It isn't just you. DS9 truly shined with no bad or boring characters. Hell, a LOT of their secondary/recurring characters (Nog, Martok, Dukat, Winn, etc.) got better development than most leads from VOY and ENT.
Kes, Possibly the Worst Lead Character of the Berman Era? Maybe Kim? Mayweather? Troi? Other?
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A protracted quarrel between Starfleet and Maquis - in that situation - would have been ridiculous.
Kes the worst character? What in the world are you talking and writing about?
She's definitely one o the best!
I mean, here we have a beautiful woman with interesting abilities who is curious, strong-willed, determined, nice and friendly but also tough when necessary and with a will to learn and explore and in that way personifies the spirit of Star Trek. What more can you ask for?
Not to mention that jennifer Lien was a great actress who really gave life to the charcater.
If the character had any flaws, then it was that stupid life-span. Obviously the wiriers realized that it wasn't working so they just pushed it in the background instead of dealing with it and gibe her a prolonged lifespan.
Not to mention that Kes like all the other VOY characters suffered from bad writing
But definitely one of the best and most interesting characters.
I actually like Troi but Kes had more edge and was more interesting than Troi, Crusher and Pulaski. kes never became as wimpy as Troi could be from time to time and she was never involved in relationships with slimy characters like Devinoni Ral and Ambassador Alkar. Or Worf for that matter!
She was also more interesting than Crusher and Pulaski. Nothing wrong with them but there were more like ordinary workers on any workplace. Kes was definitely more interesting.
You want bland characters? I'll give you some. Merriweather is probably the best example but the whole ENT gang with captain Woodblock, the downright pathetic Seven Of Nine clone T'Pol, the moving image in the background Hoshi and that silly doctor.
I could also add Wes Crusher, and Harry Kim but those characters did at least have potential who could have been used better. Even Jake Sisko in some aspects too. he was good from time to time but could be quite silly from time to time too. And Seven Of Nine is the most over-rated character ever in any TV series.
However, all of those Berman-era characters still have some value compared to the characters in DSC who were downright horrible and the worst character ever in Star Trek, Raffi Musiker.
And no, I'm not gonna go into Starfleet Academy here.
I think that Kes is unfairly judged by many here.
She's definitely one o the best!
I mean, here we have a beautiful woman with interesting abilities who is curious, strong-willed, determined, nice and friendly but also tough when necessary and with a will to learn and explore and in that way personifies the spirit of Star Trek. What more can you ask for?
Not to mention that jennifer Lien was a great actress who really gave life to the charcater.
If the character had any flaws, then it was that stupid life-span. Obviously the wiriers realized that it wasn't working so they just pushed it in the background instead of dealing with it and gibe her a prolonged lifespan.
Not to mention that Kes like all the other VOY characters suffered from bad writing
But definitely one of the best and most interesting characters.
I actually like Troi but Kes had more edge and was more interesting than Troi, Crusher and Pulaski. kes never became as wimpy as Troi could be from time to time and she was never involved in relationships with slimy characters like Devinoni Ral and Ambassador Alkar. Or Worf for that matter!
She was also more interesting than Crusher and Pulaski. Nothing wrong with them but there were more like ordinary workers on any workplace. Kes was definitely more interesting.
You want bland characters? I'll give you some. Merriweather is probably the best example but the whole ENT gang with captain Woodblock, the downright pathetic Seven Of Nine clone T'Pol, the moving image in the background Hoshi and that silly doctor.
I could also add Wes Crusher, and Harry Kim but those characters did at least have potential who could have been used better. Even Jake Sisko in some aspects too. he was good from time to time but could be quite silly from time to time too. And Seven Of Nine is the most over-rated character ever in any TV series.
However, all of those Berman-era characters still have some value compared to the characters in DSC who were downright horrible and the worst character ever in Star Trek, Raffi Musiker.
And no, I'm not gonna go into Starfleet Academy here.
I think that Kes is unfairly judged by many here.
I'm not talking about open Starfleet vs. Maquis hostilities. I am talking about the inherent tension that would be there because you've got highly trained Starfleet officers working alongside Maquis terrorists/freedom fighters and they are going to view things very differently. But suddenly they are all one big harmonious Starfleet crew. The only one who really ever had any real tension or conflict is the one who was revealed not to actually be Maquis, but a Cardassian.
Agreed.
The butting heads of the methodologies between the groups on how to get things done should have lasted at least a bit longer.
"LEARNING CURVE" was a good attempt at showing this. A shame we didn't really get more. Would have given Tuvok more to do, too.
I think everyone is highly trained in the future.
Fallout from the Eugenics war means that everyone is stronger, faster and smarter.
Anyone can do anything they put their mind to.
Lt. Leslie on TOS was so well-trained and good at his jobs he was in both one of the two original pilots as well as more regular episodes than any other background character. The true MVP of Kirk's Enterprise.
It's possible that everything these people need to know to run a Star Ship, was learned amiably at Middle School.
I've never liked "Warlord" as an episode, but it's easily Jennifer's tour de force in the series and her single best performance on the show. "Cold Fire" is a close second.
"Fury" didn't work for me when it was new and it works even less now. What an utter mess. Kes sacrificing herself to help her friends and knock the ship closer to home should have been the end for the character, going out on a high note and giving Kes positive bookends to her life. But nope, B&B had to drag her back into the show in a woefully misbegotten revenge story that came out of nowhere and sullied Kes as a sympathetic character.
