VOY - Collective

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7o9 is like Big Brother Jake.

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Icheb always felt like Voyager's Jake Sisko, there not so much for his own development (though he did get some later) but more for giving depth to Seven. And for the most part it worked, as outside a Naomi Wildman, someone like him made the most sense for her to a mentor.

That's pretty much how I feel about Icheb as well, I personally think Jake Sisko was far more interesting and done better, not only was Jake more charismatic than Icheb, but Jake did get more development beyond his relationship with his dad, like having him wanting to be a writer and journalist that would either be a continuing background element or even a full episode like "Nor the Battle to the Strong" which was also a great episode for Jake, or his friendship with Nog and helping him become the most celebrated character on Deep Space Nine by not judging Nog by his race and treated him with respect, and even the episode about his relationship with is dad and the loss of his mom are fantastic like "The Visitor" and "Shattered Mirror".

Jake Sisko may have started out as someone to give depth to Captain Sisko, but he did grown out of that and became is own, personally Icheb never grew beyond giving Seven more depth, and even then he was just boring, honestly the dynamic between Seven and Naomi Wildman was far better that that of Seven and Icheb.

Nah, we got some with Icheb, mostly his one time thinking he was dating B'elanna, and his friendship with q.

I think the big thing with Icheb was that his name, unlike Jake Sisko's, wasn't in the main credits, so he only appeared when needed for plot reasons. For fun, scroll through DS9 episodes on Memory Alpha and see how many say, "Cirroc Lofton did not appear in this episode."

He, and the Borg children, and the Lower Decks people from Good Shepherd, are what we should have gotten a lot more of, examples of Voyager's impact on the Delta quadrant, the DQ's impact on them, and evidence of Voyager as a community, as opposed to seven people and the occasional extra in the background.

Seeing the Maquis crewmembers like Chell, for instance, would have been a good idea. Icheb was proof that SOME form of continuity existed.

Heck, I only thing we even remember Icheb is because of his fridging in Star Trek Picard, as J!! posted and I agree with:

He died as he lived: as a naritive tool to facilitate 7's character development.

And while we do talk about Icheb, I've not heard anyone talk about the other Borg kids and their contribution to Star Trek Voyager, I don't even think anyone can remember their names without looking it up, heck even the series forgot about the Borg baby, as far as anyone's concerned Captain Janeway just yeeted the baby onto the nearest planet and called it a day.

Yeah, that's on the showrunners. While Icheb got some characterization and development, they really didn't. They could have done more with them, but never really did. The Haunting of Deck 12 being their biggest outing aside from the Science Fair, and the time Seven had to learn to stop being a helicopter parent.

If they had been smart, these kids should have been trying to integrate with the kids that are starting to come into school age as well on board, due to all the hanky-panky happening on the ship. It kind of boggles belief that they were on the ship for 7 years, and Naomi and Miral were the only children born on board the ship.

[Link8909]

Nah, we got some with Icheb, mostly his one time thinking he was dating B'elanna, and his friendship with q.

I think the big thing with Icheb was that his name, unlike Jake Sisko's, wasn't in the main credits, so he only appeared when needed for plot reasons. For fun, scroll through DS9 episodes on Memory Alpha and see how many say, "Cirroc Lofton did not appear in this episode."

He, and the Borg children, and the Lower Decks people from Good Shepherd, are what we should have gotten a lot more of, examples of Voyager's impact on the Delta quadrant, the DQ's impact on them, and evidence of Voyager as a community, as opposed to seven people and the occasional extra in the background.

Seeing the Maquis crewmembers like Chell, for instance, would have been a good idea. Icheb was proof that SOME form of continuity existed.

Yeah, that's on the showrunners. While Icheb got some characterization and development, they really didn't. They could have done more with them, but never really did. The Haunting of Deck 12 being their biggest outing aside from the Science Fair, and the time Seven had to learn to stop being a helicopter parent.

If they had been smart, these kids should have been trying to integrate with the kids that are starting to come into school age as well on board, due to all the hanky-panky happening on the ship. It kind of boggles belief that they were on the ship for 7 years, and Naomi and Miral were the only children born on board the ship.

That's fair, I personally just like Jake more, and I still think he got more development than Icheb, but that's mostly due to Jake being there from the start, while Icheb was added in the middle of Season 6, and as many people say about Star Trek Voyager and as you say, the showrunners didn't like to take risks, this episode was a great start to shake the status quo as Chuck said in this review, but while there were episodes like "Child's Play" and "The Haunting of Deck 12" (should have been Deck 13) that are about them, by the beginning of Season 7 in "Imperfection" the other kids are shipped off and after that episode Icheb was just there, again, this is just how I feel about the character.

