There's actually a decent character in Neelix

[CharlesPhipps]

Yes, I said it.

Binge-watching Voyager, it strikes me as weird that they decided to turn Neelix into Jar Jar Binks and I can't help but wonder if they had been willing to do the character a bit differently. I think it's the makeup and his hedgehog like appearance that resulted in them making him a parody, much the same way the appearance of the Ferengi kept them from being effective villains.

However, "Jetrel" and "Mortal Coil" both are episodes that remind me there's a perfectly solid character underneath Neelix when they're not making him antics guy. The guy who fled from the destruction of his world to become a junk trader and someone who loses faith in his religion because there was just one too many horrible things that happened (and we realize he was only clinging to it as a source of comfort).

The idea he was a rogue willing to lie, cheat, and steal as a trader also was an avenue that I think could have been explored. No, he was never as cool as Han Solo but he could have easily been their version of Quark in that he was involved in a lot of shady shit in the pilot and other episodes. You could have done episodes of people wanting their pound of flesh only for Voyager to have to protect him because he's their guide.

I remember watching "Resistance" and the Captain is making a black market deal and my wife said, "Wait, isn't Neelix someone who should be doing this? Making black market deals is LITERALLY the only thing he is actually qualified to do."

[CaptainCalvinCat]

Personally, I think, that Chuck and now Allison Pregler are overdoing it, when it comes to criticising the antics of Neelix. Sure, he has his annoying moments, like cooking stuff, that, if Neelix would be real, you could eat on "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" - but on the other hand, I'm sure the Klingons would excel in that show. And once you've stomached, that there are warrior-aliens eating basically raw earthworms and calling them a delicacy, I think, we can shrug, when it comes to Neelix cooking, now , can we?

On another thread, another user said something about the Neelix-Kes-Powerdynamic and even there I'm not that sold. Sure, Neelix promised his girlfriend to show her the universe and if Voyager hadn't been, he probably showed her the part of space, that he knew, but as much as Kes follows her own agenda on the Voyager, she'd follow her own agenda on Neelix ship.

What else is negative about Neelix?
His antics? Meh - Voyager has the kernels of being a very dark show, so you put up with all the comedy, that you can get.

[GreyICE]

I'm reminded of an author's quote - I forget whose, but I'm sure the sentiment has been echoed by many - that ideas are a dime a dozen, turning them into a book is hard. Virtually any concept can be done well. Some concepts are self-crippling, ones that set you so far back that it's probably not worth it, but even those could probably be salvaged (it's just not worth it).

Neelix is fundamentally the "fish out of water" character, who is marginally competent, stuck in the middle of a group of incredibly competent individuals. This is the normal setup for a protagonist character. They chose to go with comic relief. This is inherently difficult, but sure, one or two good skills can carry them.

The writers of Voyager though? They sabotaged him at every turn. Are we supposed to think that rationing food and cooking is important? We can't have holodecks. We can't see on the one hand "food is scarce, we might starve" and on the other hand "ah yes, let us conjure up a magical fairy tale world." Is he supposed to know a lot about the locals? Then he better have useful knowledge, not useless shit that gets them in trouble (every time. Every time). Diplomat? Then have him be diplomatic!

The actor is good, yes. That much fundamentally was there. But you've got to write the fucking character. It's not enough to blame reviewers for "not seeing the potential", you've got to blame the writers for not putting the potential on screen.

It would also help if any of the comedy was funny. I don't know why, because Voyager could occasionally nail humor, but it's almost never related to Neelix. 95% of Neelix jokes are "someone says something serious, Neelix says something stupid." This is very, very bad sitcom humor. 80% of the actual humor comes from Picardo, 15% comes from Mulgrew when they write her with a dry sense of humor (her comic delivery is amazingly timed), and 5% comes from random guest stars.

