Was To Be Cut From ST:TNG Cast???

Gates was fired from the show and that info came directly from her at a con. She was not happy about leaving the show either. Diana Muldaur who came in as the new doctor, the character just didn't work out so they asked Gates to come back. Diana was on one of our Seatrek cruises and she talked about her time on the show. She loved working with the cast but she knew it wasn't working so she left and I don't think the fans really accepted the change. The main problem with any large cast is writing for all of them. Sometimes some of the cast will get 1 or 2 lines simply due to not enough time for all of them and what happened with TNG and Voyager, the first officers basically became pretty boys. Frakes had some great episodes but very few and he himslef will tell you what I told you about Pretty Boys. You can only focus so much on the characters per eppy and some do suffer. With Jennifer Lien from Voyager, after 3 years they had no idea how to write for her character so they wrote Kes out and then Seven of Nine comes in and takes over the show. I had been to several cons where the cast complained about being forgotten about and the stories were all 7 of 9. The writers of DS9 had a better way of handling things and I could not see why their method was not applied to TNG and Voyager. I know Robert Beltran said in many interviews he was fed up with being the pretty boy and wanted a decent part and because this was ignored, he made his feelings known all too well in different ways. Smaller casts are better for shows.