Pedophilia in "Elogium"

[Mach5]

I suppose this was discussed before, but I'm not a regular on VOY forum, and I just need to get this off my chest.

So, 2x04 - "Elogium" aired on Croatian TV (HRT) the other day, and I decided to watch, since I haven't seen much of the early episodes in years.

Facts established in this episode:

- Neelix and Kes are a romantic couple
- Kes is too young to enter puberty, which technically makes her a child.
- Kes enters a premature puberty, and she and Neelix consider having a baby.

Okay, she's 2 years old, which means she would be like 17-18 in human years... But the fact that its too early for her to go into puberty means she is way too immature for intimacy and sex, especially with a 40-something year old fur ball!

I might be overreacting here, but for the love of God, am I really the only one who finds this episode utterly distasteful? I mean, watching it almost made me puke.

 

[Sci]

I suppose this was discussed before, but I'm not a regular on VOY forum, and I just need to get this off my chest.

So, 2x04 - "Elogium" aired on Croatian TV (HRT) the other day, and I decided to watch, since I haven't seen much of the early episodes in years.

Facts established in this episode:

- Neelix and Kes are a romantic couple
- Kes is too young to enter puberty, which technically makes her a child.
- Kes enters a premature puberty, and she and Neelix consider having a baby.

Okay, she's 2 years old, which means she would be like 17-18 in human years... But the fact that its too early for her to go into puberty means she is way too immature for intimacy and sex, especially with a 40-something year old fur ball!

I might be overreacting here, but for the love of God, am I really the only one who finds this episode utterly distasteful? I mean, watching it almost made me puke.

She's an alien. What makes you think that reproductive maturity must accompany sexual maturity and psychological maturity? Why can't there be an alien species that is capable of healthy physical intimacy and of displaying secondary sex characteristics without reproduction? What makes you think that it's damaging to her just because pre-reproductive maturity sex is damaging to Humans?

You're applying Human biological standards to a species with what is obviously a completely different sexual and reproductive biology and psychology.

 

[Mach5]

You're applying Human biological standards to a species with what is obviously a completely different sexual and reproductive biology and psychology.

Well, when you consider the metaphorical nature of Star Trek, the message of this episode is quite disturbing.

What I saw on screen made me sick, but hey, using my imagination to justify what I saw could work.

 

[Sci]

You're applying Human biological standards to a species with what is obviously a completely different sexual and reproductive biology and psychology.

Well, when you consider the metaphorical nature of Star Trek, the message of this episode is quite disturbing.

What metaphorical nature? What makes you think that that episode was supposed to be an allegory for sex between adults and children? It could just as easily simply be seen as an allegory for the choices women make about whether or not to conceive a child before the age of 35, when conception becomes more difficult.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

It's obvious that she does have the mental abilities to make decisions, in contrast to a human child; she is, after all, given a real job on the ship. Naomi Wildman, for example, was not. So no, there was no pedophilia in "Elogium".

 

[iguana_tonante]

You're applying Human biological standards to a species with what is obviously a completely different sexual and reproductive biology and psychology.

Well, when you consider the metaphorical nature of Star Trek, the message of this episode is quite disturbing.

When you consider that Star Trek, while sometimes metaphorical in intent, is about aliens, you realize that there is no message in this. Klingons routinely practice blood sports, kill each other at the slightest offence and are drunk half of the time, but that doesn't mean that the show support that king of behaviour in human people.

 

[kes7]

That episode was gross, to be sure. I don't think it was meant to advocate pedophilia, but Kes sure acted like a scared child when she realized what was happening, so I do see your point. She acted much younger in this episode than in any other.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

but Kes sure acted like a scared child when she realized what was happening, so I do see your point. She acted much younger in this episode than in any other.

Yes, hot, wasn't it?

 

[Myasishchev]

Elogium fails biology by making a presumption that a Talaxian and Ocampa could breed in the first place. And it actually manages to go downhill from there.

