“Fury”
Written by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga and Bryan Fuller & Michael Taylor
Directed by John Bruno
Season 6, Episode 23
Production episode 241
Original air date: May 3, 2000
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Janeway surprises Tuvok with a birthday cake—and also with the knowledge that it’s his birthday, which she says she only discovered after significant research—and then Voyager detects a vessel. It’s Kes, looking much older, asking for permission to come aboard.
However, instead of docking in the shuttlebay, Kes instead makes a kamikaze run at the ship and beams on board, destroying bulkheads and throwing security guards around corridors before arriving in engineering and killing Torres before communing with the warp core and disappearing.
She goes back in time to 2371, altering her appearance so she looks like she did in the first season. She bluffs her way past Torres in engineering and the EMH in sickbay (the EMH is babbling on about what name he might choose for himself). Her trip to sickbay is to obtain a sedative to give on her younger counterpart, which she does in airponics, placing her comatose form in a weirdly convenient drawer under the plants.
Buy the Book
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Kes then goes to the mess hall to grab some coffee to bring to Janeway, breaking a date with Neelix along the way. She walks in on Janeway and Chakotay discussing the Vidiians, who have been pursuing them from a distance. After Tuvok summons them to the bridge, Kes “accidentally” spills some coffee, and stays behind to clean it up—and then use Janeway’s computer.
Wildman has devised a neural agent that would attack the Vidiians’ compromised immune systems, but wouldn’t harm any of the healthy folks on Voyager. Janeway likes this idea and tells her to work with the EMH to synthesize it.
When Kes leaves the ready room, Tuvok sees her and senses something odd. From that moment forward, Tuvok starts to get premonitions: he sees Naomi, Seven, Azan, and Rebi, and offhandedly mentions the yet-to-be-built Delta Flyer in a staff meeting. He shares this with Janeway, and they’re both concerned—while Vulcans are telepaths, they’re not precognitives. Janeway orders the ship’s computer to scan the region around Tuvok from this point forward. Later, Janeway is in sickbay where Wildman and the EMH are working on the neural agent. Janeway orders the EMH to reveal whether or not Wildman is pregnant, citing the security of the ship, and the EMH says that she’s having a girl. Now Janeway is really worried.
Voyager is trying to avoid the Vidiians by flying through a field of subspace vacuoles. The ship is going to be on autopilot, going at warp for a bit, slowing down, making course corrections to avoid the vacuoles, then going to warp, a total of 216 times. Paris goes to take a shuttle to thoroughly scan the vacuoles and finds Kes there. She’s plotting a course to Ocampa, though she bluffs Paris and says she’s just checking on her home out of curiosity. Kes also contacts the Vidiian captain and offers tactical data and their route through the vacuoles in exchange for a ride to Ocampa for two people. When the Vidiian asks why she’s sacrificing her crewmates that way, Kes says they aren’t her crewmates, that they abandoned her a long time ago.
As Voyager is navigating the vacuoles, Tuvok hallucinates Kes’s ship arriving five years hence. He then asks to be relieved, and finds himself in engineering, drawn to the warp core, while having auditory hallucinations of the events of the beginning of the episode. In engineering, he collapses, and Torres gets him to sickbay. He’s in synaptic shock and sedated for his own safety. Janeway checks the computer scan she set up at the time Tuvok collapsed, and detects a huge spike in tachyon activity around him. This could mean time travel.
The Vidiians ambush them and board the ship, having adjusted to Voyager’s shield frequencies and physically clamped themselves onto Voyager’s hull. Environmental controls are sabotaged, keeping them from unleashing Wildman’s neural agent. It’s obvious that the Vidiians have some help from on board Voyager. Chakotay detects an electromagnetic fluctuation in airponics, and then a scan reveals two Keses. Leaving Chakotay in charge of the bridge—where he works with Kim to shake the Vidiians loose—Janeway heads down to airponics.
There, she sees Kes taking her younger counterpart out of the drawer. Kes explains that she’s taking her younger self back to Ocampa. She claims she was a naïve child when she came on board, corrupted by Janeway’s tales of discovery and adventure, and found herself with powers she couldn’t understand or control. So she’s trying to change history in her favor. Janeway is forced to kill Kes. She, Tuvok, and Kes then hatch a plan to fix things, involving Kes recording a message to her older self.
Fast forward five years. Kes’ ship arrives just after Janeway gives Tuvok his birthday cake. Janeway mutters that she almost forgot, and she and Tuvok exchange a look. This time Janeway orders red alert and has deck eleven cleared. Janeway then confronts Kes in engineering just as the holorecording Kes made five years earlier plays, urging older Kes not to blame the people she loves for decisions that she made. Kes calms down and agrees to not go back in time, but instead to return to Ocampa as an old woman. Neelix, Janeway, and Tuvok see her off, the former giving her a care package of snacks.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? This episode establishes out loud what has always been implied by how warp drive has functioned: you travel at warp in a straight line without changes in direction. Paris comments that the first rule of FTL piloting is, “Faster than light, no left or right.”
There’s coffee in that nebula! Apparently, Janeway knew about Kes’ eventual fate and Wildman’s pregnancy and the construction of the Delta Flyer and pretended like she was surprised by the first two in “The Gift” and “Elogium,” respectively and resisted the notion of constructing the latter up until “Extreme Risk.” Sure.
Mr. Vulcan. Apparently, Janeway—who should have access to the service records of everyone under her command—took twenty years to finally figure out Tuvok’s birthday. Which, again, should be part of his service record. Sure.
Half and half. Torres is killed by Kes. This is barely acknowledged—Paris looks constipated on the bridge for a moment, at least. Then again, the other twenty-plus deaths on board have barely been acknowledged, so maybe Voyager is just filled with sociopaths…
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. In 2371, we see Neelix’s first hilarious attempt at a cheeseburger, and he also leaves dinner, music, and a set table in Kes’ quarters for when she goes off duty. In 2376, he gets to say goodbye to her, and it’s a very touching moment.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. In 2371, the EMH is struggling to choose a name, and is considering Pyong Ko (a twenty-first-century surgeon who helped cure cancer), as well as Albert Schweitzer, Robert Jarvik, and Louis Pasteur.
Resistance is futile. Seven and Kes have their one and only face-to-face scene in the entire series when Kes shows up in engineering and Seven says, “State your intentions.” Kes’ response is to telekinetically toss Seven into a console.
