Jennifer Lien status

[Triskelion]

^Well OK, but I've never seen Lien perform the acting equivalent of Threshold.

No, and considering all of the episodes that should have happened but never did - I'm going to go ahead and put the onus at the conceptual stage, right beside the technobabble deus ex machina, the mediocritizing of the Q and the Borg, the crap continuity, and the inability to follow through on their own story premises.

But sure, blame the actors if it helps take some of that heat off. That would certainly be par for the professional course.


Oh, and - short hair on women is sexy. (Even no hair - remember Ilia)? Crap wigs like T'Pol's early seasons - are not. It's not a question of what one person finds sexy. It's a matter of appealing to a wide audience, and that includes other people with different opinions - and even different cultural standards of beauty and gender behaviors.

 

[KelisThePoet]

Or, they needed to make room in the budget for a easier new character to "write for", which could also be a euphamism for "screw fraculated".

Me, I've always had trouble writing for people who are 5'8'. I mean, an inch in either direction, I can write gold; but 5'8", it all comes out like a cat licking itself on a broken keyboard. Because THAT'S HOW WRITING WORKS. Nothing at all sexual about Hollywood. It's all about the Art.

In the end, they probably weighed the return on ratings investment for character-featured episodes, and Kes came in at the bottom of the totem pole. It's not like acting could save her from what they didn't write.

I don't understand the assumption that sex appeal is bad for Star Trek (especially given the franchise's history), nor the assumption that there's something inherently un-artistic about sex appeal, just because it happens to be popular. A bad financial decision is not de facto a good artistic decision.

 

[Lynx]

or perhaps they would have written more if the acting was better

If Jennifer had been a bad actress, she would never have been offered a role in "American History X".
None of the other Voyager actors have ever been close to a role in such a high quality movie.

 

[Sophie74656]

If Jennifer had been a bad actress, she would never have been offered a role in "American History X".
None of the other Voyager actors have ever been close to a role in such a high quality movie.

Again. This is my opinion. I think she was a bad actress. You have your opinion and I have mine. I disliked her in that movie also. To each their own

 

[Triskelion]

I don't understand the assumption that sex appeal is bad for Star Trek (especially given the franchise's history), nor the assumption that there's something inherently un-artistic about sex appeal, just because it happens to be popular. A bad financial decision is not de facto a good artistic decision.

You may have a point, but just to be clear it was not one I was making in my post.

And when I think of bad acting on Voyager, Lien is not a name that comes to mind. Underutilized Beltran and Wang do. And to be fair, it's not bad acting, it is detached acting. Disappointment and disaffectation with what, the writing.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Acting is about making choices.

The better an actor is, the more choices they can make.

We can't really tell if these people are good or bad at acting until we see if they are are not the same in every thing they do.

 

[Sophie74656]

You may have a point, but just to be clear it was not one I was making in my post.

And when I think of bad acting on Voyager, Lien is not a name that comes to mind. Underutilized Beltran and Wang do. And to be fair, it's not bad acting, it is detached acting. Disappointment and disaffectation with what, the writing.

I agree about Beltran. He flat out said he didn't even read the scripts. If I was a writer why would I write good things for someone who would publicly say things like that?

 

[2takesfrakes]

There's no spin that justifies shitty-assed writing. Even the greatest actors don't always understand what their character is or what their character's doing. That's where the director comes in ... to give them direction. It's a team effort. If Beltran didn't read scripts ... that's alright. You're there, you're doing it, just say the lines, with conviction. Some of the best actors out there bring their characters to Life using a very shallow approach to the whole equation.

 

[Sophie74656]

There's no spin that justifies shitty-assed writing. Even the greatest actors don't always understand what their character is or what their character's doing. That's where the director comes in ... to give them direction. It's a team effort. If Beltran didn't read scripts ... that's alright. You're there, you're doing it, just say the lines, with conviction. Some of the best actors out there bring their characters to Life using a very shallow approach to the whole equation.

How can he say the lines if he doesn't read the script?

