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letterbladeA little context: For a while now, I've been developing in this currently stuffed-up head of mine (cold, sadly, not great thoughts) a series of theories, some about characters, some about specific episodes, some about aliens or overarching developments or general issues, about how Voyager could have been better. Today, sick and bored, I randomly started writing one down; what follows is a lot of speculation about one of Voyager's particularly lusterless ventures into alien-culture-creation: the Kazon. What follows is more ramble than essay, I'll admit, mostly filled with wild speculation on how the Kazon could've gathered a little more grit and uniqueness. I hope it'll be interesting; I also hope that it'll be the first in a series. What'll be next? The underuse of the Vidiians? The lost potential of Neelix? Janeway's character flaws, and why nobody seems to notice them? How Kes Has Balls? Who knows? Probably just the next thing to sieze my attention.
A general sort of disclaimer: I am not a Voyager basher. I have a deep and t00by love for Voyager. I practically grew up with Voyager--it started when I was eleven, finished when I was seventeen. It's worth noting that I've shelled out for seasons of Voyager on DVD, yet not done so for TNG or DS9, both of which I think are better, simply because I like Voyager that much. Nor have I spent days upon days wrestling seasons of the other shows out of torrents, just to have them on my hard drive for obsessive rewatching--no, I downloaded Voyager first. (Sorry to show my love through piracy; am broke.) And part of the reason I like it is my fondness for picking over episodes, characters, aliens, plotlines, etcetera, and realizing just how much unexplored potential there was in the show, how much better it could have been. (And in a way this almost makes it easier to fic about, as there are more cracks for our bunnies to breed in.) So everything I say here is friendly, not antagonistic criticism, with a basic love for Voyager as a whole, but also with the understanding that it had some, ah, flaws.
As far as flaws go...ahhh, the Kazon. Possibly the most underwhelming major villain to ever growl its way out of the brains of the Trek writers, much mocked and maligned, and little, little missed. How the hell, most people doubtless ask, could the Kazon have been better? Better strike them out of the story alltogether. Spend more time with the angst-ridden history of the Vidiians, perhaps. Or trying to give Harry a backbone or Chakotay some verve.
Well, the answer lies in a quote I remember from some interview with one of TPTB: that the Kazon were originally concieved as a sort of interstellar biker gang.
Okay, now that would've been fun. Picture this: they aren't going about in those big fish-finned warships. Oh, no. We're talking tiny little shuttles. Since Trek has broken sound-in-space physics since time immemorial, let's go whole hog and give them loud, sputtering, roaring engines. Twenty, thirty, forty of these little buggers, each piloted by a few whooping, machismo-high, leather-clad, big-haired aliens, each armed far beyond what would be considered reasonable for its size, swarming around Voyager's hull, blasting little windows in the shields, maybe dropping off spacesuit-clad adventurers to literally saw their way through the hull--wouldn't care whether the crew lost their eyeballs to explosive decompression, now would they?--maybe attacking with kamikaze runs at the warp nacelles if they were particularly excited. Can't you just see Janeway, panicked with the shields being eaten away, humanitarian angst oozing out her pores at the thought of all those handsome young Kazon killing themselves in fireballs to try to take her down, trying to reason with the biggest-haired of them all, all but begging him to break off the attack as he twitches his massive pecs and yells at Chakotay to stop hiding behind some broad, are you man enough to come out and fight with me?
No more Majes snidely lecturing on about how they want Voyager's "technology." Do you honestly think Kazon are going to bother with four-syllable words? Four-letter, more like it. (Though, sadly, we probably couldn't get away with most of what the Kazon dialect should have been on network television. Nor could we get away with the suitable heavy metal soundtrack on Trek. Siiigh.) Some fast-spoken, abbreviated, swear-filled mish-mash of language--they aren't going to be trying to acquire Voyager's technology, they're gonna get Voy's tech now, hey, and end that broad too!
