Wow... didn't know that. Pretty impressive they knew that, considering that so little of the story existed at the time. Your wife is more gracious then me. I write parody fanfiction, and I just have horrible things happen to people as a sight gag. Me too, but I typically torture him the worst. Either I have self-loathing issues (probably true regardless), or I learned the MAD Magazine trick that you can take shots at anyone and get away with it, as long as you take a few at yourself.
Oh joy! Oh joy! The Real story! So now we finally have the true story why Jennifer Lien was fired and the character Kes was dumped……………..or have we? Let’s take it from the beginning. In the beginning of season 4, Kes is suddenly dumped from the show. After three years of good performances in the series, Kes have an important role in the cliffhanger “Scorpion” and then suddenly written out of the series in the following episode, a badly written one. The official explanation was that “Jennifer Lien left of her own free will”. Nothing more, no comment from Jennifer herself, nothing. Of course, such a lousy explanation didn’t go down among the fans. Almost immediately rumors started to spread that Jennifer Lien had been fired. So those in charge decided to come with a new version, let's call it "Why Kes was dumped, version 2" This time we were told that “the writers could no longer come up with good stories for the character” and that Jennifer had to go and that it was a “mutual agreement”. Now, everyone with the slightest knowledge of the entertainment business knows that “mutual agreement” means “fired” and that there is shady business involved. To come up with something so silly that experienced writers after three years of coming up with many good stories for a character all of a sudden lose the ability to continue with that is downright insulting to the fans and, as expected weren’t accepted either. Instead there were more rumors spreading about what really happened. What happened next was that those in charge of the show did all they could to erase all memories of the character. She was never mentioned in the series again and all focus was on her successor Seven Of Nine until those in charge decided to bring back the character with the one and only intention to ruin and destroy the character in an episode who is regarded as one of the worst ever in any TV series and honestly never should have been made. And now, more than 20 years later we get this new and final statement that Jennifer Lien was fired and Kes written out because of Jennifer Lien’s increasing mental problems. So now we have: "Why Kes was dumped, version 3 (and now the TRUE story)" Can we really assume that this is the absolute truth, I mean, they had lied about this twice before. Or is it just an attempt to use Jennifer Lien’s recent problems as an excuse to justify why she was fired from Star Trek Voyager back then? can we really believe them this time? Note that Jennifer wasn’t put in some institution back then or inactive in any way. She had an important role in “American History X” and were also in a movie called “SLC Punk”, she got married, had a child, continued to participate at conventions, studied art and had what looks like a normal life. In an article at Startrek.com called “catching up with Jennifer Lien” in 2010 she seems to have a normal, happy life. In the article she stated that: "I have kids, I study, and I'm active with a life that doesn't involve acting anymore." She added that she was taking college courses with the goal of becoming a nurse, dietician, or nutritionist — whatever would give her the most time with her family. Then everything went quiet until she all of a sudden shows up in Harriman, Tennessee and having trouble with the law. The only disturbing thing I noticed during those years were her sudden weight gain, which may have been a result of her earlier pregnancy and the following struggle with that. She lost weight then gained weight again and so on. But that can happen to anyone. However, I’m not a doctor and I don’t know Jennifer so I won’t speculate about what might have happened which caused that or triggered recent events. But let us now be kind to those in charge of the show and assume that their latest statements actually are the truth, the truth and nothing but the truth, even if it's hard to believe. If that’s so, then I still have to ask: Why didn’t they tell the truth from the beginning? OK, I can truly understand that they couldn’t come up with a statement like “Jennifer is having mental problems and we can’t keep her in the show”. But they could at least have come up with something like “Jennifer Lien is finding the filming schedule and the long days of work too stressful and will therefore leave to focus on other projects”. That, added with some comment from Jennifer herself or her management would have settled the whole thing. Like when actress Sasha Alexander left NCIS due finding the job too stressful. There were explanations from those in charge and from the actress herself why she had decided to leave. Instead, they came up with all those ridiculous lies about writers not being able to do their