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Was Kes a Good Character?

Was Kes a Good Character?

  • Yes, definitely.

    Votes: 28 24.1%
  • No, she was poor.

    Votes: 15 12.9%
  • Had potential but it was never realised.

    Votes: 65 56.0%
  • No better or worse than any of the others.

    Votes: 8 6.9%

  • Total voters
    116
In before and after it was the chronoton whattachmacallum that caused the forgetfulness. It was shown later as she was able to catch up pretty quick while travelling back through time.
the chronotons were causing her backwards time travel, not her memory loss. That's the way I understood it at least.
 
Except she was no longer the same Kes. She had changed into something else in The Gift. The last time we saw her she was a being of light. We got no explanation of why she was back in corporal form.
 
the chronotons were causing her backwards time travel, not her memory loss. That's the way I understood it at least.

Then you understood it wrong. It was the passage through the doctor's machine that caused her to forget everything at once, not little by little as is the case with Alzheimer.
How did you miss that?
 
Then you understood it wrong. It was the passage through the doctor's machine that caused her to forget everything at once, not little by little as is the case with Alzheimer.
How did you miss that?
Well maybe I understood it wrong, but to me it works

this is the scene in the very beginning which makes me believe it's normal for an ocampan
EMH: I'm afraid Kes is getting worse, Captain. Her amnesia is near total. Fewer than one percent of her engrams remain intact. It's as if her memory were wiped clean.
CHAKOTAY: Is it some sort of senility?
EMH: Maybe. I've never treated a nine year old Ocampan before. For all I know, it's a perfectly normal part of their aging process.
CHAKOTAY: It's hard to believe that she performed microsurgery on my elbow just a few weeks ago.
EMH: A few weeks ago she was a healthy woman, but this morilogium comes on abruptly and then progresses with a rapidity I've never seen before

maybe I'm wrong about it but it makes sense to me.
 
Well maybe I understood it wrong, but to me it works

this is the scene in the very beginning which makes me believe it's normal for an ocampan
EMH: I'm afraid Kes is getting worse, Captain. Her amnesia is near total. Fewer than one percent of her engrams remain intact. It's as if her memory were wiped clean.
CHAKOTAY: Is it some sort of senility?
EMH: Maybe. I've never treated a nine year old Ocampan before. For all I know, it's a perfectly normal part of their aging process.
CHAKOTAY: It's hard to believe that she performed microsurgery on my elbow just a few weeks ago.
EMH: A few weeks ago she was a healthy woman, but this morilogium comes on abruptly and then progresses with a rapidity I've never seen before

maybe I'm wrong about it but it makes sense to me.
That's not the beginning. The beginning was the passage through the doctor's machine. The first thing she sees after that is her grandson.

You obviously missed a few minutes of the show.
 
Then you remember things wrong. The First scene was Kes entering the Doctor's machine.
I was just looking at the entire transcript I know how it starts. This is really not that big of a deal. Agree or disagree with me, I'm just saying it works for me. At the end of the day it's just tv.
 
why should there be an apology? some hated it, some liked it, just like with everything in life. There are episodes that I've seen you say you dislike that I like, and some that I dislike that you like. It's just personal opinion.

Without actually being there we don't know why the character was not brought back. For all anyone knows the actress didn't want to come back. I have seen her speak at several conventions and she was very clear that her contract had ended and she moved on and had little interest in coming back. She said she had enough other work to keep her busy. That is a typical life for an actor.

If you want to take it personally that's up to you. I doubt the actress takes it personally. To each their own. I woudn't take it personally

But why bring her back for one s**tty episode if "she had moved on and had little interest in coming back"? They could have stated that "Jennifer is busy with other things and won't come back for the seventh season".

Or brought her back for the final episodes in season 7, like for a scenario which I suggested in another thread with a final confrontation with Suspiria?

Or simply didn't bring her back at all.

Instead they came up with that insulting piece of garbage called "Fury".

Considering the cicumstances with a group of fans sending in requests for a return of Kes, I do see their actions as an insult to the Kes fans.
 
But why bring her back for one s**tty episode if "she had moved on and had little interest in coming back"? They could have stated that "Jennifer is busy with other things and won't come back for the seventh season".

