Oh come on! Not a compelling story? He’s a space scavenger, his people are nomadic because OF GENOCIDE, who are wandering space in search of a new home.
He’s an ex-soldier, ex-criminal, who can’t quite come to terms with his past because he wants to be morally and ethically good, he has SEVERE “people pleaser” issues and tries to be everyone’s friend - BUT is not so weak that he can’t fight or stand up for himself or his friends. He’s multi talented, but doesn’t always know when to reign it in and he serves as a motivational character for the Voyager crew who are lost in space – and actually does a good job of it!!
This is the character of our generation. Wtf do you mean “not a compelling story”?
Bad acting? Actually agree, but you can also say that it’s the mannerisms of his people, because it seems to be a mainstay that they are all sort of “whimsical forest creatures” - for lack of better terms - which could be a writeoff in terms of acting.
But Neelix is just so endearing to me. To see how Tuvok struggles to understand him or even accept him - being the “LoGiCaL VuLCaN” that he is - is just one of those Star Trek duos that’s up there with Bashir and Garek, Kirk and Spock, etc.
He might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but a bad character, bad story? That’s boulderdash. Now cut a little jig and make a pot of space weavels - bring some light into your friends life, you low energy having, negative nancy ass bastards.
Be like Neelix.
Bashir and Garek, Kirk and Spock
How about Quark and Odo? I love both of these stick-in-the-mud cop vs lovable rogue duos!
Quark and Odo <3
There’s so much comedy in the Quark/Odo relationship that’s played perfectly and isn’t at the expense of either of the characters.
The uptight lawman/morally good criminal will-they-wont-they frenemyship is one of my favorite dynamics in the show and is up there with Garak/Bashir or even La Forge/Data.
isn’t at the expense of either of the characters
It always felt like Odo had the slight upperhand (or narrative sympathy?) in every scenario which was a tad annoying when a major theme of his character arch is his possible propensity for outright authoritarianism (a character arch I thought was brilliant to give him and, sadly, not explored nearly enough).
I still love both of them but that aspect of the dynamic will always bother me.
Balderdash* no boulders were harmed.
Still no
I wouldn’t say it’s bad acting? It seems right in line with an anxious people-pleaser who doesn’t know when to quit. I thought he was spot on.
Should be mentioned, that his character was also a pedophile.
Come on, don’t water down that term. For her species she was fully developed and presented as and portrayed by an adult human. He was a possessive creep but not a pedophile.
It’s not the internet if we don’t make broad generalizations for the sake of moral pseudo-superiority.
She was 2 years old.
- Pedophilia has to do with physical appearance (attaction to prepubescence).
- She was like 20-25% of the way through her lifespan.
Saying “she was 2 years old” would only mean something if she had a similar developmental cycle to humans.
Pedophilia is an age thing. You can try to normalize it all you want, but it just comes off sounding like a Lolicon argument. “She’s physically mature at that age”, sounds a lot like “But she only looks like a child…she’s actually 200 years old.”
Fuck off, I’m quoting definitions from the DSM-5 and the ICD-11 - not trying to “normalize” a psychological disorder. Go back to reddit. If you want to get into this argument then he would be a infantophile, not a pedophile. But he is neither.
To that point. I recently saw the episode where she goes through puberty prematurely and they talk about having a baby even though her species doesn’t ovulate until 4.
It’s creepy. It’s hard to pin down because the actress is obviously of age but that episode was gross.
You know what, we can probably blame Rick Berman for this as well.
That’s a big stretch, considering she wouldn’t even be old enough for middle school when she died of old age. She aged faster than a dog. Her entire character was originally developed to give viewers a new perspective on the concept of time. She was portrayed by (and acted as) an adult even though the character was only 2 years old. She was inexperienced and naive due to her age, but that was also largely due to the fact that she (along with her entire race) was kept as part of an uneducated slave society for her entire childhood.
Neelix was possessive and jealous, (which are perfectly valid criticisms by themselves), but calling him a pedo is difficult. There are several age-related criticisms you could make without resorting to outright pedo accusations. For instance, Neelix appeared to be in his late 20’s/early 30’s (by human standards) when the series started, and Kes was only ~19-20 (again, by human standards). And most people would cringe at seeing a 19 year old dating a 29 year old. So there was a marked age difference between them, even if she was above the age of majority for her race.
But again, her character was meant to age extremely quickly. IIRC the writers original concept was for her to age the equivalent of one human year every two or three episodes, but that was scrapped due to the actress developing an allergy for prosthetics, (which meant they wouldn’t have been able to do proper age makeup in the later seasons). So by the time they actually started dating, it’s possible that the relative age gap would have been closer.
He was better on Benson.
Huh. Yeah Neelix wasn’t great. Which made me think a little further on it. I wasn’t particularly fond of many of the Voyager crew. For comparison I’m fond of most all the crew from the other shows of roughly the same era, TNG and DS9.
