10 TV Characters That Disappeared Without A Trace
2. Janice Rand - Star Trek
This was a bit of a messy one, and definitely a situation that would not happen nowadays.
Grace Lee Whitley was cast to play Yeoman Janice Rand. A crewmember on the USS Enterprise, and the personal Yeoman to the one and only Captain Kirk. The two were supposed to have a romantic relationship that spanned over the show's run; a Jim and Pam relationship before Jim and Pam were around.
However halfway through production of the first season things began to get a bit... messy. Now, there are a lot of contradicting stories about why Janice was written off, but there are two main ones that people pretty much believe to be gospel.
One theory was that the show came in completely over budget, and around halfway through the season the showrunner was told to cut out some characters. And due to Janice being one of the more pointless characters, there only to serve as Kirk's love interest, she was put on the chopping block.
The other theory was that they decided a bit late into the show that Kirk should become more of a ladies man, meeting different women around the galaxy every episode, and having a steady love interest in Janice did not fit into the narrative.
Having completely disposable female characters on your show just to make your male leads more interesting definitely wouldn't fly now. But back in the sixties this kind of thing happened all the time, so the two theories are completely believable.