Make them come off a lot more like annoying body-slamming dumpster-diving (hey, finders-keepers, and if there was a little killing with the finding, who's alive to care?) teenagers. And then we'll get a wonderful moment in the pilot with Janeway recieving a few transmissions from their various little shuttles, staring around at her fellow neat-and-tidy-and-eloquent-and-well-armed Starfleet officers in bemusement, and sending some sort of "just coming through, don't bother with me, now run on home" transmission--whereupon, WHUMP and shakeycam!, the first one zips through the shields and all those well-trained Starfleet folk go bug-eyed as their misconceptions are hosed.
And let's up the level of bile between the sects while were at it. I just want some episode to begin with Voyager happening across sixty or seventy little buzzing, pimped-out, painted-up little shuttles--two, maybe even three or four sets of colors or symbols, complete with "Death to the Ogla!" spraypainted on the Nistrim's windshield--spewing phaser fire and knocking each other out of the sky to the point where they don't even notice the big shiny gray thing hovering just out of sensor range, and Janeway staring in fascinated disgust for a little while before simply backing off and leaving them too it, with or without spouting something about the Prime Directive before running away.
Okay, so maybe I'm getting carried away. But still. It had the potential to go much farther, be much edgier, than it ever did. The same applies to pretty much all of Voyager, of course. But still.
Now, all biker-gang speculation aside, let's take a look at what was interesting about the Kazon in canon. At which point we're looking at three things: Seska's choice for defection, the history with the Trabe, and the role (or lack thereof) of women in their culture.
Let's start with Seska. Now, annoying or not, the Kazon definitely have--even in canon, never mind how I would write them--a definite live free, play hard, fuck the world, die happy! groove to them. And face it, that would appeal to a lot of the Maquis, not just Seska. Though it certainly goes without saying that Torres or Henley would've been toast if they shipped away with the Kazon--only with her masterful powers of acting and manipulation could Seska have gotten as far as she did in such a blatantly misogynistic society. The nasty but subtlety-free Kazon--so the opposite of the Cardassians who trained her--are putty in her hands, helpless. And that could've used a bit of playing up, but hey, it wasn't even subtext to begin with that she was there to use Culluh just as much as she used Chakotay, so I can't complain too much.
But I'm rambling. My basic point? Just as your classic evil biker gang (though, yes, I know, there's a sad lack of either Kiefer Sutherland or vampirism), the Kazon could have been one part bizarre and annoying, one part scary and deadly, and one part wind-in-hair wildness, and the later has an iconic, even romantic appeal. My bet is that Seska wasn't the only Maquis who felt that latter tugging at her--even if her defection was, in the end, as much purely practical as it was a particular choice--and I think that could've been made a little clearer, even just subtextually. And that would've resulted in a lot of complications to the hunt for the traitor in State of Flux; conversely, it would've required a lot of playing up of the difficulties the Maquis in general (in general here, not just Seska, Jonas, Suder, Torres' temper, and the four from Learning Curve, which were all individually at least passably managed) had in adjusting to buttoned-down Starfleet life as imposed upon them by Mama Kate and Chakotay's nigh-mute acceptance. But the whole issue of Maquis/Starfleet reconciliation is another chapter, and a much longer one.
But that's a relatively small element in comparison to the next two. First, a revisitation of Alliances is in order. *hits the DVDs* Because it is in Alliances that we get a peek at the origins of the Delta-quad Biker Gang: amongst the Trabe.
Now, it was never made quite clear who the Kazon were or why they were repressed in the first place. Same species, subspecies, or unrelated? Are we looking at a racial issue?--as most of the Kazon we see are red to black, and most of the Trabe we see are white to pale brown, with white in the position of leadership. Are we looking at a sophisticated and discriminating high society exiling and enslaving those with violent and/or misogynistic tendences?--as the Trabe seemed reasonably well-integrated. Or are we looking at a bunch of double-dealing snobs assimilating and degrading a less sophisticated and technologically endowed alien culture? It really wasn't clear, as most of the history we got was from Mabus, who was lying through his teeth the whole way anyway, and vague grumbles from the Kazon themselves, who are never the most coherent of people. But everybody does seem to agree that the Kazon culture evolved through violent and demeaning oppression, and they've certainly done a lot to close their end of the vicious circle.
