Question: What character was the series originally to be built around?
About the article "Dexter (TV series)", section "Spin-off series".

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The film was originally meant to be the pilot episode of a series focusing around Dolph Lundgren's character, Jack Devlin but it was not accepted as a series. 
Concept and creation.
Character arc.
Helo was originally conceived as a "red-shirt" character.
After stranding him on the post-nuclear attack Caprica, the writers had no further plans for the character and intended his fate to be that he died (off-screen) in the radiation that followed the nuking of the planet.
However, many fans took a liking to the character and wanted to know what happened to him after he was left on Caprica.
This factor caused the producers, who were also impressed by Penikett's performance when watching the premiere of the miniseries on the big screen, to revise their original plans for the series to include the character and his activities on Caprica after the mini-series. 
Casting and creation.
Before the creation of "Dallas", series creator David Jacobs originally had quite a different idea of what he envisioned the show to be.
He wanted to create a television show based on "family issues and examining relationships at the middle class level".
The Production Company, CBS, initially turned down his original idea, as they wanted something more "glitzy" to put on the air, with wealthier characters.
After the success of "Dallas", Jacobs' initial idea would later become the "Dallas" spin-off "Knots Landing".
He initially conceived Pamela as the central character of the Texas based serial.
The role was initially created specifically for actress Linda Evans to star, and was indefinitely called "The Untitled Linda Evans Project" that was originally set in Indianapolis.
He described her character as, "a semitrashy lady who marries into a rich Texas family".
After crafting the backstory of the Ewing family, Jacobs began to realize that the show couldn't be settled simply around the character of Pamela.
He wanted it to be based around the entire clan and their lives as wealthy oil people living in Dallas, Texas.
Evans was ultimately not offered the part, but ironically would later go on to play Krystle Carrington on "Dynasty", a rival show to "Dallas". 
Ripley's Aquarium of Canada was originally planned in 2004 to be built in Niagara Falls, Ontario next to what is now Great Wolf Lodge around 2007, but plans fell through and Ripley's eventually relocated to Toronto.
Construction began on the attraction in August 2011 with a final cost approaching $130 million.  
Design of the 8-bit series of machines started at Atari Inc. as soon as the Atari 2600 games console was released in late 1977.
While designing the 2600 in 1976, the engineering team from Atari Grass Valley Research Center (originally "Cyan Engineering") felt that the 2600 would have about a three year lifespan before becoming obsolete.
They started "blue sky" designs for a new console that would be ready to replace it around 1979.
What they ended up with was essentially a "corrected" version of the 2600, fixing its more obvious limitations.
The newer design would be faster than the 2600, have better graphics, and would include much better sound hardware.
Work on the chips for the new system continued throughout 1978 and focused on much-improved video hardware known as the "Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller", or ANTIC and the "Color Television Interface Adaptor", or CTIA.
During this gestation the home computer era began in earnest in the form of the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Apple II family—what "Byte" Magazine would dub the "1977 Trinity".
Ray Kassar, the then-new CEO of Atari from Warner Communications, wanted the new chips to be used in a home computer to challenge Apple.
In order to adapt the machine to this role, it would need to support character graphics, include some form of expansion for peripherals, and run the then-universal BASIC programming language.
The need for character graphics led to the introduction of the ANTIC, a co-processor built to generate conventional bitmap graphics and characters providing a number of different modes with varying color support and resolution.
Like the earlier TIA of the 2600, the CTIA was designed to produce Player-Missile graphics (sprites) and expanded to provide the color for the ANTIC's playfield graphics.
ANTIC and CTIA work in concert to produce the complete display.