Jennifer Lien in trouble again?

Lynx- I'm sorry to hear of your current rl difficulties and hope things get better soon. It's unfortunate you dont post here as much anymore. I've read some of your past comments and they are interesting and insightful. (been going through the wallpaper thread...85 pages is a lot.)

 

I hope things get better for you. I also agree she did a very good job in the role but when comes to Hollywood their is always that subjective stuff that comes into judging a actors value. We have seen great shows not get ratings and good to great actors not get the respect they deserve because of sometimes very dumb reasons. If anyone the audience could share some blame for not making her a more popular character. Studio can be blamed for pinching pennies and simply not firing everyone and simply adding one more person to the cast.

One thing I do think is a issue and maybe it's a issue for all actors is how much hrelp was she getting for her mental health problems while on the show. Was she working in a toxic workplace. How much of her problems come from stress of being on a show that is part of a huge franchise but is seen as being as a failure because the ratings aren't up to what they are expecting. PLus after reading about some of the stuff that Shatner and even Nimoy did on the TOS set you got to wonder how many of the actors were part of the problem because they were just looking out for their character. From what I gather the TNG is the only ones who feel like they really cared about each other and they had for the most part a good work enviroment. DS9 maybe not bad but you always read about how serious everyone was and instead of more fun like it was while working on TNG.

Jason

 

It will get better.I'm a survivor who have been through worse than this.

Kes wasn't unpopular.Not the most beloved character but not the most disliked either. As for Hollywood,it is a hellhole where sometimes people are treated like s**t. Unfortunately,it's often the nice and quiet people who are mistreated.

I don't know if she had some mental issues while on the show. If it had been,I'm sure it would have been out very quickly and used as a reason to fire her in magazines and other articles.

I don't think she had any problems with the other actors. She was a good friend with Mulgrew and did obviously get along with the others as well. The same story there, if she had been a pain in the a**, then all of it would have been out when she was kicked out.

Maybe she was dumped because they knew she was the shy, quiet type who wouldn't dare to complain?

 

Thanks for nice reply.

It wasn't something I was about to drag up here but since I have some bad experiences of being kicked out and since Jayson brought up a similar situation that he was in,I thought that I can bring this up too. At least to explain why reading of someone being fired has a bad effect on me,especially now when I recently found myself back in a situation from 20 years back which I did hope that I would never encounter again.

As for posting and such, I was about to lose interest of Voyager and everything Star Trek due to the recent "Lien affair" and also due to my total dislike of the current direction of Star Trek.

However, someone did mention a Voyager relaunch" in some thread and there was another poster who obviously was watching Voyager for the first time and it inspired me to do my own "Voyager Relaunch" on DVD.

Which lead me to start reading some Voyager books as well and to write some posts too and here I am! More posts this week than in the previous months.

I guess I never really can get rid of Voyager and Star Trek.

And you will never get rid of me!

 

Except that O'Hare got help almost immediately from Straczynski, and was given time to have a dignified exit for his character, as opposed to how Lien went out in 'Fury' with Kes being a psycho blowing up bulkheads looking for revenge.

 

O'Hare though continued to have problems. I think he died living in a half-way house despite the help he got which is partly why in the very least i'm not sure we can blame her being fired for her current bad behavior. When you got mental illness it's always going to be a problem whether you get treated with respect or not. It's not something connected to ones job. I mean being fired can have a negative effect or having a job can have a positive effect but sometimes their is no one to blame. People just have problems that you have to fight through your entire life. Remember even Lien seems to have had good moments after being fired where it did seem like she was turning her life around only for something to happen to where she is today. The upside though is if she was able to rebuild her life once it means she can do it again and if she does it doesn't mean she won't yet again fall down, Their is no way to predict how her life is going to unfold. I suspect a serious of good and bad moments until she dies someday but you can make that prediction for every human being.

Jason

 

Thank you. I was more wondering if they've commented about her very recent issues, over the past few years.