job, mutual agreements and on top of all the constant BS about how good it was to get rid of Kes so that the show could have Seven Of Nine instead and how Seven saved the show. What all that did was to create more rumors, more distrust and more controversy. I must admit that if they had bothered to come up with a decent explanation from the beginning, I would have accepted that instead of becoming so involved in this thing. However, I wasn’t the only one to react that way. There were letter campaigns to have Kes back and a lot of questions from more people than me. However I may have been the worst one which I have realized in recent years and isn’t too proud about. But I must also state that a glimpse of the old, angry Lynx actually did show up when I read the statement from Jeri Taylor about “We knew that there was something going on,” Taylor admitted. “But she wouldn’t talk or let us offer to help.” Well, I can understand that it can be impossible to have a very troubled person in the cast. I know about rock musicians who have been kicked out of their bands for less worse things. So I understand that there might have been necessary to do what they did, if the recent story tells the truth. But what they did after that was to more and less to try to erase the character from everyone’s minds and by doing so disregard and neglect Jennifer‘s work on the show, then bring her back to make a fool of herself in the worst episode ever made for a TV show and then more and less pretend that she never existed. With “friends” and “help” like that, she probably doesn’t need any enemies. Anyway, what has happened to Jennifer Lien is a sad and tragic story. I’ve experienced a similar thing happen to a person who was very close to me once and this whole Kes/Jennifer thing has for me been to experience that nightmare once again. It’s so tragic that an obviously nice and shy person and a talented actress should end up the way she has done. We can only hope and pray that she can get her life back in order. The support from family and friends are important but she also need inner strength and determination to overcome this. Let us hope and pray for the best. Let us also hope that Jennifer will have more credit for her contributions to the series than she has had in the recent years after her dismissal from Voyager and that the character Kes will be restored in future books and stories. That would be a nice tribute to Jennifer as well.
The new evidence does not change the preamble... The wanted to fire Wang. They hired Jeri with the money they would have used to pay Wang. Wang was saved by People Magazine. There was a hole in the budget, some one had to be fired. Lien is mental, fire her.
Legally, no one that worked for Paramount back in the day could disclose why someone was fired, so expect innocuous cover stories to avoid lawsuits. Now that people don't work for Paramount they'd be more comfortable saying what really happened.
I never liked Riker, either. I can't seem to make my science fiction fanfics turn out serious, with the exception of a crossover between Sliders and The Handmaid's Tale (novel/1990 movie, not the current TV series). I wrote a vignette that crosses Dune (1984 Lynch version) with the Peanuts comic strip - Lucy stands in for Gaius Helen Mohiam, and Snoopy stands in for the Atreides' pug dog that Patrick Stewart toted around for most of the Lynch movie. I had Lucy/Mohiam, not Baron Harkonnen, get eaten by the sandworm, after she got hysterical about dog germs (Snoopy licked her).
What you have stated above makes sense. But as I wrote before, I'm not sure if Lien had any mental issues back then. The new information looks like an after-construction. I don't trust them. It's a matter of: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times........... No way! They have lied about this twice. Why should I trust them now? Or to quote Janeway: "I need more than that, Mr Kim" (From Caretaker) I like Riker. But the main reason why I compare him with Chakotay here is that Riker is mostly seen as The First Officer in series made after TOS. Chakotay could have given him a run for that title if Voyager had had better writers.
I have issues with both, for different reasons. Riker went through a beautiful ending arc in "Best of Both Worlds", emerging as a confident and capable commander. He worked without a net, he made the big decisions, and he both beat Picard and saved him, and he proved eminently worthy of the Big Chair. His natural next step was to take command. And then... they acted like it never happened. Chakotay just never really got developed much at all. He's been compared to inanimate life such as trees and potted plants by multiple people. There's no way to know, but I think that Lien was targeted much earlier, because of the existence of "Before and After". This was a condensation of Kes's planned arc into one episode, from motherhood to morilogium. There was no sense in doing a condensed version if they were still planning the unabridged one over the next four years.
Equinox should have been his ship. After Janeway blew it up, of course he checked out, until he saw the Dauntless.
