Janice Rand - Departure

Departure

Grace Lee Whitney was released during the filming of the first season. The last episode in which she appeared as a primary character was "Miri", with "Balance of Terror" (S1E15) being the final episode that included the character of "Yeoman Rand".

The reasons for Whitney's departure from the show are unclear, although the most commonly cited cause was that her character limited romantic possibilities for Captain Kirk. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's biography suggests that it was simply a budget cutback.

Whitney was suffering from alcoholism at the time, and according to some sources this affected her performance, which resulted in Rand's character being written out of certain episodes. Subsequently, this led to Rand being written out of the show altogether. Whitney in the 1980s identified these as possible causes for her dismissal, but in her autobiography, she steadfastly rejected the claims.

According to Whitney, in the first season, only William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were guaranteed to appear in every episode. Of the three episodes in which she did not appear, Rand's character was not written into two ("Mudd's Women" and "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"). The only episode that Rand was deliberately written out of was "Dagger of the Mind", which Whitney said was a creative decision made because the episode's storyline put the mutual and yet repressed attraction between Kirk and Rand too much out in the open.

In her autobiography, Whitney alleges that an unnamed television executive attempted to sexually assault her, and she draws a link between this and her sacking a few days later.