Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season 3?

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Don't forget to watch the MOTION comics for season 8.

(They use the static comics as a basis for a rudimentary animation proccess that produces a range of movement similar to South Park. New voice actors unfortunately. I'm not sure if season 9 and 10 have been turned into motion comics as yet.)

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

As soon as you make an alien guest of the week really different as far as society, personality, interaction with humans etc.. that becomes the story. Sometimes that's not the story they want to tell, so the differences are cosmetic and maybe a few throw away commentary lines for colour about what they eat or whatever.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Neelix never bothered me at all, I thought he was a decent outsider character if under used and over humanized, but that's par for Trek.

This is a very interesting point and one which has always bothered me about STAR TREK - how Human these aliens are. Yes, I "get" the whole Starship Earth metaphor and whatnot ... but I mean ... in TOS' era, "they" did try, at least, to make the aliens seem "exotic" by having English-speaking actors with thick accents playing the parts - as often as not, at any rate. So ... what is it, then? Lack of time? Political Correctness? Lack of interest? What's their angle, because it's not uncommon for these "aliens" to appear as what they are - just cosplay, basically. And that takes some of the "fun" out of it - at least, for me.

The universal translators are set to American.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Don't forget to watch the MOTION comics for season 8.

(They use the static comics as a basis for a rudimentary animation proccess that produces a range of movement similar to South Park. New voice actors unfortunately. I'm not sure if season 9 and 10 have been turned into motion comics as yet.)

I need marathon time to get up to those! Before all the new stuff starts up again.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Neelix never bothered me at all, I thought he was a decent outsider character if under used and over humanized, but that's par for Trek.

This is a very interesting point and one which has always bothered me about STAR TREK - how Human these aliens are. Yes, I "get" the whole Starship Earth metaphor and whatnot ... but I mean ... in TOS' era, "they" did try, at least, to make the aliens seem "exotic" by having English-speaking actors with thick accents playing the parts - as often as not, at any rate. So ... what is it, then? Lack of time? Political Correctness? Lack of interest? What's their angle, because it's not uncommon for these "aliens" to appear as what they are - just cosplay, basically. And that takes some of the "fun" out of it - at least, for me.

The universal translators are set to American.

Thank god the australians all died out by then and we were never subjected to a Simpson's style Oz in Space character. It makes me queasy thinking about it.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

As soon as you make an alien guest of the week really different ... that becomes the story. Sometimes that's not the story they want to tell ...

It all comes back to The Human Condition.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Well if Colonel Green wiped every with the gene for alcoholism, there would be 200 people left in Oz, and 12 people left in Ireland.

When Enterprise started talking about the New Zealand rain forests my jaw dropped.

What the frakk happened to New Zealand??!!

How badly was it bombed in WWIII that someone could plant a rain forest and fence of the rest of the country as a penal colony...

So I googled New Zealand + Rain forest and it turns out that what the locals call "the bush" which and Australian would call a tuft of shrubbery, some PR Spin Doctor from the tourism board has been exaggerating the density and height of our forrests to trick fat cat tourist whales into sinking their life saving into hunting for hobbits.

Greg in his Eugenics War talked about weapons that opened and closed holes in the ozone layer of any conceivable, so that you can destroy countries or or melt individuals with equivalent ease...

A solar weapon like that if left on for months or years, might have hyper stimulated the flora and created a rain forest if the settings were in some sort of unintentionally lucky goldilocks margin.

Rain forests?

Shii-iit.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

It wasn't that it was bombed it was that everyone turned their countries over to a single world government and because this government was soooo wonderful that everyone happily did this when the elected rulers said "you there, island, gtfo we need you as a bucolic penal colony and you other island we need you for a diorama about rainforests" everyone moved to what used to be america and embraced the root beer.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Everyone in New Zealand was probably given the opportunity to carve up several colony worlds for themselves as an incentive to abandon all that Earthbound real estate.

