The Heartbreaking Star Trek: Voyager Scene You Never Got To See
When "Star Trek: Voyager" premiered on UPN in 1995, it took the franchise in a new, daring direction as it forced a crew to figure out a way back home after being cast out so far in deep space. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) led her crew of the USS Voyager out of the Delta Quadrant on a trip home that could have taken them 75 years to finish. What followed was seven seasons of space exploring adventure, exciting battles, and surprisingly, a bit of romance.
Finding love seems to go hand-in-hand with Starfleet, as the entire "Star Trek" franchise is full of romantic pairings that fans have enjoyed throughout its long span. Apparently, being lost in the Delta Quadrant is the perfect opportunity to fall in love, and "Voyager" had its fair share of couples, including the characters Neelix (Ethan Phillips) and Kes (Jennifer Lien). Besides finding love a few times with other partners, the two also paired off during the series' beginning. However, Screen Rant wrote that the couple didn't exactly wow fans, and it wasn't long before they split. What's worse is that fans never got to see the two break up onscreen. However, Phillips recently revealed that wasn't supposed to be the case.
Neelix and Kes' breakup scene was cut from the show
Via Trek Movie, Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ (Tuvok) spoke on an episode of "The Delta Flyers" podcast, which is hosted by fellow "Voyager" castmates Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) and Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill). The actors initially talked about a scene between Neelix and Kes that took place sometime after their off-screen split when Phillips revealed that "Voyager" originally shot a breakup scene between the two characters. And although Phillips admitted he thought the pairing had too much "ambiguity" to work on the show properly, the planned scene was handled well.
"We shot it in the science lab, which was a set we didn't use often," Phillips said. "And Kes and I had a closure conversation where we said we want to be friends now and blah, blah, blah. And it was quite a nice tag to the relationship. They never aired it."
Phillips added on the episode that he thought it was a good scene, but he never really learned why they cut it out. His fellow castmates chimed in with their theories that it may have been due to time constraints, or "Voyager's" showrunners and producers never really putting much consistency into some of the series' romantic relationships. While fans may have been glad to see Neelix and Kes split, it still would have been nice to see some onscreen closure for the characters.