You know, Robin Williams was the reason that I started doing stand-up comedy? My personal hero. Knowing that he did this for Neelix, especially when he was getting a lot of hate? Robin is a saint. Also just a small thing because I wanted to honor the man...
Reason #72151.
7-21-51.
July 21st, 1951.
Robin Williams birthdate.
Carry on 💙
You're using human standards and forcing them on an alien species. Two alien species actually. Kes started dating at 2, sure, but she also has an average life expectancy of 10. Meaning, in human terms, she started dating when she was 20-25. If anything she was late to the party.
It's not a fair complaint.
Well...if you want to go there...
Neelix tells Seven that he was around the planet for about a year before Voyager shows up. Kes wasn't even 2 at that point. He explicitly states that he and Kes were "getting close" during that year. At most, Kes was maybe 7 months old when she met Neelix. And he pursued a relationship, with a whole lot of jealously involved, in that year. In human terms, she was likely about 13 or 14 year old...maybe younger.
It's a perfectly fair complaint.
No. It is not even remotely a perfectly fair complaint and it has already been explained why.
You are using human standards and forcing them upon two aliens. The age that Kes and Neelix met and started to get to know one another are utterly irrelevant without information about Ocampan maturity rates.
Moreover, you are forcing human values on an alien relationship. For all you know the Ocampans are perfectly fine with relationships that young. That information was never fully elaborated on so any complaints about the age gap are functionally worthless because you don't have the factual framework to build off of, only human comparison. As we've seen numerous times in Trek, human values are not universal.
Human or not, engaging in a relationship with someone that hasn't fully matured let alone reached age of procreation is a little creepy. We know enough about Ocampans to know they don't reach maturity by 6 months old, or even 1 year old. This should not be normalized...
For the third time, you are using human standards and forcing them upon two aliens. Your reaction is unfair. You are judging aliens by human standards. Human standards are not universal in the Star Trek universe. What humans think here is utterly irrelevant. Moreover, we know nothing about the Ocampan physiology to say she wasn't mature at this point. Even if she wasn't, that's her decision as well as the decision of Neelix. She was an adult by Ocampan standards. I'm not using the standards of a human from earth in 2023 to judge an alien in the 2300s on the opposite end of the galaxy.
I'm not continuing this. Goodbye.
The real question should be why are you so offended by this entire idea of recognizing inappropriate relationships regardless of whether humans are involved or not? Yes, these are aliens. Yes, I'm applying human standards to aliens. That's what all of these TV shows are, allegories to human situations. The entire reason we have forums like this is to talk about these human situations.
You can upset and run away all you want. All it does is kill the conversation, which I guess is what you wanted anyways. But it still doesn't change the fact that this is humans writing stories about aliens, not actual aliens. Applying human standards is not a bad thing.
@Stamets @macabrett
That only means that Kes should probably not have a relationship with anyone from a longer lifespan species.
The same way a 200 year old Vulcan would look at a 20 year old human as an immature kid. Hell, I look at a 20 year old human as immature and I'm just in my thirties!
Biological maturity does not equal getting the life experience of an adult. Not enough life experience means more naive and easier to manipulate, even if the older being doesn't want to.
That's some shit and you should judge people by their character instead of their age. I've known people in their fifties and sixties who were less mature than other people I've known in their twenties, and we're not dealing with developmental issues here.
Some people have gone through way too much shit by the time they hit twenty and have moved well past being "naive and easy to manipulate". I say this having been one and married another.
Maybe the real "immature kid" is the one making ageist judgements on people who really aren't that much younger than they are.
It's still weird in the context of humans made the show Star Trek. I actually like Neelix and Voyager but it was still a little weird. It felt like those times the writers want to inject their fetish into the script, or like in anime there will be a 10,000 year old vampire who looks 9.
Beverly Crusher fucked a space ghost who lives in a lantern.
TNG is pretty readily guilty of that as well.