Poll One Must Die...

[Sophie74656]

Honestly if (after Kes) Harry, Chakotay or Tuvok were killed off I wouldn't have been terribly upset.

You could even do something where Janeway had to order someone on a suicide mission and then deal with her guilt over it

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Honestly if (after Kes) Harry, Chakotay or Tuvok were killed off I wouldn't have been terribly upset.

You could even do something where Janeway had to order someone on a suicide mission and then deal with her guilt over it

Interesting but please, spare Tuvok. If Janeway was to lose her faithful& the closest friends, it would be worse worse than guilt for her and she would fall in a deep drepression, deeper than in "The Void". :-(

 

[Ghislaine H. B. BRAEME]

Hey, I see that Harry Kim ‎is very successful here! Oh, poor Harry! Nah, I'm kidding! ;-D
(even another poll would fail to save Wang's role, this time!)

 

[Paradise City]

I thought Tuvok was a superb character. He's my favourite and the best developed on the show.

I think *a* problem with both Kim and to some degree Chakotay is the writers took them for granted because of their allotted positions within the crew.

Kim is a guy hit the worst by being lost in the DQ because he's so close to his parents, he's the innocent one, he's Janeway's protege. You might think that kind of character writes itself as he undergoes the trail by fire that follows on from being lost in Deep Space for decades on end. So the writers didn't properly attend to that character.

Chakotay they kinda thought would fly like Commander Riker 2.0. Although I suppose he gets more material and attention but they relied far too heavily on his Indian heritage. That and the whole no-conflict thing makes him a very santised character indeed.

Kim does well in The Chute. Wang is no Tony Hopkins, ha, ha, but I'd say there's more than an element of mismanagement from the creators in exploiting his character to the full.

 

[DonIago]

The way the poll is going, it seems TPTB should have stuck with their initial instincts...though Kes is still #2.

 

[A Chimpanzee & 2 Trainees]

All I can really say is ... here's how my thought process would go :: dons his shoddy imitation Rick Berman cap ::

I'd start by trying to imagine the series trajectory after each one of them was removed? Do I like where I think it's going, does it have no impact at all, or does it hamstring the series? Janeway's really the only one that must stay.

Second, is there a way to determine likely financial impact on the series (ratings)?
I don't think there's any character (again, other than Janeway) that would by itself make that big a ratings difference, but approaching it from another angle, ratings are steadily and slowly dropping, so what are the new trends in shows that are getting the 18-35 demographic excited? How does Voyager, as a TV production - not just Star Trek, compare to what is currently out there? Is there a way that I can turn the series toward any of these trends, and could that be done by sacrificing a character for another?

Third, could writers still tell the same kinds of stories they want to without the character?
Here's where I think Torres, Tuvok, and the Doctor get saved.

Fourth, how do I judge the work of each actor in front of and behind the camera?
Here's where Paris gets saved. By most accounts, the guy seems to have worked his butt off behind the scenes.

Here's also where Chakotay and Kim are in trouble - one is a malcontent, the other is immature and unreliable.

Neelix and Kes are both redundant in that they are both DQ characters that have minor roles on the ship and can be used in a similar way, thematically, by the writers. Each can have a back story filled in for them to interact with any other new aliens-of-the-week that we want to introduce. Between the two, we need to keep one, and Philips is the better actor so that disadvantages Kes.

So, we are down to Chakotay, Kim and Kes. At least Chakotay has the native american backstory to draw from, if we can ever figure out how to use it. Kes has mental abilities we can probably use, but any story that requires something like that, Tuvok can probably take care of.

In order of most likely to least likely to let go, so far I'm thinking
Kim - from a writers' perspective, a very replaceable character and an unreliable actor
Chakotay - under/un-utilized potential with an actor who doesn't want to be here anyway
Kes - under/un-utilized character with no clear direction on how it could be used.

What's the financial impact of letting them go? Here's where contract terms of the individuals come into play.
I don't know how that affects anything since I don't know what their contracts were like, but that may re-order those three somewhat.

Otherwise, there's the answer - Ensign Kim, you're out.

 

[DonIago]

If I'm not entirely sure I agree with your analysis, I would at least say it's well thought-out!

 

[Sophie74656]

All I can really say is ... here's how my thought process would go :: dons his shoddy imitation Rick Berman cap ::

I'd start by trying to imagine the series trajectory after each one of them was removed? Do I like where I think it's going, does it have no impact at all, or does it hamstring the series? Janeway's really the only one that must stay.

