Why do the writers kill off characters when actors want to leave?

[Frontier]

I hate when shows kill off characters. It's just a poor excuse for something to do, IMHO. It also does box them into a corner in the unlikely scenario that a show doesn't continue to do well without someone.

For Trek, I think killing Jadzia was the worst thing they ever did. And that was when it happened. Since then, we've (recently) learned from Terry Farrell that she was willing to continue to play Jadzia as a recurring/limited role. Which makes me all the more angry.

Having Jadzia promoted to Captain and given her own command due to the multiple factors of A) displayed ability, B) the realities of war (transfers, promotions) and C) Starfleet's desire to separate her and Worf from the same assignment due to Worf's actions in "Change of Heart" all would have played better than "Oops, she's senselessly dead just like anyone else who dares leave."

And for those Ezri fans out there, Jadzia being promoted doesn't negate getting that character. They still could have introduced a new person with the same type of character named Ezri. She just wouldn't have been Dax.

Though I think a lot of Niner's would have preferred to see one of the recurring cast promoted. Nog or Garak, most likely.

I know the reasons why it's done professionally, but I can't help but think knowing what I do about the industry that, yeah, when it comes down to it, a lot of the time it is a personal "they're leaving? fuck them!" reaction from producers who in turn task the writers with doing such.

 

[Tiberius]

Please do not accuse me "slanting the argument" by claiming that Jadzia and Ezri are similar due just to hair color. They are both Trill, both women, both Dax, both have blue uniforms, and yes, both have dark hair. Are there differences? Of course. But there are also too many similarities, and I think the writers took the easy path by creating a character similar enough to Jadzia that the audience wouldn't really mind her being gone. I think it would have been more interesting to create a much difference character.

You say that there are too many similarities, but the only ones you mention are surface things. WHO they actually are is very different. Jadzia was an old wise soul, Ezri was young and inexperienced.

Can you give me any similarities that are not superficial?

Honestly, by your logic, Picard and Sisko are the same character. Both the same species, wearing the same colour uniform, both have very similar hairstyles...

I'm sorry but your counterargument is just sloppy. There are several other differences that I have pointed out.

Yes, but you also claimed that the few superficial similarities overcome them.

Yes, we have. Trill uncomfortable with and/or exploring past hosts experiences--yep, Jadzia experienced this. Other people uncomfortable with new Trill host who is the same yet difference from previous host--watch the TNG episode. Also see Sisko/Jadzia's encounter in Emissary.

In the DS9 pilot, we never got to see both sides of the change. In TNG, all we have is a few seconds of Bev saying she can't do it, and then it's over. Absolutely no development there. And in "Rejoined", there is a good deal more revealed, but again, it's over in one episode, then Lenara goes away and everything is back to normal. With Ezri, she stuck around and the consequences had to be dealt with. This never happened before.

 

[Silvercrest]

Please do not accuse me "slanting the argument" by claiming that Jadzia and Ezri are similar due just to hair color. They are both Trill, both women, both Dax, both have blue uniforms, and yes, both have dark hair. Are there differences? Of course. But there are also too many similarities, and I think the writers took the easy path by creating a character similar enough to Jadzia that the audience wouldn't really mind her being gone.

Allow me to rephrase. If I'm going to use a cliche, perhaps "pushing the point" would be a better one. The whole issue of the writers wanting to bring back the Trill was that she's still Dax, so saying "both Trill and both Dax" is really pushing the point. Those aren't separate objections. Unless you'd accept bringing on a dark-haired female Trill in a blue uniform whose name is Ezri Smith. If you think that's acceptable, I'll concede the point.

Enterprise is Great also has a point that killing Jadzia leaves Kira as the only female main cast. Are you good with that? If not, then you'd agree that any replacement they brought on would have to be female. That knocks out "woman" as an objection to Ezri.

I think it would have been more interesting to create a much difference character.

