A Talaxian who serves as morale officer and cook on Voyager.
Neelix is a Talaxian scavenger who joins Voyager in the pilot, after the crew helps him rescue Kes, who is then his companion. He makes himself indispensable as cook, local guide, self-appointed morale officer and, in time, ambassador, drawing on his knowledge of the Delta Quadrant.
His family was killed in his world's war with the Haakonians, and his jealousy and insecurity strain his relationship with Kes until the two separate. He develops an odd-couple friendship with Tuvok and becomes godfather to Naomi Wildman. In Mortal Coil he is killed and revived by Seven of Nine's nanoprobes, a crisis that shakes his belief in an afterlife.
Neelix does not travel to Earth with the ship. In the late seventh-season episode Homestead, Voyager finds a colony of Talaxian refugees living in an asteroid field, and he chooses to stay with them, alongside Dexa and her son Brax, with Janeway naming him the Federation's ambassador to the region. He leaves the crew shortly before Voyager gets home.