Will they get Senile as well as Humans do? But I think Kes was more angry than anything else.
My only problem with this Ep is that Kes would not be a Bag Ocompan at 6 years, previously it took her almost 9 years for that to happen.
As far as the other complaints that this episode is another foot in the rump to Jennifer, those are not really valid. The reason why they are not is because I never even knew (at the "time") the reason Jennifer had been let go without one word that she was being replaced by a Borg with huge cybernetic Implants. (What do they do, spout streams of Borg Nanoprobes? Seems like the Borg would remove gender identity from all drones).
I never knew of this potentially shabby treatment by people putting on a show about an "Enlightened" Civilization like the United Federation of Planets, acting instead like Ferengi.
In fact, I don't blame the Voyager Producers any longer at all, I blame United Paramount Network/UPN as it was known at the time.
But as to why complaints about this Episode are invalid, is because (until recently) most people and myself never considered the politics of Network TV. And those most certainly were not being discussed during that time.
I never knew why Kes suddenly vanished. All I knew is that I was bummed. And I needed closure after "Scorpion pt. II" and "The Gift". So, when this episode was originally broadcast, I was excited about it because it was a Kes episode.
And I liked it.
Of course the actress had been through some rough spots, as well as the character.
In the show, we had seen Kes taken over by a Warlord and to get rid of that personality she had to use the same tactics the Warlord used- In the end of that episode, Kes worked with Tuvok to deal with the memory of that experience. But that episode did change the character, who became more quick-witted, less forgiving with Neelix' antics, and, well basically, an older, middle-aged woman. Less innocent. Smarter, funnier in a way.
So an aged, angry, and obsessed Kes was not too far of a stretch. She had been separated from Voyager for three years. She was a very powerful being as well as a very strong person. I don't believe she would have aged that much during that time, and I never believed she would set out to deliberately harm her former benefactors and crewmates. Unless it was a form of temporary madness, I can accept that a bit more.
Nevertheless I suspended my disbelief just so I could enjoy this one episode.
Let us just assume that somehow, Kes, after separating from the nurturing Voyager environment aged rapidly and started accepting more and more of the anger left in here by The Warlord. Perhaps that liaison with the Warlord was a trigger that seeped into her subconsciousness - She had been forced into inactivity while that entity took over her body and used her powers to hurt people. But she also interacted with that being, and even after he left, that memory would remain, that evil would lie dormant. They represented this by showing discussions happening inside of Kes' Mind.
So when she rams her shuttle into Voyager, destroys a whole deck and harms a crewman: this was not any Kes that I recognized, was it the Warlord's influence? Remember, she was able to remain Kes even while under his control.
Her goal now? To return home. This seething, angry person decides to give Voyager into the waiting and salivating hands of one of Voyager's most hated enemies.
This was not Kes at all. This was not the act of the enlightened spiritual being that left Voyager and shunted the ship 9000 light-years across the main bulk of Borg Space. This was the act of a person who had been left alone and had aged more quickly than she would have aged if she had stayed on the ship, and in aging let bitterness take over.
I think she was holding back, she could have vaporized Voyager and Janeway with one finger, who knows what she might have done to Neelix? But she always stopped short of doing even greater harm. I believe even in that distraught state she still had the kind Kes deep inside.
That's why I could also suspend disbelief when all it took was a message from herself to shock her back to sanity. I think she had been there all the time.
We all have the capacity to do things in great anger which we would be instantly remorseful for- The trick is to stop ourselves before this happens. If we can do it with ourselves in this life, then Kes could have done it to herself in that story.
But if we have to blame anyone for this, we can blame Brannon "Temporal Causality Loop" Braga. But I don't, cos I enjoyed the story, was glad to see Kes. And, we forget, Voyager was a NETWORK show, and able to be canceled like any other network show.
Remember, at the time of "Scorpion" which was the 3rd year of UPN, UPN had canceled ALL of their original "Dramatically Different" shows, save Voyager, and were running very BAD comedies in their place. And I have said before I do not dislike Comedies, just BAD comedies, which these where. So to keep Voyager voyaging for another four years, Jennifer was fired and a Borg with Huge... Implants had to be hired in her place.
Just think of how great this show could have been if Both actresses could have remained, as well as Harry Kim who was the other Voyager member to be scrutinized by the Paramount crew-removing Hatchet.
So I don't Blame Trek. I blame Paramount for Hosting a Trek show but not giving Berman full control over it. Next Generation and Deep Space Nine ran for seven years each with no Network micromanagement, bumbling and interference with production and casting.
The most important scene is the very last scene in the transporter. I had read that they wanted to create a scene that involved closure between Neelix and Kes. But that was not really necessary, in fact much more was done with expressions and with Neelix's single line.
Kes: "See anyone ya know"?
Neelix: "Only you"
Just that single line and the look between the two characters was all that we needed to close out that three-year episode of Voyager.
I tried to excise some extracurricular verbosity.
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