No sex please, we’re Starfleet. In 2371, Neelix has reserved holodeck time for him and Kes. In 2376, Kes is incredibly cold to Neelix, even when he is all sappy and gives her a snack for the road.
Do it.
“It was a fire hazard.”
–Tuvok’s justification to Janeway for blowing out the candle on his birthday cake even though it isn’t a Vulcan tradition.
Welcome aboard. It’s old home week, as we get lots of folks we haven’t seen in a while. The big one, of course, is Jennifer Lien, returning to her role as Kes, having not been seen since she “ascended” in “The Gift.” We’ve also got Josh Clark, who makes a cameo as Joe Carey, having not been seen since “Relativity” (and who’ll next be seen, finally in the present day, in “Friendship One”), and Nancy Hower as Wildman, having not been seen since “Once Upon a Time.” We also get appearances by recurring regulars Scarlett Pomers and Kurt & Cody Wetherill as Tuvok’s hallucinations of Naomi, Azan, and Rebi. And recurring extra Tarik Ergin gets a rare line of dialogue as Ayala right before Kes throws a bulkhead at him.
And finally we have the mighty Vaughn Armstrong as the Vidiian captain, making his third appearance on this show (after playing Telek R’Mor in “Eye of the Needle” and Lansor in “Survival Instinct”), and his sixth role all together, having also played a Klingon in TNG’s “Heart of Glory” and two different Cardassians in DS9’s “Past Prologue,” “When It Rains…” and “The Dogs of War.” He’ll be back in “Flesh and Blood” as a Hirogen and “Endgame” as a Klingon, and have the recurring role of Admiral Forrest in Enterprise (while also at different times playing a Klingon and a Kreetassan on that show).
Trivial matters: As with her appearances in “Scorpion, Part II” and “The Gift,” Jennifer Lien is given an “Also Starring” credit, in deference to her former place in the opening credits.
The 2371 portions of the episode don’t have a stardate, though they are stated to be only fifty-six days after “Caretaker.” This sequence has to take place after “Phage,” since the Vidiians are a known hostile species, and before “Heroes and Demons,” as the EMH is still considering Schweitzer as a name, a possible choice that he no longer considers after the events of that episode.
In 2371, Paris offers to teach Kes how to fly a shuttle, something we’ll see him doing in “Parturition.”
Janeway comments in 2376 that Tuvok is approaching “three digits” in age, which contradicts both “Flashback”—which established that Tuvok was twenty-nine in 2293, which meant he’d have hit three digits back in 2364—and the upcoming “Unimatrix, Part II” that will firmly establish his age as 113. Of course, Janeway could be talking about Vulcan years…
In 2371, Tuvok’s uniform mistakenly has two solid pips and one hollow pip, indicating that he’s a lieutenant commander, when he’s still a lieutenant. Having said that, in the first season of the show, his uniform also mistakenly had lieutenant commander’s pips before it was fixed for season two, so is it really a mistake?
Tuvok and Kes worked on her telepathy together, as seen in (among other places) “Cathexis,” “Persistence of Vision,” “Cold Fire,” and “Warlord.”
This episode was conceived by Rick Berman as a vehicle for bringing Lien back as Kes, though there was no story yet when he approached Lien about returning.
The EMH comments that Ktarians have an unusually long gestation period, which retroactively explains why Wildman’s pregnancy went on so frickin’ long, as Naomi was conceived prior to “Caretaker” but not born until twenty-one episodes into season two.
The String Theory novel trilogy by Jeffrey Lang, Kirsten Beyer, and Heather Jarman establishes that the being who appears in this episode isn’t actually Kes as such but a manifestation of her dark side that came into being after Kes went back in time to help create an Ocampa/Nacene hybrid being.
While this is Kes’s last on-screen appearance, she’s seen in both the novel The Eternal Tide by Beyer, where she helps one of the Q resurrect Janeway, and the short story “Restoration” by Penny A. Proctor in Strange New Worlds V, where she restores the Ocampa homeworld’s biosphere.
This is also the last on-screen appearance of Wildman, though Naomi will continue to recur. Wildman will also appear in several works of tie-in fiction after this, including Homecoming and Old Wounds by Christie Golden and Atonement by Beyer, and she’ll also play a part in Star Trek Online.
This episode establishes that Janeway and Tuvok’s friendship dates back twenty years and that Voyager is the third starship they’ve served on together.
Set a course for home. “Goodbye, Kes.” What an unmitigated disaster of an episode.
I can understand why my friends and colleagues Jeffrey Lang, Kirsten Beyer, and Heather Jarman figured out a way to establish that this wasn’t really Kes, because this episode is just an insult to the character as established in the first season. What’s worse is that the episode itself acknowledges this…
The notion of Kes deciding to blame Janeway and the gang for all her troubles could work if, at any point, we were told what those troubles were. If something happened to her that made her turn against Voyager. But we’re never told what that is. We just see Kes being pissy and blowing up corridors and killing Torres and then going back in time to keep herself from being corrupted by Voyager.
The middle part is a fun little exercise in “let’s revisit the first season,” with the EMH still limited to sickbay and Kes as his assistant and Janeway with her bun and fighting the Vidiians and no Naomi or various ex-Borg. I especially like the way Chakotay does a good job taking charge of the fight against the Vidiians as well as Paris’s comment to Kes that he’s one of the few people on board who’s in no rush to get back home. (“I get to fly a state-of-the-art ship and there’s no admirals in sight.”)
But then Janeway kills Kes, which seems to have no impact on the captain whatsoever. Indeed, the script acts as if the characters know that the reset button is going to be hit, so nobody seems to care all that much about the deaths of Torres or Kes, since they’re going to be resurrected anyhow. They can’t even be bothered to pretend to care.
Not that Kes should be killed by phaser fire. Her super powers are changeable depending on the needs of the plot that nanosecond, and change the subsequent nanosecond. First she can rend duranium with a thought and is resistant to phaser fire and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, and the next Janeway is barely affected by Kes knocking her into a bulkhead and Kes is suddenly vulnerable to phaser fire.