And as you say and something Renegade Cut even talked about in his "Star Trek Voyager Is Good, Actually" essay video, Voyager doesn't have the best supporting cast, like you say the series really needed to have more reoccurring characters like the lower deck crewmembers from "Good Shepherd" or other crewmembers like Chell, Star Trek Voyage Elite Force did this well by not only having it's own cast, but also including and expanding upon other characters like Chell and Jurot, the latter being only name dropped in "Counterpoint", or having characters like Lyndsay Ballard from "Ashes to Ashes" and Ahni Jetal from "Latent Image" being there from the beginning before being killed off.

[Link8909]

While I'm more inclined to cut Neelix more slack... Chuck's interpretation of a Neelix scene was pretty spot-on, sadly.

Ah, well, now that he's chief engineer, at least he won't be making terrible food for a crew anymore. Can't wait to see the Ectum Ray in action!

Yeah, Chuck really nailed down Neelix's mannerisms, also while I get his frustrations with Neelix, I'm also willing to cut him some slack, personally I like the open scene to this episode with everyone on the Delta Flyer playing poker, it's something I'd imagen happening on any long shuttle trip and I always welcome more scenes of characters simply shooting the breeze in Star Trek, good human moments.

But the question remains, will the Ectum Ray be as powerful as the Photonic Cannon?

[clearspira]

While I'm more inclined to cut Neelix more slack... Chuck's interpretation of a Neelix scene was pretty spot-on, sadly.

Ah, well, now that he's chief engineer, at least he won't be making terrible food for a crew anymore. Can't wait to see the Ectum Ray in action!

Yeah, Chuck really nailed down Neelix's mannerisms, also while I get his frustrations with Neelix, I'm also willing to cut him some slack, personally I like the open scene to this episode with everyone on the Delta Flyer playing poker, it's something I'd imagen happening on any long shuttle trip and I always welcome more scenes of characters simply shooting the breeze in Star Trek, good human moments.

But the question remains, will the Ectum Ray be as powerful as the Photonic Cannon?

Neelix as intended vs Neelix as written is perhaps one of the worst pieces of writing I have ever seen - and I mean that without hyperbole. It is incredible to me how badly they botched his execution.

On paper, he is meant to be a Quark crossed with Jar Jar Binks.
In actuality, he comes off as a serial liar and a domestic abuser, particularly in the way he treated Kes. She was not allowed to have male friends in his eyes and we saw this demonstrated well in the ''37s'' and in ''Parturition''. He mistrusted her to the point that even after she asked him to be the FATHER OF HER CHILD, he still thought that she might be having it off with Tom. And I dearly want to know whether he knew what her full age was when he first met her because depending on your POV she was either 1 year(s) old or 10 years old in doggy years. I think that its fun that when she had her body stolen in ''Warlord'' and Tehran broke up the relationship for her, she chose to keep it finished.

And then there are the lies. The endless lies that got people killed (Basics), arrested (Fair trade), sick (his cooking not fit for human consumption), and injured (that time he claimed to be a mountain climber). No to mention the fact that he deserted his unit during a world war.

[clearspira]

Nah, we got some with Icheb, mostly his one time thinking he was dating B'elanna, and his friendship with q.

I think the big thing with Icheb was that his name, unlike Jake Sisko's, wasn't in the main credits, so he only appeared when needed for plot reasons. For fun, scroll through DS9 episodes on Memory Alpha and see how many say, "Cirroc Lofton did not appear in this episode."

He, and the Borg children, and the Lower Decks people from Good Shepherd, are what we should have gotten a lot more of, examples of Voyager's impact on the Delta quadrant, the DQ's impact on them, and evidence of Voyager as a community, as opposed to seven people and the occasional extra in the background.

Seeing the Maquis crewmembers like Chell, for instance, would have been a good idea. Icheb was proof that SOME form of continuity existed.

Yeah, that's on the showrunners. While Icheb got some characterization and development, they really didn't. They could have done more with them, but never really did. The Haunting of Deck 12 being their biggest outing aside from the Science Fair, and the time Seven had to learn to stop being a helicopter parent.

If they had been smart, these kids should have been trying to integrate with the kids that are starting to come into school age as well on board, due to all the hanky-panky happening on the ship. It kind of boggles belief that they were on the ship for 7 years, and Naomi and Miral were the only children born on board the ship.

That's fair, I personally just like Jake more, and I still think he got more development than Icheb, but that's mostly due to Jake being there from the start, while Icheb was added in the middle of Season 6, and as many people say about Star Trek Voyager and as you say, the showrunners didn't like to take risks, this episode was a great start to shake the status quo as Chuck said in this review, but while there were episodes like "Child's Play" and "The Haunting of Deck 12" (should have been Deck 13) that are about them, by the beginning of Season 7 in "Imperfection" the other kids are shipped off and after that episode Icheb was just there, again, this is just how I feel about the character.

