7 Star Trek Actors Who Were Fired

what entire oil hi there everybody trek cultures Adam Cleary come in take a seat sit down sit down shoes off the carpet etc right so there are nearly 600 hours of Star Trek content across movies in television for you to enjoy now that might seem like a very random stat to start an article with but 600 hours for one particular franchise means that there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours that have gone into making that all that time going into the writing the filming the producing the editing the directing every single bit of it how many people must that have involved and yet throughout its entire history only a handful of them have ever been fired I mean it does make sense when you think about it for a show that can be such a star-making gig with such a reliance on returning characters nobody's gonna really want to lose somebody if they can't help them but still even with that context compared to the revolving door policy some shows feel like they've got the walking dead Star Trek just isn't haven't doesn't and that does of course mean that on the rare occasion somebody is fired the stories behind them seem to be as bizarre and strange and magical and wonderful as the Syfy episodes themselves so since you're all sitting here and I've got nothing else to do for the next 10 or so minutes my name is Adam Cleary and these are 7 Star Trek actors and were fired that's just good even where I start should probably point out I wrote an article of this which was 2,000 words but it got deleted so I had to start again then I recorded the whole video of this which was really long but it got deleted so this is me doing it again so just to let you know this is some cursed content in my opinion so please enjoy it and just a quick pit stop before we actually begin in earnest to clear up a few names who you might think should be on this list but aren't for technicality reasons first up Terry Pharrell she played juddsie adducts in deep space 9 she wasn't fired she used to prote the producers asked for more time off to pursue other acting opportunities they said no you can either take what you're offered her you can leave so she left did cause bees time as Tashia in the next generation was cut short after just 22 episodes but again that was her choice she was frustrated with the lack of character development so she made demands and the producers and they said no you're not gonna get more screen time so she walked and finally her next generation colleague Marina Sirtis was nearly fired when she had the audacity to try and ask for some pay parity ahead of filming Star Trek nemesis the studio and now if you won't do it for this money will just get Jeri Ryan in from Star Trek Voyager and replace you in serious web well go on then but you're not gonna get Jeri Ryan and for that money either and she was right so she stays number seven Grace Lee Whitney when Gene Roddenberry first devised the crew for Star Trek good technically when he second devised the crew for Star Trek and any more on that later he created the character of yeoman Janice Rand now she was supposed to be like an assistant of sorts to james t kirk but she was let go before the end of the first season and by let go i mean fired now the network and the producers claimed at the time that it was purely budgetary that we're trying to streamline the show to make sure it got a second season but then whitney revealed years later she'd actually been sexually assaulted by somebody on the show and was then quietly let go to try and avoid the negative press now there is a happy ending of sorts this because an extensive fan letter-writing campaign and indeed support from her colleagues on the show got a brought back in time for the movie she was in the motion picture and the search for spark and the voyage home and then transferred to the excelsior with Sulu for the undiscovered country now while she's never gone unnamed the executive involved in all this because it is her story and not his this remains a black mark in Star Trek's history number six Jennifer Lee n now it's virtually impossible to talk about kes leaving Star Trek Voyager without using some arrangement of the words nine seven and of given of her last episode was the one right after they formally introduced her new borg colleague but your thing is it's not as simple as that in a version of events that is backed up by the directors the producers even Jennifer Lee Anne herself it was just that Tessa's time on the ship had naturally sort of come to an end they were really running out of ideas for things for a deal her character arc felt that it's sort of naturally completed itself and being told they needed to get rid of a character in order to bring another one in and she was just the most natural creative choice and by letting kes go they basically removed headache of having to write material for a character they'd lost their way with while stopping the network getting on their back for overloading a show that in their opinion already had too many characters Incas I'd really like Cass I thought she was a good character but what was she gonna do and yes she did briefly return for one episode which kind of just about finished her horse story but once they decided to bring in a brand new character that was her straight out of the airlock and vibe Faithie a go I just want to take a quick moment to reflect on what an awesome name biff hagar actually is all right that's enough it's actually a testament to the VAR Burton's performance as chief engineer Geordi LaForge that a lot people forget he was originally the ship's helmsman while he was manning the corn all the way down on deck 36 yes I am that kind of a nerd there was a revolving door of chief engineer's all tasked with Manning the engines now most of these figures like her and him don't stick particularly long in the mind but one who did was a tenant commander Argyle he was proving so popular with the fans that the producers considered in season two giving him a full-time role on the show until one day they just changed their minds mysteriously now their story here according to your pal and mine Wil Wheaton was that the show's producers received a deluge of letters from fans saying how much they liked dark island lobbying for a greater role form and they were really impressed by the impact it made so they actually considered doing it until they noticed that some of the letters were referencing things he'd done in episodes that hadn't actually aired yet so after doing a bit of digging they discovered that Yeager himself was behind this he had apparently been writing to fans personally to pressure them into writing to Paramount to say how much they liked dis character so that was it him gone pretty much straight away they replaced him with some of the other engineers that finally made Geordi a full-time person in that role in like season two still though did have a good run on Gilmore Girls so what you can do number four geneviève Bujold now it is a common misconception that Kate Mulgrew was