And then we have the idiotic time paradox. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that, during the entirety of the show since the mid-first season, Janeway, Tuvok, and Kes knew all kinds of things about the future, like that they’d get a bunch of ex-Borg on board, like that Wildman was pregnant, like that Kes would turn all glowy and powerful, like that they’d have a mid-range vessel called the Delta Flyer, and didn’t say anything about it, and indeed pretended like they didn’t know it. And somehow we’re supposed to believe that Kes would just forget about the message she composed to herself.
What’s hilarious is that that message feels like it’s coming from Kes to the four staffmembers who wrote the episode. Young Kes comes out and says that Kes is acting out of character here. And Kes just says, “Oh yeah,” and everything is fine. And then Kes doesn’t go back in time, and Torres is still alive—but how did Tuvok, Janeway, and young Kes find out about this attack if Kes never came back in time? Usually Star Trek, even with its wobbly and inconsistent relationship with time travel, has some manner of internally-within-the-episode consistency about temporal physics. But this episode doesn’t seem to give a shit.
Lien’s performance is terrible, too. We don’t get any sense of the titular fury, she just looks tired. Unfortunately, that extends to her brief portrayals of young Kes, too. There’s no emotional content to her performance, which is a problem insofar as the script hasn’t provided much of one, either.
There were so many wonderful ways to bring Kes back. Instead, we got this insult.
Warp factor rating: 1
Keith R.A. DeCandido has a story in the upcoming anthology Devilish and Divine, which features stories about angels and demons, which is now available for preorder from eSpec Books. Keith read his story, “Unguarded,” as part of his KRAD COVID readings series of short fiction readings on YouTube.
Or Vulcan digits. They’re a logical people… they could have decided to use a base-12 numerical system (which subdivides into whole numbers for quarters and thirds of 10) instead of base-10. That would make Tuvok 144, maybe also in Vulcan years. (Base-16 would also be very logical, but there’s no way Tuvok is 256 years old. Unless Vulcan years are a lot shorter than Earth years.)
You’re absolutely right to call this episode a disaster. While it’s neither the worst episode of season six (that goes to, IMO, “Spirit Folk”) nor my least favorite of the season (that’s “Virtuoso”), it is the episode that pissed me off the most, because bringing back Kes and revisiting the past could have been awesome, and this so was not awesome in any way.
I take that back. The scene with the Vidiian clamp ripping a hole in Voyager’s hull was pretty awesome.
You’ve highlighted most of the big problems regarding continuity with this episode, such as Janeway not knowing Tuvok’s birthday or her comment about him reaching “three digits” or whatever, to the implausibility of events occurring as we saw them over the first few seasons despite Janeway knowing that she killed Kes, no reaction at all to Torres being killed, and Schrödinger’s cat dragging in both Carey and Samantha Wildman, who, despite both presumably being alive in Voyager’s present, only ever appear in episodes that revisit Voyager’s past. All those heartwarming mother/daughter moments between Janeway and Kes still took place naturally even though Janeway knew she killed Kes? One question, though: Ensign Wildman and the Doctor develop a knockout gas against the Vidiians, but never use it in any of the instances when they encounter the Vidiians. That might have come in handy during the events of “Deadlock.”
‘Faster than light, no left or right’ is a retcon as I remember the USS Phoenix veering off in a non-linear fashion while at warp in TNG “The Wounded”. There are probably other examples.
I rarely comment here but seeing as I’m here now and because it’s used in this episode… Does the computer console that rises between the two command chairs on the bridge bother anyone else? Sure it looks cool rising up but operating that console from those angles doesn’t look very ergonomic. Riker and Troi’s consoles were on handy swivels.
Lastly, I just want to say how fantastic it is that we have this rewatch. That we are discussing this and older series after all these years is very gratifying. The debates are wonderfully interesting! LLAP
As I just commented on Twitter (yes, I’m on Twitter now, @CLBennettAuthor ), the episode title was also my reaction to the episode. I hated everything about. As a huge fan of Kes, I was so eager to see her return and so betrayed and disappointed by how poorly “Fury” handled it, as well as how nonsensical it was in every other respect. It couldn’t even bother to get Tuvok’s age right!
Not to mention the “Faster than light, no left or right” nonsense. We’ve seen countless prior episodes and would see countless later ones where starships changed course at warp. The pretense that they have to go to impulse to change direction is unique to this episode, and it jarred me along with so many other things. In The Buried Age, I rationalized it by saying that changing course at warp merely put added strain on a ship which would usually be harmless except in certain rare circumstances like the situation in “Fury” (implicitly — I couldn’t refer to it directly, since the book was set decades earlier).
It was the String Theory trilogy that salvaged this episode to the extent that it could be salvaged by reinterpreting “old Kes.” But it was still an ill-conceived mess and a slap in the face to Kes fans.
Kes’ anger made no sense, and that ultimately killed this episode. When I watched this episode originally, I was waiting for the big reveal to learn what had gone wrong in Kes’ life, and then a dull thud. Plus, Kes repeatedly talks about not being able to control her powers, when all evidence seems to indicate that she no problem controlling them. She turned the warp core into a time machine, threw crew members around, killed Torres, altered her appearance, and interacted with Voyager’s crew as her younger self.
There was another thing that bugged me about this episode. Kes traveled all the way to Voyager, and set out to return home to Ocampa, in a crummy shuttlecraft. Another example of Voyager (the series) ignoring huge distances traveled; ironically enough, thanks in part to Kes’ own gift in “The Gift.”
Kes got the reverse Tasha Yar treatment here. Yar got a lousy send-off, but got to come back for a far more satisfying ending. Kes had a wonderful send-off, but came back for this unsatisfying nonsense.
This episode is indeed a disaster, and it’s totally understandable given that Berman just had the idea to bring Kes back and approached Lien to do so with having no story in mind. Sometimes miracles can be pulled off that way, like how Michael Piller had no idea how to resolve “The Best of Both Worlds Part I” but then in a pinch pulled it off reasonably well. But here, you can tell so little was thought through or organic, and it was basically let’s work our way backwards from the premise: “Kes is back and this time she’s pissed at Voyager!” Sure, that’s intriguing if justified in-story, but the writers aren’t successful at all.
That said, I find this episode so watchable and dare I say it, even enjoyable, because it is so awful, but in a fun way. It’s obviously a “big event” episode considering the return of Kes, other notable recurring cast appearances, time travel to an earlier Voyager era, and a big space battle with the Viridians. It all looks great visually and you’re never bored. And also, it’s just nice to see Kes/Lien back because you know it’s her last time.
