I used to be like this. But after understanding his trauma I grew to tolerate him.

Yeah, Neelix was a deeper character than most people give him credit for.

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.

Fuck that. Neelix was the heart of Voyager. Someone had to remind them to live on their way back to their lives.

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

Should be mentioned, that his character was also a pedophile.

I find Neelix really difficult to watch in the early seasons. His stubborn attitude, jealousy and overall inappropriate relationship with Kez... Makes me sick to me stomach watching him.

Context: I am biased. I've been underage and been with men like Neelix. They are pathetic, narcissistic and not worth anyone's time.

In another timeline we would have had Robert Picardo as Neelix. That's the role he initially auditioned for!

Naw you aren't wrong, he is possessive as shit over his 3 year old girlfriend. But lets blame the writers for that and not the character.

I am currently rewatching voyager and realizing that my previous hate for Neelix was unfounded. He's not the best, for sure. But he adds a lot to the crew.

oh, come on, if you lower your humour threshold enough, it was a fun addition to the show!

Am I the only one who appreciates Ethan Phillips and acting the way he was written?

Still better than jar jar

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.

We found SFDebris.

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.

He was in a short lived show called Avenue 5 which I can only describe as "The Love Boat" in space. And he was hilarious! https://youtu.be/CUVFAgwdfEQ

It's not the internet if we don't make broad generalizations for the sake of moral pseudo-superiority.

She was 2 years old.

I know you don’t really mean that, Mr. Vulcan!

1. Pedophilia has to do with physical appearance (attaction to prepubescence).
2. 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.

If we're going to keep bringing up a literal age of the Ocampa as though it's some gotcha we should also mention they never reach an age we'd consider adult. Most of them die before they even become teens.

We could blame the writers, or we could blame the puritanical mouth breathers who'd rather virtue signal their disgust at the mere concept of pedophilia rather than over the very real problems of child abuse and rape.

eh? I just don't like the way he reacted to Kes trying to have a friend in her short time in the universe (Tom Paris).

Tuvok would never admit it but they're secretly besties.

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.

https://icd.who.int/browse/2025-01/mms/en#517058174

Was literally just thinking this. Star Wars fans had it worse.

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.

He was also briefly in the Alec Baldwin film The Shadow. I was rewatching it recently and was like "No, Neelix! Don't do it!"

Now I'm imagining if they had somehow managed to cast Robin Williams (RIP) as Neelix!

He's comic relief to counter the rest of the crew, but The Doc does that a thousand times better.

You know what, we can probably blame Rick Berman for this as well.

Now imagine if Robert Picardo had gotten the Neelix role like he wanted and Ethan Phillips was cast as the Doctor.

I'm not a fan of Neelix, but I don't think what was wrong with him was necessarily Ethan Phillips' fault.

He got jealous over more than just Paris, it's just none of the other ones were main characters. He also got paranoid and jealous because she knew which deck some male crew members rooms were on.

His jealousy was a flaw, but it's the flaws are what make characters interesting. It doesn't always make them likeable, but it certainly makes them more real. If he was perfect he'd be everything OP was claiming he was. Instead he was a much more real and deep character. His character also evolved over time to be less jealous and guarded as he came to trust his fellow crew members, including Paris. If he didn't have those characteristics he'd be little more than a background character.

Those flaws aren't the problem of bad writing, they're a problem of good writing.

And if her age didn't matter, why'd you mention it?

I was trying tro relate to kablez's context statement to be honest, though now I'm wishing I hadn't so my position would be clearer. But her literal age really doesn't matter; her "world experience" is what matters. Or her lack thereof rather. Neelix, at times, seem's to be taking advantage of someone who is young and naive. Neelix absolutely does evolve past it and becomes quite good friends with Tom later on. The last scene of "Parturition" always makes me smile. But up until that point I always find Neelix and Kes's scenes a little bit cringey.

I want a version where he plays Neelix but his character is otherwise unchanged

That's the thing, he's trying to protect her from people who will take advantage of her. He literally saves her from a group of people who at the very least tortured her to try and figure out a way to get to her people. Whom they'd likely massacre and make slaves of.

The problem is that over-protectiveness can be just as bad, which is something he comes to realize over the course of the first couple seasons.

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.

That’s because he was actually intended to be the breakout character. (page 23)

Please state the nature of the culinary emergency

I can’t remember the exact scene or episode for the life of me, but she’s talking to some male member of the crew and asks to keep something a secret between them “because neelix gets jealous”. She felt the need to hide just because of how she figured he would react.

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.”

I didn’t know that Ethan Phillips did that performance while being effectively blind and deaf. Impressive!

Straight up. I love my weird little Adderall-fueled space Hobbit. He rocks. And that episode where he dies and then worries about the afterlife? One of my favorites during my first run!

"Uh oh, I shouldn't have had seconds!"

In the early seasons, I couldn't figure out how the fastest ship in the area could travel in one direction and still keep meeting the same people over and over.

I was too distracted by the insanely nonsensical main storyline to ever worry about Neelix.

I love the episode where he tries to get a map on the black market and someone dies because of him, all just because he wants to be of use for the crew and is afraid to be thrown out once they enter space he's not familiar with

Haters gone hate