The other night I saw a Star Tosk: TOS episode, “Devil in the Dark,” which I’m sure most of you will remember as the Horta episode. It occurred to me that, while there are some TOS stories you can imagine happening with the NextGen crew, this really wasn’t one of them. Picard would never have been on the away team, for one thing, and even if he were, Kirk’s character development – going from wanting to kill the Horta on sightt to deciding to defend it – couldn’t have happened, because Picard would have viewed killing the Horta as a last resort from the get-go. If you imagine the story with Riker in Kirk’s place and ether Data or Troi in Spock’s, the story still won’t work. The tale just can’t be transplanted.
But that’s not true of all TOS/TNG tales. “The Naked Time” got transplanted as “The Naked Now,” though the latter was far more comic than the former; the late-series TNG episode about the Cardassians and the Indians, where Wesley Crusher reveals his essential gormlessness, would have worked too, I think, if you omit the Wesley bit.
All of which brings us to the thread topic. Take any TV franchise with multiple series \and tell how your favorite episode would turn out if you moved the action from one cast to another. How would Jack McCoy and Abby Carmichael have handled that SVU case with the art professor accused of rape by his student, for instance? What would Buffy and the Scoobies have done if they’d encountered the soulless child Angel Investigations dealt with in their first season? Again, any franchise is fine; all I ask is that you stay within the franchise when transposing casts.
Data: “Captain, sensors indicate a vessel in our area, closing fast.”
Picard: “Raise shields, Mister Data.”
Data: “Aye, sir; shields up.”
Picard: “Because of course we put the shields up. I mean, why wouldn’t we?”
Data: “Indeed, sir. As per General Order Twelve: ‘on the approach of any vessel’…”
Picard: “…‘where communications have not been established,’ yes, I know, Data.”
Data: “We all do, sir. Literally anyone who has earned any rank knows it, sir.”
Picard: “I say ‘Shut Up, Wesley’ a lot, but even an Acting Ensign would get that right.”
Data: “One could say it is the very reason why we have shields in the first place, sir.”
Picard: “Well put, Commander. Well put.”
TOS: Kirk ends the Dominion War by either A) seducing the Changeling leader/s with the values of liberty, free will, and joys of the flesh, or B) leveling the Founders’ homeworld in a somber Dresden/Hiroshima allegory, with a gloomy Cold War coda (“In the end, Captain, like many Empires built on conquest, they could be said to have ‘sowed the wind…’”“…and reaped the whirlwind.’ Yes, Spock, but I wonder…what have we sown?” [cue mournful brass theme, final establishing shot of ship, Written and Produced by Gene L. Coon]).
Luckily, by the next episode, they’re investigating the planet of the space cowboys. Special guest star, Lorne Greene!
TOS: The Tholian Web and TNG: Night Terrors were similar.
The Enterprise finds a lost ship where the crew members have murdered each other (USS Defiant/USS Brittain).
The damsel in distress (Uhura/Troi) has a distressing vision that lands them in sick bay.
The Enterprise is trapped in a space/time anomaly (Interphase/Tyker’s Rift).
Weird aliens contribute to the Enterprise’s problems (Tholian webs/unknown telepathic aliens that prevent the Enterprise crew from REM sleep)
Crewman go crazy and attack the chief engineer (Scotty/O’Brien).
The cold emotionless officer (Spock/Data) assumes command while the crew goes insane.