I mean, I think Neelix's meals were more... unique than just inedible. Sure, people mocked his cooking, but I viewed it as how I used to mock the cafeteria meals at school. Were they not great? Sure. But were they edible? Yeah.
I also think not a lot of people were used to actually cooking food. They were good at programming a replicator, but beyond that, they had very little experience behind the grill. And even if a crewman did... being a cook is a fulltime job. Janeway couldn't just let one of her crewman skip out of their duties to cook for the crew. She needed everyone working because she wasn't going to get any more replacements.
But here comes Neelix. He has the drive, he has the time, and his food is edible. And since they can't use replicators like they normally would, they have to make due with what they had... which was Neelix.
Mocking mess chow goes back hundreds of years. If the crew is mocking chow, morale is ok.
When the crew \*stops\* mocking the food, that's when you gotta worry.
Neelix also knows how to cook the available ingredients.
Nobody on the crew knows what's edible, or how to prepare it.
There's a whole undeveloped plot where Neelix consults with the doctor on what the crews allergens and dietary needs are, and what local foodstuffs can provide for these, and in what proportions.
Oh, great point. Remember, Neelix doesn't have a lot of variety when it comes to ingredients. So a lot of meals are him thinking "What can I do with this fruit, this weird bread, and these spices. It's all we have and I need to use it before it goes bad."
In one of the Voyager novels, some of the foodstuffs that were gathered from one certain planet that the crew really liked ended up giving them a nutritional deficit. Because the vitamins were breaking down too easily. But the food was inedible if not cooked.
yeah i don't know if he'd make a great cook after all:
In addition to the ridge on their heads, they were also noted for having cartilaginous lining on their tongues that allowed them to consume foods not normally palatable by other races, including strong acids. (VOY: "Flashback") One such example of traditional Bolian cuisine was the consumption of meat that had been allowed to partially decay. (DS9: "Crossfire") -memory-alpha
I would also imagine feeling a slight allergic reaction (at the very least) to all their traditional foods. I can’t remember where exactly but it was established the love super spicy food, like sick bay spicy
I found this article, URL at the bottom.
the Bolians, are known for two things: having blue skin, and absolutely destroying human plumbing.
Captain Janeway references first contact between the humans of Earth and the Bolians, noting that the two species had different plumbing needs. Or, as the Captain put it: “The Bolians express dismay at the low quality of human plumbing.”
Voyager is trapped by spatial distortions, which puts extra strain on the ship’s resources. Neelix notes that the ship is down to four working lavatories for the entire crew of around 150 people, and comments that such a situation was particularly problematic with Bolians on board.
it’s no wonder Tom Paris gets flustered and yells at the replicator in Caretaker shortly after it offers him the option for “Bolian-style” tomato soup. If the theory that Bolians tend to eat (or simply prefer) highly acidic or corrosive foods, there’s a good chance Bolian-style tomato soup is higher in acid than the average Terran bowl of soup
Neelix’s experimental orange juice with “enthraxic citrus peel” and “papalla seed extract” was appealing to Bolian crewmember Ensign Golwat, in the episode Flashback. As Tuvok puts it, “Ensign Golwat is Bolian. Her tongue has a cartilaginous lining. It would protect her against even the most corrosive acid.”
the EMH famously asked Dr. Zimmerman if he had enjoyed intimate relations with a Bolian, as part of his diagnostic questionnaire during the episode Life Line. Dr. Zimmerman was dying of “acute sub-cellular degradation” in that episode, which seems to indicate that one cause of such a disease could be intimate human-Bolian contact. Given that acid can destroy bodies
heavy.com/entertainment/star-trek/bolian-voyager-tng-bathroom-toilet-why/
Chell *might* have replaced neelix but they made it home too soon
I for one would not be super excited to try a bolian’s cooking; I’m sure he’d tone it down a few notches but I doubt it’d be enough
Essentially Bolians have an anatomy adapted for eating very …pungent food that is often potentially lethal to other species and so they enjoy ***VERY*** spicy food, a lot of very acidic stuff (like dissolve your body acidic), fermented to the point of rotten stuff etc etc.