So now we have a new lense to look at the Kazon through. The reason they don't trust anybody--particularly anybody as evolved and self-righteous as Janeway and crew--is that they've been betrayed and oppressed by the most sophisticated and respected culture around, possibly by their own people, depending upon what was going on back then (which they really should've been clearer about). Their violence and piracy? Arises as much out of revenge as out of random malice, and out of a cultural history of being subjected to groundless cruelty themselves. Their misogyny? If their function in the Trabe culture was as slaves for mining, construction, etc., women would probably have been bred from, summarily executed, or driven to death if they weren't strong enough to be useful, and that could've twisted its way into the Kazon psyche as a general opinion of women as weak and useless. And all this, of course, raises some very interesting issues.
How much were the Kazon, originally, before the Trabe got their hands on them--whether a splinter group in Trabe society or another culture entirely--like the Kazon we know now? Were they always a short-sighted, artless, violent species, just now with a hard-on for vengeance courtesy of the Trabe work camps? Or were they relatively harmless but whipped and twisted into their current lawless selves over however long--decades? centuries? millenia?--the Trabe kept them down? A sort of Delta-quad Bajorans gone beserk? And what then does that say about the Trabe: are we looking at cruel oppressors forging the weapon of their own destruction, or benevolent snobs getting a little too carried away with keeping the harmful elements out of their society? Were the Kazon victims of ethnic cleansing or criminals in prison camps? Or did the feud go on before, the cultured versus the cultureless, for generations upon generations of societal evolution, until the Trabe got the technological and administrative muscle to wrestle the bandits to the ground? And how much, then, can one blame the current state of the Kazon on the Trabe? Who started the vicious circle anyway?
So, so very much potential there, blown away. Alliances leaves us with a lot of suspicions about the Trabe--who are so deliberately set forth as a mirror to Voyager itself--and a bit of sympathy for the Kazon, but there were depths it simply did not explore, and should have. Yet still it's one of the better outings of the second season, with the first good look at Maquis issues in a while and one of the best glimpses in the entire series of Janeway and Tuvok's friendship, even if loaded down a bit by Janeway's grandstanding pig-headedness and the plot's biting off more than it could chew--because fully exploring the issues latent in the lick-and-promise they gave Kazon history would've taken a while, probably more than one episode. And they should have done it, and if I could just sit down and rewrite the entire series I'd do it, but they didn't.
Now this is another tangent here, but one of the other things I loved about Alliances was that it actually admitted there were other sects besides the "there in the pilot and then forgotten" Ogla and the "Seska's man-bitches" Nistrim. Now, of course, working all eighteen into the story would've been, ah, complicated--but I remember living in hope as the first two seasons aired that one or two of the sects might actually turn out to be sympathetic, or at least superficially so. Kazon allies with The Great Voy (because, hey, it would raise Janeway's hackles if they never bothered to name her ship properly, and the Kazon exist to raise Janeway's hackles) against Kazon. Underlying sect issues--if there are any besides 'you wear a different sash, die!'--are aired. Voyager takes a few Kazon allies on board, and Torres finds herself being awkwardly and adorably romanced by some swarthy young leather-clad gent who wants to take her away from all these rules and regulations to ride free through the black. Hell, maybe there's even a sect where the broads ride with the men--possibilities all over the map. But no, all the sects were pretty much written off as all just like each other, the only distinguishing feature being which one got Seska. So much wasted potential.
But that last possibility segues nicely into my third and probably biggest point of interest with the Kazon: what in bloody hell is going on with their women?
