7 Star Trek Actors Who Were Fired

5. Biff Yeager

I just want to take a moment to reflect on what an amazing name Biff Yaeger is...

...

Ok, that's enough.

It's a testament to LeVar Burton's performance as Cheif Engineer Geordi LaForge that a lot of people forget that he was originally the ship's helmsman. While he was manning the conn, all the way down on Deck 36 (yes, I'm that big of a nerd) the Enterprise had a revolving door of "Chief Engineers" who worked together to maintain the ship's systems and fix its technical problems.

Most of these figures didn't stick long in the memory, but one who did was Lieutenant Commander Argyle. In fact, he was so good in the role that the show's producers planned on making him a permanent member of the cast and giving him a much bigger role in future episodes until one day they just suddenly changed their minds.

The story - at least according to Will Wheaton - is that Paramount received a deluge of letters from fans advocating for a bigger part in the show for Argyle. They were impressed by the impact he'd made on the audience until, one day, they noticed that some of the letters were referencing his role in episodes that hadn't aired yet. Becoming suspicious they found out that Yaeger himself was behind this.

He'd written to fans personally to pressure them into sending letters to Paramount. Thus, they quickly binned him from the show, added some new engineers, before finally making LaForge the full-time Cheif of Engineering later in the show. Oops.

Still though, he was a big hit on Gilmore Girls so every cloud.