1. Nigel Havers As Captain Janeway
Considering the last two, I bet you were expecting another X-Men based actor weren't you? Well not so. To say that the casting of Captain Katherine Janeway was an onerous one is an understatement. It is the only main cast role in Star Trek (at least that I know of) where someone was cast and then quit after filming began and had to be replaced with someone else. Also it is the only casting I know of where the network were pushing for a Captain of an entirely different gender. So cast your minds back to the founding of UPN. Star Trek: Voyager was to be its launch show. Star Trek had returned to television in 1987 with The Next Generation, and Voyager was due to be the third incarnation of that era. It was also the first live action series since The Original Series to be network bound and not released directly into syndication. So what UPN wanted was the old Star Trek, and one that didn't really shake anything up. The Next Generation had been a huge success and this was the first ship-based series since. So they wanted a male lead. The producers on the other hand saw that they were moving forward with a stand on equality and after the appointment of an African American lead for Deep Space Nine in Avery Brooks, they wanted to court the same reaction by having a female Captain in Star Trek for the first time as a main character. So the producers were forced to audition both male and female actors for the role. People say that Kate Mulgrew was the second choice to the originally cast Geneviève Bujold but she wasn't. You see, the producers whittled it down to two choices, one male and one female. On one hand, you had Nigel Havers of Chariots of Fire and numerous British television series fame, and on the other you had Bujold a Golden Globe winner and former Academy Award nominee. So without even auditioning her, they offered it to Bujold. She lasted two days before the producers sent her home. If you've seen the footage they shot of her on those two days, you can see why. She just wasn't there. With all the costumes made in female sizes and the script written with Janeway as a woman, they offered the part to Mulgrew. Considering the pressure that UPN was placing on the producers to cast a man, you have to think that there would have been a fair chance that if Bujold had quite before filming began allowing time for script re-writes and costume adjustments then there would have been a fair chance that Havers would have stepped in instead of Mulgrew. But up against Bujold where the producers could point at her awards and background to show why she was a superior choice, he had no chance.