Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) Warlord (1996) User Reviews

Jennifer Lien steals the show

[belechannas · 8/10 · 9 January 2011]

A truly breath-taking acting performance here by Jennifer Lien.

Normally her Voyager character Kes is underplayed, sympathetic and innocent (and she is always very effective, if rarely exciting as a goody-two-shoes).

This episode, however, turns the angelic Kes on her head, and she really sells an entirely different and conflicted character with a combination of incredible energy and nuance.

The story itself isn't anything special (which accounts for the good-but-not-great 8/10 rating), but in my opinion this is one of the best performances by any regular cast member in any Star Trek series.

Surprisingly Subversive Episode

[alexwoolcott · 7/10 · 14 August 2010]

An early episode of Voyager that accidentally touches on a rather subversive topic, "Warlord" is fairly interesting and features a strong performance from Jennifer Lien. Someday, Lien is going to win an award for Best Underused Actress ever - a talented girl, she was forced to play Kes more or less like a soft spoken Vulcan for most of the show.

Finally, in "Warlord" she gets to have a little fun. Without giving too much away, a dying warlord transfers his consciousness into Kes and uses her body to stage a coup on his planet. Here's where the subversion kicks in: the Warlord is a man, but he seems to adjust to his new life inside a woman's body without the slightest problem. With hardly any effort, he uses his new body as a sexual weapon - far from a "warlord", he is more like a femme fatal, trying to use his new body to seduce everyone in sight (At one point, the possessed Kes even kisses Tuvok). The warlord's wife is naturally a little disturbed by this, and frankly the Warlord doesn't seem all that interested in her even though she seems to be the only woman on the whole planet.

I suppose you could chalk this up to lazy directing, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. The show comes pretty close to giving us a lesbian kiss and the Kes / Tuvok kiss is reminiscent of the Kirk / Uhura moment thirty years before. Voyager never really broke new ground as a show, but it's nice to see them inching towards doing the thing that Star Trek was pretty much created to do: using science fiction to comment on our own culture.

I'll warn you: there's the usual laziness in this episode that was typical of Voyager throughout the entire seres. Voyager tended to shy away from any real creativity regarding creating alien cultures: the make up is lazy and the alien "society" is pretty much a carbon copy of our own, right down to the notion of the first born male heir inheriting the throne.

The Old Inhabiting of a Body

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 24 August 2018]

This use of a body invading entity has been done to death. How many times did someone on Kirk's ship get taken over. How would this be done? So we just accept some scientific gobbledegook. Is there anything in our experience that would ever make this a possible reality? Here, Kes gets to be a warlord by the dead one inhabiting her body. She does a very good acting job. I appreciated the facial expressions and the body language. The problem for me is that the whole thing was just very dull.

Kes could use a bit of Dale Carnegie ("How to Win Friends and Influence People") in this one...

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 17 February 2015]

When the show begins, Voyager discovers a ship that's about to explode. Naturally, being galactic goody-goodies, the ship swoops in to rescue the three person crew--even though they were at serious risk for being killed in the process. One of them seems beyond help but the other two are fine. What Voyager does NOT realize is that the dead crew member is a megalomaniac jerk who is a disposed despot. In his dying moments, he secretly places his consciousness into Kes. Soon, Kes and the two survivors steal a shuttle and head back to the home planet to take over and take revenge on everyone. Soon authorities who are seeking the despot arrive. When they hear what has occurred, they want to work with Voyager. Voyager wants to rescue Kes and the authorities just want to kill her...just in case.

It's nice to see Kes behaving like a sociopathic jerk--it was a welcome relief to her usual nice persona and must have been fun for Jennifer Lien. Her husky voice, promiscuity, nasty demeanor and overall yechiness was a nice change of pace, that's for sure. So is the show worth seeing because of this? Yes, but logically, I would have just shot Kes/despot in the face and points to the usual problem with "Star Trek: Voyager"--they cannot ever make a sacrifice and they always wait to have a magical solution. Additionally, seeing Kes and the despot arguing with each other inside Kes' head is pretty dull--and very talky. But, on the other hand, the blood out of the eye socket and fun over-acting was pretty cool and on balance it's pretty good.

