[Caprica6]

I think the three worst characters were Kes, Chakotay, and Harry. But Kes by far the worst. She had potential that was never realized. Maybe if they started out with her looking like a little girl and we see her growing up and aging and going through her whole life and dying it would be more interesting

[louiskaty2]

Chakotay gets my vote!

[Caprica6]

louiskaty2, on Aug 4 2008, 01:01 PM, said:

Chakotay gets my vote!

lol, he's my second choice!

[YarFan]

I actually liked Chakotay...at least most of the times. I voted for Harry. I never really liked his character. He was too whiney. I'm surprised Janeway didn't promote him just to shut him up on that subject. Anyway, I think Kes and Neelix tied for second place. I was actually beginning to like Kes right before she left the show. Go figure...just when the character's getting interesting. With Neelix, I just wanted to slap him half the time. Anywho, that's my 2 cents.

[Irene Brustad]

louiskaty2, on Aug 4 2008, 08:01 PM, said:

Chakotay gets my vote!

And mine...

[JayTheTrekkie]

Kes is my vote

[Lynx6776]

I find this thread an attempt to start the same Kes-bashing as certain not so nice posters have done on the startrek.com forum, otherwise Kes wouldn't have been singled out as some sort of bad example in the first post. However, since most of the posters on this forum are more objective and also have the ability to debate instead of only bash, I guess that the Kes-bashing attempt will fail and hopefully we will have a constructive debate instead.

As I see it, Voyager had no downright bad characters and no one who can be considered as "worst" (if we don't count the extras among who we did have some rather lame characters, Icheb, The Borg kids, Naomi and Vorik).

As for the main characters, Harry Kim was probably the weakest. He was "young, green ensign Kim" the whole show and never developed. Rather bland as character too. But he did have some potential which was never used in the series, mostly because of bad writing, something Voyager really suffered from.

Compare that to the Voyager books where Kim is actually doing something! OK, he gets badly injured in many of them for some strange reason but that's another story.

But Kim wasn't a bad character, he's the weakest of the Voyager characters mainly because of the competition.

I must also admit that I never understood why Seven was brought in. Voyager already had excellent characters. There was no need for another main character. The whole thing was a bit cheap, with the stress on sex to attract male viewers. OK, they were lucky to get an excellent actress in Jeri Ryan and the character did have some qualities. But they should have skipped the catsuit and the high heels.

As for the others, they were simply great all of them.

Since this thread was started with an attack on Kes, I do take the liberty to defend my favorite character. I can see why a scenario with an aging and dying Kes would please certain posters. We've already gone through that on the startrek.com site where certain posters who have spewed out their hatred against the character and the actress have proposed such a solution, probably because they would get a kick out of see the character slowly dying.

But as a fan of the character, I would like to focus instead on what was good with the character and what could have been used to make the character even better.

They should have skipped the nine-year lifespan or simply prolonged Kes's lifespan (which there were hints for in some episodes). The silly nine-year lifespan was an attempt from the writers to come up with something original, something which didn't work. Eeveryne can understand thyat a species with such a short lifespan would never develope into more than a very primitive and undeveloped species. We can compare with certain short-lived species on Earth to see that.

What they should have focused on was Kes's personality and her mental abilities which was what really made the character stick out.

Kes was nice, beautiful and friendly but she was also strong-willed, brave, determined, smart, curious with a will to learn and explore. That was the qualities of the character which could have been used better if Voyager had had qualified writers.

Kes was also both a complement and a contrast to more typical female action-characters like Janeway and Torres. As such, Kes didn't or wouldn't have to use force to get things the way she wanted if it wasn't absolutely necessary. She could often solve a problem by manipulation or to move around the problem and attack it from another angle. That thoughtful, smart way to solve problems and help the crewmembers did make her an unique character as well, an outstanding character who with her will to learn and explore really personified the spirit of Star Trek.

As for Chakotay, the third character to be attacked here, I must state that Chakotay had the premise to be the best "Number One" in any Star Trek series, maybe even better than Riker and Spock too. Chakotay was also a great character in seasons 1-3. Unfortunately, the character did suffer from bad writing in the later seasons when he was reduced to nothing more than a moving image in the background. But blame that on bad writers, not on the character and the actor.

Once again I must state that Voyager didn't have any bad characters so why start a thread about "worst characters"?

[Tmir]

Ok this is a tie for me between Kes and Chakotay, Kim is after that, then Neelix who just annoyed the hell out of me. In that order Kes was just lame, she did have a few rewarding characteristics at the end there, and Chakotay he just kept getting worse, he was pretty much a useless number 1, maybe if he did something else on the ship, I don't know, I just found that he didn't do much for me personally.

I just found them to be background characters for me, not interesting at all.

