Kazon - did you like them as villains? Just a fun little question. They were pretty big in Season One, after all.
I believe the original intention for the Kazon was that they were supposed to be space pirates, or some kind of insterstellar biker gang. You can even see some of that with the design of their ships (don't tell me that you can't see the outline of a crotch-rocket motorcycle sans wheels when you look at a Kazon raider ) However, the Kazon as eventually envisioned were really nothing more than Klingon carbon copies, without the actual honor code that made the Klingons more interesting than the cardboard villains they were in TOS. I think the space pirate angle would have worked far better.
If you search on "Kayzon" you'll find nothing, because you've spelled it wrong. It's actually spelled as "Kazon." Here are a few links to chew on: The Kazon The Kazon, worst Star Trek villains ever? IMHO, they were a poor excuse for "Klingon-lite". And I just couldn't get used to their bonsai hair styles--aliens with mini shrubberies growing out of their heads?
I think they were good. Their biggest flaw was being too similar to the the Klingon. If they didn't look so much like the semi-retarded half cousins of the Klingons they might have been received a bit better. I think they functioned well as an early enemy for Voyager though, and they were kind of interesting since they were more primitive and less honorable than Klingon.
I didn't like them. They came off as low-rent Klingons and by having them so less advanced or overpowered by Federation tech from the jump made them pretty weak on the threat scale. It also didn't much sense that the Kazon were hurting for tech when they were riding around in those nice Trabe vessels. The Trabe would've made better villains. Also, I think early on the Vidiians should've been the primary adversary. Whereas TNG quickly changed course when they found out that the Ferengi weren't going to work, VOY kept plugging away at trying to make the Kazon work and it just didn't. I also found it offensive that the Crips and Bloods gangs were the inspiration for the Kazon (found that out later). For one, both gangs are far more lethal and it might be an insult to them both . Two, these gangs are heavily populated by African Americans and I didn't like the implications of that when the Borg revealed that the Kazon were unworthy of assimilation, i.e. they are worthless, have nothing of value.
Yeah, I was heading out the door to graduate school. Sadly, I hit a typo and now it's too late to edit the title. Don't you just hate when that happens? Mister or Mrs Moderator - could you fix it? EDIT: Anywho, basically, I really liked the Kazons. I think it's too often people try and create giant space empires who are going to conquer the universe when it's much more interesting to just go the Star Trek route and have criminal syndicates, terrorists, and so on. The Kazon are a bunch of a space pirates, raiders, and scumbags. They also lack the whole Klingon honor thing - which got tired at times given that they routinely displayed a distinct LACK of it. Re: The Crips and Bloods thing I think that's stretching the metaphor a bit more. I took it as a not so-subtle dig to the fact that the Kazon were considered crud-villains even by the writers. Besides, I don't think that most African Americans would have a problem mocking street gangs. If the Borg said they didn't think the Italian Mafia was worth assimilating, it would be the same case. (Not that I'm an apologist - Star Trek *DOES* have some unfortunate race stuff - see Insurrection)
The problem was that for them to be successful space pirates, there had to be some thought put into the political setting of where VOY started. For them to be any real threat at all, there has to be something preventing the other local species from basically forming a "Space Police" force to deal with them. If something has happened to keep local civilization from getting to that point, giving the Kazon freedom to act the way they do, then maybe there's a potentially good plot of VOY looking into this (inadvertently or deliberately). As it is, they basically made the Kazon out to be like Lord Humungus' Raiders from "Road Warrior" except there's no fuel shortages and civilization hasn't fallen apart. IE, quite meaningless.
Yeah, Voyager was too intent on continuing their indefinite one way trip, when they should have been getting involved in exploring their surroundings. It would have been more interesting all around and had potential for more creative plot arcs.
I thought the whole point of the Delta Quadrant is there's no Federation or space empires, so the Kazon were basically able to do what they wanted. Sort of like if they showed up on Earth in our time. Even though they're idiots, they can do what they want.
Thing is, the show never elaborated on that. There was little to no effort made by the production staff into exploring just what the area of space the Kazon inhabited was like, what it must've been like for other species who were preyed upon by the Kazon or forced to pay them tribute as a Interstellar Protection Racket, and what the appearance of a group of advanced folks from a far more tamed civilized area would do to the socio-political order of things. And without that, there's little point to giving your enemies much depth since they'll just end up as cardboard cutout baddies without a defined context to fit into.
Yeah the Kazon were good, not the most in-depth villains but alright. I noticed in season 2 of VOY the Kazon story arc that to me was emulating what DS9 was doing; making complicated story arcs. It probably the only time when VOY felt a little like DS9, and I liked that.
Yeah, but there's a balance. It's not like we wanted the Delta Quadrant to be utterly defined either. One thing I did like was, eventually, the Voyager just left the sphere of these races' influence.
That was just another thing that made things hard: Constantly leaving and entering new places meant all their hard work in defining aliens and their surroundings always would have to go out the window every few episodes. Can't blame the writers for being PO'ed over that. I mean, in Farscape they never left the area that the Peacekeepers and Scarrans lived in and no one minded.
I think the problem with the Kazon was they didn't make define their culture well enough to that everybody keep comparing them to Klingons. There were too many factions. There should have been only two, both fighting to take over Voyager. Chullah and Jaben should have been the heads of both their sects. That way, it would be just two warring sects chasing down Voyager. It would help flesh out the gangster nature of the Kazon operate via a pissing contest between the two Maj'es. The Kazon, not the Caretaker should have been the ones that killed off half the Voyager and Maquis crew. They should have been the threat that forced both crews to work together. Seska should have allowed herself to be abused by Chullah while manipulating him sexually to get what she wanted. The Kazon needed to talk less and shoot more. For a gang, they weren't violent at all. However, I still would have kept the story of the Kazon being formerly oppressed by the Trabe. I also would have done a story about a growing group of pacifist Kazon who are trying to reunite the sects by teaching them to regain their lost culture. The Kazon as villains simply put, weren't villainous.
Don't be. Being a Borg drone is equal to being a slave. If the Kazon are equal to African-Americans, then we will be the only free people in the universe.