I would like to know, why would the writers kill off so many characters that were an integral part of Dallas? I understand that some storylines come to an end, but all these characters would have brought so much more to the later seasons than what we got.
The characters I think should not have been killed/died off were Julie Gray, Digger Barnes, Kristen, Rebecca Wentworth, Mickey Trotter and Mark Graison. Am I missing anyone or is my list too long and you have no problem with these characters being killed/dying off?
About the ladies, it was a secret aloud that every woman who slept with J.R. had to be axed soon after, Morgan Brittany explains it in one of her interviews. In Rebecca´s case, they seemed to have the dumb idea that she needed to die so they could bring her daughter back, when it would have been a great storyline to have her manipulate Mama and make her hate the Ewings more and more (not that the old beech Beckie needed her for that!).
I also read somewhere that the producers regretted later to have killed Julie Grey because Tina Louise had a lot of chemistry with her co-stars and her character could have done, let´s say, what Kristin eventually did. Timothy Patrick Murphy was part of the long cause-effect storyline that was the fight for Ewing Oil, but I think Driscoll´s suicide was enough for that and they should have kept Lucy´s best boyfriend a little longer. Actor and character worked greatly in the show.
The same goes for John Beck, he seemed to have been hired for her suicide and quest storyline after his introduction, only that all happened in a long-term instead (remember that his story lasted 4 seasons, with him present or not, or being part of Pam´s dream or not). I loved Mark more in each viewing, and I honestly think that it was Beck´s one-in-a-lifetime role, his charm was old-school Hollywood and had enormous chemistry with Victoria and later Linda.
I don´t know if Keenan Wynn already had health issues when he was on "Dallas", but he did have tinnitus already and used hearing aids, as Ken Kercheval revealed in Barbara Curran´s book. Wynn died in 1986. So I´d say that it was a producers´ idea to get Digger killed, thus expanding the Barnes family with the Wentworth "girls"...