The REAL reason that Kes isn't a more beloved character...

[at Quark's]

^Those are good points.

But I still can't stomach it in this particular case, because making Kes transcend to a higher plane was a plot point to give her at least a somewhat graceful exit from the series because she had to make room for 7 of 9. And then they bring her back, just for one episode, for what? Well, basically to tell us that she has failed.

And then we never see her again.

I really don't like that.

 

[Oddish]

There are many VOY fans who undoubtedly believe the addition of Seven of Nine was the improvement over Kes. Kes for many Voyager fans was the bad. I don't believe this but there was something about the addition of having a younger looking counsellor Troi type for fan boys to ogle over felt like the genesis of the character of Kes. Eye candy for the male navel gazers.

It's not a matter of which character was better, but which one was better handled by the writers. Seven was very well handled, Kes much less. Both characters had plenty of potential.

Look at Nog, on DS9, and his utterly transformed character. Can you imagine what the writers who developed him could have done with either Kes or Seven?

But I still can't stomach it in this particular case, because making Kes transcend to a higher plane was a plot point to give her at least a somewhat graceful exit from the series because she had to make room for 7 of 9. And then they bring her back, just for one episode, for what? Well, basically to tell us that she has failed.

And then we never see her again.

I really don't like that.

Me either. Sometimes bringing back a character is just a bad idea.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I kindly wish those DS9 writers had that same enthusiasm for Nog towards Jake Sisko. To me had more potential than Nog but was unfortunately an ever incredibly shrinking character season after season.

 

[Oddish]

I kindly wish those DS9 writers had that same enthusiasm for Nog towards Jake Sisko. To me had more potential than Nog but was unfortunately an ever incredibly shrinking character season after season.

Agreed. What do you think they should have done with him?

 

[Lynx]

Fair enough. I liked it because thing's don't always work out, or at least not all at once. After her ascension Kes was a new person in some ways. It's not unreasonable to think that things could have gone wrong, or at least not the way she'd hoped, and that might turn to rapid negativity. They usually show Godlike Overpowered Beings in trek to have their dangers and instabilities, and Kes was no exception. Having said all that, Fury needed a sequel or two.

The only thing that insulting piece of crap needs is to be erased from Star trek history, from every airing of Voyager and from every DVD and be totally forgotten.

 

[XCV330]

The only thing that insulting piece of crap needs is to be erased from Star trek history, from every airing of Voyager and from every DVD and be totally forgotten.

Well, emotions run high. I understand that. Myself, i think it was the pinnacle of Kes on the show. It was not Lien's best performance, fair to say. It must have been strange coming back to a work environment that had changed quite a bit since she'd been there last, now returning as a guest. Again, just adds to my opinion that more sequels to Fury with the aged-bitter Kes might have been good. Even making her a regular villain. Hell, that would be cool if they got Lien back to voice over Angry Kes in Lower Decks

 

[Oddish]

The only thing that insulting piece of crap needs is to be erased from Star trek history, from every airing of Voyager and from every DVD and be totally forgotten.

The vibe that I'm getting from you is that you weren't particularly fond of that episode.

More seriously, I understand how you feel. Voyager had some brilliant episodes and scenes, but there were also some bits where you just wondered how any writer competent enough to be paid for their work could have thought it was a good idea.

 

[JeremyLH]

Lynx, to get it out of the way from the start, I'm answering your post but not necessarily in the same order as which you posted it.

What I disagree with you most of all is that you have Kes as a scapegoat for what sloppy writers did to all the main characters, not only Kes.
...
Still it's the character you hang out for the mistakes the writers did.
...
What is wrong is that you more and less blame Kes and only Kes for what was wrong with the series.
...
Yes, but that was the writers who were to blame for that, not the character Kes.
...
Which I totally agree on. But what I disagree on is that you're blaming the messenger for the bad news, in fact you're attacking Kes while your post instead should be about the writers.
...
The problem is that you point out Kes as the main problem with the show and the writing, which I think is wrong. Seen from a juridical position, Kes was a victim in this case and not the only victim caused by the actions of a writing staff who, to quote your own comment "had no idea at all of what they were doing".

There seems to be some miscommunication going on here and so I'm going to try to clear that up.

You are 100% right that it's all the writers' fault and that the writers are the ones to blame. Kes is just a character in the story and did not and could not have any effect at all on the problems caused by the writers of the show.

I never meant to give you the idea that I actually blamed the character Kes for any of that. And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how you got the idea that I was blaming Kes. Kes is a fictional character, a creation of the writers and so could not possible be to blamed for any the problems with the show.

So when I, and people with view similar to my own, complain about the character, we are not meaning to suggest that we think that the character is at fault for anything. What we are actually doing is complaining about the bad writing concerning to the character.

If a character is well written enough and well acted enough, they can kind of take on a certain reality of their own in our minds. When I'm watching a good movie or TV show, at least for the length of the show, the hero of the story becomes a 'real person' in my mind. So do the villains and everyone else.

If this happens, then when we complain about the character, we actually mean to blame the character. When people complain about Neelix being creepy for hooking up with Kes, they are meaning to blame Neelix. That's because people actually bought the character. When people see Neelix on screen, he takes on a certain reality in their minds and they treat him as if he were a real person. They complain that he's creepy and annoying because they imagining coming across a real person that way.

Same with many fictional characters.

I understand that and so maybe that's how you got the idea that I, and people with similar views to my own, were actually complaining about Kes and blaming the character.

This is not the case. That, I think, is where we are having the miscommunication. And maybe that's my fault because maybe I didn't make that clear enough from the beginning.

When a character is badly done, either through bad writing, bad acting or both, the character on screen never stops being fictional and never takes on a life of their own within our minds. What we see on screen never stops being an actor or actress playing a role, emoting because the script calls for it and reciting lines. Instead of imagining seeing and meeting them in the world they live in, we just see an actor or actress on a set following stage directions and delivering memorized lines.

