Janeway was much better in the three first seasons than she was later on.
Don't forget "The Kes thing".
Horrible handled whatever the reasons were for dumping the character.
When did the Janeway hatred truly start to coalesce?
- Thread starter Ragitsu
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Janeway was much better in the three first seasons than she was later on.
Don't forget "The Kes thing".
Horrible handled whatever the reasons were for dumping the character.
There is . . . especially in regard to Stewart's early relationship with the rest of the main cast.
I don't agree. In fact, I think Janeway had undergone an interesting arc development throughout the series, until she reached an interesting combination of military commander, diplomat, intelligence officer, scientist and con artist.
^^Once the decision was made that Kes was going to be written out, how much better could they have handled it? In-universe, she ascends to a higher plane of existence (later episodes notwithstanding) and sends Our Heroes much closer to home in the process, which arguably is the Prime Directive of the entire series.
Out-of-universe, I haven't heard anything to suggest that how they handled giving Lien the bad news was poorly handled in and of itself.
Out-of-universe, I haven't heard anything to suggest that how they handled giving Lien the bad news was poorly handled in and of itself.
She deserved better, I agree.
Don't forget "commando", as seen in "Macrocosm".
Agreed. And that should have ended it.
I wish I knew the circumstances of the event. I liked Kes as a character, and thought she was worth keeping. Given that they sidelined Chakotay and crapped on Harry, why not get rid of one of them?
Only in the warped minds from disgruntled "Day Players" who told some very very VERY TALL tales in the Convention Tours about them being an ensemble cast along side William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley. While the reality was the studio nor the Production gave a shit about the concern or perspective from the day players.
My curiosity piqued, I've looked up reasons for Kes's exit online. Most of what I'm finding is...
1. Writers didn't know where to take the character. Though I don't see why this would be an issue, given the number of characters on the show who went nowhere.
2. A character had to be deleted, and Harry was saved by a People magazine article. I have my doubts here, given that "Before and After" compressed Kes's future arc into one episode... suggesting that they weren't planning on carrying it out for real.
3. One source mentioned that Jennifer Lien was having issues of some sort. Don't know much truth there is to that, though other sources have confirmed it, and stated that the other reasons given were something of a cover story. Ms. Lien has suffered mental health issues later in life, but it was over 15 years after she left the show.
If anyone knows more (talking to you, @Lynx), I'd be interested in reading about it.
1. Writers didn't know where to take the character. Though I don't see why this would be an issue, given the number of characters on the show who went nowhere.
2. A character had to be deleted, and Harry was saved by a People magazine article. I have my doubts here, given that "Before and After" compressed Kes's future arc into one episode... suggesting that they weren't planning on carrying it out for real.
3. One source mentioned that Jennifer Lien was having issues of some sort. Don't know much truth there is to that, though other sources have confirmed it, and stated that the other reasons given were something of a cover story. Ms. Lien has suffered mental health issues later in life, but it was over 15 years after she left the show.
If anyone knows more (talking to you, @Lynx), I'd be interested in reading about it.
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When Nichols was unavailable owing to a singing job, Lt Palmer was casually created. When Takei was in a John Wayne movie, random helmsman sat in the chair.
1. The writers didn't now what to do with any of them. When I saw quicksilver Tom and B'Elanna getting married, I was like "Oh snap! They started dating 2 years ago! I totally forgot!"
2. Before they "found" Jeri (and inherited the costume department from First Contact the movie) Year of Hell going to play out where Scorpion did as the season ending Cliffhanger. So Before and After was only supposed to be a very brief preview of things to come just 4 episodes later.
3. A book came out recently where the cast and producer labeled Jennifer as a troubled weirdo. She did more TV after Voyager, and the movie American History X, before phasing out that part of her life, so despite complaints, she was still functioning.
Unfortunately i'm not some oracle and I don't have any contact with Jennifer Lien, her family, her management or former management so I can't come up with more information than we already have.
When the official statemen t was released about jennifer "leaving" Voyager, they told us that "Jennifer had left of her own free will", as if she had decided to leave because she wanted to do something else.
Obviously people didn't believe that because that statement was followed by a lot of discussions on different Star Trek forums about jennifer being fired from the show. That's how I first found out about it.
I had avoided all Voyager discussions up to that because I knew that the series would show up one day on some station I had back then because TOS, TNG and at least one season of DS9 had been aired. But when I just had started to watch Voyager in January 1998, I stumbled over the news about kes being "out" in March.
Anyway, when people started to question the first official statements, new statements came about why Jennifer was dumped. The new information told us that "the writers could no longer come up with good stories for the character". It was also stated thet it was a "mutual agreement".
Now that looked a bit dubious since those writers didn't have any problems at all to come up with good Kes stories during the whole season 3 and even after that (Jeri Taylor in the book Mosaic). I find it hard to think that professional writers all of a suuden loses the ability to write for a character in a series. And the comments about "mutual agreement" when some celebrity "leaves" a popular TV-series or rock band always indicates foul play.
So the debates and rumors about this continued.
Recently some book published a new version in which we were told that Jennifer was dumped because of mental issues. But if that was the case, why didn't they tell us the truth back in 1997-98?
