The Star Trek Exit That Saved Marina Sirtis From Being Fired As Deanna Troi

The "Star Trek" franchise has always been pretty progressive, but for many years it could also be pretty darn difficult for the women who worked on it. Franchise creator Gene Roddenberry and some of his disciples, including "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" producer Rick Berman, seemed to treat the female characters and the women that played them as eye candy and little more. Though "Star Trek: The Original Series" had only Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as Nurse Chapel and Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was set to have a little more equality, with big roles for women in counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Chief Security Officer Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). Unfortunately, by season 2, two of those women would be gone. 

In a panel at Star Trek Las Vegas in 2018 (via ScreenRant), Sirtis revealed that her future on the show was pretty uncertain after the first season, but after Crosby's Tasha Yar was killed off, she knew she was safe for at least a little while. 

It's really unfortunate, but "Star Trek" has a long history of women being written off and fired, starting with Grace Lee Whitney's character Janice Rand allegedly being written off simply because her character had too much chemistry with Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), which would have kept him from being an alien-humping bachelor. Sirtis told the audience at the panel that she knew she was "on the bubble" of being fired and that she felt purely "decorative" when co-star Crosby asked to be written out of the show near the end of season 1 (due to frustrations of her own about being a sex object with little to do). When Frakes pushed back and said she probably wasn't about to be fired, Sirtis confirmed it:

"Majel [Roddenberry] told me for a fact. Years later, I confronted her, because we were very close [...] I said to Majel years later, 'Majel, I was going to get fired, wasn't I?' And she said 'yes, you were. Gene came home one day and said we have one too many women.' [...] You need a doctor, you need a security chief, you really don't need a psychologist. And it was when Denise [Crosby], Denise had no clue, but when Denise left the show, she saved my job."

Though she didn't really want her character to die, Yar was killed off. Shortly after, McFadden was asked not to return for season 2, though she was replaced by another female Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Kate Pulaski (Diana Muldaur). Both McFadden and Crosby would eventually return, but it sounds like their leaving when they did saved Sirtis from the chopping block. 

It's really a shame that Roddenberry allegedly wanted to get rid of Troi simply because there were too many women on the crew, especially when she eventually ended up being one of the most important members of the Enterprise crew. As the ship's counselor, she helped many of the characters process their feelings over the absolutely bonkers nonsense they had to face as a part of being on the final frontier, giving us insight into their lives that was even better than personal logs. Not only that, but her relationship with Riker is honestly the only really good lasting romance in all of "Next Gen."

Unfortunately, another great character would face a frustrating end just a few years later on sister series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," with Terry Farrell's Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax being killed off instead of having her part reduced at the end of the show's sixth season, like she had asked for. Not every actor who has left the franchise did so on such a sour note, but it is wild how many women parted ways with "Star Trek" for sexist reasons. Things seem to be mostly better these days, but the 20th century certainly was a time.