6 geek shows that got away with cast replacements

Josh
Sunday
11:24 pm

It’s one thing to replace an actor between a pilot and the series’ pickup (nobody really knows them that well), or between a movie and the resulting TV series (big screen actors have big-screen egos). But it takes a very special kind of gall to swap out your star talent in the middle of a series run. Yet a handful of shows did. Below are the 6 that we can remember — any others?

6. War of the Worlds (1988-1990)

This series tied in the 1950s movie and even the 1938 radio play quite admirably. The first season starred a four-person government team trying to track down the titular aliens, who could (conveniently enough) take human form. It took place in present-day America, and felt a little like the X-Files, if a little sunnier.

Then the second season promptly ran the series off a cliff, albeit a jagged and kind of cool one. They killed off half of the team (the military expert and the wheelchair-bound nerd), and replaced them with one Adrian Paul (that guy from Highlander: The Series), which, frankly, isn’t a bad deal.

Even more inexplicably, the show moved an indeterminate time into the future, where the world is a cyberpunk-style wasteland where lawlessness reigns. No explanation was ever given for the shift, but nobody really complained, since it was cancelled just before the end of the season.

5. Friday the 13th, The Series (1987-1990)

This weekly horror series ran for three seasons and had absolutely no tie to the film franchise, except for a shameless attempt to make every penny possible.

In the show, Ryan and Micki were two cousins who inherit an antique shop. They proceed to sell all of the antiques until a creepy old man shows up to tell them that all of the antiques were cursed and powerful, and each must be recovered.

The y-chromosomed half of the duo, Ryan, was written out of the series at the end of the second season by transforming him into a young child, where he was promptly replaced for a more marketable star in the form of Johnny Ventura (yeah, that was his name), a hot rodding rebel who, because he wasn’t a relative, had no problem trying to strike up a marketable relationship with the co-star.

4. The X-Files (1993-2002)

The X-Files ran on for a then-unprecendented 9 seasons. The show paired paranormal-minded FBI agent Fox Mulder with skeptic-turned-believer Dana Scully. The show started as a cult classic and was on the verge of cancellation by Fox before its popularity exploded and the show went mainstream.

In order to please actor David Duchovny, the show stopped filming in Vancouver after 6 seasons and moved down to his home of L.A., hiring on a whole new production crew in the process. He rewarded their efforts by leaving the show’s regular cast one year later.

Left without a star, showrunner Chris Carter brought in a grizzled cop played by Robert Patrick, and a new-age agent played by Annabeth Gish.

The show ran largely without Duchovny for the remaining two seasons, but fans didn’t feel his absence, since a large part of the Mulder-less episodes featured searches for the missing character.

3. Airwolf (1984-1987)

This 80s action drama by the creator of Magnum P.I. starred a really boss helicopter, and some people who did some stuff when they weren’t flying around in it.

The show ran for three seasons on CBS, before the cold-war nature of the programming began to lose its appeal with viewers. The fledging USA Network agreed to pick up the ticket, allowing everyone to keep doing what they do best.

Oh, and by, everyone, we mean the aforementioned really boss helicopter. The entire cast was quickly written out of the show in apparently as dull a way possible. Ernest Borgnine’s character was killed by an explosion, Archangel was “suddenly called overseas,” and and the feisty Caitlin disappeared without even a mention.

The main character, Stringfellow, was written out after a brief nod in the first episode, with the main character reins being handed over to his “brother,” a former Vietnam vet.

The budget was slashed by two-thirds during filming. Oh, and the boss helicopter? The network didn’t even get it — only stock footage of it was used for the final season.

2. The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985)

If you were growing up via network television in the early 80s (and we were), you were flabbergasted to tune into The Dukes of Hazzard one night in 1982 to find Bo and Luke Duke were instantly gone, and supposedly had gone off to race the NASCAR circuit. The newcomers, Coy and Vance, were complete ripoffs of the Duke Boys, and were identical to them in almost every way.

In reality, Tom Wopat and John Schneider were getting a little tired of network shenanigans, and demanded a greater cut of merchandise rights. The network responded by giving them the boot, and bringing in two lookalikes. The scripts were modified with little more than crossing out Bo for Coy and Luke for Vance.

Bo and Luke came back, we’re guessing because they realized that jumping over creeks, running moonshine and generally turning right were all frowned upon by NASCAR.

Also, the network realized the Coy and Vance were hugely unpopular with fans, so studio executives cut the actors some slack, and renegotiated, forcing everyone to light their cigars with used $100 bills instead of crisp new ones.

1. Stargate SG-1 (1924-2819)

Ah, the venerable SG-1, which has saved the world more times than Shazam, The Powerpuff Girls and Dyno-Mutt combined. The show ran for a whopping 10 seasons, but really hit its highest marks around the middle of its run.

When Sci-Fi SyFy took on the show, they expected the sixth season to be its last. But the ratings kept delivering, so the cameras kept rolling.

Michael Shanks (who plays inexplicably buff and heroic nerd Daniel Jackson) tried to leave the show after the fifth season, but came back after only one year. Star Richard Dean Anderson, who defined the tone, language and sucess for the show, had slightly better luck, sliding into a reduced role in the 7th season. He largely bowed out after that, returning in only guest roles for the final two seasons. Don Davis left the cast of regulars around the same time.

When the 9th season started, fans were given a decidedly different show. Beau Bridges took over the reign of Stargate Command, and fresh-from-Farscape hero Ben Browder took the reins of SG-1, replacing Anderson, and the show’s script still had him campaigning hard to keep Teal’c, Jackson and Carter.

The new team gamely fought to protect Earth from a newer, even sinisterer supervillain set, but the chemistry was never quite the same.