She was a different character. She had a very different personality and a very different role on the show, in ways that both Christopher and I have described. [edit: And Tiberius.] The things you're talking about are cosmetic and don't affect characterization.

But adding her the cast with only a season to go seemed kind of dumb.

Dumb? The fact that she had connections to everyone made her easier to integrate into the show than a brand-new character. If they'd brought on Ensign Jones whom no one has ever heard of, it would take half a dozen episodes to get him established, and more to get him developed. Then people would be complaining that Ensign Jones was hogging all the screen time from the regulars. Or else they'd leave him undeveloped. As you say, there was only one season to go.

You do not seem to think that Jadzia and Ezri very similar. I do. They are both Dax. They are both Trill, both women--now I'm repeating myself.

Yes. Is that all you've got?

 

[The Wormhole]

Actually an interesting way would have been to have Jadzia assigned to a ship. Bring in a new science officer, female if they wanted more women sure. Then have Jadzia be killed in action at the start of the final chapter. I think that may have worked better than what we got and be something different.

Having a character killed off screen some time after they left the show is a common enough trope on TV, and usually not a popular one.

And before you say "it wouldn't have to be off-screen, she could have come back for the episode," I'll have to add that yes, it would have to off-screen since I do not get the impression that Terry Farrell would have agreed to do a guest spot in DS9's final season. Hell, word is she got pretty upset over one episode using audio clips of her.

 

[Christopher]

I'm sure that besides making sure Kira wasn't the only female series regular that the writers didn't want to pass up the opportunity to amp the drama up by replacing Worf's wife and everyone's friend with a brand new character with all the memories of Jadzia.

Yes, good point. That was one Trill-related story we definitely hadn't seen before: how other people who were friends with a Trill adjust to working alongside her next host, trying to deal with the ways in which she's similar but also different. Sisko had experience with that, but it was a difficult adjustment for people like Worf, Quark, and Bashir.

Please do not accuse me "slanting the argument" by claiming that Jadzia and Ezri are similar due just to hair color. They are both Trill, both women, both Dax, both have blue uniforms, and yes, both have dark hair.

Spock and McCoy were both men, both wore blue uniforms, and both had dark hair, so by your logic, they must've been the same character!

And of course they were both Trill and both Dax -- that was the whole point, to explore how the next Dax host would be different from the previous one in surprising and challenging ways.

Christopher: Perhaps in the future you can make your argument in one place instead of picking apart my post line by line and responding to each part individually.

Huh? Why would you object to the standard practice of responding to a post paragraph by paragraph? Especially in a post where you're responding to others in the same format?

You do not seem to think that Jadzia and Ezri very similar. I do. They are both Dax. They are both Trill, both women--now I'm repeating myself. Please see my comments above.

You're repeating yourself because you don't really have much to base your argument on.

I hate when shows kill off characters. It's just a poor excuse for something to do, IMHO.

But stories that never risk doing anything that upsets the audience are never going to be great stories. Fans should hate it when a character dies. Death is a terrible, painful thing, and it should be portrayed that way instead of dishonestly sanitized as something that only happens to insignificant redshirts and awful villains. It's supposed to hurt and make you angry and fill you with regret and frustration at the lost opportunities. That's what death is. And it's cowardly for fiction to avoid confronting that.

And for those Ezri fans out there, Jadzia being promoted doesn't negate getting that character. They still could have introduced a new person with the same type of character named Ezri. She just wouldn't have been Dax.

But the whole point of it was that she was Dax, that she and the other characters had to struggle with the fact that she was both familiar and different at the same time. It was the natural direction to take the Dax character, to put her in a new host and explore the early process of adjustment that we'd only heard about in retrospect before, with the added complication of the new host being reluctant and unprepared. The whole nature of the Trill is about their ability to "reincarnate" from one life to another. That was implicit in the character from day one. So it only made sense to fulfill that potential. Hell, it would've been a waste of potential if they hadn't killed Jadzia and introduced a new host.

