Star Trek: Voyager star, Ethan Phillips, said that the breakup scene between Neelix and Kes was cut. The science-fiction TV series aired from 1995 to 2001 throughout seven seasons. As the fifth installment of the Star Trek franchise, it follows the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which is stuck extremely far from home. They must work with rebels to return to the Federation, a whole 75 years away.
Neelix (Phillips) is a Talaxian who fulfills many jobs across the Voyager, such as cook, ambassador, and navigator. Meanwhile, Kes (Jennifer Lien) is an Ocampan and acts as a nurse on the vessel. While Neelix stars across seven seasons, Kes eventually leaves and never returns after starring in the episode titled "Fury." Neelix and Kes enter a relationship that stretches over the beginning of the series, which was generally panned by audiences and critics. At the same time, it's clear that the two characters part ways on the show; there's no closure to their relationship.
On The Delta Flyers (via TrekMovie), Phillips and Tim Russ, who plays Tuvok, talked about the interactions between Neelix and Kes. While the show minimizes the interaction between the two characters, Phillips explained how the show was supposed to have a scene that ultimately was cut before it aired. Even his former co-stars were surprised to hear the news on this. See below for Phillip's account and his co-stars' reactions from the podcast co-hosted by Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) and Robbie McNeill (Tom Paris):
Phillips: “…we did do a scene where we both acknowledge that we’re not a couple anymore. We shot it in the science lab, which was a set we didn’t use often. And Kes and I had a closure conversation where we said we want to be friends now and blah, blah, blah. And it was, it was quite a nice tag to the relationship. They never aired it…
…it was it was a very good scene. It was easily as six or seven-page scene where we track what happened to us and what we think might have caused the split, but that we want to stay friends…”
Russ: “Time, and they probably couldn’t have—I don’t even know if they had time to maybe edit it down. You know, just to get to the meat of it and get out.”
McNeill: “I don’t think that the producers and showrunners of our show valued those kind of relationship stories. They really wanted standalone sci fi concepts, let them play out. They didn’t want to deal with long term relationship consistency or continuity. There was very, very little of it. Tom and B’Elanna got a little bit of that in later seasons, but you know, Garrett and I have even talked about the Chakotay/Janeway relationship and that people get whiplash, too. It’s like, one episode, they have a relationship, then the next episode, they don’t, then they do again, then they don’t, then they do. Which is it? I think what it was was, it was if it was convenient to play that quality in an episode, they would do it if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t. And I think that’s probably what happened with the Kes and Neelix thing.”
Phillips: “It was a lot of ambiguity about that relationship to begin with. Was it platonic, wasn’t romantic. And it was shaky, just the the optics You know, I’m an older guy, and here’s this very young girl who’s ostensibly two years old in her race, and I think they weren’t sure how to handle it so much. And so I think they just thought let’s just move on, and maybe they’ll forget about it.”
While it should be noted that the relationship between Neelix and Kes officially ends in season 3's "Warlord," the scene that Phillips referred to in the podcast is in the episode titled "Fair Trade," which is three episodes after. While the show itself only makes a quick reference later on to the fact that they are broken up, although it's a bit strange how the show abandoned this thread. While the show hasn't been on for many years, it's insightful to hear from the cast about filming.
Some fans were under the impression that a scene where Kes is possessed is where their relationship came to a close. While some of the story decisions made don't make a lot of sense, the relationship itself repulsed many viewers, to begin with. It's still often referred to as being creepy, especially given that the relationship lacked nuance regarding how the species work in the context of maturity within the relationship. Even so, the series overall is still perceived quite positively.
Source: TrekMovie/The Delta Flyers
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