Give me examples.
Also, I'm not the only person who has given up on the series because of this decision to erase Kate completely.
Spoilers Batwoman - Season 1
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
Give me examples.
Also, I'm not the only person who has given up on the series because of this decision to erase Kate completely.
The only situation I can think of is Babylon 5.
Babylon 5 replaced Michael O'Hare (Sinclair) as the lead with Bruce Boxleitner(Sheridan) between Season 1 and Season 2. It later came out that O'Hare had suffered from mental health problems and that was the reason, but the show had to re-tool because JMS had actually had it planned out from start to finish. Although much of what was going to be Sinclair's storyline was just transferred to Sheridan anyway.
If you're looking for a "after the first season the show replaces the lead character with a NEW lead character played by another actor" type situation.
I can think of other shows where actors were replaced, but played the same character. Or where the lead actor left the show and the main character was written off and a new actor/character became the main(but the examples I can think of happened several seasons into a shows run) or actors who weren't really the 'lead' character.
We discussed that in this very thread back in May:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/batwoman-season-1.298000/page-72#post-13399916
Most of the examples there are recastings, but Earth: Final Conflict replaced its lead character with an entirely different one (in the dumbest way possible, by having a half-alien baby that was born in the season finale grow into a fully educated and functioning adult man in literally a matter of seconds).
A Superbaby, magically an adult 15 minutes later.
What I wanted explained is why a veritable new born decided to get frosted Tips halfway through his season, when it takes years of bad advice to be a BRUH.
What I wanted explained is why a veritable new born decided to get frosted Tips halfway through his season, when it takes years of bad advice to be a BRUH.
It’s interesting — casting someone so distinct from Ruby Rose in height, build, and ethnicity means that it’s going to be obvious to everyone in-story that a different person has taken over as Batwoman. So they’re going to lean into the change in the storytelling. There are likely to be questions about why the original Batwoman and Kate Kane both disappeared at the same time, and maybe whether the new Batwoman had anything to do with it.
(Height-wise, at 5'3½", the new Batwoman will be one of the Arrowverse's shortest heroines, tied with Lightning/Jennifer Pierce. Other costumed heroines on the shorter side include Thunder/Anissa Pierce and Green Arrow II/Mia Smoak at 5'4½" -- and Stargirl/Courtney Whitmore at 5'2", though she hasn't connected with the Arrowverse yet. Most Arrowverse superheroines are in the 5'6" - 5'8" range. Although I expect the 5'3" Mary Hamilton to adopt a Bat-sidekick identity sometime this season, probably either Flamebird or Hawkfire.)
I hope they can manage to do an episode where Supergirl comes to town to confront the new Batwoman and investigate Kate’s disappearance. They went to all the trouble to merge the universes but have hardly made any use of it since. And they were setting up the Kara/Kate friendship to be the replacement for Barry/Oliver. I hope they don’t just let it fall by the wayside without confronting the change.
(Height-wise, at 5'3½", the new Batwoman will be one of the Arrowverse's shortest heroines, tied with Lightning/Jennifer Pierce. Other costumed heroines on the shorter side include Thunder/Anissa Pierce and Green Arrow II/Mia Smoak at 5'4½" -- and Stargirl/Courtney Whitmore at 5'2", though she hasn't connected with the Arrowverse yet. Most Arrowverse superheroines are in the 5'6" - 5'8" range. Although I expect the 5'3" Mary Hamilton to adopt a Bat-sidekick identity sometime this season, probably either Flamebird or Hawkfire.)
I hope they can manage to do an episode where Supergirl comes to town to confront the new Batwoman and investigate Kate’s disappearance. They went to all the trouble to merge the universes but have hardly made any use of it since. And they were setting up the Kara/Kate friendship to be the replacement for Barry/Oliver. I hope they don’t just let it fall by the wayside without confronting the change.
NYPD Blue comes to mind. I’m sure there’s more if it doesn’t have to be the primary lead actor after just one season.
Wow. You've never seen a show in your life where a lead actor has left, been fired, or died and was replaced by someone else playing a new character? You must not watch much of anything.
As for dropping season one elements... well that's not that uncommon. Season one is more or less a test phase to see what works and what doesn't.