I know the reasons why it's done professionally, but I can't help but think knowing what I do about the industry that, yeah, when it comes down to it, a lot of the time it is a personal "they're leaving? fuck them!" reaction from producers who in turn task the writers with doing such.

I'm sure it sometimes is, but there are plenty of good reasons for writers to kill off characters we love, characters it pains us to lose. So it would be very, very unwise to assume that killing off a character is always done out of petty animosity. Often it's just the opposite. The goal is to evoke strong reactions in the audience, to make them feel the loss. And you can do that most convincingly if you kill off a character that you, the writer, genuinely care about and find painful to lose. I've killed off characters and then cried for half an hour afterward.

 

[MacLeod]

Some times part of the negative reaction from the fans to killing a character is not so much killing them but how they are killed.

 

[Christopher]

Some times part of the negative reaction from the fans to killing a character is not so much killing them but how they are killed.

Which, again, feels to me like missing the point, depending on just what it is they're objecting to. The idea that characters should only die if it's noble or purposeful or something is juvenile and unrealistic. Death is often pointless and unfair and hurtful, and like I said, it's cowardly for fiction to pretend otherwise. People who think that fiction should be forbidden to upset them or make them angry or frustrated are misunderstanding what fiction is for. It's supposed to stimulate all the emotions, not just the safe and comfortable ones.

Personally I'm far more upset by alternate Tasha Yar's "meaningful" death in "Yesterday's Enterprise" than by her random one in "Skin of Evil." The one in "Skin of Evil" was brutally honest about the randomness of violence, and her death was anything but meaningless because she died trying to save others. "Yesterday's Enterprise" abandoned that honesty and went for the easy, comfortable lie that characters we like should always get to die in noble and fulfilling ways. And then it turned out alt-Tasha died pretty pointlessly anyway, and gave birth to Sela, one of the worst, most gimmicky character ideas in Trek history.

Jadzia's death could probably have been handled better -- hell, the whole Pah-wraith thing was pretty silly throughout -- but I like what it led to. Ezri was a great character, and she and Nicole de Boer brought a fresh energy and dynamic to the final season. The only thing she and Terry Farrell really had in common was that they were equally gorgeous and talented, but in very different ways.

 

[Lance]

^ Totally agreed. Tasha's "second" death never sat easy with me, because I've always felt in a lot of ways it missed the point of her original death: that as a member of the Enterprise's security detail, Tasha faces exactly the same dangers every day that all those random crewmembers did in The Original Series. The fact that she's a regular character rather than some one-shot extra isn't the point; rather, that her job places her in danger as a regular aspect of her duties, and that even as the chief of security, she can still end up having the same kind of senseless, random, instant death as all those nameless red shirts that came before her. Her death at the 'hands' of Armus has got a strangely powerful quality to it even now. It leaves the viewer feeling numb, as if she isn't really dead and it takes a while for it to settle in that she isn't coming back from this one. Exactly how these kinds of deaths happen in real-life. It can be difficult to accept that somebody you love dearly who was alive yesterday is dead today (Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the only other genre series I've ever seen where death has been given such a raw, gritty, utterly honest aspect).

Her return in Yesterday's Enterprise, and the need to somehow 'correct' her death by giving her a more 'noble' sacrifice, to my mind completely misses the point that her original death was making. More than that, it kind of cancels it out. Because as viewers, we're invited to see her 'second' death as being a better one. An aim which (imo) fails when we're told that her ultimate fate was to be captured by Romulans, held as basically a sex slave for God knows how long, and then brutally murdered when she tried to escape. Somehow, being struck down by a living tar pit feels like a better ending, don't we think?

