Post by Janeway Forever on Mar 8, 2009 18:41:44 GMT -5
I've always loved Neelix. His bright, chipper manner never annoyed me the way it does some fans. It brightened my spirits. His genuine delight in life was contagious. It made me fall in love with his character.
So, when I read a great article in the new Star Trek magazine I couldn't help but share it with you.
Style Over Substance
by David Mack
Sometime I root for the wrong guy. Case in point: my visceral reactions to Neelix and the Doctor, two of Star Trek: Voyager's principal characters, both of whom were intended to serve as reflections on the human condition. You see, the Doctor was far and away my favorite character on Voyager, and Neelix was the one I most despised.
At the time, these seemed like entirely reasonable opinions to hold. ALthough both characters seemed ideally realized to act as the proverbial "Everyman" and to serve as viewers' proxies in the Voyager mileu, the two could not have been more different.
Neelix annoyed me from the very beginning. He was vexingly upbeat, optimistic, talkative, and folksy, and he couched his wide variety of Renaissance-man skills in a humble "aw-shucks" manner. WHen combined with his rainbow-tinted wardrobe and a face that looked like he had survived and explosion in the scrap bin of The Lion King wardrobe department, my gut reaction was, 'Someone blast this freak out an airlock. Now.'
The Doctor, on the other hand, won me over from the first moment that he declared with icy detachment, 'Please state the nature of the medical emergency.' Perfectly businesslike, trim and focused, he stepped into the story with the precision of a scalpel. He was articulate, devastatingly witty, perpetually put-upon, exasperated by the lesser beings he was forced to serve, and, if occasionally arch and abrasive, usually right.
So where idd I go wrong? If I'm to be honest, I would have to confess that, for me, this was a triumph of style over substance. There really was no logical reason for me to dislike Neelix so much. Sure, he acted like a dork; he was the antithesis of cool - and that was kind of the point; he was an uncool hero. My problem was that I paid so much attention to the 'uncool' part that I completely ignored the 'hero' part.
The more we learned about Neelix, the tougher and more noble he was revealed to be. Plagued by survivor's guilt after the Haakonians wiped out his entire family with an attack on the Talaxian moon Rinax, he became a refugee from his home world and his people. Forced to master a diverse portfolio of skills in order to survive and thrie in a hostile galaxy, Neelix's chipper demeanor masked his deep reservoir of rage.
By the time he met Voyager's crew, he was an entrepreneur with his own ship. But he was willing to risk his ship, his fortune, and his life, all to save Kes, the woman he loved. FOr her benefit, he joined the crew of Voyager and carved out his own niche in order to stay by the side of his true love. Had cicrumstances not forced them apart, we would have followed her to the end of the galaxy. After he lost her, however, he chose to stay with Voyager's crew, not just because they needed him but because they were his friends. He was brave and loyal.
Neelix had his faults, of course. He was insecure; when it came to Kes he was possessive and jealous, especially with regard to her friendship with Tom Paris. THere were times when I wondered if his incessant efforts to goad Tuvok into a moment of frivolity were a passive-aggressive form of sadism. But even thse shortcomings were at heart benign. Who doesn't understand the fear of losing love? And was it really so wrong for him to hope that he could persuade the dour Tuvok to lighten up?
In may ways, Neelix was like a walking Aesop's fable. The writers of Voyager challenged us to look past his clownish surface and see ourselves in his awkward, self-deprecating, vulnerable, and ultimately courageous persona.
The Doctor, on the other hand, started out as nothing but surface. He was the epitome of the surgeon's mantra: "Sometimes wrong but never in doubt." Where Neelix took every opportunity to seek out the good in other people, the Doctor was predisposed to ferret out the bad - and highlight it with scathing commentary.
What he lacked in sensitivity he made up for with style, skill and sarcasm. He reacted to the slings and arrows of Voyager's misfortunes with snarky humor and droll cynicism, and even in the first two years of Voyager's journey through the Delta Quadrant, he proved himself capable of growing beyond the limits of his programming, both as a physician and as a person. SOme might have considered the Doctor a misanthrope, but without a doubt he was an eminently watchable misanthrope.
