Kes's History
Kes was a female Ocampa who joined the USS Voyager after it was catapulted into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's array. For over three years she became a valuable member of the crew; she served as a field medic, and was in charge of the airponics bay. She eventually left Voyager in order to explore her increasingly powerful mental abilities.
Kes was born on Ocampa in 2369. She belonged to a species that had telepathic abilities and a normal lifespan of only nine years. Kes' father, to whom she was very close and whom she considered the greatest inspiration in her life, died not long after her first birthday. She still thought about him and often felt his presence when she needed guidance. When she was born, her mother expressed a wish that she would one day see the sun. Like most Ocampa, Kes was brought up underground, as her planet's surface had became a barren wasteland due to a catastrophic event and was unsuitable for habitation.
About 500 generations prior, a race of explorers from a distant galaxy, called the Nacene, had inadvertently damaged the atmosphere of the planet so badly that all nucleogenic particles were lost, thus rendering the atmosphere incapable of producing rain. The Nacene deeply regretted what they had done and left two of their kind behind to protect and provide for the Ocampa. While the female Nacene settler left in order to further explore the galaxy, the male Nacene, known as the Caretaker, stayed. He built a vast underground city, provided the Ocampa with food, entertainment and water from subterranean sources, as well as energy from the Array in space. The Ocampa civilization was sealed in by the Caretaker with a force barrier, and the ruling Elders were subsequently charged with discerning the wishes of the Caretaker, who had attained an almost godlike status among to the Ocampa. The Ocampa remained in this state for five hundred generations.
Over the years, some had found a way to circumvent the energy barrier and reach the surface. They were part of a rebellious minority who wanted to explore other possibilities, and no longer wished to remain dependent on the Caretaker. Among them was Kes. She was frustrated that the Ocampa had been dependent on the Caretaker for so long that they couldn't even think for themselves anymore. She knew that before they had given up their independence for comfort and security, they had been a people with full command of their minds' abilities, abilities they had lost because they stopped using them and began to just take what they were given. Kes did not want to walk the path the Caretaker had set for her and other Ocampa anymore; she believed her people needed to evolve, and that they could only do so by learning to survive on their own and on their own terms.
Her yearning to see the outside world led her to leave the city in 2371 through some ancient tunnels. However, upon reaching the surface, she was captured by members of the Kazon-Ogla sect, who had established a camp near the city. There, she was mistreated and tortured for information regarding the entrance to the city. The Kazon were a crude and rather technologically deficient race and finding a way to the fruitful underground oasis of the Ocampa city would have provided them with abundant resources.
During her time with the Ogla, she met the Talaxian Neelix and the two fell in love. Neelix promised to rescue her. He managed this with the aid of Captain Janeway's USS Voyager and Chakotay's Maquis crew that had been transported to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker's Array. In return, Kes agreed to help them retrieve crewmembers that had been sent to the Ocampa city for care, after the experiments the Caretaker had done on them.
After the Array – which could have taken Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant – had to be destroyed by Janeway so that the Ocampa would not fall victim to the ruthless Kazon, Kes and Neelix asked to join the Voyager crew on their journey, promising to serve the ship and its crew as valuable crewmembers.
As one of her first acts on Voyager, Kes volunteered to establish a hydroponics garden in cargo bay two in order to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to allow for more variety in meals for the crew. Her requirement of nitrogenated soil for her garden from sickbay started her friendship and sympathy with The Doctor.
Shortly after joining the crew, Kes began to exhibit some of the mental powers her species had long since lost. She experienced a telepathic vision of the devastation of a nearby planet by a polaric ion explosion. She also started to exhibit temporal telepathy while investigating the disaster, eventually locating the exact spot where Captain Janeway died. Even after the explosion was averted and the timeline containing the disaster completely unraveled, her vision not only remained, but became more vivid.
Kes quickly settled in to life aboard Voyager and began growing vegetables in her hydroponics bay. She also began to study medicine under The Doctor in order to become The Doctor's nurse. When Neelix was attacked by the Vidiians and they removed his lungs, she donated one of her own to save his life. After the operation, The Doctor allowed her to commence training to become his medical assistant.