Lien admitted in an interview in 2010 that she wasn’t pleased with her acting choices in this episode and much preferred her first exit episode, “The Gift.” She said it was hard with the “Fury” to get back into character because not only had she not played Kes in about three years, this was a completely different Kes. Not to mention she basically left behind live acting (she was just doing voice acting at this point). And the script did her no favors because an actor needs a motivation for their character, but the script fails to provide Kes for a justification for her titular “fury.” So I don’t really blame Lien for the terrible performance, it in fact adds to the car-crash fun of the episode for me.
Kate Mulgrew also gave an interview where she said Lien wasn’t at all comfortable working on “Fury” and couldn’t understand why she was doing it. Hmm, I dunno? The paycheck? Maybe it was awkward for her to be back and everyone was still there carrying on with the jobs they got to keep but their characters had grown. And then she had to contend with the terrible writing and finding her acting legs again.
The one thing that has bugged me for years and I still have no explanation for: didn’t Kes turn into a being of energy in “The Gift?” Why, all of a sudden, is she back in an aging body? And needing a ship to travel? Where’s the explanation for all of this? She just randomly shows up and never bothers to explain what she is doing there or where she has been.
Chris Bennett nails it. Again.
Another bit of incongruity I forgot: Janeway says that Kes traveled back in time three years, but she really traveled back five years.
Another theory I’ve read is that this simply Kes’s morilogium – the end period of her short life. “Before and After” already established that it often comes with memory loss, so it’s not a huge stretch to imagine that it comes with other symptoms of dementia and cognitive decline. Yes it’s a bit early for a nine-year life, but maybe her superpowers actually wore through her life more quickly instead of extending it.
Yeah for me, this episode has always been to VOY what “Ghost in the Machine” was to Stargate Atlantis and Elizabeth Weir’s character: A horribly executed, cruel final send-off for one of the show’s inaugural Main Cast.
I was so, so happy with how the String Theory Trilogy seamlessly salvaged this disaster.
Mr. Magic: Yes, this is very much the same sort of insulting garbage that “Ghost in the Machine” was on SGA, though at least they didn’t try to recast Kes and convince us that it was the same person………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@7: Yes, that’s what really bothers me about this episode too. She had grown into a beautiful, powerful being of pure energy, and it felt like her fleeting Ocampan lifetime no longer held her, that she was ageless now. So having her turn up corporeal and aged as well as furious about imagined abandonment when she had in fact pushed Voyager away to shorten their journey, all of it was just messed-up and infuriating. The least they could have done was establish something really bad had happened to her since being on her own.
@3: The full line was “Faster than light, no left or right. When possible, maintain a linear trajectory. Course corrections could fracture the hull.” So basically, it’s not a hard and fast rule that you can never turn at warp, just that it’s generally a bad idea so you don’t do it unless you really need to.
One thing I liked about the episode is that Janeway finally suggested that the computer should fly the ship (there’s no logical reason why a pilot is needed IMO). And the best part was Tom being put out by it lol.
I’ve just remembered what really offended me so profoundly about this episode. It doesn’t just fail as a Kes return — it fails as Star Trek. Star Trek is supposed to be about the wonders of discovery and exploration and personal growth. It’s supposed to celebrate seeking out the new and taking chances and expanding our horizons. Kes embodied that — her whole defining motivation when she was introduced was that she was unwilling to settle for the narrow horizons of her existence on Ocampa, that she was passionately driven to push beyond those limits and explore new possibilities. On those few occasions that the writers bothered to do anything interesting with her, they continued that theme of Kes expanding herself, refusing to be bound by limitations, growing as a person through her explorations and helping others (especially the Doctor) do the same. And “The Gift” showed her going off on what promised to be an astonishing journey of discovery as she grew beyond all past limits and achieved unimagined heights.
But “Fury” repudiated all that with prejudice. It said that the only outcome of Kes’s journey of discovery and growth was pain and anguish, that she’d been wrong to push beyond her limits, and that the only happy ending she could hope for was to give up and go back to that tiny, insular world she had fled. “Fury” didn’t just portray Kes badly in the present, it declared that her entire journey as a character had been a mistake and a failure, that she should never have tried to grow beyond her limitations in the first place. That is not only an insult to everything that defined Kes, but it’s an incredibly un-Trekkish message to see in a Trek series. “Explore strange new worlds? Boldly go? Nah, that sucks. Don’t even try, it’s not worth it.” What the hell?!
@16: Actually that’s the thing that I found somewhat interesting in this episode. We are not guaranteed a happy ending in this life. And as Q says, “It’s not safe out there”. Sometimes in spite of our best intentions, people do become bitter after enough pain and disappointment. Sure we like everyone to live long and prosper and make good choices. But sometimes that doesn’t happen. And that can leave room for great drama. This episode was just guilty of not showing us the trauma that would turn a cheerful, hopeful person into this avatar of fury.
One question, though: Ensign Wildman and the Doctor develop a knockout gas against the Vidiians, but never use it in any of the instances when they encounter the Vidiians. That might have come in handy during the events of “Deadlock.”
This really opens up a larger can of worms that Trek mostly just ignores. Something is mentioned about the gas working because Vidiians have been weakened by the phage, but really that shouldn’t be necessary. The various races on Trek have different biologies and corresponding strengths and weaknesses. By the time the Klingons are attempting to board DS9, should be no problem– flood the station with gas poison to Klingons (and don’t forget to give Worf a gas mask. )
Vidiians might be a bit trickier since the crew doesn’t know their biology as well, but they should have at least done deep scans of the two they captured in “Phage.” In real life, gas as a weapon really fell out of favor mostly because it’s very tricky to deploy without inadvertently hitting your own troops, there’s no such thing as gas that only kills the enemy and militaries came up with more efficient ways to neutralize the enemy anyway, but in this fictional context gas would be incredibly useful. Only Eddington and Sisko ever explored the potential that kind of warfare has in this universe by respectively making a planet respectively uninhabitable to Cardassians and Humans.