Second, is there a way to determine likely financial impact on the series (ratings)?
I don't think there's any character (again, other than Janeway) that would by itself make that big a ratings difference, but approaching it from another angle, ratings are steadily and slowly dropping, so what are the new trends in shows that are getting the 18-35 demographic excited? How does Voyager, as a TV production - not just Star Trek, compare to what is currently out there? Is there a way that I can turn the series toward any of these trends, and could that be done by sacrificing a character for another?

Third, could writers still tell the same kinds of stories they want to without the character?
Here's where I think Torres, Tuvok, and the Doctor get saved.

Fourth, how do I judge the work of each actor in front of and behind the camera?
Here's where Paris gets saved. By most accounts, the guy seems to have worked his butt off behind the scenes.

Here's also where Chakotay and Kim are in trouble - one is a malcontent, the other is immature and unreliable.

Neelix and Kes are both redundant in that they are both DQ characters that have minor roles on the ship and can be used in a similar way, thematically, by the writers. Each can have a back story filled in for them to interact with any other new aliens-of-the-week that we want to introduce. Between the two, we need to keep one, and Philips is the better actor so that disadvantages Kes.

So, we are down to Chakotay, Kim and Kes. At least Chakotay has the native american backstory to draw from, if we can ever figure out how to use it. Kes has mental abilities we can probably use, but any story that requires something like that, Tuvok can probably take care of.

In order of most likely to least likely to let go, so far I'm thinking
Kim - from a writers' perspective, a very replaceable character and an unreliable actor
Chakotay - under/un-utilized potential with an actor who doesn't want to be here anyway
Kes - under/un-utilized character with no clear direction on how it could be used.

What's the financial impact of letting them go? Here's where contract terms of the individuals come into play.
I don't know how that affects anything since I don't know what their contracts were like, but that may re-order those three somewhat.

Otherwise, there's the answer - Ensign Kim, you're out.

I agree with this, well said

 

[Refuge]

I maintain I wouldn't want any to have gone.. and Seven was a popular addition.

To me they made the easy choice in the end, in that they swapped an apple for an apple. Blonde young woman gets replaced by blonde young woman.

 

[fireproof78]

I maintain I wouldn't want any to have gone.. and Seven was a popular addition.

To me they made the easy choice in the end, in that they swapped an apple for an apple. Blonde young woman gets replaced by blonde young woman.

Which begs the question why the swap?

 

[Refuge]

I agree, well my answer would be there was no need from my fan perspective. I could speculate a thought I had when I wrote the above but it would be cynical.

 

[A Chimpanzee & 2 Trainees]

As far as the swap of Kes and Seven is concerned - I think it really focuses on the fact that they (the writers/producers) wanted to explore the recovering human character arc. They made her an attractive young blond woman in a skin tight suit, I think, in the slight hopes that it would at least attract a marginal number of (teenage male) viewers - but none of that was the real point. It backfired on them in that for a while that was all anybody saw. To those outside that target demographic, it looked like a cheap ploy they had to get over and became an impediment to embracing the character.

Assuming you were intent on having a former Borg (male or female) for the "regaining humanity" angle, you very well could have one of the crew assimilated - if it were a human character, that's really just Picard/Locutus all over again, and that very episode prevents you from really accomplishing your goal, since we already know humans that have only been assimilated for a matter of days/weeks can be brought back "whole".

You could always make up that one of the aliens (Neelix/Kes/Tuvok) couldn't be completely restored. It would be rather interesting to see one of them assimilated and then spend a couple seasons slowly being psychologically deconstructed (more or less) back to the person they were. You could probably accomplish a great deal of the Seven character arc that way.

Focusing specifically on Kes, I don't think it would work. It's not just "one blond woman for another." They spent the entire series up to that point making her as waif-like and innocent. To have her become a Borg would mean that you would have a very unimposing drone running around - one that's only going to live 4 or 5 years?. Jeri has a good 6 inches or so on both Ethan Philips and Jennifer Lien, and I think both of them would have had a problem projecting the same sort of potential menace that at least the initial stages of the character would require.

Add to that the problem that for any of the alien characters, you're not trying to regain your humanity, since you never were human. You are instead trying to regain your former self. A similar goal, but in the end I think also makes it much trickier for some of the audience to relate and/or care about the journey, particularly if the "old self" was a relatively minor cast member to that point.

In the end whether she could or couldn't pull it off, who knows? Nobody ever gave her the chance to see what she could do with such a character, even just as an audition. All I can really say is that visually, I just can't quite see it going well.