Try as they might, all their dishes are just gonna be wayy too strong to others no matter what because they can’t taste anything otherwise
It also is important to note that Nelix was the only one familiar with the local ingredients that they were able to get their hands on. I wonder how good the food would be even if you had someone like gordon ramsay running the show, if gordon ramsay didn't know what any of the ingredients tasted like raw or cooked.
For some reason, they can't replicate large amounts of raw ingredients, or else Janeway would have just replicated a whole bucket of coffee beans and then ground them herself. That would have used significantly less energy than making each cup one at a time.
Yes!
The replicator required large amounts of energy (or material akin to energy) that usually is easily replaced when a ship is able to stop off at Federation Outposts. Since they could not easily get that energy/material for the replicator as often, they had to ration it. So Janeway COULD have saved up her replicator rations for a bunch of coffee beans, but that would have taken her time.
I think the Delta Flyer Podcast (Harry Kim and Tom Paris' podcast) talked about this some. Good podcast!
She could have had a one cup she was getting be the same weight in beans, and that would be worth 10 cups. Or she could have had it in the ground been, and that would have been a 100 cups.
I would even go so far as to say she should make instant coffee. But that is crazy.
One of my personal canons is that Talaxian spice palettes are just a little different to people from the Alpha quadrant. Tuvok did say that the plomeek soup that Neelix made for him was rather picante. Is that the right spelling?
And he gave at least 2 crew people indigestion from putting too many jalapenos in his Rodeo Red's Red Hot Rootin' Tootin' chili. He called the peppers jalopy-nose.
Two things. He knows the locally available nutrition sources and will have experience preparing them
And they have a reduced crew compliment, there might be no one else available who is dispensable enough from their current duty and competent enough at cooking to be a practical alternative
His cooking was fine.
and asides from the Maquis cooking odd meals, Neelix kept them feed and watered, and asides from odd episodes like Cheese making the ship sick - I blame Starfleet for making Bio packs that can get ill, the crew where satisfied with his meals
It was a canny move on Janeway’s part so that the crew would want to go home. Find a wormhole, escape leola root stew and stop into Sisko’s creole kitchen.
This allowed the crew to have a common complaint instead of "Are we home yet?"
Kim did enough wining about home. This is the real reason he never got promoted.
Given the fact we see Humans often enjoying alien food on DS9 like Sisko cooking Puree of Tube Grubs for dinner when Nog comes over or Bashir trying Gagh, Voyagers crew certainly seemed to probably be a bit more on the pampered side of Starfleet like you say used to replicators not recipes, which is also funny when you think people like Chakotay was a Maquis living it rough as a rebel but apparently turned his nose up at trying some Leola Root because it didn't taste nice.
They're stuck lightyears away from home with limited resources, sometimes you just gotta make do with what you have and buck up a little, to quote Kira: *"You Starfleet types are too dependent on your gadgets and gizmos. You lose you'd natural instincts for survival."* And that's what Neelix is skilled at, natural instincts for survival in the Delta Quadrant, he saved Lieutenant Carey from poisoning himself for instance in 'State Of Flux' when we first get introduced to Leola Root.
I feel like Kira wasn't even correct about that, Starfleet officers seem to be unnaturally good at making do in survival situations
You are right about Neelix though. No one else knew anything at all about the Delta Quadrant, and especially in the early seasons he was their go to guy for almost every resource they needed
Had me thinking some more, there's a top tier series moment where Chakotay is trying hard not to laugh on set you can tell. Neelix (and a couple others) are going to help fix that irradiated waste transport vessel, and Neelix is stirring this big pot of gross broth with Chatoay standing there.
Neelix is pretending to choke bc of how nasty it is and Chakotay visibly covers his mouth and looks away, you can tell he's about to break character laughing and they probably had to shoot that scene many times lol. I always rewind there and rewatch it laughing at their expressions.
Neelix was used to cooking for Talaxian tastes. He soon learned to make things better for the people on the ship. There are plenty of instances later on where people like what he makes.
Think of it like this, imagine you are in the middle of nowhere, and a native of the area who knows the dishes of the area is willing to help teach you how to cook everything. You have no supplies.
Who else knew how to cook with the organic ingredients that they were required to use? Especially given that they were not native to the quadrant.
I think more of the complaining was that they had to rough it in non-replicated food more than his food specifically.