Their reproductive strategies are retarded in one way and out the other, to the point there is no way they are a viable, naturally occurring species. The conception (ha ha) of Ocampa reproduction is so terrible, I doubt anyone even gave enough thought to it to figure in an allegory about pedophilia, or anything.

 

[Mach5]

KES: It's-- It's th-the mitral sac. I-It's... It's where my child would grow. I'm going through the elogium, the t-time of change... when, when my body prepares for f-fertilisation.

JANEWAY: Humans go through the same kind of process. It's called puberty.

KES: But I'm too young, much too young. It usually happens between the ages of f-four and five. I-I'm not even two yet.

Sorry, but this doesn't make Kes look like she's mature enough to have a relationship with a guy 20 times her age... Okay, not 20 times in Ocampa years, but all the same, Neelix is a grandpa compared to her.

 

[Triskelion]

What put me off was the reproductive descriptions and the feet-rubbing.

 

[kimc]

but Kes sure acted like a scared child when she realized what was happening, so I do see your point. She acted much younger in this episode than in any other.

Yes, hot, wasn't it?

Please reactivate your creepy filter before posting here again. Thanks.

 

[JustKate]

I also found this episode creepy and disturbing - I am not sure it was because of pedophilia or just because it was all so, you know, icky. And weird. And not in a good way.

But (as I've mentioned before, so I won't go into tedious detail this time) I did find the whole Kes-Neelix relationship creepy and troubling. During the first season, and probably at least part of the second, too, Kes was just obviously so...young! Mentally, not just physically. She was like this really bright, inquisitive child, and even though she was clearly maturing, she didn't mature nearly fast enough for me to get over my "Stop it, Neelix, stop it stop it STOP it!" gut reaction.

And the reason I bring this up is that I'm not sure if the episode itself was disturbing or if I merely allowed my bias against a Kes-Neelix relationship to get in the way.

 

[Sci]

KES: It's-- It's th-the mitral sac. I-It's... It's where my child would grow. I'm going through the elogium, the t-time of change... when, when my body prepares for f-fertilisation.

JANEWAY: Humans go through the same kind of process. It's called puberty.

KES: But I'm too young, much too young. It usually happens between the ages of f-four and five. I-I'm not even two yet.

Sorry, but this doesn't make Kes look like she's mature enough to have a relationship with a guy 20 times her age... Okay, not 20 times in Ocampa years, but all the same, Neelix is a grandpa compared to her.

Once again, you are operating on the presumption that reproductive maturity is the same thing as sexual and psychological maturity. There's no reason to think that this is true of the Ocampa. It's entirely possible -- and indeed seems probable, given the Ocampa's lifespan and high intellectual and physical maturity at very young ages -- that an adult female Ocampa becomes physically and psychologically mature enough to engage in sexual relations long before her reproductive system is actually capable of undergoing fertilization.

You are, in short, assuming that the Human biological process is the same as the Ocampan one, and this seems an ethnocentric assumption at best.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

but Kes sure acted like a scared child when she realized what was happening, so I do see your point. She acted much younger in this episode than in any other.

Yes, hot, wasn't it?

Please reactivate your creepy filter before posting here again. Thanks.

lol, sorry. My point was this:

It was kinda weird how Neelix was into her, especially seeing as she did act very young in that episode. Still, to call it pedophilia is a bit of a stretch, seeing as she's an alien and all.

 

[Lynx]

Pedophilia in "Elogium"?

No!

First of all I have to state that, despite being a Kes fan I don't find "Elogium" a good episode.

This is one of the few episodes with Kes as one of the main characters which doesn't work for me. Kes is funny to watch when she eats beetles and freaks out but the story itself leads nowhere. There are also some total insane things in this story, such as: Ocampa can have only one child per lifetime, Ocampa females freak out and eat beetles, they got sticky fingers, have to have sex for a couple of days (or hours, or whatever it was) and before that one of the woman's parents must massage her feet until her tongue swells!