Okay, so they aren't the first misogynistic culture on Trek. But at least with the Ferengi we saw some of their women--mostly rebels, but hey, rebels there would be. I haven't gotten to any of the episodes with Quark's mom yet, and I look forward to them, but I did meet his adorable little cross-dressing business partner, who made some major moves towards equal-opportunity Ferengi representation as soon as the second season. But with the Kazon we never got there; and I say, we should have.
Who are they? Where are they? What are they like? Are they kept on some secret planet like pirate's treasure or locked in little rooms in the bowels of the bigger ships, awaiting the lust of their men? Are they hidden away and veiled like harem girls, or naked in the dirt? Or perhaps they're slave labor in the factories to build all those ships, big or small? (The Kazon certainly have enough mutual stupidity and blindness any way they're characterized to weather the hypocrisy flying around in ships built by females, methinks.) Is there, as I speculated earlier, a particularly reviled sect where the women ride with the men--and then are they just as cruel and obnoxious, or more tempered and reasonable? Or perhaps even a rebel sect composed entirely of women--escaped from harems, bedrooms, factories, wherever they might be held? So many possibilities, and no answer, because the writers were never smart enough to go there.
Maybe it's more extreme than that. Maybe there are no Kazon women. Seska at least thought they had rudimentary fertility and gene-implanting technology--she did seem genuinely surprised when the Doctor announced the baby wasn't Chakotay's. Perhaps they kidnap alien women, rape and impregnate them, and then modify the babies to be pure Kazon (all male, of course, or any girl children killed at birth); perhaps that would've been Kes' fate if she'd been stuck there longer (and assuming the bizarre Ocampan reproductive system was compatible). It seems a stretch for such a low-tech culture, but they do have a habit of stealing stuff, and it would've been an interesting possibility--and would've complicated the situation in Basics immensely if all the female crew was kidnapped for breeding purposes, leaving Tuvok and Chakotay to hash it out for leadership on the planet and Tom to blunder heroically to the rescue of the damsels. But, of course, still sheer speculation.
And we, the viewers, should have found this out. One way or another. Whether there are any Kazon women, where they are, what they are like. Perhaps a few uppity rebels or lucky escapees could have made it to Voyager--and we know Janeway, with all her self-righteus generosity and habit of mothering pretty young women, would've taken them in. Or perhaps Seska could've discovered this best-kept secret of the Kazon, freed them herself, and led an uprising of bitter, angry, abused women against the men--and then, eventually, against Voyager. Because wouldn't it have been fun--albeit perhaps a little Sam-Raimi-esque--to see Janeway suddenly facing the Evil Estrogen Brigade, headed by the master sexual manipulator herself?
But I digress. In short, the possibilities of exploring the Kazon women were immense and, probably more than any other gap in the writing, would've gone a long, long way towards making them an interesting presence in the Delta-quad, and not just Klingons-lite. Because, yes, in canon, I admit, they're Klingons-lite, pompous, pretentious, and boring as shit. I'm just talking about lost potential here.
But one more bit of lost potential. An interjection, a tidbit, nay, just a moment in some early third-season episode, because I've always vaguely wondered at the writer's choice, in the otherwise high-body-count Basics II, to leave Culluh alive but in disgrace. Does Chakotay get some tortured little message, well, you were right, Federation, she was one ball-busting bitch but damn it, I loved her and I wanted my baby? Do they just find his ship suicide-crashed on some moon, or is he executed by his own people for being a pussy-whipped coward? He's not going to live long any way, unless it's in bitter, depressive, exiled disgrace--maybe they find him half a season later, sulking in his falling-apart ship in some nebula. Because Culluh, yes, Culluh, of all characters, had the possibility for some tiny little swan song that would, for a moment, make him in all his emasculated pride almost sympathetic--they had it for a second in canon at the end of Basics, with him breaking down over Seska's body, but they could've gotten much more of a zing out of that. But maybe that's just in the realm of fanfiction. ;)
A general sort of disclaimer: I am not a Voyager basher. I have a deep and t00by love for Voyager. I practically grew up with Voyager--it started when I was eleven, finished when I was seventeen. It's worth noting that I've shelled out for seasons of Voyager on DVD, yet not done so for TNG or DS9, both of which I think are better, simply because I like Voyager that much. Nor have I spent days upon days wrestling seasons of the other shows out of torrents, just to have them on my hard drive for obsessive rewatching--no, I downloaded Voyager first. (Sorry to show my love through piracy; am broke.) And part of the reason I like it is my fondness for picking over episodes, characters, aliens, plotlines, etcetera, and realizing just how much unexplored potential there was in the show, how much better it could have been. (And in a way this almost makes it easier to fic about, as there are more cracks for our bunnies to breed in.) So everything I say here is friendly, not antagonistic criticism, with a basic love for Voyager as a whole, but also with the understanding that it had some, ah, flaws.