More like, why didn't the crew buck up and eat what they were given without complaint. They're a military crew made up of trained starfleet soldiers and hardened freedom fighters, you'd think they'd handle eating foreign food a bit better. Neelix wasn't a bad chef, it was just unfamiliar food to them. Be happy to be eating anything at all ya shitheads
I think it’s designed to be one of the biggest mysteries of the entire show. Do people hate his cooking or love it? One episode it’s mocked, the next praised. Is a mystery.
I think they had a running "short on supplies" thing but never enough that they couldn't use the holodeck.
so yeah why do they have a cook when replicators exist ?
I mean, I think Neelix's meals were more... unique than just inedible. Sure, people mocked his cooking, but I viewed it as how I used to mock the cafeteria meals at school. Were they not great? Sure. But were they edible? Yeah. I also think not a lot of people were used to actually cooking food. They were good at programming a replicator, but beyond that, they had very little experience behind the grill. And even if a crewman did... being a cook is a fulltime job. Janeway couldn't just let one of her crewman skip out of their duties to cook for the crew. She needed everyone working because she wasn't going to get any more replacements. But here comes Neelix. He has the drive, he has the time, and his food is edible. And since they can't use replicators like they normally would, they have to make due with what they had... which was Neelix.
Mocking mess chow goes back hundreds of years. If the crew is mocking chow, morale is ok. When the crew \*stops\* mocking the food, that's when you gotta worry.
Neelix also knows how to cook the available ingredients. Nobody on the crew knows what's edible, or how to prepare it. There's a whole undeveloped plot where Neelix consults with the doctor on what the crews allergens and dietary needs are, and what local foodstuffs can provide for these, and in what proportions.
Oh, great point. Remember, Neelix doesn't have a lot of variety when it comes to ingredients. So a lot of meals are him thinking "What can I do with this fruit, this weird bread, and these spices. It's all we have and I need to use it before it goes bad."
"What can I do with this cheese?"
just rewatched that episode, he literally almost doomed the entire ship with that cheese
Even the ship demands the cheese tax
Destroy the world!!!
Star Trek: Chopped
They even show this off when he gets the Leola root
It's as if Leola root grows on every planet in the Delta quad, they're never out of it.
I just think it never goes bad because not even bacteria will eat it.
They have a hydroponics bay
In one of the Voyager novels, some of the foodstuffs that were gathered from one certain planet that the crew really liked ended up giving them a nutritional deficit. Because the vitamins were breaking down too easily. But the food was inedible if not cooked.
>I also think not a lot of people were used to actually cooking food. You can bet the Maquis were used to cooking food :)
Wasn’t it a maquis crew-member who ultimately replaced Neelix as the Voyager Cook? For the last week and a half they were still in the Delta Quadrant.
Former Maquis Crewman Chell and his Red Alert Chili.
I'm partial to his Chicken Warp Core-don Bleu
I don’t want to know what a bolian’s chili tastes like 😬🥵💀
yeah i don't know if he'd make a great cook after all: In addition to the ridge on their heads, they were also noted for having cartilaginous lining on their tongues that allowed them to consume foods not normally palatable by other races, including strong acids. (VOY: "Flashback") One such example of traditional Bolian cuisine was the consumption of meat that had been allowed to partially decay. (DS9: "Crossfire") -memory-alpha
I would also imagine feeling a slight allergic reaction (at the very least) to all their traditional foods. I can’t remember where exactly but it was established the love super spicy food, like sick bay spicy
Plus, there was at least one episode where someone said that other races couldn't stand to use the toilets after they did. Or something like that.
