As a fan of the character, I strongly disagree with most of what you have written.
What I'm offering is the perspective of (at least some) people that rejected the character and 'our' reasons for it, not an attempt at any kind of 'objective' evaluation of the character. If you didn't reject the character, then the reasons I listed obviously don't apply to you.
Secondly, as I read through your post, it seems that every point you had to make agrees with everything I said in the OP.
And so I'm not entirely sure about what, exactly, it is that you disagree with.
First of all, I find Kes a fascinating character who really personified the spirit of Star Trek. She is nice, friendly and beautiful but also brave, witty, determined, strong-willed, curious and have a will to learn and explore.
She has an ability to solve and confront problems by simply moving around them and attack them from other angles. She's a contrast and a complement to more action-minded characters like Janeway, Torres and Seven.
No disagreement there. As stated in the OP and in a previous posts, rejecting the character had nothing to do with the likability of either the character or the actress. It had everything to do with the implausibility of the character. That was a hurdle that quite a few of us were just never able to get over.
To dismiss the character as totally wrong and something which personifies what was wrong with Voyager is not only wrong but downright insulting as well.
Considering we are talking about a fictional character, I contend that it's absurd to say that's either 'right' or 'wrong' to accept or dismiss the character.
You don't exactly say anything in the rest of this post to explain 'how' it's totally wrong anyway.
And who is it insulting to? The writers? Maybe the writers need to be insulted. Maybe if they had been insulted more often while the series was still being made, they might have taken the message, got their act together and did a better job.
However, you do have some points which I at least have to agree on. The character had flaws. But nothing which couldn't have been corrected.
Agreed but it's the fact that they didn't correct those flaws that was the problem.
First of all, the nine-year lifespan. That was a mistake and real stupid thinkig from the writers. A being with such short lifespan could never develope into anything more than a primate.
From what I understand about biology, humans are primates. But I know what you mean. You mean lower primates, like monkeys and lemurs and the like.
Anyway, that's assuming that their brains work roughly similar to humans.
Another alternative is if their brains worked significantly different than humans. They experienced time differently and process sensory input different, etc. Or they were a genetically engineered race with built in knowledge. I would have accepted either explanation but neither was offered.
What they should have done was to come up with a way to change the lifespan to a human one. That could have been ficxed by The Doctor, Suspiria or Q. it took me two minutes to sort that out in a story I wrote, therefore I would have expected more from skilled writers.
I'm a lot less concerned about that than I am in finding an answer for how they came to be in the first place. According to my knowledge and understanding of real world biology and what information we are given about the ST universe, there's no reason to think that such a creature as we are actually presented with in the series could evolve naturally. In fact, it flies in the face of everything we know about both real world and Trekian biology.
And so, just like you can offer up a solution to the 9 year life span problem just like that, I can also offer up an explanation for their existence just like that; genetically engineered slave race.
And I'm not even being original. I'm borrowing the idea from Blade Runner and hundreds of other sci-fi stories that also came before Voyager. Hell, they did it in DS9 with the Jem H'dar.
So, yeah, we're in the same boat here. We expect more from experienced writers. Especially people that are being paid to write.
They could also had come up with something about the Ocampa planet having an orbit of ten years around the sun, thus explaining that kes was only nearly two Ocampa years old when she arrived on Voyager
That works. Another answer is that there is a 'time dilation interference' (or whatever technobabble term you want to use) on the surface of the planet and so that time moves at ten times the rate as in the rest of the universe. Same answer and result in the end, just two different ways of getting there.
But yeah, the point is you and are two strangers just killing time brain storming and we're both coming up with better stuff than the crap they left us with.
The poor Ocampa were also mistreated by the writers. Some of the things the writers came up with, like the nine-year lifespan, the "one-child syndrome" and the mating and child-birth procedures were so weird that I almost still wonder what the writers were on when they came up with that. However, there were also things which could have been corrected.
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Just say they are an engineered slave race. All that makes perfect sense if they were an engineered slave race and their creators wanted to keep control over them and eliminate them if they couldn't.