For all of his brilliance and eloquence, however, the Doctor was actually not a very decent person. In his early years, before being schooled in social graces by Kes, he lacked humility, tact, and empathy. Hubris was his defining character flaw; he could infuriate almost anyone with his almost unshakeable belief in his own infallibility.
He was also tragically superficial. Frequently, he mistook appearance for substance. A classic example of this took place in the third-season episode "Real Life,' when the Doctor conjured a holographic family in order to educate himself about the humanoid concept of "family values." Unfortuantely, he had convinced himself that an illusion of an idealized "perfect" domestic life was an adequate tutorial. IT was only after B'Elanna Torres reprogrammed his scenario to include chaotic random variables, and those variables led to the tragic, accidental demise of his young holographic daughter, did the Doctor, like a character in a Greek tragedy, experience the epiphany that love, life and family are valuable because they are fragile, and that joy is precious because it is feelting. IN many ways, the Doctor, despite all of his competence and aspirations to self-improvement, represents everything that is shallow and venal in all of us.
So why did I think the Doctor was the best character on the show and cringe ever time Neelix appeared on the screen? I could cop out and proffer some lame excuse about the quality of the writing being superior for the one character over the other, or I could disingenuously try to lay the blame at the feet of the actors behind the roles. Neither would be the truth.
It's at this point that my essay must digress into a confession. I think that the real reason why I admired the Doctor and reviled poor Neelix was that I was guilty of the same attachement to surface appearances that I ascribe to the Doctor. The detached, biting wit of the Doctor appealed to my vanity, to my desire to verbally lacerate my critics with impunity. Neelix, on the other hand, often seemed so desperated to be liked that I saw him as needy and pathetic.
It wasn't fair that I should have lauded the Doctor for being snide and mean while holding Neelix in low regard for being too nice. But then, life is often unfair in exactly this manner, isn't it? I was so enamored of the Doctor's cooler facade and his ease at delivering acerbic one-liners that I refused to let myself see that Neelix was actually a better - and more human - person all along.
In the final analysis, I must admit that the fault lies not in Voyager's stars...but in myself."
So, when I read a great article in the new Star Trek magazine I couldn't help but share it with you.
Style Over Substance
by David Mack
Sometime I root for the wrong guy. Case in point: my visceral reactions to Neelix and the Doctor, two of Star Trek: Voyager's principal characters, both of whom were intended to serve as reflections on the human condition. You see, the Doctor was far and away my favorite character on Voyager, and Neelix was the one I most despised.
At the time, these seemed like entirely reasonable opinions to hold. ALthough both characters seemed ideally realized to act as the proverbial "Everyman" and to serve as viewers' proxies in the Voyager mileu, the two could not have been more different.
Neelix annoyed me from the very beginning. He was vexingly upbeat, optimistic, talkative, and folksy, and he couched his wide variety of Renaissance-man skills in a humble "aw-shucks" manner. WHen combined with his rainbow-tinted wardrobe and a face that looked like he had survived and explosion in the scrap bin of The Lion King wardrobe department, my gut reaction was, 'Someone blast this freak out an airlock. Now.'
The Doctor, on the other hand, won me over from the first moment that he declared with icy detachment, 'Please state the nature of the medical emergency.' Perfectly businesslike, trim and focused, he stepped into the story with the precision of a scalpel. He was articulate, devastatingly witty, perpetually put-upon, exasperated by the lesser beings he was forced to serve, and, if occasionally arch and abrasive, usually right.
So where idd I go wrong? If I'm to be honest, I would have to confess that, for me, this was a triumph of style over substance. There really was no logical reason for me to dislike Neelix so much. Sure, he acted like a dork; he was the antithesis of cool - and that was kind of the point; he was an uncool hero. My problem was that I paid so much attention to the 'uncool' part that I completely ignored the 'hero' part.
