With the "Celebration book", 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 which seems to have been made in a rush, only to get rid of the character as soon as possible.
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 came up with a new version.
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 foul play 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.
Can we really assume that this is the absolute truth or is it just an attempt to use Jennifer Lien’s recent problems as an excuse to justify that she was fired from Star Trek Voyager back then?
Personally I do have some problems with this. They have lied about this twice so how do we know that they are not lying again for the third time and using recent sad events to make up another story which will make them look all innocent?
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 but also may have been the result of mental problems. 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 and nothing but the truth. 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 or wouldn'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.
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 and acting the way I did.
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 the 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.
Beware, he likes to say "time f***ery." 