Our friend Bev came from the colony of New Ireland, it's possible that old Ireland was emptied and sent into space as well... Which explains TNG Up The Long Ladder. The Irish were sent into space with bad maps and not enough gas. A very quiet and tidy ethnic cleanse.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

I see your point but I agree with the decision to remove Kes IF AND ONLY IF someone just *had* to be fired. I never really cared much about her character. Neelix is more unique (I'm not sure I would agree because of his latex though). I definitely would not place him on the level of Spock though!! That role was the Doctor's but then he apparently became an expert and then it was passed more directly to Seven.

This is going to sound a bit naive, but I really wish that they didn't have to let anyone go. I would have preferred if Jeri Ryan was added to the cast and that was it. Maybe they could have lowered Wang and Lien's salaries on the basis of not being central characters, but I really hate that anyone had to be fired.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

They got rid of Seska and Cullah first.

Season one and two had a greater budget that was dedicated to supporting characters.

In season three, Berman (And Taylor? She was really against story arcs and continuity. She stole Chakotay's baby.) sacrificed those two, or whoever would replace them as Voyager continued to move through yet more foreign space, in favour of increasing their spfx budget for space battles and explosions.

If they wanted to keep Jennifer, all they need to do was bring the spfx budget back down to season 2 levels.

I know, I'm a riot.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

I mean I don't know exactly how it works but I feel like morale of the cast must have suffered....going through a period of "I wonder who's getting fired"...

I work in a creative line of work too...and it's hard to be creative and do a good job when stuff like that is going on around you. A creative work environment with tight deadlines and crazy hours is something I live every day...and it's much different from your average work environment. During that time of deciding who is going to get the sack, I'm sure it made things tense on the set and that is all just wasted focus and effort they could have been putting into their performance.

And Seska and Cullah weren't main cast anyway... I mean I liked when VOY utilized recurring characters since it didn't have enough of them....but eh I didn't feel that bad for those two though.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Not just those two actors, but "anyone" might dare to replace them over the next horizon who might have hung around for 5 or 6 episodes to frakk around with Voyager.

Human resources budget was transformed into spfx budget.

Imagine your boss fired 2 people to rent a new photo copier, and then a year later fires someone else rather then looking into renting a cheaper photocopier, to pay to bring in a new rainmaker.

 

[Captain Kathryn]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Yeah....

That's sad.

I have to admit the special effects seasons 4-7 were noticeably better though.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Cullah recurring never made sense to me. Here goes Voyager, headed home at maximum warp, and then, here's Cullah again in his much... slower... ship?

The only way Voyager should have a recurring guest character was if they could actually move faster than Voyager somehow.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Voyager kept being held up, though ... what with this race not liking it when other species violate their territory ... or nebula with Made-for-TV properties that they have to drive around. These little detours can really add up ...

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Voyager kept being held up, though ... what with this race not liking it when other species violate their territory ... or nebula with Made-for-TV properties that they have to drive around. These little detours can really add up ...

And Cullah would have had most of the same obstacles, and after a certain point his less advanced sensors would have lost Voyager, I would think.

 

[trekker670]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

When I saw Wang at a con he said they hardly make any money from syndication, dvd's etc..

Though what his hardly any money means I don't know. He talked about it like they get a couple hundred in the mail every few months.

That sounds about right, when is the last time you saw Voyager on TV? Anyone who was going to buy the DVDs already has. Voyager isn't really the show everyone is running out to buy action figures, trading cards, etc. these days.

If Voyager isn't making the studio much money right now (because they're not doing anything with it) then he wouldn't see the payouts. It's almost guaranteed he gets one of the lowest cuts out of the cast as well.

 

[Richard Baker]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

Yeah....

That's sad.

I have to admit the special effects seasons 4-7 were noticeably better though.

Computer SFX was advancing a lot during Voyagers run- they could generate shots impossible to do earlier.

Seska and Cullah did show up later than would make sense even with Voyager being delayed repeatedly. The Kazon were OK for the first episodes, but with the ship travelling as fast as possible through the sector it should have not had as many repealing villains IMO.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: Why Wasn't Neelix considered a candidate for removal after season

They went backwards/off-course for months at least twice.

The trip to Tallax in Jetrel to save Neelix, and the back track to pick up Janeway in Resolutions (seriously, that one was between 5 and 8 months.)