As far as flaws go...ahhh, the Kazon. Possibly the most underwhelming major villain to ever growl its way out of the brains of the Trek writers, much mocked and maligned, and little, little missed. How the hell, most people doubtless ask, could the Kazon have been better? Better strike them out of the story alltogether. Spend more time with the angst-ridden history of the Vidiians, perhaps. Or trying to give Harry a backbone or Chakotay some verve.
Well, the answer lies in a quote I remember from some interview with one of TPTB: that the Kazon were originally concieved as a sort of interstellar biker gang.
Okay, now that would've been fun. Picture this: they aren't going about in those big fish-finned warships. Oh, no. We're talking tiny little shuttles. Since Trek has broken sound-in-space physics since time immemorial, let's go whole hog and give them loud, sputtering, roaring engines. Twenty, thirty, forty of these little buggers, each piloted by a few whooping, machismo-high, leather-clad, big-haired aliens, each armed far beyond what would be considered reasonable for its size, swarming around Voyager's hull, blasting little windows in the shields, maybe dropping off spacesuit-clad adventurers to literally saw their way through the hull--wouldn't care whether the crew lost their eyeballs to explosive decompression, now would they?--maybe attacking with kamikaze runs at the warp nacelles if they were particularly excited. Can't you just see Janeway, panicked with the shields being eaten away, humanitarian angst oozing out her pores at the thought of all those handsome young Kazon killing themselves in fireballs to try to take her down, trying to reason with the biggest-haired of them all, all but begging him to break off the attack as he twitches his massive pecs and yells at Chakotay to stop hiding behind some broad, are you man enough to come out and fight with me?
No more Majes snidely lecturing on about how they want Voyager's "technology." Do you honestly think Kazon are going to bother with four-syllable words? Four-letter, more like it. (Though, sadly, we probably couldn't get away with most of what the Kazon dialect should have been on network television. Nor could we get away with the suitable heavy metal soundtrack on Trek. Siiigh.) Some fast-spoken, abbreviated, swear-filled mish-mash of language--they aren't going to be trying to acquire Voyager's technology, they're gonna get Voy's tech now, hey, and end that broad too!
Make them come off a lot more like annoying body-slamming dumpster-diving (hey, finders-keepers, and if there was a little killing with the finding, who's alive to care?) teenagers. And then we'll get a wonderful moment in the pilot with Janeway recieving a few transmissions from their various little shuttles, staring around at her fellow neat-and-tidy-and-eloquent-and-well-armed Starfleet officers in bemusement, and sending some sort of "just coming through, don't bother with me, now run on home" transmission--whereupon, WHUMP and shakeycam!, the first one zips through the shields and all those well-trained Starfleet folk go bug-eyed as their misconceptions are hosed.
And let's up the level of bile between the sects while were at it. I just want some episode to begin with Voyager happening across sixty or seventy little buzzing, pimped-out, painted-up little shuttles--two, maybe even three or four sets of colors or symbols, complete with "Death to the Ogla!" spraypainted on the Nistrim's windshield--spewing phaser fire and knocking each other out of the sky to the point where they don't even notice the big shiny gray thing hovering just out of sensor range, and Janeway staring in fascinated disgust for a little while before simply backing off and leaving them too it, with or without spouting something about the Prime Directive before running away.
