I'm just curious what people thought of the character? What did you like? What did you hate about her? I'm asking because I thought her the doctor and Janeway were the 3 best written characters through the 1st 4 seasons and felt it was a shame they let her go. What did you guys think of her and the decision to let her instead of Harry Kim?
Best character in the series. What do I like with the character: Her personality, her looks, her ways to solve problems, her curiosity, being brave and determined, her mental abilities. What do I dislike: Nothing. (OK, the six-year lifespan was a silly mistake from the writers but doesn't ruin the total impression of the character) It was a shame to dump the charcter. I like Kim too and didn't want to see anyone of those great Voyager characters go but if they absolutely had to dump anyone, then Kim would have been a better choice.
I thought the 9 year lifespan was brilliant, but they didn't use it as it was meant to be since on network TV they really don't let the characters change and grow significantly over the course of the series. In one ep, we saw her potential, Before & After. IMO that was what they should have done in the 3 or the 7 seasons of the show. Let her grow up and then grow old. Otherwise, I loved her spunk, she was the only one besides Tuvok who was willing to go after Janeway the way she did in season 1-3. I loved her evil streak, the way she reprogrammed the doctor's holographic virus to give him a taste of reality, and how she teased him about what WAS reality at the end of Projections. I was happy when she and Neelix broke up, their relationship just seemed "not right". I did miss her and still think she might have proved to be a good counterpart to Seven instead of using the EMH.
Kes is one of my three Voyager favourites along with Janeway and Seven. I found her extremely endearing - and felt her truncated lifespan was a potentially fascinating aspect of the character. I didn't care for the romance with Neelix particularly, but that's about it. If I remember correctly, producers spouted some lame "there was nowhere to go with the character" spiel at the time. What a crock.
We say her time with the kazon was that as a slave girl. I imagined her serving a lot of drinks. The Kazon did not have replicators. Did Kes do a lot of cooking? A lot. In theory, she could have opened a second mess across the corridor from Neelix's kitchen and possibly put him out of business. Think about what she cooks. Kazon Cuisine. (The Ocampa had replicators and no raw resources, so Ocampa don't learn how to cook and can't cook, which makes it by the time they have to resort to cannibalism after the power ran out, a mighty steep learning curve on he catering front.) Janeway fighting tooth and nail against the Kazon while subsiding on an identical diet. That's effed up. If you can't make fun of the enemies food, what's the frakking point?
The thing I liked about Kes' relationship with Neelix is that it grew and changed as Kes' character grew throughout her time on the series. At the beginning of the series she was an impressionable girl who seemed lost without her overbearing jealous boyfriend. By the time she left she was a force to be reckoned with. And I think Neelix's character was better for the breakup. It seemed like he learned something about himself in losing Kes. Which reminds me that Warlord is one of my favorite episodes. She did a fantastic job with that. As interesting as Seven of Nine was, Jennifer Lien is a better actress than Jeri Ryan and it is unfortunate we didn't get to see her develop Kes for the full seven seasons. Having to deal with her shortened lifespan in the later seasons would have been challenging. Too challenging for Voyager writers, unfortunately.
Personally, I found Kes a bit of a bore. The only truly interesting thing about her was her short lifespan which, as others have said, the writers never did anything with. That being said, she was still better than Harry.
One interesting thing about Kes, or actually Ocampans, was that they carried their pregnancy on their shoulders, which makes one wonder about how/where they had sex.
Booooooooooring! I don't feel the character brought anything to the show beyond the first episode. I found the writing for the character as limited as the range of actress that played her. The character was clearly overshadowed by more dramatic characters with bolder personalities too match.
There's this song humming through all the atoms in the universe which told Kes how to dress each morning. That song is Flashdance.
Which characters despite Janeway and the Doctor? As far as I'm concerned Kes was the center of some of the better episodes.
I think it is a little weird to marry someone with a built in use by date in a handful of years. Okay people do that if you marry someone with a terminal illness, and I don't find that creepy, but it's almost like Tom had it planned to have his Kes and his B'Elanna too because after a couple years she's dead and he can end up with B'Elanna. I'm thinking this idea was the brainchild of someone in a bad marriage who wished they had a noble way out. And the baby thing.. would you have a baby with someone if you knew that baby would grow old and die before you were in Federation human middle age? I will give Tom a pass on that one though, probably figured that the super FedMed would extend the lifespan to something with a lot more birthdays. And it's not like Tom has to plan ahead and have children to take care of him in his dodderhood unlike the 99% of the planet earth has ended up doing.
Human beings in the Federation are emotionally more put together in a touchy feely 90s too many hugs sort of way... Does human on Human divorce still exist? (Yes there is evidence of Human on Klingon divorce, but lets be serious. Humans shouldn't even survive a Klingon honeymoon god forbid the courtship.) If death is the only way out, maybe for their own mental health, they don't like to anticipate their lengthy or mayfly lifespans?
We already live long enough that marriage should be 10 year contracts at best, with provisions for children in built.
I really liked Kes, she generally ranks third in my list of VOY characters (after Torres and Tuvok). She was a sweet and endearing character, someone they could've used far more than they did. She had a lot of potential, far more so than the likes of Kim or Neelix. Her being axed from VOY was the beginning of the end for me. What I disliked about her was the creepy "relationship" with Neelix, and how in the beginning she really was really only identified as little more than his girlfriend--it was only after she dumped him that she became a character in her own right, without having her role on the show being hinged on someone else (which is always a sign of poor female characters).
So deep down, you want to be a Ferengi? Although, remember Earth 2? The bitching yuppie couple had a 5 year marriage contract, with an option to renew, that did not take into account the 30 years they spent in stasis during an interstellar voyage... They eventually figured out that their love could overcome anything and they got married "forever". Here's the problem with expiration dates on marriage licences... The price of the wedding day should not be too disproportionate. Lets work it out for each of us personally. The price of "your" wedding day divided by the number of years you were married (unless you're still happily married.) = X. X is the amount of money you are willing to spend on a wedding per year you are willing to stay wed. X times 5 years = ??? X times 10 years = ???