And they deliver their child from the back!

Talk about ruining a species. Sometimes I wonder what the "writers" were on when they came up with that rubbish.

Not to mention the stupid life-span!

However, Jennifer Lien's acting is superb and saves the episode.

Simply a bad episode and nothing more.

But pedophilia? No!

Once again, aliens are judged with human standards. Kes was something like a 18-25 years old when this episode occurred and Neelix was about 30-35. I've seen and read about worse examples than that in real life.

It's obvious that the Ocampa "elogium" takes place later in life than human puberty, therefore Kes's surprise and despair when it suddenly occurs.

As for Neelix, it seem that he was dragged into the whole thing more and less against his will.

So I consider "Elogium" a badly written episode but nothing more than that.

Personally I found Neelix interest for Samantha Wildman and Greskrendtregk more disturbing.

And once again it strikes me that Voyager did really suffer from bad writing.

 

[Guy Gardener]

She has only one opportunity to have one baby ever at one particular time in her life which can best described as middle age if she has a 9 year life span... If humans live to be a hundred baring accidents and bad choices, by that reasoning Ocampa would think it off if Humans tried to have children before their 50th birthday. Perverted even.

Neelix and Kes had separate rooms (Twisted) and they might never have slept together at that point, or ever and if Kes can penetrate him with one of her organs in like the 5th episode of season one, then surely a year later, considering how well that went, she couldn't ask him to return the favour?

When Neelix was pondering if he wanted to make babies with her, did it look like he'd had much experience in practising making babies with her? He even looked a little disgusted, and Kex had to verbally assault and even DARE him to get a leg over because he was mistakenly concerned that his life would change by raising a child for 6 months till it was old enough to look after itself and then died of old age less than a decade after that... Idiot thought it was a Talaxian Lifetime worth of commitment. The writers were idiotly thinking the same idiot thoughts because they too were idiots.

In Greys Anatomy and House MD both, the sexy alpha male supporting cast doctors (Chase and Karev) were both confronted by 12 year old girls dying of cancer(All thought is theft.) who claimed they would die of cancer before they'd ever kiss a boy. One of them sexy alpha male doctors made out with the child and the other gave an inspirational speech about hanging in their for the magic and lightning.

God help us all that such awful programming exists in duplicate, which is kinda also like Elogium kind of.

O?

I wonder if Voyager had a spermbank?

You know if the ship crashes and they need to set up a colony that will not die out from congenital moronishness and inbreeding in three generations, that they'd have a few thousand donors in stasis somewhere for just in case to keep peppering the gumbo with fresh stock.

I wonder if the guys on Voyager topped up the reservoir?

And if Kes or another other bugger on the ship could requisition a spoonful as the need arose, like it did in Elogium because the silly hedgehog couldn't sack up and boff the mud muncher?

 

[miraclefan]

I wonder if Voyager had a spermbank?

You know if the ship crashes and they need to set up a colony that will not die out from congenital moronishness and inbreeding in three generations, that they'd have a few thousand donors in stasis somewhere for just in case to keep peppering the gumbo with fresh stock.

I wonder if the guys on Voyager topped up the reservoir?

And if Kes or another other bugger on the ship could requisition a spoonful as the need arose, like it did in Elogium because the silly hedgehog couldn't sack up and boff the mud muncher?

This sounds like either some terrible Fan-fiction or Great writing for once on Voyager!

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

Wasn't the whole point of the Elogium that there was only one specific time in an Ocampan's life when she could get pregnant? So it is not like human puberty where there's a clear separation between the time before when she is a child and the time after when she is not. The Elogium might be better considered a kind of pre-menopause. If that's true Neelix wasn't banging a child he was banging a cougar.

 

[Guy Gardener]

True.

Liked the insult from Alien Nation "Your Mother mates out of season."

Kes' dad died when she was one. Which means that pappy was considerably older than mommy if he died of natural causes, and if that was normal, then all the girls on Ocampa like men twice their age.