Part of the difficulty I have with assessing acting, unless there's behind-the-scenes info available, is that it can be hard to tell how much of an evidently dubious acting job was due to the actor's limitations and how much of it may have been due to the actor being placed under constraints. I have a lot of questions about Nimoy's directing of Robin Curtis, for instance.
If his goal was to make her version of Saavik less interesting than watching paint dry, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Because I am pretty much incapable of reading social nuance, I'm not much for reading acting performances anyway.
Beltran was very vocal on his views of the scripts and how the VOY writers treated his character. Kes should've stayed and Chakotay leave; for Beltran he could've done other things than spending the remaining seasons being G.O.A.T. Janeway's punchy.
Here's a thought... Kes leaves in S3. Harry gets sucked out the airlock in Deadlock... and not replaced. Chakotay gets snuffed in S4 or 5. 1. The characters who weren't used are out of the way. 2. It gives the journey some real teeth: no one is safe. Anyone could die. 3. TOS, TNG, and ENT did just fine with seven main characters. 4. No 7/C ship. Nuff said.
Thank god someone else gets these creepy vibes Early Voyager is almost unwatchable. I keep wanting to break out the Chris Hansen memes
Sounds like a euphemism or do I mean a euphonium? Either way, it might have made him more interesting.
Oh yeah, writing and directing are definitely factors in addition to "acting ability". Some directors, I'm thinking Frakes, seem to get better performances out of a cast than others.
If the only way to make a character more interesting is to assign him a different woodwind over a 7-year show, maybe the character is expendable.
I'm not sure if I replied to this yet, so apologize if this is a repetitive post. I think for the most part, they were going to fire Jennifer Lien either way, due to her mental/drug problems that only recently came to light. They may have played up the magazine thing to distract from the truth, and protect Lien's privacy. That said, the magazine could surely have been a factor, simply because it drew attention to "Voyager's" only Asian major character. In the 1990s, and on "Star Trek" no less, killing off their token Asian character would surely have been a risky move. So if they had originally planned to off Kim, they no doubt wanted to do it quietly, without too much media fanfare. But then this damn magazine brings him up, and now millions of non-"Voyager" fans have just learned that "Voyager" has a major Asian character named Harry Kim, in a time period when Asians were probably still underrepresented on American TV. So there was no way they could kill him off now. I don't know any of this for a fact, this is just my personal hypothesis.
They spoke about Lien’s issues on the podcast. But felt she could’ve been brought back for other episodes
Given her issues, the decision to throw Kes off the bus makes sense. But that doesn't justify throwing Harry under it.
I'm actually looking forward to hearing his perspective on this as i didn't realize it had happened when it did!
Considering the post you replied to is from 2020, if he hasn't addressed it on that future podcast by now, I doubt he's going to.
Yeah I am a newbie..and didn't realize the OP was from 2020! Sorry! He probably already talked about it and I haven't seen it yet!
Reading between the lines, it was probably due to Jennifer Lien's personal issues. They were going to eliminate one character, and she was it.
Depending on your HR policy, it's illegal to fire some one for drugs/alcohol, if they go to rehab, because addiction is a medical condition, and they are seeking help. I still like the story where they had to fire Lien because they hired Ryan, because they thought they were firing Wang. Which means that they were considering working through Jenifer's drug and mental health issues, until they were not, which sounds illegal, and she could have easily sued them, until the show was prematurely cancelled.