Okay, so maybe I'm getting carried away. But still. It had the potential to go much farther, be much edgier, than it ever did. The same applies to pretty much all of Voyager, of course. But still.
Now, all biker-gang speculation aside, let's take a look at what was interesting about the Kazon in canon. At which point we're looking at three things: Seska's choice for defection, the history with the Trabe, and the role (or lack thereof) of women in their culture.
Let's start with Seska. Now, annoying or not, the Kazon definitely have--even in canon, never mind how I would write them--a definite live free, play hard, fuck the world, die happy! groove to them. And face it, that would appeal to a lot of the Maquis, not just Seska. Though it certainly goes without saying that Torres or Henley would've been toast if they shipped away with the Kazon--only with her masterful powers of acting and manipulation could Seska have gotten as far as she did in such a blatantly misogynistic society. The nasty but subtlety-free Kazon--so the opposite of the Cardassians who trained her--are putty in her hands, helpless. And that could've used a bit of playing up, but hey, it wasn't even subtext to begin with that she was there to use Culluh just as much as she used Chakotay, so I can't complain too much.
But I'm rambling. My basic point? Just as your classic evil biker gang (though, yes, I know, there's a sad lack of either Kiefer Sutherland or vampirism), the Kazon could have been one part bizarre and annoying, one part scary and deadly, and one part wind-in-hair wildness, and the later has an iconic, even romantic appeal. My bet is that Seska wasn't the only Maquis who felt that latter tugging at her--even if her defection was, in the end, as much purely practical as it was a particular choice--and I think that could've been made a little clearer, even just subtextually. And that would've resulted in a lot of complications to the hunt for the traitor in State of Flux; conversely, it would've required a lot of playing up of the difficulties the Maquis in general (in general here, not just Seska, Jonas, Suder, Torres' temper, and the four from Learning Curve, which were all individually at least passably managed) had in adjusting to buttoned-down Starfleet life as imposed upon them by Mama Kate and Chakotay's nigh-mute acceptance. But the whole issue of Maquis/Starfleet reconciliation is another chapter, and a much longer one.
But that's a relatively small element in comparison to the next two. First, a revisitation of Alliances is in order. *hits the DVDs* Because it is in Alliances that we get a peek at the origins of the Delta-quad Biker Gang: amongst the Trabe.
Now, it was never made quite clear who the Kazon were or why they were repressed in the first place. Same species, subspecies, or unrelated? Are we looking at a racial issue?--as most of the Kazon we see are red to black, and most of the Trabe we see are white to pale brown, with white in the position of leadership. Are we looking at a sophisticated and discriminating high society exiling and enslaving those with violent and/or misogynistic tendences?--as the Trabe seemed reasonably well-integrated. Or are we looking at a bunch of double-dealing snobs assimilating and degrading a less sophisticated and technologically endowed alien culture? It really wasn't clear, as most of the history we got was from Mabus, who was lying through his teeth the whole way anyway, and vague grumbles from the Kazon themselves, who are never the most coherent of people. But everybody does seem to agree that the Kazon culture evolved through violent and demeaning oppression, and they've certainly done a lot to close their end of the vicious circle.
So now we have a new lense to look at the Kazon through. The reason they don't trust anybody--particularly anybody as evolved and self-righteous as Janeway and crew--is that they've been betrayed and oppressed by the most sophisticated and respected culture around, possibly by their own people, depending upon what was going on back then (which they really should've been clearer about). Their violence and piracy? Arises as much out of revenge as out of random malice, and out of a cultural history of being subjected to groundless cruelty themselves. Their misogyny? If their function in the Trabe culture was as slaves for mining, construction, etc., women would probably have been bred from, summarily executed, or driven to death if they weren't strong enough to be useful, and that could've twisted its way into the Kazon psyche as a general opinion of women as weak and useless. And all this, of course, raises some very interesting issues.