The more we learned about Neelix, the tougher and more noble he was revealed to be. Plagued by survivor's guilt after the Haakonians wiped out his entire family with an attack on the Talaxian moon Rinax, he became a refugee from his home world and his people. Forced to master a diverse portfolio of skills in order to survive and thrie in a hostile galaxy, Neelix's chipper demeanor masked his deep reservoir of rage.
By the time he met Voyager's crew, he was an entrepreneur with his own ship. But he was willing to risk his ship, his fortune, and his life, all to save Kes, the woman he loved. FOr her benefit, he joined the crew of Voyager and carved out his own niche in order to stay by the side of his true love. Had cicrumstances not forced them apart, we would have followed her to the end of the galaxy. After he lost her, however, he chose to stay with Voyager's crew, not just because they needed him but because they were his friends. He was brave and loyal.
Neelix had his faults, of course. He was insecure; when it came to Kes he was possessive and jealous, especially with regard to her friendship with Tom Paris. THere were times when I wondered if his incessant efforts to goad Tuvok into a moment of frivolity were a passive-aggressive form of sadism. But even thse shortcomings were at heart benign. Who doesn't understand the fear of losing love? And was it really so wrong for him to hope that he could persuade the dour Tuvok to lighten up?
In may ways, Neelix was like a walking Aesop's fable. The writers of Voyager challenged us to look past his clownish surface and see ourselves in his awkward, self-deprecating, vulnerable, and ultimately courageous persona.
The Doctor, on the other hand, started out as nothing but surface. He was the epitome of the surgeon's mantra: "Sometimes wrong but never in doubt." Where Neelix took every opportunity to seek out the good in other people, the Doctor was predisposed to ferret out the bad - and highlight it with scathing commentary.
What he lacked in sensitivity he made up for with style, skill and sarcasm. He reacted to the slings and arrows of Voyager's misfortunes with snarky humor and droll cynicism, and even in the first two years of Voyager's journey through the Delta Quadrant, he proved himself capable of growing beyond the limits of his programming, both as a physician and as a person. SOme might have considered the Doctor a misanthrope, but without a doubt he was an eminently watchable misanthrope.
For all of his brilliance and eloquence, however, the Doctor was actually not a very decent person. In his early years, before being schooled in social graces by Kes, he lacked humility, tact, and empathy. Hubris was his defining character flaw; he could infuriate almost anyone with his almost unshakeable belief in his own infallibility.
He was also tragically superficial. Frequently, he mistook appearance for substance. A classic example of this took place in the third-season episode "Real Life,' when the Doctor conjured a holographic family in order to educate himself about the humanoid concept of "family values." Unfortuantely, he had convinced himself that an illusion of an idealized "perfect" domestic life was an adequate tutorial. IT was only after B'Elanna Torres reprogrammed his scenario to include chaotic random variables, and those variables led to the tragic, accidental demise of his young holographic daughter, did the Doctor, like a character in a Greek tragedy, experience the epiphany that love, life and family are valuable because they are fragile, and that joy is precious because it is feelting. IN many ways, the Doctor, despite all of his competence and aspirations to self-improvement, represents everything that is shallow and venal in all of us.
So why did I think the Doctor was the best character on the show and cringe ever time Neelix appeared on the screen? I could cop out and proffer some lame excuse about the quality of the writing being superior for the one character over the other, or I could disingenuously try to lay the blame at the feet of the actors behind the roles. Neither would be the truth.
It's at this point that my essay must digress into a confession. I think that the real reason why I admired the Doctor and reviled poor Neelix was that I was guilty of the same attachement to surface appearances that I ascribe to the Doctor. The detached, biting wit of the Doctor appealed to my vanity, to my desire to verbally lacerate my critics with impunity. Neelix, on the other hand, often seemed so desperated to be liked that I saw him as needy and pathetic.
It wasn't fair that I should have lauded the Doctor for being snide and mean while holding Neelix in low regard for being too nice. But then, life is often unfair in exactly this manner, isn't it? I was so enamored of the Doctor's cooler facade and his ease at delivering acerbic one-liners that I refused to let myself see that Neelix was actually a better - and more human - person all along.
In the final analysis, I must admit that the fault lies not in Voyager's stars...but in myself."