In such a case, when people are complaining the character, they are actually complaining about either the writers, the actor or actress or both.

This is the case with Kes. Kes never stopped being a fictional character and never quite took on her own reality in the minds of many people. Jennifer Lien never stopped being just the actress playing her and the character Kes never stopped being some crap that the scientifically illiterate writers had dreamed up.

For us, whenever Kes was on screen, the entire 'reality' of the show broke down. Whenever she showed up, Star Trek was no longer real. Jennifer Lien was an actress on a set and so was everyone else in the shot with her. There was no spaceship, just a sound stage and special effects. No space crew, just actors playing the part.

The character might not have had this effect on you but she did a lot people. Myself included.

To be extra clear about this, I blame the production for this. The writers and the directer and whoever gleenlit taking that course. I personally think that Jennifer Lien did a very fine job with what she was given and I was always perfectly fine with giving the actress another role to play in the ST universe. And from what I've both read and heard from other people both IRL and on the net, most people over all, even those that dislike the character, seemed to have a similarly favorable view.

Lien does have her detractors but since the overall view seems to be favorable toward her, I conclude that her acting didn't really make a difference. The part could have been played by any actress and you want the end result would still be the same for many people.

It was the concept of the character itself that was the problem. I

No, the Ocampa as such didn't break the rules. The writers did! You're referring to the reset button which was even more rule-breaking even if most of that took place off-screen. Just look at Deadlock when the ship is so damaged that it would take months to repair it, if that ever was possible. Still, we have the same ship in the next episode which is set to take place only weeks after Deadlock, as if the whole ship was replicated from scratch.

So the "crime of the Ocampa" is actually a crime of the writers.

That's what I meant. When I said that the Ocampa broke the rules, what I meant was that the writers were breaking the rules with the Ocampa.

However, I think that you're overestimating the importance of Kes and the Ocampa here. Kes wasn't the main character and was never meant to be and the Ocampa never had the importance of, let's say Vulcans, Klingons or Romulans in the series. They were hovering in the background now and then while the viewers were focused on other species. I guess that what made it so easy to simply sort out and skip the crap which the writers had ruined the species with when I watched an episode and instead focus on the good of the character.

It wasn't the Ocampa alone that was the problem. And it wasn't the other ways that the writers were breaking the rules that was the problem. It was the Ocampa combined with everything else that the production was getting wrong. I didn't check out of the series on the basis of the Ocampa alone. I stopped watching after the 'threshold' episode which didn't even involve the Ocampa (I don't even remember if Kes was even in the episode). I'll explain roughly how my thought process worked:

The Ocampa are introduced in the series premier and it's established that Kes is two years old and the lifespan of the Ocampa is about 9 years. They are apparently an intelligent species with some technology. That doesn't fit in at all with my understanding of how evolution and biology works in the real world or in the ST universe and no explanation is given.

But one wasn't necessarily needed. Our cast of characters are out at the other end of the galaxy in uncharted territory trying to get back home and so they are expected to run into all kinds of strange things that they are going to have to leave behind without getting a satisfactory explanation.

And we don't necessarily need to make sense out of the Kes and Neelix relationship either. It's our first encounter with a couple of aliens from unknown races whose social, political and cultural structure is likewise completely unknown. Whatever is going on between Neelix and Kes is their busy and we don't even have any way at all of guessing out it works.

The show moves on to the next episode and the ship moves on to the adventure. If it was a bad episode

But then Kes and Neelix are both brought aboard the Voyager and established as going to be a recurring characters demanding that we make some sort of sense out of them.

I didn't check out of the series yet because I was affording a certain amount of trust to the story tellers. I was wondering where they were going with this. I stayed with the series up to 'Threshold.'

The number one thing I remember thinking while watching that episode and immediately afterwards is, "that is not all how the theory of evolution works."

It wasn't the events of that episode but the dialogue that it made it so stupid. Characters that were trained scientists or had a highly advanced medical program for a mind should have known better than to be saying the crap they were saying.

I became aware of the fact that I was watching a science fiction series being written by people that had no idea how either the biological theory of evolution worked or how trained scientists working in the field discuss things or how a textbook would explain it and that these people couldn't be bothered to do some research before playing with these ideas in an episode.

I had my answer to Ocampa. They weren't going anywhere with it. They had no idea what they where doing with anything. They were scientifically illiterate and too much so to be aware of it. It hadn't even occurred to them that the Ocampa needed an explanation.

It wasn't the Ocampa alone and it wasn't any particularly bad episode alone either. And it wasn't any particular way that the writers were otherwise breaking the rules. It was the Ocampa in combination with everything else.

They didn't need to be main characters. All they needed to be wass reoccurring. So long one of them are regularly showing up in the story, even if they aren't a main character, we want an explanation. We'll stick with it though so long as we have some amount of trust in the story teller.

And then an episode like 'Threshold' (for some of us) comes along and our trust in the story teller is destroyed.

If it had been an episode in an otherwise decently written series (or even an episode in the same series where the Ocampa had normal lifespans), I would have written it off as a failed experiment and a bad episode in an otherwise good series.

But in a series that asks the viewer to makes sense out of the Ocampa, this kind of episode really stands out. With the Ocampa, the introduced a species that defies our understanding of how the universe works and, in doing so, they aroused our suspicions that they might not know what they are doing. And with an episode like 'Threshold,' they confirm all those suspicions.

I never made a decision to stop watching. I just stopped tuning it after that. It wasn't hate or anger or anything like that. I even laughed at the episode. It was just a loss of interest after that point.

By the way, keep in mind that all this is just a subjective perspective of myself and similarly minded people. It's neither intended to 'correct' or 'incorrect' nor is it intended be 'true' or 'false.' This is just how I, and similarly minded people, thought and felt about the series watching it through the first time.

There is no right or wrong in it. If these weren't big enough issues for you to loose interest and you were able to keep enjoying the show, more power to you. I neither agree nor disagree with your perspective of the show. I just didn't necessarily experience it the same way. That is all.