 

[2takesfrakes]

Cue Cards are one way. Another is to have the Script Girl, off on the side, giving you your lines. Is that what you're asking?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Some actors can memorize a scene in minutes, sometimes just minutes before they are supposed to act. So they have the lines down because they are a mutant, but they haven't had the time to do anything else for their performance but to run on autopilot.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Was this the case for Beltran? Does he have a photographic memory?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Eidetic memory is learning a script (forever?) in seconds, which is rare, but more so lazy, that all you could think to do with this super power is act. However, after you've been an actor for 20 years, it's not so much a trick, as the definition of your job to memorize (for a few days) a 40 minute script in less than 40 minutes.

I have no idea how long it takes Beltran to memorize a script, but if he only has to memorize his bits, if you think about how much they gave him in Voyager, there's rarely over 5 minutes of talking per script.

Here's a list showing how many lines everyone had for season one to three.

http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/LineCountS1-S3.htm

Chakotay had 4 lines in Cathexis.

Heh.

(I am a child.)

In Scorpion, Beltran has 69 lines.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Understood. I would go the cue card route, myself. Or even use a teleprompter, where appropriate. The idea of committing episodes like "Displaced" to memory doesn't do a lot for me, personally.

 

[KelisThePoet]

We can't really tell if these people are good or bad at acting until we see if they are are not the same in every thing they do.

By that logic, everyone can be a great actor in at least one role.

In reality, put the majority of us on a stage and tell us to be ourselves, and you won't wind up with anything anyone wants to watch.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Understood. I would go the cue card route, myself. Or even use a teleprompter, where appropriate. The idea of committing episodes like "Displaced" to memory doesn't do a lot for me, personally.

I think they were paying these actors 20 to 40 thousand dollars an episode so that the production crew didn't have to fuck around like that, sticky taping lines to the back of tricorders.

Wang got kicked out of two episodes as punishment for turning up late without his lines memorized. That's 40 thousand dollars in the hand, plus decades of residuals he stole from himself by being unprofessional.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I can just imagine his agent going off on him, "Good job, Wang! Another 40 thousand-dollar write off...!!!"

 

[Sophie74656]

Was this the case for Beltran? Does he have a photographic memory?

Others have said that he had script pages taped to props

 

[Triskelion]

Wang also wanted to direct without going through the requisite director training program. So there is some degree of unprofessional expectation there. But when you go to the writers at the beginning of a season and say, "Could we pretty please give Kim a little action, a little romance, a little fleshing out over the season" and they say "SURE HERE'S NON SEQUITUR, IT'S GOT ALL THAT CRAP, NOW LEAVE US ALONE THE REST OF THE SHOW'S RUN", you can see where a person would feel disaffected.

Personally I think they should have gone the TOS route and said "This is a trio show and the rest of you are supporting bit players, be happy with any spotlight" - no one would have had their expectations of a true ensemble cast dashed.

As for actors and lines, in most professions it becomes second nature to become efficient at your tasks. So efficient, it may look the same as doing nothing. This is the benefit of experience. For example you could give me any topic you pulled from a hat, and throw me into a room of a few hundred people, and I could happily run a seminar on it. This isn't because I know everything; this is because I know how to pick apart topics and relate them to a specific audience from years of experience. No, I may not have prepared today, but actually, I've been preparing for decades. I don't waste hours hunting for a handle on something.

I am certain other posters here can relate similar experience from their own vocations.

I can see how it would be possible to refuse to read a script delivered a week or so before a shoot, and figure out what you need to know for your one line in your dressing room during the hours and hours between shooting scenes. Also, you can have multiple takes.

There's an unwritten thing in shows like this, where everyone speaks positively in public, but if you want to leave the show to pursue better opportunities, they don't just write you out, they mutilate your character so you can never return. It happens a lot, must be some kind of unspoken rivalry between writers and actors. Voyager ended up with that passive-aggressive tit-for-tat on the screen, recorded for all time. Well - probably not all time. Much of it was forgettable as a result.

 

[Squiggy]

Understood. I would go the cue card route, myself. Or even use a teleprompter, where appropriate. The idea of committing episodes like "Displaced" to memory doesn't do a lot for me, personally.

Cue cards or prompters only really work if you're talking to camera. When you're talking to Kate Mulgrew who's 3 inches away from your eyes, you don't have the luxury of glancing over at anything.