How much were the Kazon, originally, before the Trabe got their hands on them--whether a splinter group in Trabe society or another culture entirely--like the Kazon we know now? Were they always a short-sighted, artless, violent species, just now with a hard-on for vengeance courtesy of the Trabe work camps? Or were they relatively harmless but whipped and twisted into their current lawless selves over however long--decades? centuries? millenia?--the Trabe kept them down? A sort of Delta-quad Bajorans gone beserk? And what then does that say about the Trabe: are we looking at cruel oppressors forging the weapon of their own destruction, or benevolent snobs getting a little too carried away with keeping the harmful elements out of their society? Were the Kazon victims of ethnic cleansing or criminals in prison camps? Or did the feud go on before, the cultured versus the cultureless, for generations upon generations of societal evolution, until the Trabe got the technological and administrative muscle to wrestle the bandits to the ground? And how much, then, can one blame the current state of the Kazon on the Trabe? Who started the vicious circle anyway?
So, so very much potential there, blown away. Alliances leaves us with a lot of suspicions about the Trabe--who are so deliberately set forth as a mirror to Voyager itself--and a bit of sympathy for the Kazon, but there were depths it simply did not explore, and should have. Yet still it's one of the better outings of the second season, with the first good look at Maquis issues in a while and one of the best glimpses in the entire series of Janeway and Tuvok's friendship, even if loaded down a bit by Janeway's grandstanding pig-headedness and the plot's biting off more than it could chew--because fully exploring the issues latent in the lick-and-promise they gave Kazon history would've taken a while, probably more than one episode. And they should have done it, and if I could just sit down and rewrite the entire series I'd do it, but they didn't.
Now this is another tangent here, but one of the other things I loved about Alliances was that it actually admitted there were other sects besides the "there in the pilot and then forgotten" Ogla and the "Seska's man-bitches" Nistrim. Now, of course, working all eighteen into the story would've been, ah, complicated--but I remember living in hope as the first two seasons aired that one or two of the sects might actually turn out to be sympathetic, or at least superficially so. Kazon allies with The Great Voy (because, hey, it would raise Janeway's hackles if they never bothered to name her ship properly, and the Kazon exist to raise Janeway's hackles) against Kazon. Underlying sect issues--if there are any besides 'you wear a different sash, die!'--are aired. Voyager takes a few Kazon allies on board, and Torres finds herself being awkwardly and adorably romanced by some swarthy young leather-clad gent who wants to take her away from all these rules and regulations to ride free through the black. Hell, maybe there's even a sect where the broads ride with the men--possibilities all over the map. But no, all the sects were pretty much written off as all just like each other, the only distinguishing feature being which one got Seska. So much wasted potential.
But that last possibility segues nicely into my third and probably biggest point of interest with the Kazon: what in bloody hell is going on with their women?
Okay, so they aren't the first misogynistic culture on Trek. But at least with the Ferengi we saw some of their women--mostly rebels, but hey, rebels there would be. I haven't gotten to any of the episodes with Quark's mom yet, and I look forward to them, but I did meet his adorable little cross-dressing business partner, who made some major moves towards equal-opportunity Ferengi representation as soon as the second season. But with the Kazon we never got there; and I say, we should have.
Who are they? Where are they? What are they like? Are they kept on some secret planet like pirate's treasure or locked in little rooms in the bowels of the bigger ships, awaiting the lust of their men? Are they hidden away and veiled like harem girls, or naked in the dirt? Or perhaps they're slave labor in the factories to build all those ships, big or small? (The Kazon certainly have enough mutual stupidity and blindness any way they're characterized to weather the hypocrisy flying around in ships built by females, methinks.) Is there, as I speculated earlier, a particularly reviled sect where the women ride with the men--and then are they just as cruel and obnoxious, or more tempered and reasonable? Or perhaps even a rebel sect composed entirely of women--escaped from harems, bedrooms, factories, wherever they might be held? So many possibilities, and no answer, because the writers were never smart enough to go there.
