Characters with no job security

Over in this thread we discuss movie and TV characters played by multiple actors.

Which got me wondering, which roles (not necessarily a character with the same name) wound up continually recast – either because the character was somehow removed, or because it was a glorified extra, and they didn’t care who played the role?

I have three to start with:

Murphy Brown’s secretary

Star Trek security guard

Any wife of any of the Cartwrights on Bonanza

Any girlfriend of Captain Kirk. For that matter, anyone the hero fell in love with in the first 20 minutes of a 60s TV show.

Anyone other the seven castaways who visited Gilligan’s Island.

Callers on Frazier Crane’s radio show.

Just Captain Kirk? Almost all of the romantic interests in all of the Trek series’ come to inglorious ends.

After that…pretty much any position in the Japan Self-Defence Forces. Particularly the armored forces—the one place you never want to be, in fiction, is manning a Japanese tank. You’d have better luck staying with the Polish Lancers. :eek:

Well, having polished a few lances in my time, I have to say the Lance Polishers are more fun to spend time with…

CTU (24) security guard…heck, they even went so far as to start dressing them in red uniforms. :smiley:

Bond babe.

It’s tough to separate job security from life expectancy. If a character appears only in one episode, it probably means that hour/half-hour will cover the last few days or so of their life.

The red shirts from TOS and yellows from TNG are a good example of this. In a similar vein, the guy working OPS or CONN on the Enterprise-D other than Data, Wesley Crusher, or Ensign Ro is either part of a really big rotation or just not up to the task of molesting that shiny black panel. :stuck_out_tongue:

Old friends and colleauges tend to survive at a cost, though. If they’re not killed, they either go insane or fall from grace. Take O’Brien’s old captain, Maxwell from “The Wounded,” or Riker’s former captain-turned-admiral Pressman in “The Wounded.”

Star Trek is loaded with that kind of thing, but Law and Order’s another good example. There are probably dozens of episodes like this, but in one there’s a forensics expert that Van Buren had worked with closely, but turned out to be fixing evidence and sending innocent people to prison.

And let’s not forget Firefly, either. But I’ll let someone else break out with spoilers. :wink:

Gil from The Simpsons. Pretty much defines the genre.

I think Drummer for Spinal Tap qualifies as a high-risk position…

In any serial killer mystery, the first suspect will be the next victim.

Heroic black guys in any action/adventure movie in which the lead is not him.

The Evil Overlord’s minion who has to give said Evil Overlord bad news. Really, if I were given that job, I’d say, “right away, sir!” head out, and make a run for it. I’d lose a cushy job, but I’d keep breathing.

Nigel Powers: Look at you, you don’t even have a nametag.

Felix Liter from Bond films. I think they failed to have guy play him twice, ever.

Snakes! On A Plane!

David Hedison played Leiter twice, in Live and Let Die and License to Kill.

Scientist on the SS Discovery seems a pretty marginal position.

mm

Look here chaps.

How can you ignore the leading character of ‘Dr Who’, who regularly regenerates? :eek:

Of course Tom Baker was the best …

One of the recurring bits in the Harry Potter series is that the “Defense Against the Dark Arts” teacher gets replaced every year.

Johnson from the Drew Carey Show. That guy must have been fired every week.

George Jetson used to get fired a lot. Fired and then rehired, but fired.