Honestly, I wonder why (other than a morbid fear of continuity) that they didn’t imply that Kes’ fury came from the events of “Before and After.” In that episode we got to see what her life would have been like- and it looked pretty darn good! Sure, she had Space Dementia, but she had lived a (relatively) long life, fallen in love and had kids and grandkids, and made friends and had adventures- only for all that to be erased. Considering the she de-briefed Janeway (and presumably the rest of the senior officers) on the events of that episode, it isn’t even like it is something she remembers but they have no clue about. It wouldn’t be all that hard to imply that her time as a wave of celestial intent was lonely and not what she wanted, and that she was upset that the chance for the nice, normal life she lived in “Before and After” was ‘taken’ from her.
I was actually going to wait and bring this up in the “Shattered” review, but I guess it is relevant here! One of my favorite-ever fanfics posits that Janeway remembered the events of “Shattered” even when she was sent back to the pre-“Caretaker” Voyager. It’s a great little character piece, and also helps explain Janeway’s sometimes inexplicable choices, because if she remembered the “future” from Shattered, she knows that every time she threatens to self-destruct the ship, or she is left stranded on a planet, or when the Borg shows up– she and the ship (and the opening credits characters) will survive it. There’s a great line in it about how that means she can stare down the universe and always know it is going to blink first. It’s not a theory I take seriously, but it is a fun little premise to think about.
Fury is a product of late-season fatigue, and it shows. Bringing Kes back should have been a momentous occasion, one done with time and care. The fact that Rick Berman went ahead and booked Jennifer Lien without them even having a basic story outline speaks to how misguided the whole thing was.
It doesn’t work because the episode never bothers to provide adequate explanation or motivation for Kes being on the warpath. Did powers somehow contribute to her never finding happiness? Was she under some sort of outside influence? Did she just regret leaving Voyager? Was she just getting senile and took out her frustration on Voyager, over her own inability to live up to her potential? Questions that are never properly answered. Without them, the episode shatters apart (I’ve recently had the same issue with another show; one so obsessed in painting a ruthless villain that it never bothered to provide him with a credible motivation).
What keeps the episode afloat is pacing and direction. This is very much a by-the-numbers blockbuster affair. Putting the plot aside, this is functional enough. Definitely not worth going over the time travel logistics for this one.
My biggest problem, however, is the ending. Why did they just let her go? Wouldn’t Janeway try and reconnect with her? Give her a chance to be with the crew that loved her? Help her through her remaining years? For that matter, she left with a shuttle that I’m pretty sure is NOT transwarp capable. Wouldn’t she just die on the journey back to Ocampa, all alone in the middle of nowhere? She’s already pretty old — and as she gets older, she’ll likely have less and less control over her powers, plus being in a position where she’d be unable to do anything about it.
Here are links to articles I had referenced in my previous comment:
Jennifer Lien talking about coming back for “Fury” and comparing it to “The Gift”: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.startrek.com/article/catching-up-with-jennifer-lien%3famp
Kate Mulgrew talking about “Fury” and working with Jennifer Lien again: https://archive.org/details/starlog_magazine-281/page/n85/mode/1up?view=theater
And I know there has been much said and speculated about the circumstances of Lien’s original departure. The official party line from the cast and crew was that Lien was a gifted actress and her character had been written into a dead-end. The rumors meanwhile were that Garrett Wang was set to be fired after the 3rd season and that People magazine’s Most Beautiful People profile on Wang saved him and so Lien was pushed out instead. Turns out, according to the new Voyager retrospective that was released last year in which everyone but Lien was interviewed, was that Lien was having personal problems and it was affecting her performances. She didn’t accept offers of help for her issues and so her contract wasn’t renewed. So that is a sad reveal and portends the psychological unraveling and criminal incidents she would have only a decade and a half later. And it also makes sense in retrospect how little she is seen and used in the latter half of the third season aside from where she was really needed like in “Before and After” and “Scorpion Part I.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/heavy.com/entertainment/star-trek/voyager-jennifer-lien-substance-abuse/amp/
So now we all know the truth.
@17/Stacey: Yes, there’s room for characters to have bad things happen to them, but Star Trek stories should offer them hope that they can recover and grow, not just tell them they were wrong ever to try in the first place. The problem is how they resolved Kes’s anguish — by sending her back home, back to the tiny, insular world she had left in the first place because she found it intolerable. The message was “Don’t try new things. Don’t expand beyond your limits. Settle for mediocrity.” That is anathema to Star Trek. And saying that Kes’s entire defining purpose was misguided and worthless is an insult to the character.
@21 It’s always so sad when you see a promising career become derailed by addiction and/or mental illness. Reminds me of everything I’ve seen recently about Nikki Clyne from BSG and her involvement with NXIVM. Apparently she decided to leave BSG to follow the cult (it was in the show’s last season, but still).
@23,
Huh. I had no idea about Clyne’s post-BSG career. That’s…wow.
@12,
I mean, I’m willing to cut the SGA Writers Room some (emphasis on some) slack there because they were in a no-win situation.
Weir’s storyline from Season 4 (and the ending of the Asuran story arc in particular) had to be wrapped up. Joseph Mallozzi’s actually discussed some of the original plans for “Ghost” and how it was intended to kick off a larger story arc for Weir…and how all that went out the window when Tori Higginson passed.
The rub, of course, is that Higgonson declined to return precisely because of how badly the show had mishandled Weir’s character in the preceding Season and her lukewarm reception to the “Ghosts” teleplay and its resolution of her character.
There were a couple of nice touches to the episode. Not many, but for example it was a nice continuity detail to show everyone still treating the doctor basically as a hologram character. It’s a reminder that both he and the crew have come a long way in awareness since those days.
But why make the episode at all, if you’re going to assassinate the character? Ostensibly it would be a ratings draw for Kes fans, so their big idea is to show her life has been a waste? Great plan. I wonder what its like to be an actress that got fired, probably didn’t want to leave the show at all, and then be brought back on to say things like “remember you chose to leave”.
@25: I think Berman, and by extension, his cadre of writers, didn’t really care what the end result was, character assassination be damned. Voyager had long ago proved itself to be less about character development and more about gimmicks and action spectacle. Ratings stunts were the name of the game. The introduction of Jeri Ryan at the top of the 4th season provided a momentary ratings bump. After that, it was milking the Borg and the Borg Queen to death, and then stunt casting from The Rock to Barclay and Troi, to the return of “evil” Kes. Yes, “Fury” was a not very well thought out disservice and mockery of that character.
It’s very sad to hear what happened to Jennifer Lien.
At least she’s still alive and out of the news these past few years.
