: : Cynthia Lane in particular has received a great deal of email, and her name and email address have been posted here so that people know who she is. Telescene is aware of our concerns. Clearly aware. At this point, it seems we are more engaging in harassment than protest.

: Faust: You are certainly correct here. It would seem that only those directly responsible for production and casting should be contacted. Higher management deals with finances and public relations reflects decisions already made.OK, we are a little wiser now. They do know our intent, however. That, at least, has been well established.

: : So it may be time to stand down with respect to Telescene.

Leaving Telescene alone is all fine, well, and good, but I'd still like to find out why they didn't just confirm or deny instead of allowing it to get to this point. And I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being dense here, but regardless of anything else, isn't Telescene the ones with the power to hire and fire?
Also, but as I (and Theresa) pointed out earlier, Cynthia Lane is the public relations person there, we are the public, and her job, among other things, is to act as a liaison between the public and higher management. Her e-mail and title are right out there, and that's how I got her address. Not that there's anything wrong with us contacting higher management directly, but the fact that they're trying to make it sound like she's an innocent bystander amazes me ~ this is what she's supposed to do.

: Faust: There are several approaches possible at this point:
: ( 1 )Stand down as you suggest and leave our friend, Michael S without support. Now, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that he is quite capable of finding other parts in other productions, but he loved his role as Summerlee and we loved him in it.

Obviously, he has a successful career and won't have a problem finding work, and as far as I'm concerned as I posted earlier, I'm willing to continue as long as the first episode doesn't close this issue down or MS says otherwise. After all, ultimately this is his decision. I know there are SACD:TLW purists who would continue to keep Summerlee whether MS played him or not; I am more concerned with keeping Summerlee in but only if he's played by Sinelnikoff.

: ( 2 ) Give Telescene time to realize their mistake. They may come to realize that losing Michael wasn't a smart move. The proof is in the pudding and all that.I don't know about everybody else, but I would not watch the show if it were not for the interaction between cast members. Summerlee, Roxton, and Marguerite in particular. The girls are very beautiful, but in the long run what can even the best actress do when she's given nothing of substance to work with. I believe that by withdrawing Summerlee, Telescene has weakened the production. We could all sit back and see if that's the case.

I agree that taking out Summerlee is cutting the show off at the knees ~ goes back to your statement which compared it to if they had taken Spock/Nimoy out of Star Trek ~ makes no sense. Again, though, this could all be moot after the first episode, unless we get a spy in the editing room that can tell us whether Summerlee's body is found or not. If the character is actually dead and a body found, there's nothing we can do. I mean, there could be a dream season a la Dallas, but personally I found that whole thing to be pretty silly.

: ( 3 ) We could continue to probe. Find the right production people to write to en masse, and/or, write fewer letters that contain cogent arguements for Michael's return. Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly why they dropped him. Such intelligence would help us to find chinks in their reasoning, and I have every reason to suspect that such chinks exist.

It would be nice to find out why, although apparently Theresa's letter from Cynthia Lane gave several reasons. My plan was *always* to send a petition (which I just finished typing up and made a first copy of yesterday btw, pre-the bombshell) to *everyone* I could find, including all the partners listed at the official site, and any TV stations that runs the show. I've sent one letter to Cynthia Lane, which I think I showed you, Steve, and one quick message to the official site via their feedback.

: Getting pissed off and jumping up and down will serve no purpose. It will not assist our friend. We have simply lost the first battle. Why be upset. The game is not over. Perhaps it is now time to work with public relations. What might we do to earn their respect? Perhaps to interest them in what this board has to say. In the long run it might help our cause.

Gee thanks Steve ~ was this aimed at anyone you know? Not everyone can stop their emotions in mid-flow. I really cannot help but be upset ~ aside from the work I put into making up the Save Summerlee page, collating the responses, researching who to send it to, yesterday I actually wrote the whole thing up, called to get a zip code and was relieved to find out that, wow, it wasn't going to be necessary, everything was ok and Michael would be coming back, I post it here so everyone could be as happy as I was, and then a couple of hours later, find out that not only was everything not ok, but I was lied to in a big way, and now I've been told to calm down. Well, sorry, way too much of a rollercoaster ride for this girl. I've never pounded on anyone with tons of irritating e-mails or anything else, I find that idea to be really rude, so just worked hard to get a decent petition together to be sent to *everyone* concerned ONCE, not hundreds of times, tried to get the people here and at other LW forums to sign, wrote to many different places online to try to get some interest going, so forgive me if I'm a little upset that our first battle wasn't won. I'm not looking for accolades or pats on the back, just trying to make you understand why I'm, yes, pissed off, as well as upset and feel like jumping up and down like a little kid. RE-grouping is fine, but this is a little too fresh for me right now. I don't think a little hissy fit is totally uncalled for.