Jennifer Lien saves it

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 30 December 2022]

Kes has her body possessed by the consciousness of a vicious warlord.

This is an unoriginal episode, but is worth watching for the performances.

The story is as clichéd as Star Trek gets and the contrived nature of the technobabble makes the writing feel lazy. Making Kes the central character though does make it work reasonably well.

Much of the positivity comes from seeing Jennifer Lien playing a vastly different character. I think she does great work here and makes it feel real. Tim Russ is also very good, particularly in his scenes with Lien.

There is a bit too much of Neelix in annoying mode for me and the relationship between him and Kes still lacks plausibility. I disliked the opening scene in the holodeck immensely.

The production values are reasonably good, with some short but well made action sequences.

Good performance but undercooked story.

[thevacinstaller · 6/10 · 17 July 2021]

Lien provides a good performance but this episode ultimately has no statement to make. It ends up being empty calories and that is one of my pet peeves in terms of star trek storytelling. The Illara are not exactly compelling --- they have a generic internal struggle story arc but I have no personal attachment to the society or the characters and thus my sense of suspension for the outcome of the episode is non existent.

The episode establishes that Kes is strong but why not really hammer that idea home? Have Kes convince Tieran that his thirst for conquest is misguided or make this an episode where Kes comes up with a creative solution to trick him?!

Not my cup of earl grey tea hot.

Jennifers' best episode.

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 5 July 2019]

In this episode of the range of the actress is stretched to her utter limits.

It also changes the character irrecoverably.

The whole thing is kind of a shock, because we don't know what's really going on and then all of a sudden Kes starts doing some very uncharacteristic things.

She even takes Tuvoc's teachings and uses them against him. Nothing can be taken for granted in this episode, things that would have worked before, will not work now.

But the real battle is going on within Kes herself.

This episode also changes her relationship with Neelix for the remainder of the time the character appears in the show. She is now a mature woman, at three years old. And it's also possible that this encounter gives Kes access to some of that incredibly dark stuff from "Cold Fire", because after this point she really starts coming into her mental and telekinetic abilities.

But there is no other way to say this: Kes has been violated, there was a stronger word that I can use but I'm pretty sure that bean counters at IMDb rejected my original review because I used that word. it is the most appropriate word for what has happened to Kes. But she does not accept the role of "victim" willingly, and in the end she proves to be the one who is stronger.

I'm sure my previous review had all kinds of spoilers in it, I don't really want to do that this time. But I am pretty sure that there were a few insights in that old review that were pretty important, which is why I want to see it back, thank you. Nothing makes me angrier than when I come in here to look over an episode that I had previously reviewed, and my original review has magically disappeared without any notification.

Bad Consequences

[wandererthelost · 1/10 · 24 January 2021]

The writing on this one is so bad that a couple episodes later I had to come back to make sure I was not missing an episode. In this Kes gets possessed by an alien and breaks up with Neelix. For some unknown reason they never address in this episode or any other, that breakup is just how it is for the rest of the show. Imagine if everyone else had to stick to what they did when they were being controlled by aliens. When the writing is so poorly explained you have to wonder if you missed an entire episode, then you wrote it wrong.

Kes the warlord!

[Tweekums · 9/10 · 18 August 2010]

As this episode opens it looks like we are in for a light hearted episode; Neelix has developed a relaxing holodeck program based on a Telaxian beach resort but Tom and Harry have a few ideas to make it better… Bikini-clad women for a start. Things get more serious soon enough though when a ship Voyager is trying to help explodes, they beam out three personnel over to Voyager but one soon dies in sickbay. Kes soon makes friends with the two survivors. When a representative of their planets beams up to Voyager to thank them for helping Kes kills him and escapes along with the two survivors and overthrows the planet's ruler; it turns out the man who died was Tieran, a former ruler who somehow transferred his consciousness into Kes. While Voyager tries to rescue Kes she is fighting back herself in an attempt to regain control of her mind and body.

This was a really good episode; it was great to see Jennifer Lien get to show a greater acting range as she plays Kes while possessed by Tieran, she came across as surprisingly forceful as Kes tried to retake control. There were scenes that rather surprised me, particularly when Tieran used Kes's powers to attack somebody causing him to bleed profusely from his eyes and nose.

