VP may have told them that 1987 would be her final year, but she did renegotiate with them when the time came. She's since given interviews saying she couldn't be bought, but she apparently asked for salary parity with Duffy (which was more than they were offering her, which she says would have made her "the highest paid actress on television" --- so, more than Joan & Linda on DYNASTY). They also wanted her to sign for two more years, and she was only willing to sign for one, if anything.
After negotiations fell apart, CBS/Lorimar publicly said, "her terms were very high" (to return after 1987) and she professionally announced, "CBS and Lorimar have always been very generous with me." Allegedly, Larry brought a dinner offer to Victoria to return in 1988, Lorimar realizing the program was dropping and that they could suddenly afford to meet her financial demands. Principal declined, and you can't blame her.
Later, she admitted that she thought that "DALLAS' best days were behind it."
Now, to your plot points..... When Bobby told Pam the story, in 1981 in the living room at the bar, that Christopher's parents were from New Orleans and were killed in a car crash, that was metaphorically prognosticative (wrong terms, I'm sure) -- because DALLAS opened up in 1978 with Pam & Bobby fresh from their elopement in New Orleans; and when Bobby "died" he was run over by a car; and shortly after Bobby's quasi-death, Pam almost crashes her convertible into a road-grader.
So, one has to assume that whenever Victoria chose to exit the series, the car crash was planned -- more or less -- years in advance. Not the details, naturally, but the general automotive disaster scenario.
Had Bobby not been miraculously revived, one assumes Victoria would have been more likely to stay (can you imagine Pam in Bobby's role in Season 10, fighting alongside her nemesis, J.R., to save the family and Ewing Oil from the feds and intel terrorists? But Katzman would never have permitted it) with Lorimar/CBS more likely to capitulate to the actress's requests.
If she'd been coaxed to stay beyond 1987, and Pam exited later in the series, then who knows?? (I always want Bobby and Cliff to learn in the final year of oldDALLAS, after a lengthy investigation in the shadows, that Pam "may have died" of adult-onset neurofibromatosis -- she was Digger's daughter after all!)
I agree that her exit in 1987 seems a good time for DALLAS to end. I guess Sue Ellen shooting JR in Alexis' high-rise in 1988, and Sue Ellen's departure in 1989, might've worked as well. And JR being locked away in an asylum in 1990 makes some sense.
I dunno. Everything in the last few seasons of DALLAS was just so piecemeal and unmoored (again, probably the wrong terms). And, worst of all, so intentionally silly.
