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Seized Opportunities
When I first heard that the tactical officer for Voyager was going to be a Vulcan, I thought it made no sense. Coming from a frame of reference where the optimal security chief is a war-thirsty Klingon, I had no idea how the writers could possibly justify giving that role to a Vulcan. But they framed it well: like Odo, Tuvok also approaches the job from the law enforcement side of things. Law is a field that embraces logic, and a Vulcan following the pursuit of order makes perfect sense. Tuvok also brings an analytical study of criminal behavior patterns, something that comes to the fore in what turned out to be his best episode, Meld.
Tuvok's second most critical development episode is probably Random Thoughts. This episode also highlights the law enforcement angle, but more specifically in terms of contrasting his own, more pragmatic approach with that of the rigid, draconian society we meet there. Tuvok doesn't expect to change the minds of those around him, he doesn't expect to force order upon the chaos, he's just interested in maintaining a system under which a diverse collection of peoples can coexist.
I also was a big fan of his mental tutoring sessions with Kes. While she was around, she was his strongest connection to the rest of the crew. What made it work for me is that they were so different in their world-views, and yet were still completely compatible. Where Neelix would try to force his differences on Tuvok, Kes simply embraced Tuvok's outlook as another thing to appreciate. Her healthier approach to life gave Tuvok room to reach out to her as well. Even though Janeway had this old friendship with him, his connection with Kes was much more believable.
Missed Opportunities
That said, I really think the angle of "Tuvok the pragmatist" got dropped way too early. For his part in Prime Factors, I loved his reasoning for working behind Janeway's back to steal the technology. He did it so that she could still look good while giving the crew a way home, and I thought it gave him a fresh but still reverent angle on the Vulcan outlook. The writers had just intended it to be a cheesy "logic led me astray!" moment, so the opportunity was lost, but I kept hoping for that Tuvok to return.
Due to Tuvok's relative absence from the later seasons, there were several relationships that either never arose or withered without attention. I mentioned his few interactions with Seven in her review, but there's also Tuvok and Torres - an oddball pairing that worked due to grudging respect. Since the Tuvok and Neelix relationship was much more important to Neelix, I'll save an evaluation of it for his review, but for now I'll just say that I took Tuvok's side every time, even when the script didn't. But the most conspicuously absent relationship has got to be between Tuvok and Chakotay - Tuvok infiltrated Chakotay's crew, earned his trust, betrayed him, and now he's next in line for the first officer position. There is a brief talk between them in one of the Seska episodes, but there could have been so much more going on there.
Vulcans are a fan-favorite alpha quadrant species, and he's wound up as the only Vulcan in the delta quandrant. Moreso than any other character, I needed Tuvok to be awesome, because I wanted the delta quadrant to know why Vulcans are so cool. However, more often than not, he's just as easily debilitated by mental tricks, and any time he might have a Vulcan edge, the Doctor and Seven just get to be even more awesome.
The Actor
Tim Russ is a rare kind of Trek actor in that he actually liked Trek before he became involved in it. As a result, the memory alpha annotations for the first three seasons are littered with citations of his feedback on the dialogue and plot of the episodes he was involved with. A large number of those examples are him simply saying that Tuvok or a Vulcan simply wouldn't say or do the things the writers wanted him to, and it shows. A number of the Voyager writers went on to Enterprise where, like it or hate it, the Vulcans are jerks. To be fair, very often writers would try to use Spock or Data or Seven as sock puppets to show how awesome emotions are, this isn't a Voyager-specific phenomena - but it was the grace with which those characters accepted the cajoling of their annoying crew members which made them so sympathetic.
In that environment, Russ fought to keep Tuvok out of that kind of story and position, and I think that's a major part of why his character remained high on the charts for so long. However, I suspect his steadfastness on those issues is also a factor in the decline in Tuvok plots in the series; if the writers couldn't write what they wanted to about him, why write about him at all? This is pure speculation, and unlike Robert Beltran, Russ has been very professional about not blaming the writing crew. I'm just trying to figure out why a guy who loves Trek and actually got to be on a Trek show would pursue his music career halfway through the series. He's got a good voice, to be sure, but I suspect that there's more to it than that - and I don't buy that the guy who fought against making Tuvok look dumb for being logical could really be upset that the role of a Vulcan is not giving him the chance to fully express his range as an actor.
Final Thoughts
Tuvok is probably the character that suffered the most from the addition of Seven to the cast. When the writers had a choice between writing for the stoic character whose goal was to become more human and the stoic character whose goal was to remain less human, they opted for Seven. A side effect of that choice is that Tuvok, who had most of his development in the first three seasons, is the only character in the show who doesn't have any 5/5 episodes centered on him. I like Tuvok, and I liked Tim Russ' portrayal of him, but overall I wouldn't say he's my third favorite character on the show.
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