Don Chastain was working off of Harding Lemay's outlines the entire time he was with the show. He said he made some choices here and there, with some nuance, but that he was fired when his first set out longstory was submitted. He planned on having Travis Sentell join NASA and go into outer space. I suspect this may have been the original plan for Operation Sunburst before it became whatever it was suppose to be.
Chastain is briefly replaced by two writers who are assumed to be Millee Taggart and Courtney Sherman, who are credited in the newspaper as being the Ellises later script writers. Taggart and Sherman didn't do much, but I remember reading that they were being credited with writing the tale end of the Hong Kong sequence because the sequence overlapped with the Ellises material and it had been pre-taped. I think the switch to the Ellises was to beef up the hype for the move to CBS as it was announced in the same press releases as NBC acquiring the show.
There were definitely flourishes that were uniquely his. Supposedly, the Halloween, 1981, episode included a drunk Stu Bergman encountering a lifesized rabbit (presumably someone in a Halloween costume). This was the same month (October, 1981) that Stu learned that Ellie had run off with the chef. Some other misfires by Chastain included murdering Mignon Sentell after recently bringing her back.
Some of Chastain's work definitely sounds like Lemay as Mignon returned and was immediately obsessed with making Roger Lee Sentell her new Travis.
Lemay claimed he and Bunim argued over a rape plot that ended up appearing after he left when Garth Taper's maid, Vicky Curtis, was sexually attacked by I believe the creepy character Peter Burnell played, but maybe I'm confusing the years.
I'm not even sure Don Chastain wrote Max's exit as it would have been very close to the time he departed the show (November 1981).
@VelekaCarruthers Chastain had a returning Brian Emerson involved in a boxing story, which was pretty well received in the press. I think there was always a sorta homoerotic undercurrent to the Brian / Spence dynamic, but I am not sure if that carried over onscreen to the boxing story. Larry Joshua probably started as Brian before Gene Pietragallo wrapped it up as I seem to recall Gene is promo pictures in the boxing ring.
@Tisy-Lish I have not seen Mary Stuart as Kate, but I think they missed an opportunity in 1983 not making Vargas' Kate's son. It would have given even more depth to the kidnapping tale if Vargas' mother had ties to Martin just as Martin was dealing withthe revelation that Steve Kendall was his biological son.
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