The truth is that nothing got better when Kes was dumped, it got only worse.

In the subjective sense of the enjoyability of the show, that is up to each individual to assess. And so there is no right or wrong answer.

In ways that can be objectively measured, the writers made fewer mistakes once Seven replaced Kes. With Seven, they had a formula and a road map to follow that had already been successful in the past. With Kes, the were operating without a roadmap and so didn't know what they were doing with her they same way they knew with Seven.

 

[JeremyLH]

Adding a woman in latex amd making her the big star of the show might have attracted a lot of male teenage viewers but it didn't make the writing better.

First off, inasmuch as I've your read your criticisms of Seven up to this point, they have always been about the ridiculous outfit they had her wear and to really about the character.

Anyway, the reason she became the star of the show was because since the first time since the show started, the producers had a clear trajectory to follow. Seven came with a road map and they were just following it.

And we had the Trill in DS9, the only species in that series which I did have a problem with due to that weird symbiot things. But I could live with that and I'm not attacking neither Jadzia or Ezri on the DS9 forum, blaming them for whatever mistakes there might have been in that series. In fact, I like both characters despite the weirdness of the Trill.

I never had a problem with the trill because, even though I didn't quite understand how it worked, it didn't contradict what I did understand in any obvious way.

And, again, I wasn't blaming the characters. I was blaming the writers for what they did with the characters.

I find it hard to accept that genetically engineered slave race thing because the Ocampa had nothing common with the Jem Hadar. The Ocampa didn't act like genetically engineered slaves. If they were, kes would have stayed and lived her happy (?) life among the other slaves, not starting questioning their lifestyle and finally leave the planet.

Depends on a lot of factors, like the disposition and the level of technology of the creators and the purpose for the slaves. The Jem H'Dar were created for fighting. The Ocampa could have been created as a kind of sex slaves or for a position in some alien society that we have no equivalent to in the human species. Or they could have been created to be a sentient food supply to a race of beings that eat brains. There's all kinds of possibilities.

But I must agree that the two of us actually have come up with more plausible solutions for the problems than the Voyager writers.

Agreed.

Once again I have to give you some points. Which only make me more angry when it comes to the writers because they could have skipped all the crap and used the good things which the character had.

If I had been the producer of the show, I would have cast Jennifer Lien as a plausible character and kept her onboard.

The writers must actually had realized that some things were over the top because as time and episodes went by, there were less and less of the lifespan problem and all that. It was only used as some leftover in episodes like Before And After when they had to use it for the background story and nothing more than that. It's one of the reasons why I'm pretty sure that if Kes had stayed, her lifespan would have been prolonged. Just a pity that they didn't do that already in season 2 or earlier.

An explanation would have been needed before the end of season one. A life extension would need to have been found early in season two. Some of us in the audience need both an explanation for a character and at least the illusion of a long term investment to actually invest in a character. If the writers want us to invest in a character but the character could be terminated at any time, then they should not let us know it right from the get go that the character might go on any episode. When a character is given an extra short life span right from the beginning of a series, one thing that that signals to some members of the audience is if the production needs to let someone go, this the first one in line.'

To be clear, I blame this on the production, not the actress Jennifer Lien and not the character, Kes.

Once again you have some points. But I must also once again state that Kes wasn't a consistent reminder that the story tellers were being lazy and sloppy since the whole Ocampa concept were shoved in the background most of the time. There were other things which showed their sloppiness more often.

All that comes back to the way that different people perceive the series. Again, most of the time when they were being sloppy it was off screen and between episodes. With Kes and the Ocampa, they were being sloppy onscreen and for a lot of us in the viewing audience, that became a constant reminder of all the ways they were being sloppy off screen.

I must say that the fascination with numbers that so many people have is somewhat disturbing. many who criticizes the Kes-Neelix relationship are complaining about "Neelx dating a two year old".

Because that is what we were told in the series. We, the viewer, were informed that Kes was two years old and then series seemed to present Neelix and Kes as a couple. And so the series itself gave us a scenario of a creature that appears to be in the human equivalent of middle age 'dating' a creature that was only two years old left us to make sense of it.

He wasn't! He was dating someome between 17 and 20 years old.

That said, I must add that I do find the nine-year lifespan disturbing and downright idiotic in many aspects. My theory of a 10-year orbit for the planet would have been a better solution to that problem.

That's not what is actually is the series though. In the actual story that the series was telling us, Kes was a two year old member of a short lived species that apparently aged very rapidly.

To be honest, I'm not rejecting the character, instead I have made attempts to improve the character! Most of the characteristics and the good aspects of her are still there in my explanations and stories.

That's just way of saying the same thing that I did. I rejected what the series gave you and came up with your own explanation and your character instead I'm not disagree with you in the least little way that your ideas are improvement over what the writers gave us because it is an improvement. But, at the same time, you need to keep in mind that your idea of the character is not what was actually in the series and that the rest of us didn't get your version of the character when watching the series. We got the same character that you felt needed improvement.

It's very creative of you to come up with your own, improved version of the character but not all us put that much work into it. Many us, instead, just tuned out or changed the channel.

As for that, you should really need a visit to The Kes Website. Consider yourself cordially invited!

And I strongly recommend a visit to the Voyager mysteries-and how to solve them page which can be found on that site.


http://www.lynx677.tk/

I'll check that out and thanks for the invite.

I'm not entirely sure of that. There are rumors about Kim being the one selected for axing but that the mentioning of him (or more correctly the actor Garrett Wang) in a glossy magazine about "the 50 most handsome" made them change their minds and axe Kes instead. Obviously Lien didn't even know about it before being told that she wasn't welcome anymore.

That's also according to my understanding of it. The specific magazine was People and back then they had a practice of dedicating an issue to their list of the '50 most beautiful people' once a year and Garrett Want appeared on the list the same year that Voyager was in its third season. The article about him, of course, mentioned that he was part of the cast of Voyager and so that was free, unsolicited advertisement. A lot of people read 'People Magazine' back when magazines were still a thing and so that secured his position of the show.

