Jennifer Lien in trouble again?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by oskarr, Jan 4, 2018.

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  1. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I can agree here.
    As for "yesterday's Enterprise", it was good but I was not too fond of that Sela plot in "Redemption" and "Unification". I thought it was weak.

    As for Crosby, I have always thought that it was a mistake to kill of Tasha Yar. They should have let her leave and then brought back the character, either as a regular or for some guest appearances.

    "The Defiant" was a good episode.

    The crap episode in Voyager's season 6 was just bad and I agree that it was a middle finger to Kes.
    And her fans. :mad:
     
  2. Finn

    Finn Bad Batch of TrekBBS Admiral

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    I'm not so sure the writers cared either way. They may not see Kes the way her fans do.
     
  3. HugeLobes

    HugeLobes Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Yeah, it was a weak episode. Agreed. But maybe they were trying to give Kes a good episode and just thoroughly messed it up?
     
  4. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    'Warlord' was great only because Lien gave such a strong performance. She was the consummate megalomaniac in that episode and it stays in my mind because she was that compelling. That insane glint in her eye was just fantastic. She made me believe in the nutcase and his agenda. I mean the way she tore into the palace decor after ripping the title from the old man's hands... it was such a delight to watch. I cannot think of anyone else who has given that sort of powerful performance. Patrick Stewart was great, but he has never played a complete and utter asshole like this (this is besides the point but he's great in 'Frazier.' OMG hilarious!) It's a pity what they did with Kess. Lien was obviously capable of a lot of depth - far more than Garett Wang for sure and even Jeri Ryan. Seven was entertaining, but she was sort of one-note in that she had that robotic personality, and when the more human aspects did come out, they were not as compelling. I've seen another thread here about how most ST characters are insipid - perhaps it's true. After all, the execs wanted a huge, broad audience and in order to do that you cannot make your elements too spicy.
     
  5. STEPhon IT

    STEPhon IT Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't know what they, the writers, were thinking when they pretty much implied Kes would've been a damn burden if she continued onto the series. She was one of the most inventive characters Trek had created since Gul Dukat and Vedek Wynn; Kes was interesting to me because she was a character who saw the Star Trek Universe in the prism of a general audience. Everything was new to her, it reminded me of how I saw Star Trek for the first time as a child. The world is wondrous and cool, and the universe just seemed so optimistic there's no need to stay where Kes was. Kes was a valuable investment and it appeared to me, she was metaphorically a caterpillar; so the 9 years angle shouldn't have been taken literally but would eventually transform into something else... you know... something special in a series called STAR TREK.

    Unfortunately, the limited imaginations from the producers couldn't get their heads out their asses and took the 9 years concept literally, and "Fury" is the result of their lack of vision.

    Voyager was what it was, it was a redundant series which really and truly didn't or couldn't grasp its own potential; the series demanded to boldly go, but just couldn't look pass the grand success of Star Trek: The Next Generation and made silly attempts to monkey off of it.
     
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  6. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Agreed - 'Fury' was totally stupid. It's like the execs came in the writers' room and said, "alright people - we need for Kess to come back and just be a complete dick. Doesn't matter how it happens. Just - she's gotta be a dick to everyone and get tossed out on her ass. Go!"

    That being said, I thought Voyager was great because they turned all the roles the other way. Like they had a female captain, an ex-Maquis XO, a helmsman with a checkered past, a hothead girl for an engineer, a Borg crewer, the doctor, and so on. Plus they were not trying to explore anything, they really just were trying to get home.
     
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  7. STEPhon IT

    STEPhon IT Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    LOL!!! More like, we have our diamond in the rough Seven of Nine, who's very popular and is saving our series*. So we can't make Kes shine in any way to give our fans doubt that we made the wrong decision to let her go.

    *This theory was based on polling, of course voted by a depleted fan base, which could not possibly be proven since Trek at the time was waning in popularity.
     
  8. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    That's interesting. Yeah I can see how they put Jeri Ryan in there as eye candy... but I guess they gave her a brain so it wouldn't piss off the smaller (cerebral?) segment of the viewership - the part which would not be entertained by mere t&a. Nice. Poor Kess.
     
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  9. STEPhon IT

    STEPhon IT Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It's these misleading polls of its day in the 90's and early 2000's which proceeded with the ridiculous notion TNG character Data was the most popular character on that series. So when the producers were green lit to make movies, their first action was to give Data nearly equal screen time as Picard, the results were a cataclysmic disaster in narrative storytelling. Data worked well within the confines of the supporting cast as Patrick Stewart carried the load on the series, but the polling numbers and fan letters was spawning the producers disillusionment for Data. When the movie "First Contact" came along and was quite popular, despite its terrible storytelling feats, the writing was on the wall on where the producers were going with Voyager.