Soon Kes started to help The Doctor in sickbay. She was shocked at the way The Doctor was treated by the crew. After explaining the situation to Captain Janeway, the captain agreed with her. Janeway told The Doctor that he was a member of the crew and she gave him control of the deactivation of his program. The Doctor found Kes' intellectual curiosity intriguing, and in the course of instructing her in her medical studies, he postulated that Kes had an eidetic memory. With Kes acting as his medical assistant, this gave Voyager a physician that could act as a medic in cases where patients couldn't be immediately transferred to sickbay, also allowing The Doctor to be kept offline rather than be constantly activated to deal with any minor injuries. Despite her respect for his lessons, Kes also lectured The Doctor on his bedside manner; when The Doctor programmed a holographic "flu" to better his bedside manner, Kes secretly modified it to last longer than the expected duration, telling him that "it wouldn't be an effective lesson" if he knew when his illness would end.
In late 2371, Voyager encountered a swarm of space-dwelling lifeforms whose presence resulted in increased electrophoretic activity in the atmosphere. At the same time, Kes began exhibiting strange behavior, such as developing a big appetite and eating copious amounts of food – from mashed potatoes, flowers, to the dirt from soil and even the bugs she used in her airponics bay for cross-pollination. Neelix caught her devouring a combination of these foods and was worried that she might have poisoned herself. She resisted being taken to sickbay, stating that she just couldn't stop eating. The Doctor examined her and discovered that she had an elevated temperature and increased electrophoretic activity. However, he was unsure as to what exactly was causing her symptoms.
Before long, Kes barricaded herself behind a force field in The Doctor's office, running a dangerously high fever and developing a growth on her back. Captain Janeway, whom Kes trusted the most, was called in. She explained to her that the growth on her back was the sac where her child would grow. She revealed that she was going through the Elogium, a time of change, during which her body prepared for fertilization. Janeway tried to explain to her that Humans go through a similar process called puberty, but Kes was panicking because she was simply too young for the Elogium, as it usually happened between the ages of four and five and she wasn't even two years old yet. As Janeway tried to console her, Kes pointed out that the Elogium only occurred once – and if she was ever going to have a child, it had to be now. This left Kes and Neelix with the tough decision of deciding whether to have a child. Neelix in particular was unsure whether he was ready to be a father, which in turn left Kes somewhat disappointed because she wanted to mate with him. Even though Kes later decided to not conceive, The Doctor believed that the Elogium was a false alarm, probably set in motion by the swarm they encountered, and that she was still able to conceive again at the right age.
In 2372, the Bothans attacked Voyager with a bio-electric field that caused the crew to experience hallucinations. It put the crew under some kind of psychoactive trance which disabled the ship. Kes' telepathic abilities allow her to resist the Bothans and to restore the crew to normal.
Later that year, Voyager found a second Ocampa colony in a second array under the guidance of Suspiria, the Caretaker's female counterpart. These Ocampa had advanced telepathic abilities and their leader, Tanis, tutored her while secretly plotting with Suspiria to take Voyager. When she demonstrated her new skills to Tuvok, she accidentally boiled the water in his body and he was severely injured. Nevertheless, he said she should continue her training under Tanis, who told Kes to join them. Tanis encouraged her to pursue destructive abilities, inducing her to incinerate the plants in hydroponics. When Suspiria attacked the crew in revenge for the Caretaker's death, Kes attacked Tanis telepathically and Janeway deployed a non-lethal toxin to disable her. Being shown mercy caused Suspiria to leave with Tanis; his departure caused Kes' power to return to its previous level. She was disturbed by the harm she did with her enhanced abilities; Tuvok told her that she must learn to control, rather than fear, such impulses.
Voyager passed through a divergence field that caused all sensor readings to double and every particle on the ship, except antimatter, to duplicate forming a second Voyager and crew. The field caused extensive damage to the first Voyager. Kes vanished in a mysterious void, Harry Kim was sucked out into space and Samantha Wildman's baby died. Kes led Janeway back to the void to take her back to her ship. When the Vidiians attacked, they killed the duplicate Kes and they themselves were destroyed when the duplicate Voyager self-destructed, but not before Kim returned with Wildman's baby to the other Voyager.
Kes, along with the rest of the crew, was marooned on Hanon IV after the Kazon had captured the ship. She was captured by the primitive tribe on the planet who were amazed at her blond hair and light skin. Chakotay later rescued her.
On a visit to the Nechani homeworld, Kes was struck by an energy burst that put her into a coma. She had wandered into a sanctuary into which only monks were allowed. She was saved by Janeway, who went through a series of tests of faith.
One of the most troubling episodes in Kes' life occurred in 2373, when her body was taken over by the Ilari Tieran. Although he found her physically weak, he discovered that he was able to put her budding psychokinetic abilities to dangerous uses and grew fond of her body. For the first few days, he concealed his presence and even ended Kes' relationship with Neelix.