And as you say and something Renegade Cut even talked about in his "Star Trek Voyager Is Good, Actually" essay video, Voyager doesn't have the best supporting cast, like you say the series really needed to have more reoccurring characters like the lower deck crewmembers from "Good Shepherd" or other crewmembers like Chell, Star Trek Voyage Elite Force did this well by not only having it's own cast, but also including and expanding upon other characters like Chell and Jurot, the latter being only name dropped in "Counterpoint", or having characters like Lyndsay Ballard from "Ashes to Ashes" and Ahni Jetal from "Latent Image" being there from the beginning before being killed off.

Renegade Cut can make good points, the problem for me is that he often has to reach so hard in order to prove that something he likes is actually good that he just comes across as a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. The Youtuber Mauler made a very good critical response to the ''Ghostbusters is good actually'' video and he didn't really have to try all that hard.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I appreciate him trying to say that Luke Skywalker is the cool one.

[Madner Kami]

The Youtuber Mauler made a very good critical response to the ''Ghostbusters is good actually'' video and he didn't really have to try all that hard.

Do you happen to have a link? I can't find such a video.

[Link8909]

Neelix as intended vs Neelix as written is perhaps one of the worst pieces of writing I have ever seen - and I mean that without hyperbole. It is incredible to me how badly they botched his execution.

On paper, he is meant to be a Quark crossed with Jar Jar Binks.
In actuality, he comes off as a serial liar and a domestic abuser, particularly in the way he treated Kes. She was not allowed to have male friends in his eyes and we saw this demonstrated well in the ''37s'' and in ''Parturition''. He mistrusted her to the point that even after she asked him to be the FATHER OF HER CHILD, he still thought that she might be having it off with Tom. And I dearly want to know whether he knew what her full age was when he first met her because depending on your POV she was either 1 year(s) old or 10 years old in doggy years. I think that its fun that when she had her body stolen in ''Warlord'' and Tehran broke up the relationship for her, she chose to keep it finished.

And then there are the lies. The endless lies that got people killed (Basics), arrested (Fair trade), sick (his cooking not fit for human consumption), and injured (that time he claimed to be a mountain climber). No to mention the fact that he deserted his unit during a world war.

That's fair and I won't even try to justify all the failings of Neelix, like I said I get Chucks frustrations with Neelix, he just never bothered me as much.

This could be because Star Trek Voyager was the first Star Trek series I ever watch, with ''37s'' being one of the earliest episodes I remember watching when it first aired, so because of this and I was so young, I just got used to Neelix.

Also Chuck's analogy of Neelix being that annoying roommate is very accurate, I'm only exposed to Neelix when I want to watch a Voyager episode, while Chuck whom regularly reviews Voyager, has to put up with him far more than me.

[GreyICE]

Honestly, Neelix is a great example of a good character in the wrong show. You can turn on Farscape, any time (I recommend it), and see a fantastic version of that character. Rygel, also known as Dominar Rygel the XVI, is greedy, amoral, cowardly, gluttonous, and constantly causing complete chaos. By any account Neelix is his moral better. So why does Rygel work so, so well and Neelix so poorly?

First, Star Trek is competence porn. Everyone in Star Trek (and Voyager is no exception) is expected to be incredible at their jobs, emotionally stable, multidisciplinary, amazing in a crisis, and generally the best of the best. Farscape features an alien Klingon analog whose first responses is violence, a human from a fascist warrior culture whose first response is amazingly violent, a deranged mystic who might become a serial killer if her chakras don't align, and a pathological liar and thief. Later they replace the mystic with a man who faked being crazy for so long that he actually went insane. Rygel doesn't come off as "the one idiot in a show full of geniuses", he comes off as "another nut in a show full of nuts."

Second, he's actually good at something. Unlike Neelix, who fails at pretty much everything he's shown attempting, Rygel is an experienced diplomat, incredible with "high society" negotiations, a not-unskilled thief, and fits in tiny spaces (this comes in handy more than you'd think). When he does come up with a plan to help the group, not himself, his plans have a high success rate, and he's often someone bailing them out of messes (though never without complaining. Never).

In short, Neelix is just a dumb character to stick in a Star Trek show. He doesn't fit the tone of the show at all, and I think it showed. Neelix's personal struggles happen on a backdrop of hyper competent people. And if they made him the main protagonist, really dived into his trauma, and showed the guilt, the pathos, the suffering of this man who is a coward, a liar, and a cheat, and who knows he's with better people than him and desperately guilty about it, but also unable to help his nature, it might have worked.

Instead Neelix is the comic relief. He's not funny.