Could Fury have worked with a rewrite?

[exodus]

Earlier it was mentioned that tptb wouldn't have written Fury to anger a section of fans. If they had though it wouldn't be unprecedented.
On Sliders when they fired Sabrina Lloyd who played Wade, they wrote her out off screen as having been captured by the Cro Mags and taken to a breeding camp, and talk from behind the scenes was that tptb thought it was funny to have the character taken off to be repeatedly raped for the rest of her life. From what I've heard there was some really messed up stuff behind the scenes in the later years of Sliders after the original creater was pushed out.
So I wouldn't rule out that tptb deliberately wrote an insulting story for Kes.

Really, so you believe Jen Lien agreed to come back and was in on the idea to purposely piss off her fan base because that's what you're saying.
Sliders is Sliders, Voyager is Voyager.
It was just a poorly written story, no reason to believe it was done on purpose.
If that was the case, they didn't have to bring her back at all.


Do you have any proof of these "talks" behind the scenes?

 

[Guy Gardener]

He said the TPTB "might" hate Kes, not us.

 

[exodus]

He said the TPTB "might" hate Kes, not us.

No, he didn't.
"So I wouldn't rule out that tptb deliberately wrote an insulting story for Kes."
That is the exact quote.

 

[borgboy]

I don't believe that Lien knew how bad the script was when she signed onto return. I have heard that the original script called for Kes to die, and Lien talked them out of killing her off. I have nothing but the highest regard for Lien and have said nothing that implied that she was in on the character assasination of Kes.
I don't understand what the problem is with my quote. I do think it's possible that tptb intentionally wrote a story to assasinate Kes's character. I'm not the first person to suggest that.
As for proof, I don't have recordings or documents, no. Just things I've heard and read, and what I can observe by watching the shows and drawing my own conclusions. Is this evidence that would stand up in court? No, but then I'm not on trial. I'm giving my opinion and passing on what I've heard.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He said the TPTB "might" hate Kes, not us.

No, he didn't.
"So I wouldn't rule out that tptb deliberately wrote an insulting story for Kes."
That is the exact quote.

Look at how the word "for" is being used.

Kes is being insulted.

Not Jennifer.

Not the fans.

Kes.

 

[exodus]

I don't believe that Lien knew how bad the script was when she signed onto return. I have heard that the original script called for Kes to die, and Lien talked them out of killing her off. I have nothing but the highest regard for Lien and have said nothing that implied that she was in on the character assasination of Kes.
I don't understand what the problem is with my quote. I do think it's possible that tptb intentionally wrote a story to assasinate Kes's character. I'm not the first person to suggest that.
As for proof, I don't have recordings or documents, no. Just things I've heard and read, and what I can observe by watching the shows and drawing my own conclusions. Is this evidence that would stand up in court? No, but then I'm not on trial. I'm giving my opinion and passing on what I've heard.

My point was, between her, the cast and writers, nobody ever got the idea that the story was written to piss anybody off. It was just a story that sounded good on paper that didn't come out well upon execution.

 

[borgboy]

I respect your opinion. That would certainly be the reasonable way for things to have played out.
I'd rather that even be true, but I think it's possible that the writers wrote a story to destroy Kes so people would stop asking them about her. These things have happened before, as in the example I gave from Sliders where the writers had Wade taken to a breeding camp to have her raped off screen when the actress left the show.
Fury is just so bad I think it may have been deliberate. I'm sure the writers thought they made the show entertaining, but I also think their intention was to destroy Kes. It is a little hard for me to swallow that they brought her back, made her old and unattractive, made her crazy and murderous, and intended for her to die, and compromised to instead send her off in a shuttle never to be seen again.
Maybe they really did think that was going to make the fans happy, but it was a huge failure. I can't imagine how they thought Kes fans would be pleased with that. It was either incompetence or malice, and I honestly don't know which, but I'd expect highly paid professional writers should've known what they were doing enough for it to have been a mistake. I don't know for sure that it was intented to upset and anger Kes fans, but I don't know that it wasn't intended either. I just think it's a possibility.
I would've prefered that Kes not have returned rather than get treated like this.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Just to stress, I personally do not believe that there was any malice of forethought.

It was just bad luck, bordering on emperors new clothes syndrome.

 

[borgboy]

Just to stress, I personally do not believe that there was any malice of forethought.

It was just bad luck, bordering on emperors new clothes syndrome.

It may have been.
As I said, it was either incompetence or malice. Incompetence is probably the lesser of two evils, but still. Even if they just really dropped the ball on that episode, it was a pretty important episode to a lot of fans to screw up. If you screw up a random one off episode in the middle of the story arc or even a one off episode, you have lots of time to smooth it over and fix it. When it's the last episode featuring that character, the tv show had no chance to fix that. Kes' tv exit was wretched. Thankfully the books did a lot of damage control.
I'm actually a lot less upset about this now than I was when it first happened.