Maybe it's more extreme than that. Maybe there are no Kazon women. Seska at least thought they had rudimentary fertility and gene-implanting technology--she did seem genuinely surprised when the Doctor announced the baby wasn't Chakotay's. Perhaps they kidnap alien women, rape and impregnate them, and then modify the babies to be pure Kazon (all male, of course, or any girl children killed at birth); perhaps that would've been Kes' fate if she'd been stuck there longer (and assuming the bizarre Ocampan reproductive system was compatible). It seems a stretch for such a low-tech culture, but they do have a habit of stealing stuff, and it would've been an interesting possibility--and would've complicated the situation in Basics immensely if all the female crew was kidnapped for breeding purposes, leaving Tuvok and Chakotay to hash it out for leadership on the planet and Tom to blunder heroically to the rescue of the damsels. But, of course, still sheer speculation.
And we, the viewers, should have found this out. One way or another. Whether there are any Kazon women, where they are, what they are like. Perhaps a few uppity rebels or lucky escapees could have made it to Voyager--and we know Janeway, with all her self-righteus generosity and habit of mothering pretty young women, would've taken them in. Or perhaps Seska could've discovered this best-kept secret of the Kazon, freed them herself, and led an uprising of bitter, angry, abused women against the men--and then, eventually, against Voyager. Because wouldn't it have been fun--albeit perhaps a little Sam-Raimi-esque--to see Janeway suddenly facing the Evil Estrogen Brigade, headed by the master sexual manipulator herself?
But I digress. In short, the possibilities of exploring the Kazon women were immense and, probably more than any other gap in the writing, would've gone a long, long way towards making them an interesting presence in the Delta-quad, and not just Klingons-lite. Because, yes, in canon, I admit, they're Klingons-lite, pompous, pretentious, and boring as shit. I'm just talking about lost potential here.
But one more bit of lost potential. An interjection, a tidbit, nay, just a moment in some early third-season episode, because I've always vaguely wondered at the writer's choice, in the otherwise high-body-count Basics II, to leave Culluh alive but in disgrace. Does Chakotay get some tortured little message, well, you were right, Federation, she was one ball-busting bitch but damn it, I loved her and I wanted my baby? Do they just find his ship suicide-crashed on some moon, or is he executed by his own people for being a pussy-whipped coward? He's not going to live long any way, unless it's in bitter, depressive, exiled disgrace--maybe they find him half a season later, sulking in his falling-apart ship in some nebula. Because Culluh, yes, Culluh, of all characters, had the possibility for some tiny little swan song that would, for a moment, make him in all his emasculated pride almost sympathetic--they had it for a second in canon at the end of Basics, with him breaking down over Seska's body, but they could've gotten much more of a zing out of that. But maybe that's just in the realm of fanfiction. ;)
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Date: Jan. 18th, 2006 10:03 pm (UTC)Anyway, it would have been hil-fucking-arious if the Kazon HAD been like an actual biker gang XD And I think that, at some point, someone DID intend for Culluh to come back and probably with the kid to mess with Chakotay's head, but they kinda forgot about it, or something.
*snickers* Ah, Basics. I wrote shitty fanfiction all summer while waiting for the second half of THAT two-parter. Damn, hardcore nostailga, yo.
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Date: Jan. 18th, 2006 10:25 pm (UTC)I'm really sick of the Trek writers writing the same storylines in each series (the fact that Enterprise had a "Borg episode" still cracks me up), so yeah, it would've been nice to see them do something so radically different.
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2006 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 18th, 2006 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 19th, 2006 05:01 am (UTC)I need to rewatch me some Voyager.
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Date: Jan. 19th, 2006 10:17 am (UTC)