But as a naturally occurring race, it's completely implausible. That right there is why many of us rejected the character. It's because we didn't buy it. The Ocampa didn't make since in either the real world or the ST universe as we understood it. They were entirely too obviously and blatantly the invention of lazy writers that either didn't know what they were doing or didn't care.
Without the age 2 and 9 year lifespan crap right from the start, I would have just accepted the character at face value without any problem at all. Just another ST alien. No problem.
But they throw in the age and life span and instead of just accepting the character at face value, I'm wondering what the hell that thing is supposed to be. What the hell am I supposed to do with the information that it's only two years old? This doesn't match any of my experiences or understanding of reality or other people or how they understanding the world around them.
Without some kind of explanation for how it came to be and/or how it's brain works, I have no way of relating to or understanding this thing.
But on screen, she's presented as a young woman in her early twenties. The conflict between what we are being told and what we are seeing is so jarring that it takes us out of the story and draws our attention to the writing, the casting, etc. Things that the story itself is not supposed to be drawing your attention to.
The Ocampa are the ST character equivalent to 'It was a dark and stormy night."
but to state "that the occompa broke the Star trek rules" is silly. The introduction of the Ocampa was never any ground-breaking felony.
The Ocampa broke the rules in that they didn't conform to any established standard in the ST universe. Introducing something new and known is cool but in doing so, they need to establish a frame of reference for how this fits in with the ST universe as we already understand it.
That's not the only way that ST: Voyager or any of the other series broke the rules. However, most of the time, the rule breaking happens off screen. For example, hitting the reset button to restore all expanded resources and repair all ship damage every episode.
This kind of rule breaking is allowed to a much greater degree because when you have a week between episodes, it takes a lot longer to notice and there's nothing to stop you from filling in the blanks yourself. If they don't say 'it' didn't happen, then it could have, right?
The crime of the Ocampa is they did on screen and blatantly so and included one of them in the regular cast. If they'd only shown up for a single episode, we would have written it off as a stupid episode and they would've never been seen again. But they including one of them in the regular cast. And so week after week, we are confronted with a creature that doesn't fit our understanding of either real or the fictional ST universe.
And so, again, it draws attention away from the story in which they are present and toward the people writing the story. When this happens, it's because the audience has lost trust in the story teller. To keep the audience and once again engage them in the story, the story teller has to reestablish trust. In the case of the Ocampa, that never happened.
It was just one of many mistakes by those writers, mistakes which in the most cases had nothing to do with Kes or the Ocampa.
You are right. Most of the the mistakes and the ways they cheated had nothing whatsoever to do with Kes and would have and did go on with and/or without her presence in the story.
The same is true for all the ST series. And many other series across all genres.
We just usually don't notice it immediately but only over time and only on repeated viewings if the series is otherwise good.
The Ocampa, and Kes specifically, drew attention away from the story and toward the story tellers on a consistent basis. And once we were looking at the story tellers, we started to notice all the other ways that the story tellers were being sloppy and cheating.
IOW, Kes was a consistent reminder that the story tellers were being lazy and sloppy.
if anything borke the rules, it was sloppy writing in common such as the amount of shuttles and torpedoes which was stated to be limited but all of a sudden they always had shuttles and torpedoes, no matter how many were destroyed. Kes and the Ocampa had nothing to do with that and I must take credit for solving that problenm too with my idea about The Shuttle And Torpedo Building team.
I agree with that. The reason they were able to get away with that for as long as they did was because their wasn't any consistent onscreen reminder that they were breaking the rules.
I think I had your solution. If I remember it right, it makes sense and doesn't actually conflict with any of the info we are given.
Stating that aliens such as Klingons and Kazon were more alien than Kes and that she was "too human" is silly. So what? The whole Star trek universe is filled with aliens who are like humans. They even have dogs, like the Baneans which Voyager encountered in season 1, the planet where Tom Paris was accused for murder.
