Fury

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. She had lost her trim figure... but she did the best she could as both young and old Kes. Her performance was exemplary.

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 episode, 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 including "Legend" and "Nowhere Man"... except 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 were. 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, or 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"

Notice that Kes and Neelix are still looking at each other as she dissolves, showing they still had feelings for each other.

Just that small interaction and the look between the two characters was all that we needed to close out the saga of Kes and Neelix.

I tried to excise some extracurricular verbosity, apologies for the tome.

The episode brings back Kes just to completely destroy her character with the vaguest explanation that provides no real reason for why. What? I don't even care for her character, but the plot of this episode somehow annoyed me with its incredibly flawed portrayal of Kes. Not to mention, the episode throws every other time travel episode and their warnings into the trash, choosing to completely ignore anything that could have changed history during its events. Overall, this episode is one of the worst cases of Voyager writing featuring poor understanding of characters and plots full of holes and 'some kind of' Vulcan premonitions.

Since Kes was let go, it may be that the poor actress needed a paycheck. So what do you do? You contrive some plot and send her after her former crew, making up some kind of rant that needs to be addressed. She comes aboard and starts to tear the ship apart. Apparently, she has become delusional in her old age and is able to use her powers (for some reason!!!) I think a marriage with Q would have made a much better episode. Then one could throw all cause and effect into the dumpster.

Beyond the visual FX there's nothing in this episode that makes it as special as it tries to be.

A weak concept brings back an old character who gives a weak performance, and everything resets by the end.

Damning, however, is the resurgence of one of Voyager's more frequent writing issues - unexplained Deus Ex Machina. The story is driven forward when Tuvok experiences a nonsensical phenomenon that the script goes to the effort of acknowledging as unprecedented, and then leaves its occurrence unexplained.

The episode feels rushed and lazy, which ironically reminds me of the episodes when Kes' hair grew out and her relationship ended and neither significant change is ever addressed.

Kes returns to Voyager to time travel back to her past self.

This episode has been hammered enough in other reviews so I'm not going over too much detail done to death by others.

I'll start with some praise. It has good performances and moves at a decent enough pace to keep you interested.

The creative choices made with the Kes character has annoyed lots of reviewers and with some justification. Personally, I was never a big fan of how they used Kes (particularly the relationship with Neelix) so it doesn't bother me as much, however they would have been better off leaving her future unknown rather than completely undermine what went before. Also, the plot is made more complicated than it needed to be and is resolved in a pretty unimaginative way.

Having it paraded alongside 'Spock's Brain' and other low points in the franchise is a bit of an overstatement for me. It's certainly below average for Voyager, but it's not that bad.