Or brought her back for the final episodes in season 7, like for a scenario which I suggested in another thread with a final confrontation with Suspiria?

Or simply didn't bring her back at all.

Instead they came up with that insulting piece of garbage called "Fury".

Considering the cicumstances with a group of fans sending in requests for a return of Kes, I do see their actions as an insult to the Kes fans.

It was pretty bad, they even got Tuvok's age wrong.
 
In Fury she was 7, tops. Now maybe her experiences out in the greater universe didn't turn out to be as enlightening or liberating as she clearly anticipated they would be when she left. Despite her ever inquiring mind, one might suggest that she didn't possess, let's say Q's sophistication and more distanced and nuanced interest in those he encountered/toyed with. She might have hung around the dregs of the Delta Quadrant, trying to help them out, while corporeal, for too long and became embittered or spent too much time in Exosia, with her solipsistic distant relations, while finding that Suspiria's haughtiness and self-satisfaction, weren't exactly emotionally or psychically nourishing or fulfilling, and left her bereft of her hopeful dreams, perhaps making her prey to vindictiveness.

At any rate, she was only 7, and the evidence in Before and After and what scant intimations one can draw from Caretaker, is that the morilogium doesn't start before the current homeworld iteration of the Ocampans', last year. Kes herself in B & A doesn't begin that decline until after her ninth birthday, despite van Gogh's nascent plan to prolong her life. In fact, she was still working at that point. And only a bit over 6 months into the whole backward trek, she was as youthful looking as she appeared in the Gift. On the other hand, one can claim that those possible stresses that she encountered out in the great beyond, had a physical impact on her health, as she certainly appeared significantly older and worn in Fury, than was the case a year plus onward in her life span, as described above. Still a haggard, used up, and bitter countenance doesn't necessarily equate to entry into the last part of the life cycle. We basically see cunning, awareness, and of course, anger, as well as, perhaps purposefully wanton distortion and misrepresentation of certain facts. At no time in the episode does Kes show evidence of the degradation clear in the first three jumps in B & A.

Leaving fiction for reality, does anyone have an absolute concrete, bedrock, and confirmed (having written there and in receipt of a response) knowledge of Jennifer Lien's current home address? I have sent her birthday and holiday greetings, as well as notes of encouragement, for the last 6-7 years. Even with her peripatetic existence during that time, I am confident that, albeit sometimes with considerable difficulty, I've always sent these missives to the correct location, even once receiving a response, after she moved to Tennessee. However, I've been unable to reach that point of certainty this time around, and with precious little time left, I would greatly appreciate a verification someone might very well be able to provide (I certainly don't think that I'm the only person that has directly kept up with her, even during these recent years of the evident acceleration of her mental decline (IMO)). The hink that has presented itself, was the reported arrest of someone with the exact same name and age, on a DUI and accompanying charge in far northern Georgia, with a published address at variance with where I last had reached her very early this year. I just was made aware of this arrest, appearing in a local paper's crime section, even thought it took place early in March. Both the location of the arrest and the different home listing, did not seem out of line at all with her previous location, and perhaps most interestingly, the disposition of the charges, not guilty and all records expunged, give me the sense of some kind of resonance with her legal fortunes in her home state.

At any rate, I think I've looked into all the angles and I may just need to take the most reasonable educated guess, and by tomorrow afternoon, at the latest, So, again, if someone does have this knowledge, I would be very thankful of your sharing that in a PM to me (please, don't bother if you're not being on the level and just looking to inflict a few laughs or insults) I absolutely know there are many, many genuine and caring members here that feel that such support for Ms. Lien, is within appropriate bounds, especially considering how many posts proffered the exact same idea of rendering such understanding and compassion to her when last year's troubles became widely known and were discussed here extensively.
 
Drone, have you considered contacting Robert Picardo, at all? He would surely know all about what tokens of appreciation Ms. Lien would welcome and to what address they should be sent, as he's been a friend to her, all of these years. It touches my heart, also, the support people have expressed, here. It would be so easy to make uninformed, snap judgements ... to, sort of, dismiss her as a whackadoo and treat her as light entertainment. But it's been quite the contrary. I do not know her, at all. I've never met her. But I love her performance in VOYAGER and everything I've heard about her time on that show indicates to me that she was very loved by cast and crew.

