Hi everyone, does anybody know why Guinan was barely to see in S6 and in S7 not at all? From what i've read, she really wanted to play that part on ST and "offered" herself, because she's a fan. Ok, during S6 there could have been a movie project or something, but not at all in S7 as well, not a Good-bye for the character, nothing. I really love Guinan and have been a little bit disappointed that she just vanished. And then for ST-Generations - whoops - back again, as if nothing happened. Hmm. ??
Looking at her IMDB page, she was working on several "major" films around that time. But true, she could have showed up for one or two scenes couple of times. Guinan would have worked well in Liaisons, Dark Page (with such a long life and all those marriages, she surely had something awful happen to her aside from Borg destroying her world...), Lower Decks (they had a lot of Ten Forward scenes in that one) or Eye of the Beholder.
Yes she love Trek, and yes she was open to appearing, but this wasn't basically a tiny side job. And wasn't this also during the year she tried her hand as a late night talk a show host? And not only that but you also need to remember that she also did stage work, both in comedy and actual broadway. Just checked her own show the Whoopi Goldberg show was 1992-1993, that I am sure took the majority of her time, and then her film work would have taking her extra time. As for the character on Trek, no episode was really designed around Whoopi, because they never could count on her availability. They generally rewrote material that was set out for Troi, or others. Certainly the writers when they knew she has a full time 5 day a week job, would not write an episode for her character, because there is very little chance they could use it, and the writers simply put don't have that much free time, as they are always rushed to get an episode ready for filming.
^I wonder if that means they had an alternate script for episodes where she had more than a few scenes or was part of the plot (Rascals and Yesterday's Enterprise).