Shran's blue antennae are made of painted latex - and are connected to a remote-control device held off-camera. Tee hee. BTW, me (far left) with foam-rubber Star Trek rock: Klingons rock by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
You don't understand! "You" being everyone! For 5 years on this BBS I have had exactly one comment every time the topic of Crusher has come up: "She has beautiful hair." That's been it and it's been my way of saying "Crusher is as boring as dirt to me" because truly that's all I have to say about her. I wasn't exaggerating mind you, I really did admire her hair quite a bit. But I also needed to say she was as boring as dirt to me without actually saying it. Now what am I to do? I feel like there's a writer's strike in my brain.
Dude. And I say that as sexlessly as a possible. "Dude" Jeri Ryan has nice tits. Oh? Jeri Ryan has nice fake Tits? Her fake tits are nicer than her real anything else? Well? I like that she is tall. Tall chicks are hot. Jeri, as Seven of Nine wears 4 inch heals. Maybe 6 inch heals. Okay she has a nice personality then. Jeri or Seven? Because you've never met Jeri (yes, the convention that time, shut up, I'm making a point. oh gods! her damn assistant writes that twitter feed! Stop interrupting...), and Seven of Nine is just a manifestation of Brannan Braga's ego? You're into a dude, dude. Woman are just layers and layers of falseness (makeup, jewellery, polish, clothes, perfumes, surgery and hair dye.) until you find nothing (SHREK!) or a dude. Woman are men. They just hide it well.
If I put my hands on Jeri Ryan's breasts what do I feel? JERI RYAN. Because it's her skin. Whether she has something extra underneath or not, I am still feeling Jeri Ryan. If I put my hands on Crusher's hair I am in direct contact with something that is not her. It would be as if Jeri Ryan had no breasts and had completely fake ones strapped to her chest and I was feeling them. It's okay though, I have worked out the paragraph of disclaimers I plan to post along with my hair comments the next time Crusher comes up. I may even include my comparison to Jeri Ryan's breasts.
Wait? Pat wouldn't wear a toupee in insurrection to demonstrate that he was getting younger because he found the wig "demeaning". Gates would have been totally within her rights to tell Stewart to "Grow a pair."
your posts on this seem to be "whatever the writers/producers say is right and good enough for me." I guess I'm a bit more skeptical, especially as mentioned, since Lien was not the first choice to go. Wang was, they dropped that because of a magazine story, and all of the sudden "Kes is hard to write for," despite there being a lot of strong Kes stories in seasons 2 and 3, and no signs of any issue with the character. She has psychic powers, a great rapport with the Doctor, etc., and yet she's suddenly "hard to write for?" So how were they writing "Warlord" and "Before And After?" Heck, Kes was getting more and better stories at the time she left than Tuvok or Chakotay were. But hey, TPTB said "she's hard to write for," that's why she was dropped, so therefore it must be true.
I think I explained the "Hard to write for" situation pretty well in my previous post... So I do believe Kes was more difficult to write for than say Tuvok or Harry because they could get their quota of lines shoved in saying stuff like "shields down to 80%" or any random Starfleet nonsense. Since Kes was a more unique character, she was more difficult to write for. But the producers jettisoning Kes was not a testament to a character that had no potential/was too difficult, but simply to the laziness of the writers who were far more comfortable writing character types they'd already done.
Per your theory, Neelix should have been a pain to write for as well for the same reasons. I just don't buy it.
I just love the audacity that some of us feel that "we" know better than the actual people who are producing the show, how to to produce the show. Boggles my mind. Your mileage may vary of course, and certainly there are times when the fans "know" the show better than the production staff, but with regard to how to handle a character that isn't working out, or how to handle an actor who is giving you problems, none of you really know or understand what goes on in that kind of situation on a network show. We can argue till we're blue in the face () but the fact is that they got rid of Kes. From my own experience working on scripted dramas on network television -- and with working with some of the writers mentioned in this very thread -- I believe they are telling the truth. Or, at least, as much of the truth as is warranted to tell.
Well as I said doubleohfive, clearly Kenneth Biller didn't agree so it wasn't a unanimous decision. There were obviously some writers who had no problem with her, and given how much Chakotay, Tuvok, Neelix etc were pushed into the background from season 4, I'd hardly say Kes was the only characters some of the writers weren't that bothered with. The uneven character development and utilization in Voyager just stinks of laziness or lack of daring to try something new, I don't blame the characters themselves very much at all.
Yes we have the audacity to question whether what we're told is necessarily the truth or just a party line. It's really "audacious" not to just accept whatever you hear as the truth.
The sky is blue. Are you going to question that? Probably not, because you can see the sky yourself. Traffic in Hollywood is awful. Are you going to question that? Probably not. Perhaps you've been here. Perhaps you hear about it from locals or others who have visited. "We wrote Kes off the show, because there weren't many stories left to tell." Are you going to question that? Of course you are. Because you (the general you, not you specifically, sonak) think you know how to write for television or how a character should be portrayed. Let's put it another way: Would you tell a doctor to prescribe ritalin over buspar for some other patient? Of course not. Because you (again, the general you) are not a doctor. Would you tell a fireman how to put out a blazing fire in a three-story complex in the middle of downtown? Of course not - you are not a firefighter. There's a fine line between knowing what you want a character to do and writing it that way, versus understanding the intricacies of how a television series is written and run and all the other elements that get factored into it. Those of you railing against the dismissal of Jennifer Lien don't seem to be giving that part of this particular equation much consideration, and that's the point I'm simply trying to make.
OK so some of us find it easy to believe that the writers really did find it too difficult to write for Kes and they put soo much effort in and they found it didn't work. And some of us feel like Kes was easy to write for and the writers were just lying. And some of us, like myself, feel like only some writers had issues writing for Kes because they were kinda lazy and couldn't be bothered thinking of how to write for a fairly unique character, while other writers such as Kenneth Biller were inspired by Kes but simply weren't high enough up the pecking order for his opinion to be taken seriously. Let's just agree to disagree. Surely most of us can agree that Jeri Taylor wasn't particularly a fan of writing for Kes or she would have kept her on the show.
Really, there's no way to say this in a medium such as this without sounding like a douche, so please try to understand that I in no way mean it that way, but until you've actually worked on a show, --and I mean, not just a day or two, but a whole season of being there and bleeding and sweating and staying late at night and being a part of the process -the entire process -- then you really can't understand the whole picture of it. I don't know what other way to explain it, but there it is. Another element we have not yet considered: Those of you who constantly whinge and complain on this issue -- about all these stories that were left to tell about Kes... let's hear them. Because clearly, you believe those stories are there, and it would not be that illogical an assumption that you have at least ONE story worked out, so I'd like to read them. Prove your point to me and wow me with your never-told Kes stories.