@26,
I think Berman, and by extension, his cadre of writers, didn’t really care what the end result was, character assassination be damned. Voyager had long ago proved itself to be less about character development and more about gimmicks and action spectacle.
That assessment equally summarizes the TNG era of the films.
“If you’re watching this now, you’ve come back to take revenge on the people who cared about you. That’s not who you are and it’s not who I am.”
It’s hard to get past the crushing disappointment this episode was when it first aired. The elation of learning that finally, finally Kes was going to make another appearance. The months of anticipation. And then the first reviews appeared and I went “Kes comes back…but she’s gone mad and tries to kill everyone. What the hell?”
And then I finally got to see it and it was even worse than that, because Kes doesn’t even get to interact with the present day Voyager crew except for five minutes at the start and five minutes at the end, and the only people she really converses with are Janeway and Neelix. Instead, it’s mostly set back in the early days of the series, with the actors attempting with varying degrees of success to make out they look six years younger (it’s not quite Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis pretending to be a decade younger in “These are the Voyagers” but it comes close), meaning there’s absolutely no attempt to develop Kes’ character or explain what exactly she’s been doing for the last few years because for most of the run time everyone thinks she’s her younger self.
Actually, when the plot wasn’t getting in the way, I did manage to quite enjoy this as a missing Season 1 episode. But then the plot takes over, as Kes gets turned into a super-powered killing machine and yet gets killed by one phaser blast from Janeway, which sums up the show’s attitude to the character and her fans. “Hey, you know how we demonstrated how much we hated you by axing your favourite character in order to bring in a character dressed as a Barbie doll and keep all the men no matter how dull or annoying? Well, here’s us showing we hate you even more by bringing her back just so we can completely trash her! And then have her phasered to death in front of you!”
I mean, they do rescue it a bit with the coda. But frankly, I had a plan to bring Kes back once the series was over, and this episode added so little to her character that I didn’t have to change it at all: As far as she’s concerned, only five minutes of the episode happen, at the end of which she’s magically back to her old self. The whole Vidiian subplot just overcomplicates things. Kes is suddenly sane again after a quick telling off from her past self, even though spending two days aboard Voyager and seeing what her life there was really like didn’t change anything. I’m surprisingly fine with the novels retconning this into not being the real Kes because frankly, it isn’t. And yes, there’s the messing about with time. So, Janeway, Tuvok and Kes found out in the first season that Kes was destined to leave the ship and go mad. Do they have her not leave the ship and go mad? No, she still does that, she just leaves her future self a post-it note saying “Please don’t kill everyone.” Not to mention the glimpses of the future they get. Fine, explain why Wildman managed to be pregnant for eighteen months, but there’s no point doing that if you’re then going to have Janeway find out about the pregnancy about six months before she should. Did the last scene of “Elogium” not happen now, or did Janeway just pretend to be surprised?
Janeway says she and Tuvok have known each other twenty years and served on three ships together, which I don’t think really contradicts anything. Her statement that he’s not yet reached three digits when “Flashback” showed him in Starfleet 83 years earlier is a bit harder to accept. She’s obviously having a bad day as she promptly tells Kes “Three years ago, you travelled back in time” which makes no sense when the point is she was going to travel back nearly six years (going by the dates given in “Live Fast and Prosper” and “Life Line”) and now hasn’t: She seems to have got mixed up with when Kes left Voyager. Kes is portrayed as an old woman, which seems to contradict “Before and After” in which she looked the same aged six as she did aged three, but maybe she’s had a tough few years.
The Doctor has begun his search for a name in the past timeline, indicating this is set after “Eye of the Needle”, and probably not long after since Janeway is still deactivating him without his consent. (Something she agreed not to do in that episode, which makes it a bit awkward.) 2371 Tuvok is addressed as “Lieutenant” but wears lieutenant commander’s pips…but then he did that in the first season as well, so maybe they were trying to be authentic! Last appearance of Naomi this season, although goodness knows how we’re meant to characterise her appearance here (is it just a vision or some sort of timeslip?): She’ll be back next year but in much reduced circumstances. Joe Carey and Samantha Wildman’s only appearance of the season but only the 2371 versions appear. Ayala actually gets a line (credited as Security Guard), and apparently gets killed by Kes, but only in the first version of events.
Whilst you could call this Seven and Kes’ only face-to-face encounter (which then doesn’t happen anyway), they did actually share scenes in both “Scorpion” and “The Gift” (although I think only when Seven was unconscious in the latter).
I liked it, but then I like most time travel episodes. It was fun watching everybody turn back the clock to their earlier portrayals.
I thought it would have been a little more interesting if Kes had killed Seven instead of Torres – a riff on an exiled character exacting vengeance on the character that replaced her.
Not sure if I really noticed it during the original run, but binging the show like this, Jennifer Lien looked quite physically different in the less than 3 years she was away. So it was interesting seeing her portray her season one counterpart.
@34: I never saw the episode in first run but when I saw the episode for the first time on DVD the weight gain was pretty noticeable to me. I just watched “Before and After” the other day and Lien is pretty skinny and muscly even so it’s quite the contrast comparing her, uh, before and after. But she hadn’t been in front of the camera for at least a couple of years by the time she did “Fury”, and it’s pretty normal for an actor or ex-actor to not keep up their former appearance.
@35/garreth: Also, Jennifer Lien was only 20 years old when VGR began, young enough that her features could’ve changed quickly over the following 6 years.
What shocks me is that this episode had four writers, all of whom have shown themselves to be at least competent in the past, and yet it still ended-up like…*vague hand gesture*…that.
@37/Queen Iacomina: This late in the season, having four writers might mean that they had little time to write it and split the work between them to meet the deadline, with each writer taking a different part of the story and the showrunner then doing the final draft. Sometimes splitting the work can turn out quite well — see “Yesterday’s Enterprise” — but there are no guarantees.
@36/CLB: I was referring to the roughly three year span between 1997 and 2000, from “The Gift” to “Fury.” Lien had given up on-camera acting in that span so she didn’t have to keep up with the Hollywood network/studio pressures of appearance and/or just wasn’t taking good care of herself. As Krad mentioned, she look tired in all her scenes, which could make sense for old Kes, but she was also tired looking as young Kes (just look at the screen grab in the article of both versions in the same scene.)