the first female captain in Star Trek history not true of course does a massive disservice to all the women who were captains of other ships just either not named not credit it certainly didn't have their own series but the point I'm trying to get out here is not only was she not the first female captain in Star Trek she wasn't even the first Captain Janeway now in paramount signed off on having a female led Star Trek series the only person they wanted in that role was a legendary Canadian actress geneviève Bujold if you're watching she had an extensive critically acclaimed history of roles in movies but the problem with this was while it meant she was a good actress it meant that she was not in any way prepared for the rigors of intensive TV filming the long sometimes 18-hour days on set the constant changes to the write into the script being fiddled with all the time by hair and makeup and wardrobe even having to work with directors she didn't really know all did not sit well with her took it at all and she left after just a day and a half on set yes on only her second day filming she headed back to a trailer in tears she was followed by the producers a short conversation took place in which it was agreed that things would be better for everybody if she just did not come back to the show and they recast the part of Nicole Janeway to Kathryn Janeway with Kate Mulgrew so technically technically she might have walked here but if she didn't the push was coming number three gates mcfadden yes they actually fired Beverly Crusher she didn't really go and take a job as the head of Starfleet medical interestingly the actual truth of this story is only really come out in the last few years because when she left the show Paramount issued a statement saying she had left to pursue other career options when in reality she just had a phone call from her agent saying actually they just want to go in another direction but the plot thickens substantially when Rick Berman spoke on a panel or a podcast to me I don't remember and said that writer maurice Hurley really had a bone to pick with her as an actress he hated the way she did all of a scene so we used his considerable sway to have a removed from the show and if you think that's maybe a little bit convenient literally the day Maurice left the show as a writer they got gates mcfadden back now that return was probably just inevitable really because fans hadn't really reacted to dr. Pulaski all that well there was a strong letter-writing campaign a real one this time wanting her to come back and even Patrick Stewart thought it was a dumbed which a now in hindsight just seems really idiotic Maurice made plum number two case the alley now at the time the inclusion of Kirstie Alley looked like a transparent unexpensive attempt to add some much-needed star power to a long-running franchise movie and it was but what people don't realize that Kirstie Alley was actually a lifelong Star Trek fan who run around everywhere as a little girl with a pair of fake Vulcan ears on pretending to be Spock's Doris when the part came up for a young Vulcan she absolutely flew down its throat she was great in the role she was a hit with the fans it was absolutely perfect but then star trek 3 rolled around and she just got randomly replaced with Robin Curtis and nobody seems to know why and the truth of that is of course well it differs depending on whose version of events you want to believe but the short version is money now the official line from Paramount was when they approached her to reprise the role her representatives asked for 10 times the fee she'd originally been given which would have put her ahead of stars like DeForest Kelley and they were like well look we like you but you're just not worth that kind of money and Ali's version of this is that while yes they did approach her about reprising the role they came to her with a bigger part of a Star Trek 3 but less money than she got in Star Trek 2 so she concluded the wit action that interested in having her and decided to walk away from the franchise now where do you think the truth of that is because my guess is the middle number one the entire cast of the original pilot - Spock happy see see what I've done there I've got back to that point I made about being the second time which I did in the first entry we're visiting that at the end now so it's kept you the whole way good good interconnected list writing that get on my level in 1964 with America's still firmly gripping just the famous throbbing erection is hard over the space race NBC decided to cash in on this by commissioning a show that would deal with man's wonderous voyage into the Stars it was called Star Trek and it was written produced piloted everything by 1965 and they hated it it was too slow it was too intellectual it was too ponderous it was to scientifically see boring it was not the action-adventure that millions of Americans were imagining the final frontier to be so they decided not to pick a the option on the show however in a move that hardly never happens they were still sold on the premise and they were still sold on gene roddenberry as a creator so they said don't do another one out when Captain Pike out went number one out when dr. boyce and in to replace them came the more action-oriented characters of Kirk and Sulu and Scotty they did keep Spock but they gave him a whole new character or his emotions were suppressed and invented the whole concept of Vulcans now yes Pike did stay part of the Canon IVA prices roll a few episodes later and more on that next year I'm sure and a few of the faces were recast into other roles but that was it Star Trek's most brutal swing of the axe came before even started so there you have it those are seven actors who were fired by Star Trek read to you by a man who's gonna fire himself if anything untoward happens to this recording of this video let me know what you made of it all in the comments below of course you get a like share and subscribe if we premiere this I'm assuming we did then thank you so much for joining us we're really enjoying this whole trek culture adventure so join us for a whole post more of it you can get me on twitter at Adam Cleary trek culture on twitter at trek culture our wonderful editor chris at edit chris edit but in the meantime that's all for now we'll see you soon I need a star trekky signing off somehow in the comments goodbye [Music] [Music]

Channel: TrekCulture

Views: 1,014,337

Rating: 4.7754993 out of 5

Keywords: Star Trek, Actors, Voyager, Discovery, Picard, Deep Space Nine, DS9, Denise Crosy, Jeri Ryan, Grace Lee Whitney, Wil Wheaton, TOS, The Original Series, The Next Generation, Enterprise, Terry farrell, marina sirtis, Jennifer lien, kes, yeoman rand, janice rand, beff yearger, argyle, Genevieve bujold, Nicole janeway, Kate mulgrew, gates mcfadden, beverly crusher, dr crusher, Maurice hurley, Kirstie alley, saavik, robin curtis, the cage, magel barrett, jeffery hunter, fired, recast

Id: 47efvwqDp7E

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020