[Caprica6]

YarFan, on Aug 4 2008, 06:47 PM, said:

I actually liked Chakotay...at least most of the times. I voted for Harry. I never really liked his character. He was too whiney. I'm surprised Janeway didn't promote him just to shut him up on that subject. Anyway, I think Kes and Neelix tied for second place. I was actually beginning to like Kes right before she left the show. Go figure...just when the character's getting interesting. With Neelix, I just wanted to slap him half the time. Anywho, that's my 2 cents.

I liked Neelix, but yes I agree, Kes was pretty bad

[wildcard1377]

Kim. They didn't know what to do with Kes, but I still liked her. And I liked Chakotay, who also suffered from writers not knowing what to do with him. But at least both of these characters got some development. Kes wasn't on long enough, but Kim and Chakotay were on all 7 seasons so there's no excuse for his underdevelopment. With the exception of "The Disease" he was still "Starfleet" Harry at the end of the series...maybe a little less anxious to impress his captain, but nothing really got delved into regarding his character.

[Maco Captain]

Harry Kim got my vote. Imo, he just seemed like a redundant character that could have been played by anyone. When Seven of Nine joined the crew, his position became nearly obsolete.

I personally, Liked Chakotay and Kes the best. Kes was Imo, a character that the writers didn't do right by. She was always kind, compassionate and possessed some ultra cool powers....and she helped propel Voyager a bit closer to home. One of my faves, to say the least.

[Lynx6776]

Caprica6, on Aug 12 2008, 09:55 PM, said:

I liked Neelix, but yes I agree, Kes was pretty bad

Both Kes and Neelix were great characters and Kes was the best Voyager character.

[Captain_Hair]

Lynx, I do believe you've already established your opinion on that...

[Lynx6776]

^^
Maybe.

But this

Caprica6, on Aug 12 2008, 08:55 PM, said:

Kes was pretty bad

has been repeated many times by the same poster in many threads too.

[Caprica6]

Lynx6776, on Aug 17 2008, 04:31 AM, said:

Both Kes and Neelix were great characters and Kes was the best Voyager character.

I liked Neelix, he was sweet!

This post has been edited by Caprica6: 17 August 2008 - 09:03 PM

[Elf]

Harry Kim got my vote.

[JustKate]

I agree with the poster who said that none of the characters were actually "bad." Well, OK, Neelix wasn't great, but even he had his moments. I agree that Harry's character was the weakest and least developed. He started as the ensign -- the wet-behind-the-ears character that you find in so many action shows and movies -- and that was a perfectly fine place to start. But he never really moved on from that, but I think that was a problem with the writers not the actor.

I am not among those who thinks Voyager was badly written -- it has some great episodes and I enjoyed it a lot. But what it didn't have too much of was general character development, and the reason was that too many of the story lines were confined to one or at most two episodes. It's really hard to do in-depth character development that way.

[Caprica6]

JustKate, on Aug 19 2008, 02:09 PM, said:

I agree with the poster who said that none of the characters were actually "bad." Well, OK, Neelix wasn't great, but even he had his moments. I agree that Harry's character was the weakest and least developed. He started as the ensign -- the wet-behind-the-ears character that you find in so many action shows and movies -- and that was a perfectly fine place to start. But he never really moved on from that, but I think that was a problem with the writers not the actor.

I am not among those who thinks Voyager was badly written -- it has some great episodes and I enjoyed it a lot. But what it didn't have too much of was general character development, and the reason was that too many of the story lines were confined to one or at most two episodes. It's really hard to do in-depth character development that way.

Voyager had a LOT of character development. All the characters grew wonderfuly. Look at B'Elanna, Harry, Tom, The Doctor, Seven, Janeway in the beginning and then look at them at the end. They've all changed and grown and developed, some of them so much that they're almost like completely different characters.

[Lynx6776]

I didn't like that character "development". All of them, except for Seven, The Doctor and maybe Janeway were shoved aside and became stale images in the background. All of them became pretty boring too compared to what they were in the first three seasons.

[JustKate]

Lynx6776, on Aug 19 2008, 05:10 PM, said:

I didn't like that character "development". All of them, except for Seven, The Doctor and maybe Janeway were shoved aside and became stale images in the background. All of them became pretty boring too compared to what they were in the first three seasons.

Yeah. Remember that I do really like the show, so you don't have to convice me of its overall worth. That doesn't mean it couldn't have used some help, though. Way too much time was spent on Janeway and Seven, to the detriment of just about everybody (except the Doc). I agree that B'Ellana and Tom grew...but an awful lot of that happened in the first 2-3 seasons.

At least that's my recollection. I've actually just started rewatching the last couple seasons' worth of shows for the first time in a long time, so maybe my opinion will change. But right now, what I remember most is lots and lots of Janeway fretting about Seven, and Seven fretting about those whacky humans. Some of that was good and necessary, but jeez, it went on a lot. There were all those other interesting characters that I would have liked to have known more about.