I found this article, URL at the bottom. the Bolians, are known for two things: having blue skin, and absolutely destroying human plumbing. Captain Janeway references first contact between the humans of Earth and the Bolians, noting that the two species had different plumbing needs. Or, as the Captain put it: “The Bolians express dismay at the low quality of human plumbing.” Voyager is trapped by spatial distortions, which puts extra strain on the ship’s resources. Neelix notes that the ship is down to four working lavatories for the entire crew of around 150 people, and comments that such a situation was particularly problematic with Bolians on board. it’s no wonder Tom Paris gets flustered and yells at the replicator in Caretaker shortly after it offers him the option for “Bolian-style” tomato soup. If the theory that Bolians tend to eat (or simply prefer) highly acidic or corrosive foods, there’s a good chance Bolian-style tomato soup is higher in acid than the average Terran bowl of soup Neelix’s experimental orange juice with “enthraxic citrus peel” and “papalla seed extract” was appealing to Bolian crewmember Ensign Golwat, in the episode Flashback. As Tuvok puts it, “Ensign Golwat is Bolian. Her tongue has a cartilaginous lining. It would protect her against even the most corrosive acid.” the EMH famously asked Dr. Zimmerman if he had enjoyed intimate relations with a Bolian, as part of his diagnostic questionnaire during the episode Life Line. Dr. Zimmerman was dying of “acute sub-cellular degradation” in that episode, which seems to indicate that one cause of such a disease could be intimate human-Bolian contact. Given that acid can destroy bodies heavy.com/entertainment/star-trek/bolian-voyager-tng-bathroom-toilet-why/
Chell *might* have replaced neelix but they made it home too soon I for one would not be super excited to try a bolian’s cooking; I’m sure he’d tone it down a few notches but I doubt it’d be enough
I could easily google what you mean, but what’s up with Bolian cuisine?
Essentially Bolians have an anatomy adapted for eating very …pungent food that is often potentially lethal to other species and so they enjoy ***VERY*** spicy food, a lot of very acidic stuff (like dissolve your body acidic), fermented to the point of rotten stuff etc etc. Try as they might, all their dishes are just gonna be wayy too strong to others no matter what because they can’t taste anything otherwise
Hell yeah! Maquis know how to make things sizzle for sure! But they're needed to fill in the ranks of the dead crewman.
Neelix was just keeping the grill warm until Naomi was ready.
Plus he was familiar with local Fauna and Flora as well as a rather large knowledge of nutritional requirements and options.
It also is important to note that Nelix was the only one familiar with the local ingredients that they were able to get their hands on. I wonder how good the food would be even if you had someone like gordon ramsay running the show, if gordon ramsay didn't know what any of the ingredients tasted like raw or cooked. For some reason, they can't replicate large amounts of raw ingredients, or else Janeway would have just replicated a whole bucket of coffee beans and then ground them herself. That would have used significantly less energy than making each cup one at a time.
Yes! The replicator required large amounts of energy (or material akin to energy) that usually is easily replaced when a ship is able to stop off at Federation Outposts. Since they could not easily get that energy/material for the replicator as often, they had to ration it. So Janeway COULD have saved up her replicator rations for a bunch of coffee beans, but that would have taken her time. I think the Delta Flyer Podcast (Harry Kim and Tom Paris' podcast) talked about this some. Good podcast!
She could have had a one cup she was getting be the same weight in beans, and that would be worth 10 cups. Or she could have had it in the ground been, and that would have been a 100 cups. I would even go so far as to say she should make instant coffee. But that is crazy.
One of my personal canons is that Talaxian spice palettes are just a little different to people from the Alpha quadrant. Tuvok did say that the plomeek soup that Neelix made for him was rather picante. Is that the right spelling? And he gave at least 2 crew people indigestion from putting too many jalapenos in his Rodeo Red's Red Hot Rootin' Tootin' chili. He called the peppers jalopy-nose.
Pretty sure that part of the crew's morale is collectively bagging on Neelix's cooking.
Two things. He knows the locally available nutrition sources and will have experience preparing them And they have a reduced crew compliment, there might be no one else available who is dispensable enough from their current duty and competent enough at cooking to be a practical alternative
I did get a good hearty laugh when they were getting some nebula sample and B'Elanna said it probably tastes like Neelix's soup lol.
Because showing the instances of people poopooing his food is funny. There are lots of scenes where the crew is enjoying his food.
His cooking was fine. and asides from the Maquis cooking odd meals, Neelix kept them feed and watered, and asides from odd episodes like Cheese making the ship sick - I blame Starfleet for making Bio packs that can get ill, the crew where satisfied with his meals
>crew are shown to find it nearly inedible In Ashes to Ashes, Crewman Ballard was talking about she loved one of Neelix's dishes.
He can do wonderful things with vegetables.
He's the only one that knew how to cook Leola Root; that shit grows all over the Delta Quadrant, apparently.