An example of a season one element being dropped would be "Barry Vision" from the Flash. For shows essentially starting over with season two I'll give you two examples. Mannix which ended up running eight seasons and The Jeff Foxworthy Show which was put down after season two.
Oh. A knee jerk reactor who instead of giving the new version of the show a chance they just immediately dismiss it for... reasons.
They're not erasing her. They're just not using her as the main character anymore.
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They’re not erasing her. Where the hell did you get that idea?
I mean, this is the guy who refused to watch any other Arrowverse show after one of the Legends seasons ended with the entire timeline changing. The timeline was mostly fixed between seasons, but still.
I don’t think suspension of disbelief existed for him.
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MASH one of the most popular shows ever did it three times. Trading Henry Blake for Sherman Potter, Trapper John McIntyre for B.J. Honeycutt and Frank Burns for Charles Winchester.
They lose one, but they gain two in me and my wife who will resample the series now that there is a new lead, as Ruby Rose simply wasn't cut out for the role.
Pretty much half the show was thrown out after season one of Supergirl. The DEO Area-51 desert base being replaced with a downtown skyscraper, the Lane family, either of the team boys being into Kara...
Well, the first two of those changes were necessitated by the production's relocation from LA to Vancouver. They had to build new sets and part ways with actors who weren't willing to make the move. (The biggest loss being Calista Flockhart's Cat Grant.)
There's also The ORIGINAL Star Trek - they really did want to go with Chistopher Pike/Jeffery Hunter - and they would have too if not for Hunter's wife. They were acceding to a host of her demands untikl she finally convinced her husband do a series would end his film career - so they recast and went with Willian Shatner as James T. Kirk
As well as the classic Mission Impossible where actor Stephen Hill (character was Dan Briggs) was replaced by Peter Graves (character was Jim Phelps) as the team leader for the Second Season onward.
But none of those series or characters had supporting characters tied to the main characters.
Star Trek didn't feature Pike's father and ex-lover and Mission: Impossible didn't feature Brigg's gone batshit insane sister playing a major part in the story arc.
and given that M:I's characters were pretty much one dimensional with almost no background swapping out characters with no explaination didn't matter.
Changing cast after a single pilot is a different matter -- it happens frequently. Changing the lead after an entire season is massively different. Imagine if Pike had been the captain for all of season 1 and Kirk had been brought in at the start of season 2.
Those weren't the only second-season cast changes. Superboy also replaced third lead T.J. White (James Calvert) with the much more annoying Andy McAlister (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) and recast recurring villain Lex Luthor from the atrociously bad Scott Wells to the eventually brilliant (once they stopped asking him to play Gene Hackman) Sherman Howard. And Lois & Clark dropped season 1 regulars John Shea (Luthor) and Tracy Scoggins (Cat Grant) without replacing them.
Superboy went through even more drastic changes in season 3, dropping the entire college setting and having Clark and Lana become interns at the Bureau of Extranormal Matters alongside new regulars Peter Jay Fernandez as their coworker Matt Ritter and Robert Levine as their boss C. Dennis Jackson. It also became a much smarter, more serious, somewhat darker show.
You really should watch M:I some day - no, you can't really say that the character of Dan Briggs had no ties to the other characters in the first season; and yes they did swap out some characters during the run, but a few were there for the entire run and had backgrounds. It was hardly an anthology type series.
But if you want another example (although it's a show I never watched):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083395/trivia
I've seen all the S1 M:I and there was nothing that struck me as particularly close ties that would make a difference if characters were swapped out.
it was also an episodic series, an anthology series would be something like The Twilight Zone.
Actually it's not. That was a case of simply recasting the role. Cagney was originally played by Loretta Switt in the pilot (but she was contractually tied to M*A*S*H). Foster didn't sit well with the suits who felt she might be seen by the audience as a lesbian.
Sharon Gless was also in the mind of the series creators but she was unavailable at the time of the pilot and first season (6eps). When it went to a full season pickup, Gless was available and rest the is tv history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagney_&_Lacey#Original_cast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Gless
Shatner does claim that his scene-stealing during the show was because he was afraid that, with Spock being the breakout character, if he ever let Kirk end up in the back seat, he'd be fired, the producers would make Spock the Captain, give Nimoy a token raise, and pocket the difference, so there is a possible world where that happened to Star Trek (though in that case it would be an existing character replacing the lead, not someone all-new).