The fact that Kes was their second choice is indicative that by that time, the production had a much better grasp of what was and what wasn't working about the show. Again, I'm not sure when, exactly, the decision was made but episodes like 'Warlord' gave me the impression that they might have already been moving toward severing ties between Kes and other characters on the show to give her a clean break from the show. But it's just as likely, probably more so, that it was just really sloppy writing.

And if they really wanted to axe Kes in season 3, they could at least have let the lieave with that Zahir in Darkling instead of coming up with that energy-being mumbo-jumbo in The Gift.

That would have been a better idea than the route they took. Just about everything they did with Kes was inexplicable.

Unfortunately, your OP points out Kes as the one and only big problem with the show, thus omitting all the other evidence of sloppy writing from the writers.

No it doesn't. I pointed out examples of sloppy writing that didn't necessarily involve Kes at all. I was merely pointing out that the mistakes that they were making with Kes onscreen alerted many of using the audience to the fact that the writers were being sloppy and we started noticing other ways the show was being sloppy as a result.

Other posters on this thread seem to have understood my intent perfectly fine and so I'm not sure how you got the idea that I was pinning everything on Kes exclusively. Or even at all. I was never blaming the character Kes. I was always blaming the writers and just pointing out that Kes was the most visible and consistent example of how the writers dropping the ball.

i'm not so sure about that. What I can see, the ratings tells a different story.

Since the series ran, most of the people that I've had conversations with IRL about ST and most of the stuff I've seen online has left me with the impression that, of the people that watched the series, most of them were bigger fans of the later seasons than the earlier ones and that Seven has a much larger fan base than did Kes. That gave me the idea that the ratings were probably better during the later seasons than the earlier ones.

On the flip side, I'm not surprised either though because neither myself nor most of the people I knew never actually finished the series or even made it to the later seasons during the initial run.

The ratings of the show during syndication might tell a different story than this chart.

Besides that, I don't care if I'm in a minority here as long as I feel that I'm doing the right thing.

We're discussing our perception of a fictional show and so I don't know what you mean by that. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' here, just different perspectives and opinions.

It was a horrible episode near the end of season 6 in which kes was brought back-only to be totally destroyed and humiliated. That episode was a finger up the faces of everyone who like the character and it made me definitely stop watching the series. After that, Iv'e only watched seasons 1-3 on DVD.

I'm familiar with "Fury" and that is one of the worst episodes in the series. I figured that might be the episode you were referring to but I was thinking it was in season seven instead of six.

I have no idea at all why anyone thought that that was a good idea. I'm just not convinced that it was intended to destroy the character or give the middle finger to fans of her. I think it was much more likely a case of having no clear idea at all what they were doing.

There's an episode in season seven called Human Error that's just as bad and does a lot of the same things to Seven of Nine that Fury did to Kes. But the intent of the episode seems to be an attempt at character development, not character destruction. They maybe thought that they were adding to the character and making her more interesting, not undermining our interest in the character. The problem was that whoever wrote the episode didn't appear to be familiar with the character and only knew the vaguest outline of her backstory. Much of what happens in the episode directly contradicts things already already established in the series up to that point. The same might be true of Fury that whoever wrote the episode wasn't actually familiar with Kes.

Of you could be right. Both episodes might have been deliberately made to give the audience the bird.

As for Threshold I agree with you. It was horrible.

However, If you watch the episode and imagine that what you watch is actually a nightmare Tom Paris had after eating too much of Neelix's food,then the whole episode is actually funny.

That's how they should have done it Or once they realized that that episode was a failure, they should have shot a new scene, with Paris waking up from the nightmare, to use with reruns and syndication.

That episode does have a MST3K kind of quality to it and kind of taken on a certain notoriety and infamy as a result. It's the episode that always gets mentioned when people complain about the series.

And I must ask you: Did the series become any better when Kes was out?

In my estimation, in many ways, yes for seasons four through six. The writers had a much better grasp of what they were doing with Seven than they did with Kes and it showed in how they handled the two characters differently.

Of course, that was mostly because they were falling back onto old, familiar 'tried and true' formulas instead of trying to branch out into something new With Kes, they were trying something new but had no idea how to go about it or make it work. Switching out Kes for 7o9 was them giving up on their 'experiment' and instead just relying on the already established, well treaded ST themes.

Season seven sucked. They knew the series was ending but didn't know how to end it and so the entire last season is just episodic and doesn't go anywhere. No loose ends are tied, the characters aren't given any proper home coming. The series doesn't really even 'end.' It just stops.

I'm of the opinion that seasons four through six were mostly a success but the series is otherwise a failure.

I'm much less a fan of the series than I am of the characters in the series.

 

[Lynx]

Exactly, because as much as you can't face it; this was something at least for the crew of writers should've set the ground works on. I don't particularly want to see something like what you mentioned on Star Trek but could there have been something more? I don't believe death was the outcome for Kes but I did believe she would be the crucial part for Voyager getting home. Probably this is too much for you to understand, I thought VOY abandoned the mystery of her manipulating space-time and I thought this element of the character was a clue the 9 year existence was a misunderstanding and was something more and be explored. Kes just being a pretty faced Barbie doll and being sweet and nice makes her bland, what was given allowed her to branch off and experience things a lot faster than another person had too, but also there's something interesting about a person and how valuable they are when they're around.

There are many VOY fans who undoubtedly believe the addition of Seven of Nine was the improvement over Kes. Kes for many Voyager fans was the bad. I don't believe this but there was something about the addition of having a younger looking counsellor Troi type for fan boys to ogle over felt like the genesis of the character of Kes. Eye candy for the male navel gazers.