    Janeway needed her own Data type character, childlike - and very very very very very VERY resourceful in... everything!!! Janeway was a superwoman herself and bringing in Seven didn't alter or change the course of the very poor storytelling done on the series. All it did was diminish the great supporting cast's role in the series which was already declining because the series was so Janeway heavy. Lets not forget the EMH Doctor was also hogging screen time as well and this kind of overstuffed "me" "me" time pushes a great character like Kes off of the cliff.

    Voyager never required to be TNG; they should've stick to their guns and allow the characters they had and flourish. If the writers can't hang by writing and developing the characters then the producers should've found new writers to keep the concept on course. What's there I believe was a permanent stain on Voyager.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2019
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  10. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    That's interesting - I had no idea. Thanks for the info. I agree about the seriously skewed feedback.
     
  11. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Voyager is not TNG. It is its own show. They are similar in that they fly around in a ship. Voyager follows its own premise as laid out in its own story bible.

    "Unused potential" is not an actual objective criticism. It's criticizing a show for not doing what someone retroactively thinks it should have done, rather than critiquing it for what it did do. Making generalized complaints of the whole show of a series that ran so long is not useful, and bound to lead to inaccurate statements. It's like there's a few people who will use every post of any Voy thread to kick the whole show, over and over again. This is way beyond any objectivity. It's an emotional need to whine.

    Voyager remains extremely popular for a 20 year old series. Did Star Trek wane in in viewership in the late 90's? Yes. Was that the fault of Voyager? No. It would be bonkers to claim that, unless you assign equal blame to DS9, and omit a dozen other more pressing factors.

    What is Fury? Was it a "middle finger to the fans"? Obviously not. It was the writers attempting to have Kes return for a visit in a creative way. Perhaps they should just have had Kes return as a guardian angel.
    Jennifer Lien was respectfully asked for input on the script, and gave it. She was fully satisfied with it and says she liked the story. There are no villains here.
     
  12. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Okay, but only if it was a guardian angel like on a Victoria's Secret show. They could've kitted out Janeway too with wings. Also, Chakotay and Tom in thongs to balance it out.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019
  13. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    They were trying to give Kes a good episode? :eek:
    In that case, I would really hate to see when they decide to give someone a bad story.
    What they did was to totally destroy the character in the most sadistic way.
     
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  14. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I know that some people disagree with me when I see that horrible episode as a middle finger to the fans. But I can't find any other reason for them to making it.

    They had spent two and a half year to make people totally forfet about the character. She was never mentioned, not even in that episode when they tried to pretend that Seven had been on the ship all the time.

    Then all of a sudden they bring her back, only to totally destroy, humiliate and ridicule the character. I see no other reason then that they wanted to show the middle finger to those who wanted Kes back.

    Have Kes return for a visit in a creative way? Sorry, I see nothing "creative" in that piece of crap as the episode was. It only makes me think about a verse in the Deep Purple song "No, No, No":

    "They talk about creation, but all they do is kill"

    As for Jennifer Lien's input, what she did was to persuade them not to kill off the character, something they obviously had planned to do as a "gift" to the fans of the character. Talk about a middle finger there!
     
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  15. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    Thanks for posting. Another poster had said earlier Lien had okayed the script for 'Fury' which I thought a bit odd, because it did not do her character much justice. It seemed like a really crappy way for Kess to go out.
     
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  16. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    For some perspective on "Fury," and the intentions behind it, here is an old interview with Jennifer Lien.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20001208110100/http://www.startrek.com/news/newsarchive.asp?ID=111625

    Quotes in bold:
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019
  17. Geetha Stachowiak

    Geetha Stachowiak Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    OK so we may all be partly wrong and partly right. I did some research.
    1. I do see from the article on 5/1/2000 at startrek.com (above) where Lien is OK with the 'Fury' concept.
    2. But, here's an article from 8/9/2010 on startrek.com - another Lien interview where she admits she made some crappy choices as far as acting - on the question of 'Fury.' (please scroll to the middle of the interview)
    https://www.startrek.com/article/catching-up-with-jennifer-lien
    3. Then I found this review on the episode at them0vieblog (6/21/18) which examines in detail what happened with the producers, etc. It does detail how the 'Fury' script wasn't the best (about 2/3 down) for Kes:
    https://them0vieblog.com/2018/06/21/star-trek-voyager-fury-review/
    I hope this helps.

    I do know (firsthand) that even when shit happens within a production, actors and crews frequently maintain a story in order to keep things looking smooth on the surface (so even if you had a shit fit about an episode and wanted to smack everyone upside the face including the producers, in public you say, "oh yeah this will work", "I can work with anyone", "this is cool", "everyone is very professional" and "happy to be working with XYZ again" etc.
     
