I realize that I'm diverting the discussion away from TekWar, but I'd like to put in that I think it's really lame when a game show unilaterally decides that a contestant's appearance may as well have never existed for whatever reason they choose.
Yes, I know. It's in the contracts and all of that. I also know that the example in question ended with no money being won. But part of the reason that game shows are interesting and exciting is because you don't know if someone is going to win or lose. (In the case of MDP, though, you do know when someone's last money round; by fail or bail, is coming.) Millionaire would be much less interesting if everyone got to $1,000.
That's to say nothing of the contestant who tells all of her friends and family that she's going to tape an episode of Password, and has to come home and explain that her game was so utterly awful that it was chucked, and they replaced it with something else.