Not just a dropped or forgotten plot element, but something so interesting you can’t believe they did not return to it. In fact it makes the story ten times more complex, but again they ignore it going forward.
In the Stargate series one of the primary antagonists are the Goauld species, a species resembling a cross between a fish and a snake that resides inside the body of a host species and controls them completely. It can cure any human disease and with the use daily of a healing bed called a sarcophagus both human host and goauld are effectively immortal(there is a human host early in the show from the hunter gather phase of human history). The goauld are total monsters, evil for the sake of evil type cackling villainy. We later learn goauld are born with genetic memory from the queen that laid them, they are seemingly born with a personality somewhat.
Later we meet “good” goauld that only take volunteer human hosts(terminal disease patients mostly) and allow the host personality to control the body sometimes. However these guys are totally opposed to use of the healing bed, instead they simply change host when the human body wears out eventually. They believe the bed turns the Goauld evil!
A human character on the show uses the bed excessively in one episode and TURNS EVIL! He gets better though.
Now aside from the fact they should have kept that bed and strictly controlled its use(it can heal any injury and even a recently dead body! but only effects you psychologically with repeated use) did they just reveal the villains on the shiow are actually not acting under their own volition?:dubious:
If one of the main characters could turn on the team, thats how severely the sarcophagus effects a person psychologically, what about the villains? Are they all basically victims of the bed’s mental changes?
In Star Trek DS9 they had established that the Breen wore those suits because their world was cold. But then in one episode Weyoun offhandedly remarks that the Breen homeworld is actually temperate which reopened the question of why they wear those suits. The novels eventually answered why but the show never revisited it.
The russian from the Sopranos. Pauly and Christopher bring him into the woods to bury him, but he makes an escape, getting shot in the process. The never find a body, so they can never bury it and hide that they killed him. It was never mentioned again.
Speaking of ST:TNG, the notion of a “Warp Five Limit” was dramatically introduced, then instantly ignored - I think there was one later reference, Picard saying the current mission was so important that they were allowed to exceed the Warp Five limit. After that… nada.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we learn that, because Buffy was technically dead (she got better) once, there could be more than one slayer. That’s how we got Kendra, who then died (and didn’t get better), and then Faith. Faith went rogue though, and went to jail. I thought that the Watchers’ Council would try to assassinate her to get someone better to be the second slayer, but no. And don’t tell me they were too ethical to do that.
I mean, that at least sort of got addressed in subsequent episodes. The irritable behavior, the Narcotics Anonymous meetings, etc. But then they had that episode in season 6 that was all about him having these horrendous migraines and going to doctors and thinking he was getting schizophrenia like his mom and then. . .never mentioned again. Maybe once. I read an interview with one of the writers where she explained that we should have assumed he “discovered Advil.” Well, OK then. :rolleyes:
It was definitely more than mentioned again - it led to numerous arguments between Chris and Paulie in subsequent episodes. What is never revealed is whether or not the Russian died in the woods. But I think it probable that he did die, because the only alternative is him surviving, then going back to his boss and telling him the whole horrific story of being kidnapped, bound, stuffed in the trunk of a car, taken out to the woods, humiliated (even being forced to dig his own grave) and then almost executed.
No, he would not have been too embarrassed to recount this incident to his boss (who we are told in the previous episode is like a brother to him, and who served with him in the military in Chechnya.) He would have described the entire ordeal, and then the Russians would have hunted down Tony and tortured him brutally before murdering him and chopping him up into pieces.
The only possible conclusion is that the Russian (Slava) eventually died in the woods, and with no leads as to how it happened, his people chalked it up as a loss and moved on.
In the sixth season of The West Wing there was an episode about Cuba. It appeared to be setting up future plotlines but it was never mentioned again. Perhaps the writers were laying ground work in case the series had been renewed for an eighth season (and John Spencer had lived).