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Hot Take: Ezri Dax and Jake Sisko are way more rounded characters than Chakotay, Kim and Mayweather

A

Abi Smith

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Despite Ezri appearing for only a season and Jake appearing in far less episodes than a main character should, they are shown to possess far more depth in their story arcs, personal relationships and effect on narrative.

Chakotay, Kim and Mayweather are so underdeveloped, such a shame that these members of bridge crews are surplus to requirement.

Defend these characters, show me the error of my ways if you can.

PS I have nothing against the actors, they were just given nothing to work with.
 
I mostly agree. But didn’t they do a few eps about Chakotay’s youth and his Spirit Trips?
As for the others, Robin Lefler had more character development than Kim and Mayweather, and she’s in only 2 eps!
 
I agree about Ezri, good character, good actress, she only got one year but she was believable as a character. She worked well with the ensemble of characters especially Worf.
 
I've always had a soft spot for Ezri; her quirky, adorkable personality made a very good job of separating her character from Jadzia and she integrated very well into the main cast for the short time she got. Jake was a good character, especially whenever he appeared together with his family or Nog, but as the plot became focused on the war, the storylines that could properly utilize his character quickly evaporated and whenever he appeared outside his interactions with his family, he stuck out like a sore thumb. But I'd still place him over Chakotay the line-reading piece of wood, Travis the talking autopilot and Kim the eternal ensign.

In Kim's defense though, his butt monkey status at least makes him enjoyable, albeit unintentionally. Travis was so bland that I almost expected Enterprise to end with Archer opening the valve at the back of his head and letting the air out of him so that he could stuff him back into his box.
 
Infern0 said:
And all are more developed than owosekun, detmer, and the other two
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You'd hope so, given that they were main cast members and Detmer, Owosekun, Rhys and Bryce are essentially extras, filling the role that various supernumeraries filled in other series.

That's like saying that they're more developed than Rager, Leslie, Broik and co.
 
donners22 said:
You'd hope so, given that they were main cast members and Detmer, Owosekun, Rhys and Bryce are essentially extras, filling the role that various supernumeraries filled in other series.

That's like saying that they're more developed than Rager, Leslie, Broik and co.
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Always with the excuses. The reason they aren't developed is to not take away from Michael borenhams screen time zzz
 
I loved Ezri, I liked that they gave her enough episodes early to help separate her from Jadzia. I also liked that she played well off the rest of the cast.

Jake offered an interesting view as someone close to star fleet but not a member. I also loved the relationship between him and Benjamin, I am so glad that his decision to not join star fleet was not a cliche need-to-rebel-against-expectations so much as him finding his own right path in life.

Kim and Chakotay I think both had a problem of filling a specific role on the ship and not really having anywhere to grow. I know Chakotay gets a lot of flak for his acting but I thought he had better moments then many of the main cast.

Mayweather.... yikes. I liked the character concept , younger/but more experienced at the same time offered some unique possibilities. That being said, some of his dialog was so Stiff! it felt like he was reading words from a teleprompter without ever having seen them before. His speech where hes trying to convince the other boomer dude to surrender is so monotone; its ironic that half way through the speech Archer gets kind of annoyed with how long its taking.
 
Abi Smith said:
Despite Ezri appearing for only a season and Jake appearing in far less episodes than a main character should, they are shown to possess far more depth in their story arcs, personal relationships and effect on narrative.

Chakotay, Kim and Mayweather are so underdeveloped, such a shame that these members of bridge crews are surplus to requirement.
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Thanks, Captain Obvious.
 
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Yes, a "hot take"....15-20 years after the shows were over.

:lol:

I didn't like Ezri that much, but I agree that Jake was a better character than Chakotay, Mayweather, or Kim.
 
I like it when a show focuses on a small core group of characters instead of getting into all kinds of convoluted drawn-out soap opera drama with everybody on board.

Kor
 
The 'Hot Take' was a smidge of sarcasm, but my point was that even two much maligned characters on DS9 were much better served than well-liked (by some) and supposedly main characters who appeared on subsequent shows where the creators should have learned. Over the course of 7 seasons for Voyager and 4 for Enterprise these characters failed to grow when Ezri did it a season.
 
Abi Smith said:
The 'Hot Take' was a smidge of sarcasm, but my point was that even two much maligned characters on DS9 were much better served than well-liked (by some) and supposedly main characters who appeared on subsequent shows where the creators should have learned. Over the course of 7 seasons for Voyager and 4 for Enterprise these characters failed to grow when Ezri did it a season.
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Robert Beltran as Chakotay got done dirty by the Voyager producers.

I have a strong suspicion that he was supposed to be far more rougeish than he was, and a stark contrast to Janeway.

Instead he was turned into space zen master with no personality.

His best moment was facing off against Janeway in equinox. I got excited for a minute as I thought he was gonna do something bad ass finally. But he was soon back to bland ol Chipotle.
 
I agree with what others have said here.

Ezri was a good character, played by a good actor (much better than Terry Farrell IMHO), and a good addition to the final season of DS9. She's unfortunately not remembered fondly because her focus episodes were mostly not good. Afterimage was below-average, and Prodigal Daughter was absolutely terrible. Field of Fire was the only one which really gave us anything interesting, or even watchable.

Jake was great - in a lot of respects I'd argue he was Wesley done right - a kid just allowed to be a kid. While he had his off episodes - like The Muse - he also had fantastic ones like In The Cards. Cirroc was criminally underused in the later seasons for some reason. I don't understand why anyone would be annoyed by him.

Chakotay could have been interesting as a character, but I think the original conception was doomed because Voyager's "expert" on Native American culture turned out to be a fraud. Also their decision to back away from any Maquis-Federation conflict almost immediately turned him into a weak yes-man for Janeway. Still, they could have done some interesting things with him, like play up the sexual tension hinted at with Janeway a bit more. Or have him be a dick to the crew - that's part of an XO's role after all - be the dick so the Captain can stay more above the fray. But as a character, he turned out a failure.

Kim was in contrast I felt a relatively well-rounded character. The problem was his character was being a wet blanket/greenhorn, and Voyager's steadfast insistence that no characters grow and change over its seven years meant that he - implausibly - was still acting much the same by season seven. It didn't help that Wang was probably the weakest actor out of the Voyager cast, and every time they attempted to give him a focus episode he tended to flub it.

Mayweather was, of course a joke. But every time they tried to give Anthony Montgomery a more substantive role - a bit of focus, like when he ran into other boomers - he showed he just didn't have the range for it. He was a mistake in casting, and eventually they realized it and started treating him as just an extra.
 
I already liked Ezri more than most of the cast of Voyager, pretty much all the cast of Enterprise and definitely all the cast of Discovery by the end of S7 Episode 2.
 
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