@37/Queen Iacomina: At this point in the franchise, Berman and Braga in the writing credits for an episode should have induced a mass shudder from the fandom. Their involvement would portend flashy gimmick and premise over any logic or in-character behavior. The other two writers were probably just beholden to the former two’s dictates to just “get it done!” (in Captain Jellico voice. Lol).
@39/garreth: My point is that someone in her early 20s could change a lot in a few years, even aside from any other considerations.
@40/CLB: I understand that. But my personal belief as to this particular case, is that had Lien remained with the show, she would have had to abide by dictates to maintain “a figure” and/or certain weight. Free of those constraints and no longer acting in front of the camera, in just three years (and less), one can gain a considerable amount of weight.
I was actually kind of expecting Krad to give this mess a big, fat zero. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
I do agree with the general consensus that “Fury” is an illogical, ill-conceived, unholy train wreck of an episode. The time paradox element is so poorly handled that I found myself throwing up my hands in disgust, unable to muster up the energy to even try to rationalize it. As far as I’m concerned, this thing takes place in some other, lesser continuity. (I have not read these String Theory books but I understand that this is how they approach it.)
It’s also an incredibly mean-spirited episode. It’s character assassination of the worst kind. For crying out loud, Kes even betrays her former comrades to the Vidiians! (Actually, the act of watching this episode feels like a betrayal.) And as far as I can recall, no explanation is given as to what brought her to this point, why she’s so angry and bitter, why she returned to a corporeal existence after the events of “The Gift.”
“Fury” may have been intended as a valentine to the fandom, but in the end it comes off as more of an insult than anything else.
I know a follow-up book states that this version of Kes we see here wasn’t the real Kes, so I am going with that. The writers really screwed up this episode. It was an interesting episode and had some great moments but falls completely flat. It’s the first time in the series the writers really missed an opportunity.
@34 et al: I didn’t want to say it directly but…yeah. That struck me on first viewing and it was one of the many reasons that I think setting most of the episode during the first season, and getting Jennifer Lien to play Kes at that age and/or an older version that was meant to look like Kes at that age, was a bad idea. It really did spoil the illusion, to the point of coming across as quite cruel.
I have the privilege of having never seen this episode. I was deployed when it first aired. Glad I didn’t miss anything important. I remember seeing lots of still shots of it over the years. But never sat down to watch it. After reading this….”I don’t think I will”.
The thing that makes me sad is that Kes is one of the kindest, most level headed, warm, thoughtful characters in all Star Trek. She’s also optimistic and bright. Not intelligent but the type of bright that raises up others around her.
One thing I have heard is the whole “Faster than Light, no Left or Right” which is the most wrong thing I’ve ever heard and never depicted before. I get it when you’re talking about Star Wars Hyperspace where long distance travel is based on pre-established routes in a completely different space-time continuum, but Warp Drive has never shown those limitations. In fact maneuvering at warp has been baked in since TOS. It’s not even necessary saying they couldn’t deviate from their course because of the Vacuoles was more than enough.
@45/Mr. D: I don’t differ from any others in agreeing that “Fury” is awful and non-sensical, but I also concede it is still entertaining or at least watchable. You’ve got several returning characters, time travel to 1st season Voyager, an excellent space battle and bulkheads being blown up all with nifty FX, and bad acting. So I’m never bored but every time when the end credits roll I’m shaking my head at the travesty I just watched.
I also have to highlight one of my favorite moments in “Fury” when Ensign Kim objects to an order by Chakotay, the latter barks, “Then tear it apart!”
https://youtu.be/je–v8Y1ugc
It’s very reminiscent of this moment in Star Trek VI:
https://youtu.be/c7xvi6GL9Fk
:o)
I remembered this one as “Voyager does Dark Phoenix,” and confess I’d completely forgotten the time travel plot.
@47/garreth
Good point. It’s never bad seeing Chakotay putting in work.
“Torres is killed by Kes. This is barely acknowledged—Paris looks constipated on the bridge for a moment, at least.”
“What’s that, B’elanna’s dead? Then break out the resurrection nanoprobes, Seven! It worked the last time a main cast member died!”
The actors playing Carey and Mama Wildman must’ve been thrilled every time they did a flashback episode because they got to be on screen again. I wonder if either of them would casually wonder out loud “You know, we’re not actually dead! We don’t only have to appear in flashbacks!”
@51: It was a bizarre use of these recurring characters but the actor playing Carey would actually get to come back in Voyager’s present timeline toward the end of the series’ run. Pity that here he was just used for a cameo, like all of two lines. At least the actress playing Samantha had a more significant part as it had more to do with Tuvok’s premonitions about her future daughter. Voyager was really poor at developing its small community aboard ship especially considering it was only around 140 crew or so, so it should have felt more tight-knit and familiar.
@51: Samantha Wildman actually didn’t die, the show just acts like she did for some reason, treating Neelix as Naomi’s sole parental figure.
ETA: Actually I think I just made the same mistake the writers do, Carey isn’t dead but I thought he was, but that’s Hogan. Perhaps the writers do that with Samantha Wildman as well.
I have read speculation that the writers may have mis-remembered the events of “Once Upon a Time” and thought that Ensign Wildman was actually dead.
@54: Strange how the writers can’t pull out the tapes of previously completed episodes to review and jog their memories. And this is even assuming Memory Alpha isn’t around yet.
@55/garreth: The writers certainly would have had access to the tapes, and they had a script consultant whose job it was to keep the continuity straight. But they were all very busy people, there are only so many hours in the day, and once a series gets up to well over 100 episodes, it’s hard to keep track of every detail.
Plus the problem with assumptions is that you don’t realize they’re assumptions and don’t stop to question them. If you think you already know the answer, it may not occur to you to double-check.
Anyway, any experienced writer will tell you that mistakes are persistent buggers. It’s possible for a dozen people to go over a novel or a script multiple times each and fail to catch every error. Indeed, it’s practically inevitable that something will be missed.
@56/CLB: Then in these instances I would support the concept of the “hive mind” so that our collective will would eliminate the possibility of any canon inconsistencies.
Seriosuly though, there is a something to be said for relying on the massive fandom of the franchise as a precious resource which obviously has a love and tenderness for Star Trek. That‘s what’s so great about Memory Alpha.
@57/garreth: “Then in these instances I would support the concept of the “hive mind” so that our collective will would eliminate the possibility of any canon inconsistencies.”