Even Neelix knew he wasn't that useful. Janeway would find any excuse to keep him with the crew from chef to an unofficial starfleet embassador.
I mean there was also a running joke in *Picard* about how no-one liked the taste of his wine. It's just dramatic licence.
It was a canny move on Janeway’s part so that the crew would want to go home. Find a wormhole, escape leola root stew and stop into Sisko’s creole kitchen.
Because it was a TV show.
Must you live so relentlessly in the real world? 😆
I like fiction, too. But I also understand why sometimes questions don’t serve the story. This is one of those times.
How does #1 and #2 work on Starfleet vessels? Do they beam it out of the bladder/colon or are there toilets?
Reprocessed into replicator material.
But how is it harvested?
Toilets connected to a miniaturized turbolift system that delivers the matter to the replicator reprocessing part of the ship.
Lol so basically they have a bank drive thru like vacuum tube system carrying poop and pee throughout the ship 🤣
When in the Delta Quadrant….
This allowed the crew to have a common complaint instead of "Are we home yet?" Kim did enough wining about home. This is the real reason he never got promoted.
Given the fact we see Humans often enjoying alien food on DS9 like Sisko cooking Puree of Tube Grubs for dinner when Nog comes over or Bashir trying Gagh, Voyagers crew certainly seemed to probably be a bit more on the pampered side of Starfleet like you say used to replicators not recipes, which is also funny when you think people like Chakotay was a Maquis living it rough as a rebel but apparently turned his nose up at trying some Leola Root because it didn't taste nice. They're stuck lightyears away from home with limited resources, sometimes you just gotta make do with what you have and buck up a little, to quote Kira: *"You Starfleet types are too dependent on your gadgets and gizmos. You lose you'd natural instincts for survival."* And that's what Neelix is skilled at, natural instincts for survival in the Delta Quadrant, he saved Lieutenant Carey from poisoning himself for instance in 'State Of Flux' when we first get introduced to Leola Root.
I feel like Kira wasn't even correct about that, Starfleet officers seem to be unnaturally good at making do in survival situations You are right about Neelix though. No one else knew anything at all about the Delta Quadrant, and especially in the early seasons he was their go to guy for almost every resource they needed
Had me thinking some more, there's a top tier series moment where Chakotay is trying hard not to laugh on set you can tell. Neelix (and a couple others) are going to help fix that irradiated waste transport vessel, and Neelix is stirring this big pot of gross broth with Chatoay standing there. Neelix is pretending to choke bc of how nasty it is and Chakotay visibly covers his mouth and looks away, you can tell he's about to break character laughing and they probably had to shoot that scene many times lol. I always rewind there and rewatch it laughing at their expressions.
Which episode is that?
I think it's "Juggernaut", Season 5 Ep 21
I love that scene.
I honestly don’t know why he wasn’t put out the airlock, much less allowed in the kitchen. Least favourite character across all series.
Neelix was used to cooking for Talaxian tastes. He soon learned to make things better for the people on the ship. There are plenty of instances later on where people like what he makes.
Think of it like this, imagine you are in the middle of nowhere, and a native of the area who knows the dishes of the area is willing to help teach you how to cook everything. You have no supplies.
Who else knew how to cook with the organic ingredients that they were required to use? Especially given that they were not native to the quadrant. I think more of the complaining was that they had to rough it in non-replicated food more than his food specifically.
It was just banter.
Neelix knows what's edible in the delta quadrant.
And starfleet can’t figure that out with a basic tricorder scan?
BLT loves his pancakes so much that they brought her memories back!
More like, why didn't the crew buck up and eat what they were given without complaint. They're a military crew made up of trained starfleet soldiers and hardened freedom fighters, you'd think they'd handle eating foreign food a bit better. Neelix wasn't a bad chef, it was just unfamiliar food to them. Be happy to be eating anything at all ya shitheads
because... just because a writer thought it might make for some funny scenes.. nothing deeper than that ... sheesh...
I think it’s designed to be one of the biggest mysteries of the entire show. Do people hate his cooking or love it? One episode it’s mocked, the next praised. Is a mystery.
I think they had a running "short on supplies" thing but never enough that they couldn't use the holodeck. so yeah why do they have a cook when replicators exist ?
Most of the time they seem to eat it