"Fury" didn't work for me when it was new and it works even less now. What an utter mess. Kes sacrificing herself to help her friends and knock the ship closer to home should have been the end for the character, going out on a high note and giving Kes positive bookends to her life. But nope, B&B had to drag her back into the show in a woefully misbegotten revenge story that came out of nowhere and sullied Kes as a sympathetic character.
You know things have gotten bad when your middle school has to eject the warp core.
For some reason Trek writers were obsessed with counselors instead of more logical, story driven characters, like xenobiologists. Troi only really had her 'powers' to fall back on and they were so badly conceived, they sometimes had to leave her out.
She fared better as Picard's cultural attache in season one IMO. If they had dialled down her powers to be more nebulous and made her the A&A officer (Anthropolgy, Achaeology, Ancient Civilisations, Cultural Advisor - whatever A's you like) she could have contributed so much more than she could as a therapist. Hell, they brought Guinan in to usurp even her therapist role - that's how redundant she was.
I think Trek's 'problem' was having 8 regular characters when it only really needed 4, plus 4 others who appear in half the episodes, and 4 recurring guest stars who appeared 2- 4 times per season. They could have padded a bit with extras, bumped off recurring characters, and easily upgraded or downgraded characters.
Kes didn't need to be written off the ship IMO, she just needed to be saved as a guest star for Kes-centric episodes. I mean, seriously, if course she should have been the solution to Year of Hell.
She fared better as Picard's cultural attache in season one IMO. If they had dialled down her powers to be more nebulous and made her the A&A officer (Anthropolgy, Achaeology, Ancient Civilisations, Cultural Advisor - whatever A's you like) she could have contributed so much more than she could as a therapist. Hell, they brought Guinan in to usurp even her therapist role - that's how redundant she was.
I think Trek's 'problem' was having 8 regular characters when it only really needed 4, plus 4 others who appear in half the episodes, and 4 recurring guest stars who appeared 2- 4 times per season. They could have padded a bit with extras, bumped off recurring characters, and easily upgraded or downgraded characters.
Kes didn't need to be written off the ship IMO, she just needed to be saved as a guest star for Kes-centric episodes. I mean, seriously, if course she should have been the solution to Year of Hell.
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Let me suggest that Lien would have been a great Ziyal.
Warning for the slur. You know better than that.
There's a few different issues being combined here.
How well thought through was the character at the creation process?
How well written was the character?
How well did the writers follow through on the original plans?
How well was the character performed?
Star Trek has had several characters who seemed like good ideas at the beginning, and got at least some good writing early on, and whose actors gave good performances in the role, only for the writers to just give up on them.
Ro Laren is a prime example. "Ensign Ro" and "Pre-Emptive Strike" are two of my favourite TNG episodes. In the episodes between those two she didn't get much more to do than Ensign Gates, who was in 48 episodes of TNG. But Michelle Forbes was such a good actor that they wanted her for DS9. She wasn't the problem, the character wasn't the problem, the writers were.
Travis Mayweather had some interesting backstory that was followed up on... twice, maybe? I'm not going to get into whether Anthony Montgomery was a good actor because he didn't really have much of a chance to show whether he could act. But he was on Enterprise. Voyager and Enterprise were the "we came up with so much cool backstory for the characters and we're going to ignore it all!" shows. The producers or the writers decided to make Enterprise more TOS-like by making everything about Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, and Mayweather, Reed, and Sato suffered as a result.
So there were a lot of wasted opportunities, including Saavik, Kes, and many others. That doesn't necessarily make them the worst characters. To be one of the worst characters, I think you need at least three elements: a badly conceived character, badly written, and badly acted. Ladies and gentlemen and others, I give you Jonathan Archer.
How well thought through was the character at the creation process?
How well written was the character?
How well did the writers follow through on the original plans?
How well was the character performed?
Star Trek has had several characters who seemed like good ideas at the beginning, and got at least some good writing early on, and whose actors gave good performances in the role, only for the writers to just give up on them.
Ro Laren is a prime example. "Ensign Ro" and "Pre-Emptive Strike" are two of my favourite TNG episodes. In the episodes between those two she didn't get much more to do than Ensign Gates, who was in 48 episodes of TNG. But Michelle Forbes was such a good actor that they wanted her for DS9. She wasn't the problem, the character wasn't the problem, the writers were.
Travis Mayweather had some interesting backstory that was followed up on... twice, maybe? I'm not going to get into whether Anthony Montgomery was a good actor because he didn't really have much of a chance to show whether he could act. But he was on Enterprise. Voyager and Enterprise were the "we came up with so much cool backstory for the characters and we're going to ignore it all!" shows. The producers or the writers decided to make Enterprise more TOS-like by making everything about Archer, Trip, and T'Pol, and Mayweather, Reed, and Sato suffered as a result.
So there were a lot of wasted opportunities, including Saavik, Kes, and many others. That doesn't necessarily make them the worst characters. To be one of the worst characters, I think you need at least three elements: a badly conceived character, badly written, and badly acted. Ladies and gentlemen and others, I give you Jonathan Archer.
Ro got some good material in The Next Phase and Conundrum
Definitely made me like Ro a lot.
"Seatbelts everyone!" Just got a whole new meaning.
I could definitely get behind this!
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