After killing the Autarch's representative and Ensign Martin, he returned to Ilari and staged a coup, killing the ruling autarch. During the next few days, Kes fought him mentally, causing increasingly erratic behavior. She even surfaced at one point, with the help of Tuvok, but she was unable to remove Tieran's influence.
As a civil war broke out on the planet, the crew of Voyager rescued Kes but failed to prevent Tieran from taking Ameron as a new host, although he was driven out of Ameron and destroyed a short time later. Kes found the experience difficult to comprehend and blamed herself for the high death toll. It was clear that her time with Tieran had shaken her badly.
Possibly as a result of her experience with Tieran, Kes began to question her continued presence on Voyager. She chose not to restart her relationship with Neelix and began to pursue other relationships instead. The first of these was with a Mikhal Traveler named Zahir. She fell in love with Zahir during a stay at one of their outposts, and seriously considered his offer to explore space with him rather than stay on Voyager. Meanwhile, The Doctor, who was experimenting with his matrix, caused an evil side to emerge. He became jealous of her suitor, attacked Zahir, and kidnapped Kes. During their time together, Kes realized that the "dark Doctor" was not truly evil; despite his claims that all organics were pathetic, he seemed to care for Kes in a twisted manner. Despite this, when cornered by an away team searching for them, rather than be captured, the 'dark Doctor' jumped off a cliff with Kes. They were saved by the transporter beam as the dark subroutines in The Doctor's program finally collapsed, resulting in him being back to normal when he returned to Voyager. Eventually, she decided to remain with her friends.
A few weeks later, Voyager entered the core space of the Borg and stumbled across the Borg-Species 8472 War. As a result of the telepathic nature of Species 8472, Kes began to experience visions of the future, and later began to communicate with the race. When they realized her nature, Species 8472 began reading Kes' memories. The communications ceased when the species retreated from the Delta Quadrant.
Only a few days later, Kes began to undergo a massive surge in her mental powers. Although it was theorized that the exposure to Species 8472 caused these changes, there was little evidence for this. For whatever reason, Kes became telekinetic and was able to carry out delicate surgical procedures using only her mind. Unfortunately, she rapidly started to destabilize at the subatomic level and was causing massive damage to Voyager as a result. Taking a Class 2 shuttle, she left the ship to explore her new condition and, as she left the corporeal world behind, pushed Voyager out of Borg space, 9,500 light years closer to Earth, as a parting gift.
In the original sequence of events in 2376, Voyager received a distress call from a small ship. Sensors revealed that the ship had one Ocampan lifeform on board. It was an aged Kes, who requested to be beamed aboard Voyager. When Janeway questioned her motives, Kes responded by ramming Voyager with her ship and boarding the Starfleet vessel. In her old age, Kes had forgotten she had chosen to leave Voyager and thought the crew had abandoned her when she had become too troublesome. Subsequently, she hunted down Voyager, seeking revenge. She made her way to engineering, using her powers to cause extensive damage along the way. When she reached engineering, Kes murdered B'Elanna Torres and used the warp core's energy to enhance her powers and travel back to 2371, shortly after Voyager had become trapped in the Delta Quadrant. She attempted to prevent her younger self from developing her powers, making a deal with the Vidiians to attack and capture the ship, while taking the younger Kes back to Ocampa. This attempt was thwarted by Captain Janeway, who had been alerted to the possibility of time travel as Tuvok had been experiencing 'flash-forwards' due to exposure to tachyon particles caused by the presence of the future Kes, ranging from mentioning the Delta Flyer around four years before its construction or witnessing Naomi Wildman before her mother announced her pregnancy. In a confrontation in the airoponics bay, Janeway was forced to kill the older Kes when she was knocked off-balance during a Vidiian attack. She and Tuvok subsequently explained the situation to Kes of the present, who recorded a hologram that would dissuade the Kes of 2376 from making the time jump.
In the new version of 2376, Kes once again assaulted the ship, but Janeway was able to divert the crew from Kes's path, minimizing the damage she inflicted on the ship. When she reached engineering, she found the warp core off-line. A hologram that Kes had recorded of herself before leaving Voyager was activated. The holographic image reminded her that she was responsible for her own fate. Kes responded emotionally and ceased hostilities. Janeway offered her a place on the crew but she refused, opting instead to return to her homeworld.