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  18. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'll read the rest of the movie blog article later, but what trash. The quotes used in that article are the same quotes I posted, albeit out of context, or quotes found right on the wiki. So years later Lien, when asked which episode she preferred, the Gift, or Fury. She answers the "probably the gift" and then relates how she felt her acting was a bit off from being absent for so long. None of this negates the fact that she liked the story, and wanted the story to be that way. As far as I am aware, she has not criticized the story she praised years earlier.

    And look at this:

    This is from the interview I posted, but taken completely out of context. She also says "Well, I've changed in the last three years, and other people who are still here that I knew back then have changed considerably too. So I'd imagine naturally they'd be changed if I were to come back in three more years."

    She's not commenting on the show being "stagnate" or anything that Darren in trying to imply. She's commenting on how It's like being right back in the saddle. Is this reviewer stupid or dishonest?

    This is the perfect example of an episode review simply used to trash the whole show in general, and harp endlessly about "serialization," "the premise," "reset buttons" and so on, and so forth. He spends more time talking about other episodes, naming as many as he can, each with its own unique pejorative attached. He also speculates on how the producers were "trying to stick it to the fans." Fury is all a meta-narrative for his perceived war between the producers and the ...I dunno... former? Voyager fans(HIM)? He's essentially identifying his own personal emotional baggage with all Voyager fans, because everyone must feel exactly like he does.

    I'm at the Bryan Fuller quote, which he also takes out of context. Fuller commented on how those great powers had unexpected consequences. He turned the star trek trope of "evolving into energy beings" on its head with Kes. That's all Fuller is saying. The reviewer takes this quote and folds it into his "producers vs fans-like-him" theory.

    So he doesn't actually offer any new information on the process by which this episode was created. He quotes from the same two interviews, plus a few quotes found right on wikipedia under the "Fury" page(and there are so few, so the author did no actual research into the behind the scenes of this episode beyond wikipedia and the interview linked to the wikipedia article).
     
  19. Starflight

    Starflight Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Yeah, I quite enjoyed reading them0vieblog reviews as I rewatched Voyager a while back but all his articles are just him adhering religiously to his idea of how Voyager is "stuck in time" and a show about "nostalgia" which doesn't make sense to me at all. Not to mention all the times he ascribes weird motivations to writers - Fury exists as an attempted justification of the episodic format? Don't even know where to start with that. All the articles blend into one because it's the same line of argument every time: Voyager's format is outdated (as if nobody was making episodic TV around 2000), there's CHAOS!! behind the scenes and here's a quote from Rick Berman to prove it, [insert episode here] is clearly a secret coded message to fans to tell them to stop complaining, boom, article done.

    His writing really strongly reminds me of when I had to write my dissertation for university but I'd left it too late to do it properly so I just grabbed context-less quotes from anywhere and everywhere, shoved them in and then desperately tried to twist them into my argument.

    The Lien interview from 2010 is cool though, never seen that before and I think I did try to look her up a while ago to see how she was doing after hearing some of the worrying news about her.
     
  20. Lynx

    Lynx Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I have to agree with the guy who wrote the movieblog, although I do think that he was too nice to that episode in his comments. The only statement needed about that episode is that it was downright crap and nothing more. That would take less space.

    Despite that, I find Darren's comments more believable than the propaganda phrases from Berman, Braga and Fuller. I don't give a d**n for their "official explanations" crap. They were out to destroy the character and nothing more.

    I also read Bragas comments about "unpleasant fans" :lol:. Well, if he finds me and other fans of the character Kes "unpleasant" because we dared to express our opinions about Kes being axed in season 4, dared to stage a letter campaign to have Kes re-instated and dared to criticize the piece of s**t they came up with in that season 6 episode, then at least I take it as a great compliment. Take that Brannon and chew on it!

    As for Jennifer Lien's involvment in this horrible plot, I must admit that she lost many gold stars in my book for participating in that episode. She should never have done that.

    I mean, if I had been in the same situation, I would have told those producers where they could stuff their script and where to go. Most of her comments in those interviews (I do have that magazine somehwere in my home) looks like they are read from some script where someone tells the readers or listeners how cute and nice everything is. I guess that Jennifer is, or at least was at that time a person who didn't want to argue or create trouble.

    I wish that she had turned that offer down. The only good thing with her participation is that she managed to persuade the benevolent, gentle people in charge of the show not to kill of Kes as they had planned to do. Otherwise they would probably have brought in some lookalike, splashed some make-up over the lookalike's face to make her look evil and disgusting and then killed off the character as they wanted to do.

    I wish
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2019
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