HOW DARE YOU SAY THIS ABOUT NEELIX
He was better on Benson.
The thing about Voyager is all the characters kinda suck but all the actors portraying them were pretty fucking great. Excellent cast; film school writing.
Tom Paris is the worst character on Voyager, fight me.
If you took a spoiled 6 year old from the 1950’s and suddenly turned him into an adult, that child would be Tom Paris. He’s overly childish, and not in a cute way. He character has practically zero depth. He’s like Wesley Crusher if Wesley was an idiot.
Tom Paris was a pseudonym. His real name was Nick Lacarno and he got kicked out of the academy while Westley Crusher was there.
A pseudonym cleverly concocted to avoid paying royalties to Naren Shankar, the writer of TNG 5x19: The First Duty, who was let go after TNG finished its run.
Lower decks squashed that theory.
That’s like saying Brunt of the FCA and Weayun are the same person.
Look, Lower Decks might have featured another person with the same name as Nick Lacarno, but that guy looked completely different, so it was obviously a new character.
Lower decks is barely canon, much like Clerks was barely a movie.
/s
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.
Wesley Crush is already really shallow character like the rest of tng
Edit: also this, meant only as a jest 🖖 :
Neelix is awesome.
Oh come on! Not a compelling story? He’s a space scavenger, his people are nomadic because OF GENOCIDE, who are wandering space in search of a new home.
He’s an ex-soldier, ex-criminal, who can’t quite come to terms with his past because he wants to be morally and ethically good, he has SEVERE “people pleaser” issues and tries to be everyone’s friend - BUT is not so weak that he can’t fight or stand up for himself or his friends. He’s multi talented, but doesn’t always know when to reign it in and he serves as a motivational character for the Voyager crew who are lost in space – and actually does a good job of it!!
This is the character of our generation. Wtf do you mean “not a compelling story”?
Bad acting? Actually agree, but you can also say that it’s the mannerisms of his people, because it seems to be a mainstay that they are all sort of “whimsical forest creatures” - for lack of better terms - which could be a writeoff in terms of acting.
But Neelix is just so endearing to me. To see how Tuvok struggles to understand him or even accept him - being the “LoGiCaL VuLCaN” that he is - is just one of those Star Trek duos that’s up there with Bashir and Garek, Kirk and Spock, etc.
He might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but a bad character, bad story? That’s boulderdash. Now cut a little jig and make a pot of space weavels - bring some light into your friends life, you low energy having, negative nancy ass bastards.
Be like Neelix.
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!
Quark and Odo <3
Haters gone hate
I know you don’t really mean that, Mr. Vulcan!
Tuvok would never admit it but they’re secretly besties.
Tuvok danced for him on the last episode
Fuck that. Neelix was the heart of Voyager. Someone had to remind them to live on their way back to their lives.
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!
Associate Producer
DAN SCHNEIDER
Nah, all those dancing swimsuit ladies are of legal age.
In another timeline we would have had Robert Picardo as Neelix. That’s the role he initially auditioned for!
Robert Picardo ended up exactly where he was needed.
“Please state the nature of the acting emergency.”
Robert Picardo even says this
I want a version where he plays Neelix but his character is otherwise unchanged
Please state the nature of the culinary emergency
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.”
“Uh oh, I shouldn’t have had seconds!”
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.
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.
I didn’t know that Ethan Phillips did that performance while being effectively blind and deaf. Impressive!
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
Now I’m imagining if they had somehow managed to cast Robin Williams (RIP) as Neelix!
Am I the only one who appreciates Ethan Phillips and acting the way he was written?
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
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!”
deleted by creator
You know what? The real world is filled with people like that. On any given day, you might be one. Embrace mediocrity.
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.