 

I didn't like Fury at all, either, it was such an insult to the Kes character. Yet at the same time the story goes that Lien herself was pleased with this story. At the very least she wasn't offended enough to actually refuse to take up the part again. Does anyone know the truth behind this ?

 

I think "Fury" was accidently insulting more than it was them trying to insult the character. I'm sure in their minds that thought it would be fun to turn a beloved character evil, which happens alot in sci-fi and then they could have some fun going back to season 1 and using a old alien race they no longer used in the Vidians. Even her entrance I bet is something that your supose to enjoy as a bad ass moment with the corridors exploding and then killing Torres like it was nothing. The mistake was they botched the happy ending and it doesn't hep that Kes seems even more sad at the end than even when she first arrives despite the fact she is going back home.

Jason

 

I think that "Fury" was deliberately insulting.

There was a campaign going on about re-instating Kes as a regular character. Obviously it was noticed by those in charge.

They had two choices: To bring back the character in a decent way or simply ignore the wishes from many fans.

What they did was to choose option 3, to destroy the character and show the finger to all the fans who wanted her back.

Their plan was tokilloff the character. Now, wouldn't that have been a nice present to the Kes fans. But Jennifer Lien persuaded them to change the end of the story.

As for Jennifer Lien,Idon't know what she really thinks of all this. After being totally quiet for some years, then most of her comments have been sort of "yes, everything was nice and everything was perfect".I don't know if she really means it or if she simply is trying to be nice and avoid trouble.

But I must admit that she lost a lot of points on my ranking list when she agreed to participate in that horrible,insulting episode.

 

It wouldn't be the first time a paycheck trumped someone's artistic integrity, sad as that is. I remember watching Fury the first time and thinking, "Well, that's one way for the showrunners to tell fans to shut up about a favourite character." VOY had its share of not good episodes, but this was, by far, one of the biggest turds they dropped in the punchbowl.

 

Well to give the actress a little leeway she does do 'bad' really well. Look at Warlord. She rocked that role. Maybe she was trying to recreate the same experience but didn't factor in the fan's response.

 

I think that Jennifer was excellent in "Warlord" which is a great episode.
Her acting wasn't that good in the s**t episode in season 6.

The difference between "Warlord" and the s**t episode innseason 6 is that in "Warlord", Kes was restored back to normal while the character was destroyed in the s**t episode. That's why I love "Warlord" and hate the s**t episode.

 

I can't argue with you Lynx because I believe you are right. After Fury I honestly did not want Kes to return which is sad because I loved her in the first three seasons.

 

I wish that they had come up with an episode in season 7 in which Kes had been restored and the damage done to the character in the s**t episode had been done away with.

I actually sent them a story. I also made a script out of it with the help from a professional. During my interaction with Paramount I got the impression that some folks there liked my story.
But obviously not the right people.

There had been some decent attempts in some books to undo the damage from the s**t episode but I'm not 100% happy with anyone of those.

 

Hey Lynx I hope you're going to be all right. We live in a world that has much advantage others times have not but it is also the 'outsourcing' world, the time of the 'audit' and the disrespect of loyalty and experience. Just keep your head down, get that pay cheque and remember your worth. We only have one life to live and your 'worth' matters

 

Yikes! I like your avatar.

 

Thanks.

 

To me the most important difference is that in Warlord it isn't really Kes that goes evil, but 'just' an alien posessing her body and suppressing the 'real' Kes, whereas in Fury it is Kes herself that goes down a malevolent path. Even if in Warlord the damage would have been irreversible, and they would have had to kill Kes to get rid of Tieran, it wouldn't have stained the Kes memory for me. (Though in that situation I'd probably complain that it was an extremely lousy way to write someone out of the series.)

 

Thanks for kind words and support.

And don't worry, I will solve this situation. In fact, I've been in similar and even worse situations before and gotten out of it.
A cat has nine lives after all!