 

[Christopher]

It was also great the way "Skin of Evil" showed us the desperate lengths Dr. Crusher went to in trying to save Tasha's life, which is so much more realistic and effective than just a quick Feinberger wave and a "She's dead, Jim." That was a really powerful scene. I cried not only the first time I watched it, but practically every time I've ever watched it. (Though Ron Jones's music has a lot to do with the scene's impact.)

 

[Sector 7]

It isn't just Star Trek. After two seasons of NCIS, Sasha Alexander wanted to leave the show and the producers agreed ONLY if she agreed to being killed off in her final episode (she appeared in two more after dying. Her funeral episode and a flashback episode when her characters sister appeared).

In general, producers (not writers as the death of a major character is a producers decision) prefer to kill off departing actors because:

1) More dramatic
2) Gives the show leverage over the other actors when it comes to contract renewals.

3) Producers tend to dislike the possibility of fans clamoring for a particular actor to return and killing them off makes that more difficult.

4) As mentioned above, peeved at actors for leaving. This is especially true of a successful tv series. Producers know that many actors will work for 20 years without an opportunity at being a regular in a successful series so they see it as "ingratitude".

+1
A well thought out and quite accurate post. Actors and producers are often very emotional people and do take things personally. All four reasons in your post are occurrences which I have personally witnessed. Here in the "Sunny South" it also happens with regular employers/employees.

 

[RoJoHen]

Of course it's a no-brainer--it's the most convenient fix. Jadzia's leaving?--oh, let's bring in someone very similar to replace her. It's the quick and easy solution.

Jadzia and Ezri were not similar. Different confidence levels, different job specialties, different attitudes toward the whole Trill thing, different dynamics with The Sisko.

You may not approve of bringing in another Trill-- fine. I wasn't all that fond of Ezri either. But you're slanting the argument if you claim they're "very similar" due to hair color.
(Of different lengths.)

I have to admit that, when we were first introduced to Ezri, I was a little annoyed by the physical similarities as well, but you're absolutely right that they had completely different personalities.

I think if Jadzia had died earlier in the show it would have been easier to bring in someone even more different. Make Dax a man again or something. But with them knowing that Ezri would only be around for one season, not a huge amount of time for character development, it made sense to bring her in and make her relate to us as much as possible. In this case, the best way to do that was through her relationship with Worf.

 

[WillsBabe]

I don't know why the writers killed off Tasha and Dax but I think if an actor or actress is going to leave a show, especially an action show, I think the temptation to kill off the characters must be overwhelming.

 

[Greg Cox]

I don't know why the writers killed off Tasha and Dax but I think if an actor or actress is going to leave a show, especially an action show, I think the temptation to kill off the characters must be overwhelming.

Exactly. They might as well go out with a bang!

 

[Silvercrest]

I can picture Jadzia saying, "This is a good day to die!" under other circumstances.

 

[Shazam!]

They wrote Doctor Crusher out after the first season. Also, Wesley left with the door open for a return.

 

[MacLeod]

Of course in relation to Denise Crosby leaving the show, there is a little blooper in the preceeding episodes. At the end when the door is closing you can see her waving.

As for why some make it and some don't. Thw writers like the character, the character is a stand in for one of the creators etc..

 

[Christopher]

Of course in relation to Denise Crosby leaving the show, there is a little blooper in the preceeding episodes. At the end when the door is closing you can see her waving.

That's more an Easter egg than a blooper.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Because it gives the writers a chance to do something dramatic?

 

[The Wormhole]

They wrote Doctor Crusher out after the first season. Also, Wesley left with the door open for a return.

I was under the impression they decided to write Dr. Crusher off during the hiatus between seasons 1 and 2. Saying she already left in the S2 premiere was easier than bring Gates McFadden back to do a good-bye episode.

Sending Wesley off to the Academy was the logical development for his character at the time.

 

[Knight Templar]

They couldn't really kill off Wesley Crusher. Wesley was basically a stand in for Gene Roddenberry (Wesley was G.R.s middle name IIRC) and GR was reportedly hurt that the character was so despised