Yup. Though I doubt it will do much now. But, this is long expected for many different points of contention in history is people being able to share. Agreed. And better source material than a conman. Though Riker is not even close to my favorite Trek character, he at least had some good writing. Exactly. And that's more frustrating to me. Leaving the character to languish as Picard's XO makes no sense.
Well, it makes no Watsonian sense, it makes perfect Doylist sense. They wanted to keep his character on our TV screens in between commercials.
Yes, and I can sometimes square with that for most TV shows. TNG though is one that I can't always square away which is frustrating because a lot of people like it. I just...am indifferent.
And that's why I try to give them something of a break, but it is frustrating to watch BoBW and see one of TNG's best-executed one-episode story arcs in its history get wiped by the Reset Button. I'm a lot nastier regarding Data, since there was no reason why he couldn't be bumped up to commander. Beverly was one, after all.
Why can't it all be true, just parts of the truth? As in: they may have had a desire to hire a new character to sex the show up and had to fire someone else for that and they had problems with developing the Kes character further and the actress at the time was beginning to develop mental problems which finally made her leave of her own free will? In that case, they wouldn't have lied, just not told the whole truth. Not saying it happened that way, but I can't rule it out, either. And no, I'm not buying that the writers couldn't have written good stories for Kes anymore, but possibly they were put under constraints by some higher ups. After all, the characters of Harry and Chakotay didn't really go anywhere, either and I would have expected them to be able to write more interesting stories for them as well.
Robert Beltran was reported so frustrated with his character's lack of development, he tried to get himself fired by endlessly making more demands. Strangely, even though they didn't intend to use his character properly, TPTB were willing to pay through the nose to keep him around.
I've found some comments about this subject on the net and after reading them, I still stand for what I wrote before. There are no evidence at all that Jennifer did have mental problems during her time in the Voyager cast and the whole thing loooks like an after-construction based on recent events. If they had came up with those explanations before what happened to Jennifer in 2015, I might have had more trust in it. Now it looks like something they used to come up with a better story than the ridiculous "the writers couldn't write for the character" crap. But even if the recent story should be true, they should have came up with something more close to the truth than the lies about "Jennifer left of her own free will" and "the writers could no longer write for the character" which they came up with in the beginning. More something like "Jennifer has found the job and long hours of filming too stressful and want to focus on other activities in her life" plus a comment from Jennifer herself. That would have settled it. As for buying the book, I do buy lot of books about things that interests me and I'm not so sure that I would waste money on a book about "how necessary it was to get rid of Kes, how Seven saved the show, how great season 4-7 was, why it was such a great idea to make that episode in season 6 and som sugar-coated stories about what a happy family we all were". Not to mention that I'm tired of the constant lies from those in charge and their glorification of themselves. What I would like to read is a book written by some outsider, like "What really happened during the making of Star Trek Voyager".
When it comes to Riker, I see no reason to dump him after Best Of Both Worlds because he was such a good sidekick to Picard. Why break up something which works fine? As for Chakotay, he had the potential but never got the chance. When it comes to kes, I'm not buying your theory. Isn't it more possible that they made Before And After just as one oof those "what would have happened if"-episodes and later on used some of it for coming up with Year Of Hell ? I mean, in Before And After, Janeway, Torres and Carey died. I don't think they had any intentions to kill them off in future evvents so what I can see, they used some of the stuff in Before And After to create Year Of Hell, maybe because the writers already had started losing inspiration. If they actually had been planning to dump Kes, then why didn't they do that in the episode Darkling? Kes could have left with Zahir and they could have had some episodes without her at the end of that season in order to plan for Seven's glorious arrival in season 4. At least, Kes would have had a better ending that way instead of the crap they came up with later on. Another thing is that they actually did come up with a lot of action for Kes in season 3, in episodes like Warlord, The Swarm, Darkling, Before And After and Scorpion#1. So why bother to make the character more in focus if the plans were to dump her?
But how could an outsider know, unless he spoke with insiders who were candid with him, or had access to confidential insider material? I would be interested in hearing Lien's side of the story, though. If she'd ever write a book that covers her experiences on Voyager that'd be great. (But I don't hold out high hopes on that).