And she was so beautiful, so talented ... that it would be great to see her transcend all of this drama and become another success story, like Robert Downey, Jr., or something like that. But as for me trying to actually get in touch with her, I wouldn't even know what to say. None of it's under my control and I don't have any solutions to offer. Hell, I can't even send her a cheque. But if I knew that it really meant a lot to her, hearing from fans and strangers, knowing that they were so supportive of her, maybe I could bring myself to write for her a lovely poem and send it along ....
 
Drone, have you considered contacting Robert Picardo, at all? He would surely know all about what tokens of appreciation Ms. Lien would welcome and to what address they should be sent, as he's been a friend to her, all of these years. It touches my heart, also, the support people have expressed, here. It would be so easy to make uninformed, snap judgements ... to, sort of, dismiss her as a whackadoo and treat her as light entertainment. But it's been quite the contrary. I do not know her, at all. I've never met her. But I love her performance in VOYAGER and everything I've heard about her time on that show indicates to me that she was very loved by cast and crew.

And she was so beautiful, so talented ... that it would be great to see her transcend all of this drama and become another success story, like Robert Downey, Jr., or something like that. But as for me trying to actually get in touch with her, I wouldn't even know what to say. None of it's under my control and I don't have any solutions to offer. Hell, I can't even send her a cheque. But if I knew that it really meant a lot to her, hearing from fans and strangers, knowing that they were so supportive of her, maybe I could bring myself to write for her a lovely poem and send it along ....

It seems she's going through a rough patch lately. (Multiple arrests for DUI, assault, resisting arrest... that sort of thing).
 
If she had stayed at the end of 7 years she would be around her final year of life, so I would hope in that time she would have had growth and development.

You could say that it wasn't out of the blue. In before and after we learn that a normal part of ocampan's aging process is memory loss.
But in season 6 she wasn't quite in her final year of life, she would have been 8. And it seemed to me that in the episode Before and After, the mental decline and physical aging didn't take place until her 9th year. Remember she still looked fairly young when she was holding her baby grandson Andrew for a picture. I believe she would have been 8 at the time because Andrew is still a child or at the most the Ocampan equivalent of early teens when her morilogeum started in her 9th year and she starts looking old enough to be her husband's mother.

Besides, the last they saw of her, she was morphing into an energy being. Why would she as an energy being be prone to physical aging?
 
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Besides, the last they saw of her, she was morphing into an energy being. Why would she as an energy being be prone to physical aging?

Yeah, that's a bit of a plot hole. On the other hand it wasn't very practical to make up a story about Kes energy being.
 
What is the "official" version?

I've heard Jennifer Lien say several times that it was just a matter of her contract not being renewed, which is a very common thing for actors. She said she had no ill feelings about it or to the powers that be.
Sorry for answering late - I've just got back from holiday.
I can see that the Kes debate is in full swing. @Lynx might be a little biased in favour of Kes, nevertheless he is the Kes expert on these threads so he can probably point you to a website that tells you the whole official story. Apologies if it has been discussed in the meantime, I just don't have the time right now to read all the posts and start writing long essays.
 
Sorry for answering late - I've just got back from holiday.
I can see that the Kes debate is in full swing. @Lynx might be a little biased in favour of Kes, nevertheless he is the Kes expert on these threads so he can probably point you to a website that tells you the whole official story. Apologies if it has been discussed in the meantime, I just don't have the time right now to read all the posts and start writing long essays.
I can understand being biased towards a character. I have a bias for two characters myself. I know there are a lot of "official" stories floating around the internet, of some "evil" plot against the actress and whatnot. That's fine if you like conspiracy theories. Personally I have seen many of the actors speak in person, including Jennifer Lien herself and they have addressed the subject. All of them have said there were no hard feelings, yes they were sad to see their co worker and friend go, but they all understood it was part of the business. Ms Lien said she was fine with it and had no hard feelings. She simply said her contract wasn't renewed and she moved on. I don't think it's a big deal either way. Hollywood is a tough place and actors know their jobs are all temporary.
 
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