Honestly, I think that kes could have provided much more for the ship, crew and the whole Voyager story if focus would have been on her personality, her wit, curiosity, determination and for being tough when it was needed, as when she struggled to break loose from Tiearn in Warlord. And she could also have had some limited powers, as in Persistence of Vision than as someone who was supposed to die just for the sake of exploring death.

I would have been as p***ed of if characters like Garak or Quark had been turned into characters who were about to die a slow death just for the sake of it.

Seven Of Nine got many fans because of the catsuit. I still wonder what had happened if they had placed the character in a Starfleet uniform from scratch. Maybe Ryan's acting could have save the character even then?

Or if, let's say Riley from the episode Unity had joined the crew instead of kes in season 3. Would she has got as much publicity as Seven?

It's not a matter of which character was better, but which one was better handled by the writers. Seven was very well handled, Kes much less. Both characters had plenty of potential.

Look at Nog, on DS9, and his utterly transformed character. Can you imagine what the writers who developed him could have done with either Kes or Seven?

Nog is a good example of character development.

Unfortunately the word "character developnet were unknown to the Voyager writers.

As for writing, Seven was a good character which was given decent stories and a lot of publicity, unfortunately more for her looks than for the character itself. Anyone who bought the many Star Trek magazines which existed during that era probably remember that. Was there any issue without a big aricle about Seven or a Seven poster?

Kes was a great character with potential who were given some decent stories but could have been used much better.

Me either. Sometimes bringing back a character is just a bad idea.

yes. Especially when the only purpose was to utterly destroy and humiliate the character.

I'm sometimes questioned and criticized for this but I still beleve that it was a deliberate finger to the fans of Kes who had staged a letter campaign to have her back.

Well, emotions run high. I understand that. Myself, i think it was the pinnacle of Kes on the show. It was not Lien's best performance, fair to say. It must have been strange coming back to a work environment that had changed quite a bit since she'd been there last, now returning as a guest. Again, just adds to my opinion that more sequels to Fury with the aged-bitter Kes might have been good. Even making her a regular villain. Hell, that would be cool if they got Lien back to voice over Angry Kes in Lower Decks

As I wrote before, I will never see The Witch who was supposed to be Kes in that episode again.

I must state that the whole thing with bringing back the character as a crazy lunatic was stupid to say the least. In fact, that really broke all the rules when it comes to Star Trek. kes was the last one on that ship who would become a maniac and try to kill her friends.

The vibe that I'm getting from you is that you weren't particularly fond of that episode.

More seriously, I understand how you feel. Voyager had some brilliant episodes and scenes, but there were also some bits where you just wondered how any writer competent enough to be paid for their work could have thought it was a good idea

Now how can you get the impression that I don't like the episode?

There were a couple of episode in which I really questioned what the writers were doing but that episode was the first one when I really started to question their sanity, purpose and ability to write Star trek episodes at all.

 

[Lynx]

Lynx, to get it out of the way from the start, I'm answering your post but not necessarily in the same order as which you posted it.

There seems to be some miscommunication going on here and so I'm going to try to clear that up.

You are 100% right that it's all the writers' fault and that the writers are the ones to blame. Kes is just a character in the story and did not and could not have any effect at all on the problems caused by the writers of the show.

I never meant to give you the idea that I actually blamed the character Kes for any of that. And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how you got the idea that I was blaming Kes. Kes is a fictional character, a creation of the writers and so could not possible be to blamed for any the problems with the show.

So when I, and people with view similar to my own, complain about the character, we are not meaning to suggest that we think that the character is at fault for anything. What we are actually doing is complaining about the bad writing concerning to the character.

If a character is well written enough and well acted enough, they can kind of take on a certain reality of their own in our minds. When I'm watching a good movie or TV show, at least for the length of the show, the hero of the story becomes a 'real person' in my mind. So do the villains and everyone else.

If this happens, then when we complain about the character, we actually mean to blame the character. When people complain about Neelix being creepy for hooking up with Kes, they are meaning to blame Neelix. That's because people actually bought the character. When people see Neelix on screen, he takes on a certain reality in their minds and they treat him as if he were a real person. They complain that he's creepy and annoying because they imagining coming across a real person that way.

Same with many fictional characters.

I understand that and so maybe that's how you got the idea that I, and people with similar views to my own, were actually complaining about Kes and blaming the character.

This is not the case. That, I think, is where we are having the miscommunication. And maybe that's my fault because maybe I didn't make that clear enough from the beginning.

When a character is badly done, either through bad writing, bad acting or both, the character on screen never stops being fictional and never takes on a life of their own within our minds. What we see on screen never stops being an actor or actress playing a role, emoting because the script calls for it and reciting lines. Instead of imagining seeing and meeting them in the world they live in, we just see an actor or actress on a set following stage directions and delivering memorized lines.

In such a case, when people are complaining the character, they are actually complaining about either the writers, the actor or actress or both.

This is the case with Kes. Kes never stopped being a fictional character and never quite took on her own reality in the minds of many people. Jennifer Lien never stopped being just the actress playing her and the character Kes never stopped being some crap that the scientifically illiterate writers had dreamed up.

For us, whenever Kes was on screen, the entire 'reality' of the show broke down. Whenever she showed up, Star Trek was no longer real. Jennifer Lien was an actress on a set and so was everyone else in the shot with her. There was no spaceship, just a sound stage and special effects. No space crew, just actors playing the part.

The character might not have had this effect on you but she did a lot people. Myself included.

To be extra clear about this, I blame the production for this. The writers and the directer and whoever gleenlit taking that course. I personally think that Jennifer Lien did a very fine job with what she was given and I was always perfectly fine with giving the actress another role to play in the ST universe. And from what I've both read and heard from other people both IRL and on the net, most people over all, even those that dislike the character, seemed to have a similarly favorable view.

Lien does have her detractors but since the overall view seems to be favorable toward her, I conclude that her acting didn't really make a difference. The part could have been played by any actress and you want the end result would still be the same for many people.

