What happned to Athena in TOS

[jjrakman]

I was just watching the DVD's and I noticed that in the latter half of the season her part was severely cut, and in many episodes she doesn't appear at all.

[thomas7g]

yeah... that was sad. :(

she hardly ever spoke to Apollo outside of a group setting despite being his only surviving sibling.

[jjrakman]

To be honest with you, I liked Athena better than Sheeba. But it seems Sheeba was there to kind of take her place.

I wonder if something was going on with Maren privately and maybe she wouldn't have shown up in a second season?

Or did the writers feel that they needed someone who could be a love interest for Apollo?

I'd really like to get the lowdown on that.

[jjrakman]

I was just watching the commentary on the pilot episode and one of the chaps I'm not sure which, said that Athena was cut towards the end of the series, and idin't appear in the last 4 or 5 episodes. They said she was cut because of bad acting but they all thought she did fine. I think she did fine too.

I wonder if that has anything to do with her kind of vanishing.

[jjrakman]

The last thing she did according to IMDB was back in 1981 where she co-stared with Sharon Stone.

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0421596/

[thomas7g]

I think she wasn't a great actress. But she had a very wonderful endearing nature to her. And she projected herself and that's what we all like about Athena.

Maren Jensen was a young model at the time. Her agent pushed her to geting jobs and landed her acting assignments. So she didn't have the training of those who were pursued careers in acting.

But she worked hard, and gave us a character we all fell in love with. :)

[Starbuck]

Here's what Dirk said about her in an old Starlog interview:

"Maren Jensen [Athena] was the only flat-out, beautiful woman I've ever worked with who had no hang-ups about her beauty. There was not one iota of difficulty with Maren. She was always pleasant, open to direction and advice, eager to do a good job. She was relatively inexperienced at the time, but reachable, teachable and a joy to be around."

Makes me wonder what the heck happened! :confused:

[Charybdis]

Apparently, the powers that be (oh how I'm really getting to hate that term!) decided that Maren Jensen could not act so they began to write her out of the show by the midpoint.

She did not appear in the last several episodes. I believe that she never would have been included in a second season.