Again, it's an established trope within the ST universe that there are humanoid species all over the galaxy. But all them seem to have a biology and lifespan that is roughly similar to ours. Creatures with greater intelligence and/or greater mental abilities are (almost) always longer lived. (I put 'almost' in parenthesis because I'm not familiar with any that are not but there might be one I've never heard of).
With Kes, we get a two year old female with the body of a 21 year old of most other species, with equal or greater intelligence of that of humans and with higher mental powers. And who has a life span of 9 years.
This thing is completely alien to our understanding of humanoids, in both the real world and the ST universe.
And I see nothing wrong with the Kes-Neelix relationship to start with either. She was captured by the Kazon and Neelix saved her with the help of the Voyager crew. I can imagine that such an event would make a 18-year old girl fall in love with the one who rescued her, in this case a 30 or so adventurer, no more offensive than having the female main character in an Indiana Jones movie fall in love with old Indy himself.
It's setting her age at two that makes the whole thing so messed up. You're not really treating her like a two year old. Instead you're treating her like a woman that's the same age as the actress.
I think you rejected the character also. You just dealt with it differently. What you appear to have done is substitute your own character in for the one that was actually presented in the series.
The point is that the writers let the relationship linger for three seasons when it was obvious for most thinking viewers that it was doomed the minute Kes and Neelix joined the Voyager crew.
Right.
Kes found a life on Voyager. For her, the ship was a heavenly place with nice people where she could really learn and explore. She started to work with The Doctor and got friends among the crew while Neelix realized his limitations and became jealous and paranoid.
The problem is that the writers couldn't even come up with a decent break-up story. We had that crazy berak-up which occured when Tieran was in control of Kes and no explanations at all why the break-up continued after Kes being restored to normal again. What they should have done was to come up with a break-up story which would have taken place as a subplot in two-three episodes to make it all plausable. But they didn't have the ability to come up with anything better.
It's because the production was giving up on the character. According to Ethan Phillips, a proper breakup scene was written for Neelix and Kes but it was never used in the series. I think he said that they shot it but it was left on the editing floor to cut time. I'm not sure when the decision was made to axe Kes from the cast but by midway through season three, it was definitely headed in that direction.
Unfortunately the rest of your post is a long rant about a lot of things which were wrong with the series itself due to bad writing. It has nothing to do with Kes or anything kes related, only bad writing which affected all the main characters. To blame one, single character for what was wrong with Voyager is actually rude and far from truth too.
I never said that everything wrong with Voyager came back to Kes. I did say that Kes personified everything wrong with Voyager but by that, I mean that everything they did wrong with Voyager, they also did with Kes specifically and she was an on screen reminder of everything the production was doing wrong with the series.
I'm sure that the DS9 writers could have accomplished much more with Kes and the other Voyager characters as well if they had been in charge of the show. If anything dragged Voyager down, than it was bad writing in common, not one, single character.
I agree. The DS9 team had a much better grasp of what they were doing.
And It wasn't Kes and Kes alone and I never said it was. Again, it was a matter of she was on screen reminder of just how sloppy the writers were being.
You also stated that "you've have never once heard or read anyone saying that the show was actually better with Kes instead of 7". Now you have done that!
You're definitely in a minority and the ratings of the show reflect that. But I'm sure if that even counts if you didn't watch the rest of the series.
You also stated that you did quit watching the series after half of season 1. Well, I stopped watching when Kes was dumped. OK, I did start to watch it again two years later but definitely left after being insulted by the writers by an episode at the end of season 6.
I'm curious as to what it episode it was. I lost interest when Tom Paris went to warp 10 and mutated into a salamander. The whole episode was laughably bad and, if it wasn't before, it was perfectly clear from that episode on that the writers had no idea at all what they were doing. When I went back and watched the entire series in order, I skipped that episode.
That was so stupid that I'm laughing out loud right now just thinking about it.
However, I still like seasons 1, 2 and 3 despite the many flaws in some episodes, flaws which affected all the characters and the series itself, not only Kes.
Well, I never said that Kes was the only problem with the show. Again, it's more a matter of she was onscreen reminder of just how lazy and sloppy the writers were being.