[CaptainCalvinCat]

The writers of Voyager though? They sabotaged him at every turn. Are we supposed to think that rationing food and cooking is important? We can't have holodecks. We can't see on the one hand "food is scarce, we might starve" and on the other hand "ah yes, let us conjure up a magical fairy tale world." Is he supposed to know a lot about the locals? Then he better have useful knowledge, not useless shit that gets them in trouble (every time. Every time). Diplomat? Then have him be diplomatic!

Oh, you can have holodecks and yet your "rationing food is important"-plotline. Why? Well - do you think, people would give up they one chance in "conjuring up fairy tale land" for something like food?
Think about our real world: Good, and I mean good food is expensive. In order for it to be good, it needs to meet several requirements, just two of them are "it might need to be regional" and "it needs to be prepared fresh" - so no "fast food" like hamburgers from McDonalds or your pizza joint.
But that stuff is expensive, while you get your McDonalds-Hamburger for 1 Euro.

I don't know, if you have something like the thing, I'm talking about now, but in Germany, we have the "Warenkorb" (market basket) , which shows what goods and services were representative in the last years. We even have a word for it: "Warenkorbanalyse" (market basket analysis)

What do people buy more? Healthy food or Books, DVDs etc?

When was Neelix not diplomatic, by the way? I mean, did he run around and insult ambassadors? No, actually, he did not. Except for the cheese-incident and the one time, when Voyager entered the region, where Neelix never was - when did he say useless shit, that got Voyagers crew in trouble?
Granted - there was the one scene in the pilot, where he betrayed Janeway, but he did that in order to free Kes.

Let's see, what else qualifies as "usesless shit, that gets them in trouble".
You could count the death of Hogan, because Neelix said, that he should pick up the bones - but besides that?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

From what I'm reading, I affirm that he's just written too much with white noise in the form of being either nothing more than or a painfully contrived social foil most of the time despite having genuine character traits off in the corners. He's very good as a godfather to Naomi, and his relationship with Tuvac is actually one of the better ones across Trek as far as making a concept work. Probably a hair under Odo/Quark as they get pretty subsistent with their relationship.

A generally affirming episode for Neelix, for me at least, is the elevator shaft episode with him and Tuvac. It doesn't hit you over the head with his sentimentality, at least not without at least making a point this time. He helps save the day, and it's overall not an embarrassment. Not to sum it up like that, but he actually does leverage his ability to operate the elevator nicely considering Tuvac literally does objectify him.

[CharlesPhipps]

According to Ron Moore, VOY was his own special hell because the writers had been writing Star Trek for something like twelve years at that point and had gotten into a rut where they loathed writing outside their comfort zone. They didn't want to write a different kind of Star Trek, they just wanted to do more TNG.

The holodecks were just one of the "cheats" that they didn't want to give up for the setting.

UPN was apparently not much of a help as their executives said, "We just want our own TNG."

[TGLS]

Hm. There goes my fantasy of time traveling, buying paramount and making best voyager.

[GreyICE]

Oh, you can have holodecks and yet your "rationing food is important"-plotline. Why? Well - do you think, people would give up they one chance in "conjuring up fairy tale land" for something like food?
Think about our real world: Good, and I mean good food is expensive. In order for it to be good, it needs to meet several requirements, just two of them are "it might need to be regional" and "it needs to be prepared fresh" - so no "fast food" like hamburgers from McDonalds or your pizza joint.
But that stuff is expensive, while you get your McDonalds-Hamburger for 1 Euro.

I don't know, if you have something like the thing, I'm talking about now, but in Germany, we have the "Warenkorb" (market basket) , which shows what goods and services were representative in the last years. We even have a word for it: "Warenkorbanalyse" (market basket analysis)

What do people buy more? Healthy food or Books, DVDs etc?

You're rather misunderestimating the orders of magnitude of energy involved. Occasionally, there's some video someone puts out of assembling something ludicrously expensive, like "the $250 hamburger" where they use some ridiculously premium rare ingredients and shit to make some silly-expensive hamburger.