 

[exodus]

I respect your opinion. That would certainly be the reasonable way for things to have played out.
I'd rather that even be true, but I think it's possible that the writers wrote a story to destroy Kes so people would stop asking them about her. These things have happened before, as in the example I gave from Sliders where the writers had Wade taken to a breeding camp to have her raped off screen when the actress left the show.
Fury is just so bad I think it may have been deliberate. I'm sure the writers thought they made the show entertaining, but I also think their intention was to destroy Kes. It is a little hard for me to swallow that they brought her back, made her old and unattractive, made her crazy and murderous, and intended for her to die, and compromised to instead send her off in a shuttle never to be seen again.
Maybe they really did think that was going to make the fans happy, but it was a huge failure. I can't imagine how they thought Kes fans would be pleased with that. It was either incompetence or malice, and I honestly don't know which, but I'd expect highly paid professional writers should've known what they were doing enough for it to have been a mistake. I don't know for sure that it was intented to upset and anger Kes fans, but I don't know that it wasn't intended either. I just think it's a possibility.
I would've prefered that Kes not have returned rather than get treated like this.

Forgive me but I think you're grasping at straws.
I think if you're going to imply such things, you should learn how a TV show and its episodes are actually created and MAYBE then you'll understand how these things can happen without any forethought of malice behind it.
Just because it happens on one unrelated show doesn't mean that's how the writing staff runs things on Voyager.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I think it was just a bunch of dumbos going, HEEEYYY PSYCHOKINISIS LET'S BLOW STUFF UP!

 

[exodus]

I think it was just a bunch of dumbos going, HEEEYYY PSYCHOKINISIS LET'S BLOW STUFF UP!

That too, her powers were one of the big focuses of the ep.
They couldn't do it if she was sane and good because she'd be to passive to use them. That was fine for me, for 3 years I wanted to see exactly what she could do.

 

[borgboy]

It might have worked if Kes had an actual motive to blow stuff up.
Just because a malicous end to a character happened once also doesn't mean it couldn't happen again somewhere else. I'm not saying definitely, but possibly. None of can know for sure.

 

[exodus]

Have we learned nothing from the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and others in recent months just like it, that mental illness or dementia don't require a motive(or at least not a logical one)?
However I doubt even given a motive it would change anything considering many Kes fan can't ever imagine her EVER doing ANYTHING wrong for any reason.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Once she got to the past... Where was the Furiousness?

Is the title a reference to her emotional state or the Greek Vengeance deities/aspects?

 

[Lynx]

Not to mention that I still don't understand why they had to bring back the character for one lousy episode, only to ruin the character in the worst possible way and then kill her off, as they actually planned to do.

The episode had no impact at all on the ongoing Voyager saga. There is nothing in it which is similar to Seska's treason in "State Of Flux" which affected the ongoing story for two seasons or Suder's murder case which also had some impact on the events in "Basics" later on. So why bring back a character only to destroy that character?

Unless.......someone didn't like that some fans were sending in letters and mails in which they expressed their wish to have Kes back and decided to teach those ungrateful people a lesson.

And "someone" could probably justify the creation of such an episode in some way for the higher authorities and get the necessary money for it as well. "Oh, it will be an episode full with action and explosions. Just what the fans want! Not to mention that many fans will be happy to se JL back again!"

Just because some persons are in charge of Star Trek of all shows doesn't have to mean that those persons are nice and benevolent persons who really care about the show and its fans. In that case we wouldn't have had episodes like "The Gift", "Fury" and "Endgame".

And I can't possibly think that they thought that the fans of Kes would like or appreciate that episode. If that's what they thought, then they are bigger idiots than I ever think is possible to be and I don't think they are idiots. In that case they would never be in charge of a show.

After the bad reviews of the episode, there were some statements from those in charge about the episode "didn't turn out the way we wanted it". I guess that's because they weren't allowed to kill off the character as they actually planned to do.

The fact that Braga, Fuller and Michael Taylor spent the Christmas holiday to come up with such a horrible, insulting story just makes the situation even more morbid.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Fury that we got: You are a bitter horrible twisted prick, but take a beat, think back to the good old days and re-evaluate how twisted your prick really is. Oh my how could I have forgotten there is so much hope and love in the world!

The Fury we almost got: You are a bitter horrible twisted prick, and no one cares if you die, so why don't you die? #### off and die.

 

[exodus]

Let's see, Kes has miscomphesion and due to it comes back to villianize the innocent crew of Voyager.
Kes fans have miscomphensions about script writing and due to it villainize the writing staff of the show.

Interesting.

.....and for those that actually care to learn TV production, "Fury" wasn't written over any holiday season because shows stop production in late Oct. or early Nov.

 

[Guy Gardener]

As far as the rewrite goes, they had a balanced and thematic story where everything was conceptually leading to her death. With foreshadow and dread is how they were writing about the end of this girl. It was a mercy killing.

They didn't rewrite the entire script. Just the last 5 pages.

There was a 2 hundred year period in the middle where some assholes decided that Cordelia should survive the end of King Lear, because the only decent person in the whole thing shouldn't get done in by... Is it alright to call Reagan and Goneral bitches?

One of them took their fathers eyes out with a spoon.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

.....and for those that actually care to learn TV production, "Fury" wasn't written over any holiday season because shows stop production in late Oct. or early Nov.

So it's not a Christmas card to the fans?