Plot hole the size of our solar system

[syncopatedrhythm · 1/10 · 17 February 2022]

Ok, Kes who just hangs out in sick bay, is able to lock out transporters, transport a shuttle out of the bay and modify it in seconds. Then the shuttle goes to warp and Voyager just sits there, ooops they went to warp guess we can't follow. Who knew a shuttle going to warp was like a cloaking device.

One of my favorite Voyager episodes

[Hillius · 9/10 · 12 August 2016]

Voyager comes across a disabled ship about to be destroyed and beams the three crew aboard. One perishes and transfers his consciousness to Kes. Kes now as the dead warlord and his crew escape and take over the rule of the alien world by killing the ruling member, his servants and son. The remaining son arrives on Voyager wanting help to stop the warlord (occupying Kes) by any means possible. Tuvok unsuccessfully tries to rescue Kes and it is left to her to fight the warlord off mentally. Eventually the remaining son & Voyager crew successfully defeat the warlord & his allies and the warlord's consciousness is ultimately destroyed using a medical device from Voyager. The episode ends with Tuvok helping a rattled Kes resettle her emotional and mental state following her release from the warlord's mind.

Having watched this episode again after becoming a fan of Game of Thrones, I can't help but draw parallels between Warlord Kes & Jack Gleason's tyrant king Joffery. Jennifer Lien does an incredible 180 from her usual soft spoken, very kind character when possessed by the warlord and she not only shines, but sparkles playing the tyrant ruler showing her exceptional acting prowess. Warlord Kes is violent, cruel, irrational and even provocative with a side dish of a schizo-spectrum disorder. It is excellent to watch as over the course of the episode she slowly struggles as she regains control of herself by battling the warlord's mind.

One can watch an actor play a similar role across episodes and the viewer can become settled or even bored by the character, but the great thing about Star Trek is the possibility of the same character acting in bizarre ways allowing the player to show their superb acting range. Another Voyager episode I really enjoy this on is Living Witness where people in a distant future envision an evil version of Voyager played out so well by a new evil Janeway and crew.

She is the best actress from all the Star Trek episodes

[ppla-835-46098 · 10/10 · 3 September 2010]

I got a chance to see Jennifer Lien at the Las Vegas convention August 2010. Seeing her with the crew reminded me of my favorite Voyager episode, "Warlord". The episode was well written. The music and camera angles were fabulous. The scenes were right out of our typical everyday struggle within ourselves....shall we fall to our desire to control others or shall we compromise with the good within us. Each scene stretched her talents to massive audition proportions. If only the directors could watch this episode. We'd see her on the BIG Screen with consistency. The scene that hit me personally was when "Kes" and "Nelix" were discussing, "..her desire to make friends without his involvement". The, "Kiss with Tuvok", scene was very surprising! The "Warlord" episode showed her to be a great convincing talented actress. It also showcased her then as she is still today...a beautiful, talented and versatile actress. I hope to see her in some major movies.

It's common enough story, but a tour de force performance from Jennifer Lien

[jimcancook · 10/10 · 14 September 2022]

OK, this is a typical alien entity invades/takes control of/possesses a crew member. Think Kirk being controlled by Sargon in Return to Tomorrow or Dr Janice Lester in Turnabout Intruder. I'd give the story a 6/10. Jennifer Lien's performance, however, is a 15/10.

Other than Elogium, the writers had mostly been treating Kes as a prop for 2 1/2 seasons. Perhaps the first NPC (in this case Non Participating Character). Occasionally a straight woman for Robert Picard's Doctor to riff off of and a few brief scenes of her mental training with Tuvok.

I had assumed that she just wasn't capable of shouldering a bigger share of the load. Or that at least the writers didn't think she could. In Warlord she spanned the gamut from raging at one moment, conniving at another, threatening at another, manipulative, then fear, and remorse and relief and gratitude. All in a very controlled performance that actually gave her character a masculine flair (she was portraying the spirit of a 200 year-old warlord inhabiting the body and mind of a "little girl").

Brava, Jennifer!

Tuvok's contraction

[leewatch · 15 November 2020]

For the first time that I've noticed, Tuvok said "don't attempt to deny...." while counseling Tes (43:48).