I feel like it wasn't just Kes who had this problem.
The Doctor and Seven were probably the best written characters. Tom and B'Lenna were probably the next two after that. Janeway only got better because she could act as a bad parent to Seven, which vastly improved her character and gave her focus. Neelix and Tuvok kind of drifted off to the background. Kim and Chakotay were blander than that, although Kim got a few decent character beats.
I'm not going to fault the actors on this, since this was the writing.
Voyager was probably the most high concept of the era's Trek and didn't really fulfill that promise. It is funny that DS9 kept better track of its roundabouts over Voyager's shuttles.
They really didn't nail down the writing of the crew. The Doctor and Seven are the best written. However, out of the rest of the crew, only Tom Paris seems somewhat consistent.
You get some good episodes out of it, but I don't think it plays with the parts of Trek they were given to its fullest extent. I also feel like, while some of the shows are pure Trek, they aren't Voyager.
Enterprise was great when it was allowed to be the prequel it was meant to be. The actors were great. Set and prop design was on point. There were interesting ideas to explore during that time like the Vulcan-Andorian Cold War and the increasing destabilization cause by Romulus.
Cut the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi and Enterprise could have gone on for seven seasons and we might have seen the Earth-Romulus War.
You’re aware of the systemic inequality and want to address that first, which is admirable.
The best you can do for now is to prep for the next fight by getting your colleagues on the same page that they are being just as exploited by the system.
Overall wage growth has remained stagnant for a while, but we are seeing greater wage equality and an increase in education requirements for jobs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the economic conditions for high-school educated men dropped significantly and the economic conditions for college educated men remained stagnant.
So if you are a working class white male angry at the system, you may end up angry that all these women came in to change the system for them instead of at the economic elites not paying their fair share.
And they may hear stories about how men a few generations ago were still “kings of their homes”, where women were unable to leave bad situations. The power sounds a lot nicer than today.
So you’ve got a lot of young guys looking at the old system and wanting that.
You also have items in the article noting that managers who saw drops in performance during the pandemic were the ones most likely to pull people into the office. So it seems like some managers saw issues with group performance and going back to the office was seen as a way to resolve the issue.
I can see why Koenig wasn’t really happy about his role. I can see why a lot of them weren’t.
For Chekov, this isn’t a good posting for him. He is still a commander, and worse is that he is only second officer. It makes sense why Kirk is on the Enterprise still, but not Chekov. Worse, Chekov doesn’t really do that much. Functionally, Valeris seems to fill more of the role of second officer than Chekov does. Chekov’s most remembered line was only said by him because Nichols refused to say it.
Both McCoy and Uhura display gross incompetence at their posts. McCoy has served as a doctor on the front line with Klingons around for decades; he should have been educated about their physiology. Uhura is even worse in not being able to speak Klingon; it is good that later versions of her character highlight her linguistic skills.
Unless Starfleet is testing out new technology, it really doesn’t make sense that Scotty is the chief engineer of the Enterprise unless Starfleet is still pissed off about the Excelsior.
Even though the movie was partially written by Nimoy, it really doesn’t make sense why Spock is still in Starfleet at this point at the rank of Captain. Either Spock should outrank Kirk since he is making Admiralty level decisions or already be in the diplomatic service as he is by the time of TNG.
Only Kirk makes sense. He is a washed up Captain; never able to make it to bad admiral status. He gets to keep his ship, but Starfleet seems to use him as a pawn in diplomatic missions due to his noteriety with other powers.