Without Ms. Lien being a member here and willing to discuss the issue, maybe this is a thread that should be put to bed? Because, honestly, all any of us is doing is guessing about something that happened almost 25 years ago.
You do have a point here.
I wonder how much of this story will come out in the doco thing. It always seemed like a taboo with the cast and they’ve only ever talked in general terms about how they loved Jen etc.
I guess that telling the story puts Mulgrew’s bullying of Jeri Ryan in the spotlight too, which could be problematic.
I wonder as well if Lien has been approached to be in the doco. And if she has any interest in talking about it. I understand she hasn’t been well so maybe it’s of no interest to her.
The doco will probably be told "the official way", with the not too reliable versions from those in charge.
As for Lien, i don't think she has the slightest interest in participating in anything considering Voyager now. And why should she.
I remember many years ago when I was fired from a job I had. OK, it was for economical reasons, not problems or such. But I questioned (and still question) their reasons since the economy wasn't that badand there was one other person who was less qualified than me there. But as I see it, I was let go because I didn't have the right surname and wasn't related to the bosses in that family business like a certain person was.
So I got the sack. Fortunately, I found a much better job a few months later.
But I have no contact with anyone from that place which I was fired from and if they contacted me about some "reunion party" I would kindly tell them where to stuff that invitation and where to go. Anyway, they did go bankrupt some years later. Nothing that I feel sorry about.
That happened a couple of months before I started watching Voyager in the beginning of 1998 and when I found out about the firing of Jennifer shortly after, it gave me a bad flashback to my previous situation.
The same could be said of so many. Look at what DS9 did with Bashir and Nog, two other characters at the start of their journeys. Think if Kes and Harry had gotten the same. Especially Harry, who spent seven years with a rank and persona that really only worked for about two.
Without "Fury", yes. "Homestead" did the same for Neelix. And Janeway popped up in Nemesis. But look at the rest...
Seven: Not addressed for nearly 20y
Chakotay: Teased, over 20y later
Tom: Cameo, over 20y later
Tuvok: Nothing
B'Elanna: Zilch
Harry: Nada
EMH: Nil
I don't think that neither "The Gift" nor "Homestead" were great send-offs. Both of them were horrible. "The Gift" was just a badly written story with that "energy being" mumbo-jumbo. If they really had to dump the character, they could have let her depart with that Zahir from "darklig" with a possibility to return later. As for "Homestead", it should never have been made. Downright rude to dump Neelix with only three episodes left.
As for
that episode in season 6, I guess that most of the people on this forum knows what I think about it.
Kes was an appealing blend of delicate blond beauty and deep soothing voice, I was sorry she had to be dropped. There are several versions of why that happened, here is what Rick Berman said in The Fifty Year Mission —
“Jennifer Lien was another story. For her character we were looking for sort of an elfin female who played a very important role in the pilot and who was going to come on the ship and become this kind of funny-looking gremlin’s girlfriend. It just didn’t work. The relationship didn’t work, and her character became somewhat superfluous. It was just really hard for the writers to work on it, so eventually we wrote the character out of the show.”
Yes Mr Berman, we know that you and your so-called "writers" didn't have the skill or imagination to develope the character, a job that even an amateur like me has being sucessful in after you and your bunch of yes-sayers dumped her.
Maybe you should have learned something from your smarter colleagues at DS9. They managed to make the best possible out of such characters as Rom and Nog who looked like two losers in the beginning (something Kes definitely didn't) and actually developed both of them to become very important and very likeable characters.
It's actually a tragedy that Kes didn't become a DS9 character where they had writers who cared about the show and its characters.
