Star Trek: Voyager: Why “Fury” didn’t quite work

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a first-time viewer of Star Trek: Voyager, and while I enjoy the series for the most part, there are episodes that just don’t quite work for me. The season six episode “Fury” is one of those.

Kes left Voyager after three years because her telepathic abilities were threatening the ship. Now, three more years later, she returns, and she’s angry because she couldn’t return to Ocampa. She blamed the Voyager crew. She’s back with the intention of destroying the ship. For her plan to work, she has to go back in time so she can later send a younger version of herself back to her home planet.

To me, this episode almost erased everything that Kes was, and while the writing staff of Voyager felt like there was more of Kes’ story to tell, this didn’t work. Even Bryan Fuller admitted that it was a great idea to have her play a villain but “we never quite worked it out, and it always felt a little forced.” There was supposed to be a much more in-depth explanation as to why she was so angry, but there wasn’t time for the show to explore it.

To me, the entire episode just didn’t make sense. The Voyager crew had nothing to do with Kes’ abilities, and they weren’t the reason they grew out of control. She chose to stay with the crew those entire three years, and they had no way of knowing what would happen to her eventually. Blaming her inability to return to Ocampa on them was over the top.

Kes’ hologram saves the day and tempers the fury

And to have the situation resolved by a Kes hologram? All it takes to calm the older Kes down is a talk from her younger self? That was too simplistic. And it wasn’t that she couldn’t return to Ocampa, is was that she was scared to because she thought she wouldn’t be accepted. So she never tried to go home. She just got angry because she thought she wasn’t able to go home. That led her to the irrational conclusion to blame Voyager.

Fuller also said that the story felt like it should have been a two-parter, that potentially involved the other aliens (I’m assuming that’s the Vidians). Things might have been a little clearer if Kes was under the influence of the Vidians. It wasn’t like they didn’t have the ability to do that. But as it stands, Fury came across as a weak episode with a villain who didn’t have a reason to be a villain.