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Seized Opportunities
As the only major character that was dropped from the series midway through, Kes is going to have fewer seized opportunities than missed ones. I still liked her, but there were a lot of places that the writers could have gone if they were more creative or less cowardly.
What did work about Kes were her superior character pairings. Take, for example, the Doctor – arrogant, a paragon of self-confidence, yet trapped in sickbay and respected by few. Kes, however, saw in him at least a glimmer of what he saw in himself, which kept his hope alive until he could get himself a mobile emitter. Or take Tuvok, whose personality was an opposite of Kes' – yet, unlike Neelix, she respected his wishes and world-view. She was unlike him, yet they had a fascinating telepathic mentorship together.
Speaking of mentoring, that's the other thing they did right with Kes. She was two years old, in a species that lives to nine, and if that species is every going to make much scientific progress, they'd better be fast learners. Kes was, and I appreciate that because most of the rest of her species' development was botched.
Missed Opportunities
So, yeah, I think the Ocampa were botched, but it's not the idea of a species that lives to nine years old that I have a problem with. In researching this project, I've encountered a surprising number of instances of people objecting simply to the idea of a short-lived species. Anyone who complains that that part doesn't make sense simply doesn't have any sort of imagination and I'm surprised that they've watched enough sci-fi to be complaining about Voyager. It is true that a species that only procreates once per lifetime and only makes one child per coupling is doomed to extinction, but that would be true regardless as to how long the members of the species lived. Ocampan procreation certainly is a problem with the species' concept, but it is unrelated to their lifespan.
The real problem is that Ocampan personalities were not imagined to be fundamentally different from human-life-lengthed Trek species. Take, for example, the Vulcans, the high-elves of Star Trek. It makes sense that the stoic, logic-bound species would have a significantly longer lifespan than humans – the closer you get to immortality, the less urgency, the less reckless ambition I imagine one would have in their life. I already mentioned that Kes was the opposite of Tuvok personality-wise, but they are weak opposites. Kes only lives nine years, she should be dialed up to eleven at all times. Maybe she never sleeps. Maybe she used to, until she got into Janeway's coffee supply.
Maybe she could have been the inversion of the old Trek space-sailor/womanizer trope. Bashir was a different kind of subversion, since his womanizing ways only earned him ridicule. Her long term relationship with Neelix never made much sense, along with the mate-once issue, and kept her from subverting the trope in a new and more brave way. Instead of being tied down with him, she could be subverting the double standard that sex is success for men but sex is sluttiness for women.
I've heard a number of stories about people who were on the early HIV meds, medications that made life miserable to live. Many of those stories end with the patients opting to stop taking the meds, knowing that they'd die sooner but they'd enjoy life more on the way out. That's what I wanted out of Kes, that sense of urgency. Some of it was there, but not enough for me.
The Actress
Jennifer Lien took some getting used to, but I think that has more to do with Bashir syndrome than anything. Alexander Siddig's first performances were terrible, a problem compounded by the fact that his character wasn't very likeable. Fortunately, he greatly improved as an actor as the series progressed – a chance that Lien was not afforded. She did improve over her three seasons, but it did help that the writers were slowly getting more comfortable with her character in general.
Final Thoughts
For the first season, Kes seemed to be just getting leftover Deanna Troi parts, and as a result, there was nothing really unique to her for a while. After stumbling in the beginning, the writers struggled with finding a groove for her, even though her options seemed fairly obvious. Right about at the end of season three, after yet another weak collection of twenty six loosely related episodes, knowing we were going to lose her, I felt as though her loss was the most damning failure of the Voyager writers. They were giving up because they were not creative enough and not brave enough. I guess I still feel that way. Fortunately, season four was a big improvement over the first three, so I managed to forget about that failure for a while.
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