What Could Have Been / CSI

• CSI's writers originally planned to go on longer with Grissom's otosclerosis, and possibly have it eventually force him into retirement, but they got a lot of letters about the fact that the condition is easily repaired with surgery, and finished the arc in season 3.
• It appears that Ray Langston's character was retooled after William Petersen announced his departure. An issue of the short-lived CSI official magazine talks of him being a younger character with a different last name who was a replacement for Warrick. The secret struggle thing was always there, though.
• Nick and Catherine were going to be paired up from the beginning, and there's even stills of a cut kiss scene that still exist. This was scrapped because it would seem too much like Nick was just her boy-toy. (Such considerations never seem to have gotten in the way of the older Gil and younger Sara getting together, though.)
• Both Gil Grissom and Mac Taylor from CSI: NY had different names originally with Gil Scheinbaum and Rick Carlucci, but both actors changed them with William Petersen renaming his character's last name as Grissom after astronaut Gus Grissom because he was a fan of the US space program. Gary Sinise used his son's nickname, Mac (short for McCanna) and Taylor after his Forrest Gump character (leading to, unsurprisingly, a few Epileptic Trees as a result).
• There was intended to be a fourth series in the franchise titled CSI: London, which was to be centered around CSI: NY character Dr. Peyton Driscoll after she had moved back to the city. It was never put into production for unknown reasons, though they did get far enough into development to pick out which The Who song they were going to use as the theme ("Eminence Front"). New Orleans was considered for a spinoff location as well, though one surmises without Stella going there as she did as well as Chicago, which was established to be the home town of Mac Taylor.
• Peyton's season 6 return was planned as the start of a love triangle arc with it being revealed in season 7 if Mac picked her or Aubrey, his new potential love interest. However, Melina Kanakaredes' departure and Claire Forlani taking a part on Camelot scrapped it.
• The writers still had ideas for hooking up Jo and Mac. The 200th ep would have had a wedding but they weren't sure who Mac would marry. One idea was to have a fake out and everyone would think it was Christine, then reveal it was Jo. Or if the series continued, have Mac leave Christine and hook up with Jo. Some backlash resulted from unhappy fans after it was revealed.
• Christine's brother was written first as a Marine buddy of Mac's but it would have been unworkable given Mac's timeline-she would have been too young back then.
• Before Laurence Fishburne was named as William Petersen's replacement, John Malkovich and Kurt Russell were considered for the part. Malkovich really considered taking the part, but after talking to Petersen and Gary Sinise, personal friends, he didn't want to commit to a ten-month shoot.
• The original outline for Catherine, way when the first season came out, was that she was born and raised in Bozeman, Montana. She was later retconned as a Las Vegas native (although Lindsay Monroe ended up being from there).
• One would wonder what the parent show would've been like had Holly not been killed off in the second episode as she was setting up to be a series regular prior to test audiences finding her uninteresting after watching the pilot that resulted in her being killed off and replaced by Sara.
• All three series' 2007-08 seasons were going to comprise of 24 episodes each but due to the writer's strike at the time, the parent show ultimately ended up with 17 episodes, while both Miami and NY ended up with 21 episodes each.

---