddess immortality and he just wants to finally die... But that's just silly, after all if he died she could get her lung back.

Um?

If she was so antiTuvix, why didn't she ask for her lung back from him?

God help us but would a last minute relationship with Chuckles in Endgame at the 11th hour have been even slightly less fuckedupped? And speaking of Endgame, then surely that story would have been about Susperia, and every adventure beforehand against the Borg Queen might have been versus Susperia instead?

And most important of all.

Can Jennifer sing well?

 

[Lynx]

^^
When it came to face the situations Seven faced, I'm sure that Kes could have handled some of them. In some situations she may have needed some help but so what, she wasn't the only person on the ship.

But it's also unfair to compare Kes and Seven the way it has been done here because they are such different characters, like comparing a goalkeeper with a forward in an icehockeyteam.

Would goalkeeper X have scored the winning goal? No, but he may have saved the last shot which made the team win.

If Kes had stayed, the stories would have been different. If both Kes and seven had been on the ship, we could have had the situations you have described but there would still have been some differences in them.

As for your last question, Jennifer can sing. She did sing some song at a convention many years ago but I don't remember what convention or what song it was.