10 TV Characters With The Most Wasted Potential

10. Captain Georgiou - Star Trek: Discovery

When you get an esteemed actress like beloved Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh on a show, you're well within your rights to assume she's going to play a big role and stick around for the foreseeable. Because who wouldn't want that!

That wasn't the case this time around, as Yeoh's turn in Star Trek: Discovery as Philippa Georgiou, captain of doomed USS starship Shenzhou, was a middling two-episode affair that ended with a noble death and nothing more. Yeoh returns as an alternate version of the character later on, which is fun but not the same. 

Despite giving a great performance (no surprises there) and serving as one of the finest additions to Discovery's opening two episodes, Yeoh was cut down before the series could really get moving, and Georgiou - mourning but hopeful, brave and pragmatic - was never allowed to become more than a glorified one-off. 

You can argue that Georgiou's death was a necessary evil to sell the stakes of the coming drama, and to make way for show lead Michael Burnham, but Discovery simply made the captain too compelling to disappear so quickly.