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!

Balderdash* no boulders were harmed.

Still no

Bashir and Garek, Kirk and Spock

How about Quark and Odo? I love both of these stick-in-the-mud cop vs lovable rogue duos!

I wouldn't say it's bad acting? It seems right in line with an anxious people-pleaser who doesn't know when to quit. I thought he was spot on.

But he is so goddamn unbelievably annoying.

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

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

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

Voyager cultivates the bio-neural cheese, making the smartest and most delicious cheese in the Delta Quadrant.

Cheese sales used for diplomacy, barter, and bribes. All Delta Quadrant species like this cheese.

Janeway, recognizing the power of the cheese to get home quickly, looks at a nutrient rich nebula in wonder saying "There's cheese in that nebula!"

Bio-neural cheese easily defeats borg nanos in one-on-one nano deathmatches. Whole borg cubes left disconnected and smelling of cheese.

Neelix makes a fondue that becomes sentient for a few days. Janeway establishes diplomatic relations with the cheese. Neelix is now the ambassador of cheese.

Voyager gets home in 3 years, with borg defeated. Multiple successful diplomatic first contacts, and trade deals. Dramatic increase in all cheese related technology, and basic civil cheese rights across the Federation.

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

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

Robert Picardo ended up exactly where he was needed.

Holy shit, I was imagining Robert Beltran at first, and nearly died.

He should have played Picard.

Howling Mad Murdock's character didn't suck.

Tom Paris was a pseudonym. His real name was Nick Lacarno and he got kicked out of the academy while Westley Crusher was there.

Yeah it's like they were going to give him a strong character arc by showing him growing up side by side with Harry Kim... But then the writers forgot to actually grow their characters. So they're just children the whole time.

He's also responsible for all the awful Captain Proton episodes that I always skip.

The thing i do like about tom, is that hes a pilot, and wants to be a pilot. Making a hot rod shuttle, building old muscle cars on the holodeck. Wanting to enter a star race... just wants to go fast.

"if" doing a lot of heavy lifting there

"Yes mam."

tom paris is imo easily the most forgettable character amongst the main cast

Only near the end of the Voyager game did I realise there was a tab for tom paris logs, I'd gone the whole game missing them. What a pleasant discovery that was.

Wesley Crush is already really shallow character like the rest of tng

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Darth Jar Jar was the original plan, Lucas changed it after the backlash against the character. He was supposed to be the new trilogy's foil to the goofy character in a New Hope, Yoda. Lucas has said that he was making the new trilogy rhyme with the original, no other character matches with that initial Yoda introduction. That is also why Grievous and Dooku come out of nowhere despite supposedly being big characters, to fill the gap.

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

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

a "southern califironia spiritual center" makes me picture it in a strip mall

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.

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.

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.