I liked The Doctor, 7 of 9, Tom Paris, and Ensign Kim. Captain Janeway was a badass and I think Kate Mulgrew’s performance in the role was quite good. But didn’t find the character likeable. I did find her character likeable in those… I want to say two episodes where she played her descendant.
Neelix is what happens when producers want to force another Quark.
Yall haters
I like Nelix plotlines.
Neelix is a subdued, cerebral character compared to what I’ve seen from the Starfleet Academy show’s trailer.
Besides, it’s called a mess hall for a reason.
Edit: also this, meant only as a jest 🖖 :
Still better than jar jar
Darth Jar Jar was the original plan, Lucas changed it after the backlash against the character. He was supposed to be the new trilogy’s foil to the goofy character in a New Hope, Yoda. Lucas has said that he was making the new trilogy rhyme with the original, no other character matches with that initial Yoda introduction. That is also why Grievous and Dooku come out of nowhere despite supposedly being big characters, to fill the gap.
Darth Jar Jar was the original plan, Lucas changed it after the backlash against the character.
Was this ever confirmed? I just thought it was a fan theory.
That said, if Lucas had actually gone down this path, it would have totally redeemed Jar Jar.
Oh it’s just a fan theory, but it makes sense and matches with comments Lucas has made with regards to the overarching themes. It also explains odd things the character does, which must have been intentional since he was a CG character.
Lucas will probably never confirm or deny it officially because it would confirm that either he got scared and made a huge mistake abandoning that plotline and making the story worse in the process, or that he made a bad character a pivotal linchpin of the storyline since Jar Jar is the deciding vote that gives us the Empire.
Tom Paris is the worst character on Voyager, fight me.
If you took a spoiled 6 year old from the 1950’s and suddenly turned him into an adult, that child would be Tom Paris. He’s overly childish, and not in a cute way. He character has practically zero depth. He’s like Wesley Crusher if Wesley was an idiot.
Wesley Crush is already really shallow character like the rest of tng
Yeah it’s like they were going to give him a strong character arc by showing him growing up side by side with Harry Kim… But then the writers forgot to actually grow their characters. So they’re just children the whole time.
The thing i do like about tom, is that hes a pilot, and wants to be a pilot. Making a hot rod shuttle, building old muscle cars on the holodeck. Wanting to enter a star race… just wants to go fast.
Tom Paris was a pseudonym. His real name was Nick Lacarno and he got kicked out of the academy while Westley Crusher was there.
Lower decks squashed that theory.
That’s like saying Brunt of the FCA and Weayun are the same person.
Lower decks is barely canon, much like Clerks was barely a movie.
/s
Look, Lower Decks might have featured another person with the same name as Nick Lacarno, but that guy looked completely different, so it was obviously a new character.
A pseudonym cleverly concocted to avoid paying royalties to Naren Shankar, the writer of TNG 5x19: The First Duty, who was let go after TNG finished its run.
He’s also responsible for all the awful Captain Proton episodes that I always skip.
Yep, that’s one of the main reasons I compare him to a 6 year old from the 1950’s.
Tom Paris is the kind of character that would sleep in a racecar bed and think it made him cool.
“if” doing a lot of heavy lifting there
You know what? The real world is filled with people like that. On any given day, you might be one. Embrace mediocrity.
HOW DARE YOU SAY THIS ABOUT NEELIX
I feel like the more ridiculous a neelix plotline, the better. Cheese premise all the way. Could have gone further with it tho. Maybe the cheese bacteria become horrendously infectious and produce a disgusting disease that incapacitates the crew. Bring that shit into DS9 Ferengi or TNG Q episodes of goof level wackery. I feel like his character was intended to fill a similar niche but they never made him into the chaos goblin he should have been.
I didn’t know that Ethan Phillips did that performance while being effectively blind and deaf. Impressive!
Neelix is immune to the cheese infection of course because he’s been eating his own experiments for a while and we get a Neelix-Doctor teamup to save people from the disease. But not before most of the crew turns into an infection vomiting mess of cheese zombies. Neelix gets to show expertise and care in the recovery of his crewmates, as well as regret/pathos for wielding his dangerous culinary powers with abandon
Now I’m imagining if they had somehow managed to cast Robin Williams (RIP) as Neelix!
In another timeline we would have had Robert Picardo as Neelix. That’s the role he initially auditioned for!
I want a version where he plays Neelix but his character is otherwise unchanged
Please state the nature of the culinary emergency
Hah, reminds me of the time Bender tried to become a cook on Futurama.
“There was nothing wrong with that food. The salt level was 10% less than a lethal dose.”
“Uh oh, I shouldn’t have had seconds!”
Robert Picardo ended up exactly where he was needed.
Robert Picardo even says this
Yup! He was only familiar with TOS and assumed the Spock-type role would go to Tuvok (not an unfair assumption to make).
“Please state the nature of the acting emergency.”