And yet instinctively we know that the most expensive possible ingredients, prepared using the most energy-intensive methods possible, pale in comparison to assembling food molecule by molecule in the replicators. And we also instinctively understand that no matter how ludicrously difficult that is, it's a drop in the bucket next to the fucking holodeck.

It's like if books were printed on 100% pure rhino hide, the ink was made out of crushed diamonds, and the binding was done with gold thread. And someone had six of those books but was like "oh and getting a hamburger might be tough." It don't work. It very obviously don't work.

When was Neelix not diplomatic, by the way? I mean, did he run around and insult ambassadors? No, actually, he did not. Except for the cheese-incident and the one time, when Voyager entered the region, where Neelix never was - when did he say useless shit, that got Voyagers crew in trouble?
Granted - there was the one scene in the pilot, where he betrayed Janeway, but he did that in order to free Kes.

You know, when was he diplomatic? When did we have an episode where Neelix sat down and negotiated a useful peace between Voyager and some alien species? Some trade, something diplomatic, that we see him negotiate on screen? Which episode was that, exactly?

Yep, that often.

[CaptainCalvinCat]

Oh, you can have holodecks and yet your "rationing food is important"-plotline. Why? Well - do you think, people would give up they one chance in "conjuring up fairy tale land" for something like food?
Think about our real world: Good, and I mean good food is expensive. In order for it to be good, it needs to meet several requirements, just two of them are "it might need to be regional" and "it needs to be prepared fresh" - so no "fast food" like hamburgers from McDonalds or your pizza joint.
But that stuff is expensive, while you get your McDonalds-Hamburger for 1 Euro.

I don't know, if you have something like the thing, I'm talking about now, but in Germany, we have the "Warenkorb" (market basket) , which shows what goods and services were representative in the last years. We even have a word for it: "Warenkorbanalyse" (market basket analysis)

What do people buy more? Healthy food or Books, DVDs etc?

You're rather misunderestimating the orders of magnitude of energy involved. Occasionally, there's some video someone puts out of assembling something ludicrously expensive, like "the $250 hamburger" where they use some ridiculously premium rare ingredients and shit to make some silly-expensive hamburger.

And yet instinctively we know that the most expensive possible ingredients, prepared using the most energy-intensive methods possible, pale in comparison to assembling food molecule by molecule in the replicators. And we also instinctively understand that no matter how ludicrously difficult that is, it's a drop in the bucket next to the fucking holodeck.


It's like if books were printed on 100% pure rhino hide, the ink was made out of crushed diamonds, and the binding was done with gold thread. And someone had six of those books but was like "oh and getting a hamburger might be tough." It don't work. It very obviously don't work.

Is it, though? Is the holodeck that much of an energy-eater?

When was Neelix not diplomatic, by the way? I mean, did he run around and insult ambassadors? No, actually, he did not. Except for the cheese-incident and the one time, when Voyager entered the region, where Neelix never was - when did he say useless shit, that got Voyagers crew in trouble?
Granted - there was the one scene in the pilot, where he betrayed Janeway, but he did that in order to free Kes.

You know, when was he diplomatic? When did we have an episode where Neelix sat down and negotiated a useful peace between Voyager and some alien species? Some trade, something diplomatic, that we see him negotiate on screen? Which episode was that, exactly?

Yep, that often.

Well, what about the episode "Alliances"? And think of all the other alliances, Voyager made during its way through the Delta-Quadrant? Who helped Voyagers Crew to establish something between themselves and the Sikarians? Oh, and by the way, who helped to find out, that Michael Jonas was a traitor?

[CharlesPhipps]

Note: They established the Holodeck had incompatible energy generators with the rest of the ship.

It was a handwave.

Everyone knew it was a handwave.

The thing about the holodeck isn't the science, though, but the fact the holodeck is an inconceivable luxury that makes it so that the Voyager never feels too cramped or desperate. It's the same as Cloud 9 in BSG.