It was the concept of the character itself that was the problem. I



That's what I meant. When I said that the Ocampa broke the rules, what I meant was that the writers were breaking the rules with the Ocampa.



It wasn't the Ocampa alone that was the problem. And it wasn't the other ways that the writers were breaking the rules that was the problem. It was the Ocampa combined with everything else that the production was getting wrong. I didn't check out of the series on the basis of the Ocampa alone. I stopped watching after the 'threshold' episode which didn't even involve the Ocampa (I don't even remember if Kes was even in the episode). I'll explain roughly how my thought process worked:

The Ocampa are introduced in the series premier and it's established that Kes is two years old and the lifespan of the Ocampa is about 9 years. They are apparently an intelligent species with some technology. That doesn't fit in at all with my understanding of how evolution and biology works in the real world or in the ST universe and no explanation is given.

But one wasn't necessarily needed. Our cast of characters are out at the other end of the galaxy in uncharted territory trying to get back home and so they are expected to run into all kinds of strange things that they are going to have to leave behind without getting a satisfactory explanation.

And we don't necessarily need to make sense out of the Kes and Neelix relationship either. It's our first encounter with a couple of aliens from unknown races whose social, political and cultural structure is likewise completely unknown. Whatever is going on between Neelix and Kes is their busy and we don't even have any way at all of guessing out it works.

The show moves on to the next episode and the ship moves on to the adventure. If it was a bad episode

But then Kes and Neelix are both brought aboard the Voyager and established as going to be a recurring characters demanding that we make some sort of sense out of them.

I didn't check out of the series yet because I was affording a certain amount of trust to the story tellers. I was wondering where they were going with this. I stayed with the series up to 'Threshold.'

The number one thing I remember thinking while watching that episode and immediately afterwards is, "that is not all how the theory of evolution works."

It wasn't the events of that episode but the dialogue that it made it so stupid. Characters that were trained scientists or had a highly advanced medical program for a mind should have known better than to be saying the crap they were saying.

I became aware of the fact that I was watching a science fiction series being written by people that had no idea how either the biological theory of evolution worked or how trained scientists working in the field discuss things or how a textbook would explain it and that these people couldn't be bothered to do some research before playing with these ideas in an episode.

I had my answer to Ocampa. They weren't going anywhere with it. They had no idea what they where doing with anything. They were scientifically illiterate and too much so to be aware of it. It hadn't even occurred to them that the Ocampa needed an explanation.

It wasn't the Ocampa alone and it wasn't any particularly bad episode alone either. And it wasn't any particular way that the writers were otherwise breaking the rules. It was the Ocampa in combination with everything else.

They didn't need to be main characters. All they needed to be wass reoccurring. So long one of them are regularly showing up in the story, even if they aren't a main character, we want an explanation. We'll stick with it though so long as we have some amount of trust in the story teller.

And then an episode like 'Threshold' (for some of us) comes along and our trust in the story teller is destroyed.

If it had been an episode in an otherwise decently written series (or even an episode in the same series where the Ocampa had normal lifespans), I would have written it off as a failed experiment and a bad episode in an otherwise good series.

But in a series that asks the viewer to makes sense out of the Ocampa, this kind of episode really stands out. With the Ocampa, the introduced a species that defies our understanding of how the universe works and, in doing so, they aroused our suspicions that they might not know what they are doing. And with an episode like 'Threshold,' they confirm all those suspicions.

I never made a decision to stop watching. I just stopped tuning it after that. It wasn't hate or anger or anything like that. I even laughed at the episode. It was just a loss of interest after that point.

By the way, keep in mind that all this is just a subjective perspective of myself and similarly minded people. It's neither intended to 'correct' or 'incorrect' nor is it intended be 'true' or 'false.' This is just how I, and similarly minded people, thought and felt about the series watching it through the first time.

There is no right or wrong in it. If these weren't big enough issues for you to loose interest and you were able to keep enjoying the show, more power to you. I neither agree nor disagree with your perspective of the show. I just didn't necessarily experience it the same way. That is all.



In the subjective sense of the enjoyability of the show, that is up to each individual to assess. And so there is no right or wrong answer.

In ways that can be objectively measured, the writers made fewer mistakes once Seven replaced Kes. With Seven, they had a formula and a road map to follow that had already been successful in the past. With Kes, the were operating without a roadmap and so didn't know what they were doing with her they same way they knew with Seven.

I'm beginning to see your point here and I have to admit that there are many things in your posts that I agree with.

What I disagree with is that you started to point out Kes as the worst failure in the show, maybe the worst failure of all Star Trek when focus should be on the writers, not only for failing with Kes but so much else.

I agree on what you are writing about shows where the characters get real and when you blame a character for being jealous, offensive, a jerk or something like that or praise a character for being a hero in the way you want to see a hero.

One character who affected me that way was The Female Changeling in DS9. Up to the last episode I hoped that someone would blast her to kingdom come. I really loathed and still loathe the characer for being so icy, cold, ruthless and prepared to commit genocide in order to conquer. Other villains like Dukat, Khan, Seska, Culluh or anyone else haven't affected me in the same way,

But I have to lift the hat and bow to both the character and those who wrote the stories. They came up with an excellent villain!

There have also been chartacters which I have found bland and uninteresting. Jake Sisko was one of them, at least from the start when I thought he was a whiny kid. However, I started to like him more and more the songer DS9 progressed. I've sometimes found Kim bland too but I have never disliked the character. I've actually defended him sometimes when people wanted to kill him off, the same for Neelix who I actually like.

But I must admit that I've never encountered a character who has given me the same feelings as you seem to have when Kes shows up. Sort of not seeing the character as "a real person" or so. There have been characters in certain series which I have strongly disliked for different reasons but they have always been real to me.