I think that would make the inconsistencies even worse. Any single mind is bound to overlook things that other, independent observers would catch. You need the parallax of different perspectives, different ways of thinking and looking, to minimize the number of things that slip through the cracks.
And Memory Alpha has mistakes and oversights too. Adding more eyes and hands to the process catches more errors, yes, but it also creates more errors, because there is no such thing as a completely error-free human endeavor.
The writers certainly would have had access to the tapes, and they had a script consultant whose job it was to keep the continuity straight. But they were all very busy people, there are only so many hours in the day, and once a series gets up to well over 100 episodes, it’s hard to keep track of every detail.
Yeah. Then there’s also the creative/personal burnout factor of being immersed in that world/job for 24/7.
Actually, Ronald D. Moore put it best while recounting how Piller approached him to join DS9:
“I mean, when I was working on Next Gen, I didn’t really watch a lot of Deep Space. I had seen the pilot, and maybe I’d seen an episode here and there. But Star Trek is so, the show was so all-consuming, when I got home and I was going to relax and watch something else, I didn’t want to watch more Star Trek. It was like doing something else.”
I just have to say: Kes travelling back to 2371 and scattering future knowledge that other characters didn’t have in the original episodes is… how time travel works. (Sometimes.) Some past stories now happened differently, that’s all. What you see when you re-watch those episodes is not what happened then now. Other episodes erased “The Year of Hell” story and all of seasons 8-13, thank you Admiral Janeway. ;-)
And yes this is “Dark Phoenix” from X-Men (comics), character gets super super powered but also super evil. But Trek characters have gained powers and become nuisances since Gary Mitchell, Charlie X, arguably the Talosians are it. I’ve argued it’s a theme that having great power without substantial time to learn to use it wisely makes you… a nuisance.
Phoenix slaughtered a star system; Dark Kes may have had embarrassing or tragic experiences that she’s not here to discuss but to prevent by removing her past self from Voyager. If Super Phoenix hadn’t happened… well, then the universe would have been destroyed by the Shi’ar, so that’s not really better.
I suppose that Dark Kes arriving in 2371 and being killed by Captain Janeway is still in the timeline, but Dark Kes going back in time from 2376 isn’t – which doesn’t quite add up, but that’s how time travel works, too. Someone comes from a tragic future to prevent the tragedy, they usually die doing it, but now the tragedy doesn’t exist for them to have to travel back in time to prevent, so why do they? And if they don’t, then the tragedy happens after all. And yet… these episodes happen. Although I just argued that in the end, they don’t.
So, why was 2371 Tuvok seeing the future? As he himself said, Vulcans aren’t precognitive. At first I thought maybe he was unconsciously linking telepathically with future-Kes, but he was seeing things that she didn’t know about either, like the Borg children. If that was ever explained, I missed it.
Until this rewatch, I think in my head I’d always been conflating this episode with “Warlord,” “Before and After,” and “Shattered.” Now I’ve sorted the three episodes apart, to the benefit of none of them.
CLB, I’ve followed you on Twitter. I’m Vandy Beth Glenn, or @RedVelvetCakes. You’re all welcome to follow me (or follow me back).
Sorry I broke my own rule of my rewatch and skipped this one, I hated it first time around and was not going to wind myself up by putting myself through thisagain. Utter rubbish and as far as I am concerned I am going to pretend none of this happened
@62,
Utter rubbish and as far as I am concerned I am going to pretend none of this happened
I like to call it ‘The Tao of Basil Exposition’.
I read this overview before watching this episode and expected disaster. Instead, I think I could quote lines from it to refute 70-80 percent of these critiques. @17 has it right.
I’m no writer but I sort of had an idea of how they should have brought Kes back into the series.
The episode opens with the scene of Kes leaving in The Gift – evolving and then we cut to the Ocampan home-world and Kes appears in the Ocampa city. Bit of fear and panic in the people there but after a while they recognise Kes.
Kes begins to tell of her travels and her advancement of her powers. The Kazon on the surface of the planet are trying to break into the Ocampa city to steal the energy/food etc the Caretaker sent them to survive. Kes begins to tell her people to embrace their powers and to begin to develop and use them.
Kes realises that The Kazon are out in full force that she uses her powers to bring Voyager back to where it all began. We see the ramifications of Voyagers impact on the Kazon. After a nice reunion, they begn to work together to fight off the Kazon (one last time) and the Ocampa use their collective powers to take back their home world and make th eplanet livable again. They bring back rain and they begin to rebuild their society that was decimated by the Caretaker.
Once everything has been worked out, goodbyes are handed out and Kes and the Ocampa send Voyager back to where they were taken from (and possibly send them a little further).
As I said I’m no writer but just a nice idea that might have worked. And a nice way of going right back to the pilot episode. And possibly Susperia could have been squeezed in there somewhere.
Just an idea – it would have honored Kes, it wouldn’t have ruined her and it would feel like season 7 episode near the end signalling that the end of the series is near.
I think this is the episode I hate the absolute most in Voyager. I liked Kes, I was not happy that she was written out of the series and then THIS???
@66/ th1_
Agreed, I hate this one more than any other single episode.
I want to know how janeway knew to clear deck 11 when old kes finally caught up to the timeline .. ?
I actually paused this trainwreck kes episode right after janeway gave the order to clear deck 11 ,to search inline if i missed something …? It was the final straw, the last bit of disbelief i couldnt suspend lol
First episode in our rewatch I refused to see. I had only vague memories of most of the series (other than a few random episodes) But this episode was seared into brain as not just being awful-but insulting. My husband watched it without me.
So the last thing I want to is even give the slightest defense to this episode (cause it it is a dumpster-fire in pretty much every way) nor do I want to resurrect a three-year old thread, but just a theory re: the time travel.
I don’t think in the events of the series as we’ve seen them up to this point, Janeway is supposed to have know about Kes/the Delta Flyer/Naomi/etc. My interpretation of time travel here would be that the version of the timeline we saw up to this point was the version before older Kes went back, and there is an alternate timeline where Janeway knew that information that we never see.
It is a well-directed episode though — just shoddily written. Up until the last quarter of it, I was pretty much with it. The action was taut, there was mystery. But it just fails in all the ways mentioned here.
I am not by any means an expert on warp technology, but I feel the whole notion of turning or going straight should be irrelevant.