OK, I can understand if they didn't want to write anything about "we dumped Jennifer because she had mental problems" but they could at least had came up with something about "Jennifer finding the work schedule too stressful" or something like that instead of the crap they did come up with back then.
Since they actually have lied twice, I hope that people forgive me for not really trusting them this time either.
And as you wrote in your post, the recent mental issues were about 15 years after she was dumped. Some years before that, there was an interview with her at the official Star Trek website which gave us the impression that she was living a happy family life.
As for the scenario that they were supposed to dump Garret Wang but changed their minds after that inside poll in People and dumped Jennifer instead, there might actually be some truth in that one. It's also something I've run into many times when I tried to dig into thise events.
Garret Wang was obviously close to be sacked in season 3, due to some incidents which I won't go into since I have very little to go on here. The most spread story is that somewhere between season 3 and 4 something happened since they were about to kill off Harry in Scorpion but in the second part he recovers and then Kes is dumped in the next episode.
Another story which often has come up is that Year Of Hell were supposed to be the cliffhanger for season 4 and then with Kes being involved in that one but that it was slightly rewritten and put forward to a season 4 two-parter after Kes had been kicked out.
If that's the truth, then some of the events in Before And After could have happened in Year Of Hell even if I highly doubt that the some of the events in Before And After with B'Elannas and Janeway's death and other events as well would have taken place no matter what.
As for Jennifer, she has chosen to keep a low profile about all this which is understandable due to her shy nature and the nature of the whole story. But at a convention some years after Voyager had ended, she got a question from a person if she had been fired from Voyager and her reply was "yes".
I guess that it will take time before we will know the absolute truth about all this-if we ever will.
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"Left of her own free will"?
Or...
"Tiny feral Jennifer Lien has been hiding in the walls and crawlspaces of the set and the studio for three years now, rarely coming out to bathe, but ladies and gentlemen I can joyfully admit that at 9.02 this morning we finally lured her out of her bolt hole, securing the unemployed actress with shiny fishing lures and catfood, so production for season 6 of Star Trek Voyager can finally resume unimpinged."
Or...
"Tiny feral Jennifer Lien has been hiding in the walls and crawlspaces of the set and the studio for three years now, rarely coming out to bathe, but ladies and gentlemen I can joyfully admit that at 9.02 this morning we finally lured her out of her bolt hole, securing the unemployed actress with shiny fishing lures and catfood, so production for season 6 of Star Trek Voyager can finally resume unimpinged."
Thank you for sharing this Lynx. I appreciate the insights and information you have to share! In the end it sounds like while TPTB may have prevaricated regarding the reasons why Lien was leaving the show (which I honestly don't even think is uncommon in show business), I don't really see anything to indicate that she was "mistreated" or otherwise treated particularly worse than anyone else who's cut from a TV show.
Consider that if Lien was hoping to land another job, then it was to her benefit for TPTB to tell the most amicable version of the tale that they could. "We ran out of ideas for her character," makes her look a lot better than, "We fired her because her mental problems were getting in the way."
It does seem like they tried to make separation as amicable as possible. So even if there were issues, they might not have mentioned it.
On the other hand, it's possible some mean-spirited
who wanted attention just made up the story about her being mentally unstable, possibly after her IRL issues, over a decade later.It seems very likely that this was not a popular decision with TPTB, given the treatment that Wang's character got. Reading between the lines in S7, it seems likely that after S6, and Harry's idle line about not finding a box on his chair, a lot of people wrote in and complained about this. Accommodating them would have been a simple matter, but the showrunners clung fiercely to making him stay an ensign. I still maintain that this was a vendetta, a deliberate, calculated attempt to humiliate an actor they had wanted to be rid of but couldn't. And it was important to them. Otherwise, they would have done the logical thing and simply given Harry his hollow pip.
The best sort of hollow victory?
Only not so hollow. It wouldn't have affected the show much, but the ensuing 22 years (and counting) are another story.
Maybe.
But still the statement about professional writers all of a sudden not being able to write for one character looks downright silly. A comment which didn't solve whatever problems with rumors they had after the first comment about "Jennifer left of her own free will".
And when it came to problems with writing stories for certain characters, I get the impression that they had more problems coming up with good stories for Chakotay, Tuvok, Paris, Torres, neelix and kim in ceasons 4-7 than they had to write good stories for Kes in seasons 1-3.
It does seem like they tried to make separation as amicable as possible. So even if there were issues, they might not have mentioned it.
On the other hand, it's possible some mean-spirited
I find it odd that possible mental problems were brought up in this latest book where there never have been any indications of such problems earlier on. When I read those comments from people who were in charge back then, I start to wonder. Especially since they obviously lied twice about it.
If they were p***ed off with Wang and took it out on his character, it was very mean and downright childish as well.
Considering "The kes thing" and their issues with Wang and Beltran and how tension was created between Mulgrew and Ryan, I get the impression that those in charge of the show had difficulties to cooperate with the actors which they were supposed to cooperate with.
Maybe the best thing would have been to sack Berman, Braga and the others after season 3 and bring in more motivated people with a better attitude to their actors.