NCIS which is one of my favorite series had a female character for one season named Quinn whose presence in the series I actually questioned, sort of "what is she actually doing there?" I found the character rather bland and uninteresting with no purpose at all. But I never hated the character or blamed her for things that might be wrong with the series and for me she was always "one of the gang" and as such aceptable. Obviously other had the same opinion about her because she left after one season without a plausible explanation other than that the characer "was about to care for her sick mother". I didn't celebrate when she left but I didn't cry either, I just shrugged and thought, OK.

I guess that it's therefore I have problems with following your logic in this matter.

Mostly when I watch a series, I mentally sort out things which are contradicting or doesn't make sense. Kes's lifespan was one of those things, the same with all mumbo-jumbo considering the Ocampa. For me those things were "there" but really not there. I remember mentally skipping large chunks of dialogue both in episodes and the Voyager books about those things.

I was and still is a fan of the Voyager books, especially the early ones with the original crew. But even if those books are mostly good written, some of them much better than the TV episodes, there are contradictions here and there. Every time I read one of these books, I just skip the part where there are some heavy contradictions, like when some information about how B'Elanna Torres joined Chakotay's crew contradicts the official facts.

As for Voyager, I really liked the series when I started to watch it and for real life reasons I won't go into here, Kes became a favorite and when she was dumped, I got real p***ed off.

For some strange reason, I still like Voyager, despite it's flaws. Voyager is one of two series when I took an immediate liking to all the main characters from the start, NCIS is the other. And I still have a lot of affection for the series and for the characters, not only Kes.

In recent years I have often thought of how the series should have been or could have been with better writers and producers. I see Voyager as a wasted opportunity, a sereis which could have been great if the premise and the characters had been used better.

One thing I have to bring up here is that due to stupid program policy from one channel in my neighborhood, I watched Voyager before DS9. Or more correctly, I watched season 1 of DS9 before the channel which aired it decided to dump it. In the aftermath of that I started to watch Voyager.

It took me many years before I had the opportunity to watch the whole DS9 and to realiize what an excellent series it is. I wonder if my interest for Voyager had been different if I had watched 2 or 3 seasons of DS9 before starting to watch Voyager.

To sum it up, I actually agree with a lot of things you have written, it's your view of Kes I have problems to understand.

But I'm happy to see that we have the same opinion about Jennifer Lien's acting!

 

[Oddish]

Anyway, the reason she became the star of the show was because since the first time since the show started, the producers had a clear trajectory to follow. Seven came with a road map and they were just following it.

Kes had a road map as well. So did Harry Kim (Nog and Bashir verify this). The fact that the writers chose to "follow" the maps for the EMH and Seven and ignore it for Kes and Kim does not make the latter weak characters.

In the actual story that the series was telling us, Kes was a two year old member of a short lived species that apparently aged very rapidly.

That's the split point, I think. Can a person accept the notion that the Ocampa reach emotional maturity at age two (which is the human equivalent of 18, allowing for an 80-year equivalent lifespan). If they can, Kes romancing a human or Talaxian is Ok. If not, it's exploitative and wrong.

article about him, of course, mentioned that he was part of the cast of Voyager and so that was free, unsolicited advertisement. A lot of people read 'People Magazine' back when magazines were still a thing and so that secured his position of the show.

My theory is that Kes was chosen for elimination by the time "Before and After" aired. They were effectively condensing the planned journey for Kes into one episode. Can't be sure, but it seems convenient.

There were a couple of episode in which I really questioned what the writers were doing but that episode was the first one when I really started to question their sanity, purpose and ability to write Star trek episodes at all.

I would think that "Threshold" would have had that effect, long before "Fury" was a thing.

I'm sometimes questioned and criticized for this but I still beleve that it was a deliberate finger to the fans of Kes who had staged a letter campaign to have her back.

I'm not criticizing. I think that certain scenes in "Unimatrix Zero" and "Nightingale" were a similarly raised middle finger at the fans who campaigned for Harry to get promoted. Kind of a "we're not gonna do it and you can't make us so ha ha ha" sort of thing.

 

[JeremyLH]

[QUOTE="Lynx, post: 13912372, member: 336"[/quote]
Seven Of Nine got many fans because of the catsuit. I still wonder what had happened if they had placed the character in a Starfleet uniform from scratch. Maybe Ryan's acting could have save the character even then?[/quote]

The success of the Seven of Nine character has nothing whatsoever to do with the catsuit.

To a lot of people, myself included, the catsuit just looked silly. (There are some episodes where she does wear a starfleet uniform and my brother related to me that he thinks she looks like a lot prettier that way. I concur). The Star Trek franchise had a history up to that point of being laughable when the show was trying to be sexy and Seven of Nine was no exception to that rule.

The reason why they are able to get away with it is precisely because of that history. TOS had women in skirts and, since the STTMP, women had a history of wearing catsuits. Troi, Kira, Kes in the third season three and a list of other civilian women in the ST universe regularly wore catsuits. I grew up with the franchise and that's just how people dress in the ST universe.

And so when Seven of Nine comes along in her silver catsuit, it doesn't scream 'sexy.' It screams "Star Trek' and all that that entails, for better or for worse. And so the way that she's dressed just fades into the background and the success and failure of her character will depend on the writing, the directing and her performance. All of which could go either way considering ST's history.

All three got it right. The writers knew what they were doing, the directors understand what they were doing and Jeri Ryan knew how to deliver on the character.

As for writing, Seven was a good character which was given decent stories and a lot of publicity, unfortunately more for her looks than for the character itself. Anyone who bought the many Star Trek magazines which existed during that era probably remember that. Was there any issue without a big aricle about Seven or a Seven poster?

I remember seeing her picture on the cover of a lot of Trek related magazines at the Newsstand around that time. But that's kind of like saying that Iron Maiden is more famous for Eddie than they are for their music. That may or may not be true but it misses the point entirely. The reason the image sticks around is because the performance of the artist behind the image made an impact.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Agreed. What do you think they should have done with him?

Make Jake Sisko an architect and have more of an involvement in Bajor culture eventually leaving the station and have a life on the planet.

In ways that can be objectively measured, the writers made fewer mistakes once Seven replaced Kes. With Seven, they had a formula and a road map to follow that had already been successful in the past. With Kes, the were operating without a roadmap and so didn't know what they were doing with her they same way they knew with Seven.

A road map which should've had Seven the one making a sacrifice for Voyager to reach home. What's the point in making a road map and was never followed to the series finale's conclusion?

An explanation would have been needed before the end of season one. A life extension would need to have been found early in season two. Some of us in the audience need both an explanation for a character and at least the illusion of a long term investment to actually invest in a character. If the writers want us to invest in a character but the character could be terminated at any time, then they should not let us know it right from the get go that the character might go on any episode. When a character is given an extra short life span right from the beginning of a series, one thing that that signals to some members of the audience is if the production needs to let someone go, this the first one in line.'

That's Monday morning Quarterbacking, all characters on a TV series have a birthing stage; if something doesn't work that character will be axed either an actor wishing to leave or viewers didn't connect them (Kes), or the trajectory of the mythos is altering course to something different. Voyager's series route was designed to have crewmembers be terminated if the showrunners wanted to.

The fact that Kes was their second choice is indicative that by that time, the production had a much better grasp of what was and what wasn't working about the show. Again, I'm not sure when, exactly, the decision was made but episodes like 'Warlord' gave me the impression that they might have already been moving toward severing ties between Kes and other characters on the show to give her a clean break from the show. But it's just as likely, probably more so, that it was just really sloppy writing.

No. The Borg was coming and Viacom as well as the VOY/TNG viewers demanded their return and quite frankly the Kazons, the Ocampa and whatever was going on in the 1st 2 seasons had a bad taste and everyone involved was ready to move on - sloppily or by design. The magazine excuse of keeping Harry Kim is hard to believe because Star Trek has always been keen on having a diverse cast so the Asian, the Black, and the latinos were staying by default.

 

[STEPhon IT]

The success of the Seven of Nine character has nothing whatsoever to do with the catsuit.

To a lot of people, myself included, the catsuit just looked silly. (There are some episodes where she does wear a starfleet uniform and my brother related to me that he thinks she looks like a lot prettier that way. I concur). The Star Trek franchise had a history up to that point of being laughable when the show was trying to be sexy and Seven of Nine was no exception to that rule.

The reason why they are able to get away with it is precisely because of that history. TOS had women in skirts and, since the STTMP, women had a history of wearing catsuits. Troi, Kira, Kes in the third season three and a list of other civilian women in the ST universe regularly wore catsuits. I grew up with the franchise and that's just how people dress in the ST universe.

And so when Seven of Nine comes along in her silver catsuit, it doesn't scream 'sexy.' It screams "Star Trek' and all that that entails, for better or for worse. And so the way that she's dressed just fades into the background and the success and failure of her character will depend on the writing, the directing and her performance. All of which could go either way considering ST's history.

All three got it right. The writers knew what they were doing, the directors understand what they were doing and Jeri Ryan knew how to deliver on the character.



I remember seeing her picture on the cover of a lot of Trek related magazines at the Newsstand around that time. But that's kind of like saying that Iron Maiden is more famous for Eddie than they are for their music. That may or may not be true but it misses the point entirely. The reason the image sticks around is because the performance of the artist behind the image made an impact.

Seven was easy to like because of fans love and appreciation for the Borg; also it was an opportunity for the showrunners to bond GOAT Janeway and 7's camaraderie and ape off the character intricacies of Kirk and Spock and movie versions of Picard and Data.

 

[fireproof78]

The success of Seven is one I still largely question. I can only owe it to Ryan's acting and some of the writing because little of her character appeals.

 

[Oddish]

To a lot of people, myself included, the catsuit just looked silly. (There are some episodes where she does wear a starfleet uniform and my brother related to me that he thinks she looks like a lot prettier that way. I concur)

As do I. Kes was a civilian, but her outfits were flattering without looking like they were painted on.

since the STTMP, women had a history of wearing catsuits. Troi, Kira, Kes in the third season three and a list of other civilian women in the ST universe regularly wore catsuits.

There are catsuits and there are catsuits. A translucent thigh-high nightie and a pair of full-body footie pajamas are both nightwear, but one is designed for sex appeal and the other is not.

Make Jake Sisko an architect and have more of an involvement in Bajor culture eventually leaving the station and have a life on the planet.

That would have worked fine.

a road map which should've had Seven the one making a sacrifice for Voyager to reach home. What's the point in making a road map and was never followed to the series finale's conclusion?

Having Seven sacrifice herself for the good of the crew would have worked, if done right. But, I saw no reason why it was necessary. Indeed, if one character didn't get home, I think that Janeway was the natural choice. Remember her three rules?

 

[XCV330]

Seven Of Nine got many fans because of the catsuit..

Clearly Will "Eyes Up Here" Decker was the most popular character in all of Star Trek, then.

I must state that the whole thing with bringing back the character as a crazy lunatic was stupid to say the least. In fact, that really broke all the rules when it comes to Star Trek. kes was the last one on that ship who would become a maniac and try to kill her friends.

I think it was a pretty bold move from a show that was always too risk adverse.

 

[Oddish]

My issues with Seven's catsuit lie largely with the fact that it had a built-in corset, and Jeri Ryan had trouble breathing while wearing it. No one should have to work under those conditions.

 

[Dukhat]

7 of 9 wasn't popular because of the catsuit. The catsuit was the product of the frat-boy mentality of Brannon Braga and the UPN suits who were his bosses (and which was carried over into ENT with T'Pol.) They were catering to the lowest common denominator audience-wise with that ridiculous outfit. It served no logical purpose in the show (other than some paper-thin BS about how it helped her function or something.)

No, the character of 7 of 9 was popular because the actress who played her was able to transcend beyond the silly costume and actually act well. She would have been popular if they'd have just kept her Borg implants on. Hell, she would have been popular if they gave her a garbage bag to wear.