No, your clearly all missing the corect answer. Sometime between now and TNG, France was reconquered by England, with the French language and culture expirtated in favor of a love of tea and shakespearean accents.
It’s obvious you’re surprised, but perhaps you should refrain from calling things “open secrets” when you have no evidence anyone but your small circle of friends ever thought such a thing.
:dubious:
You’ve never run across a situation where you thought some fact was common knowledge? Should I go around and quiz everyone in SoCal about everything I can think of, just to make sure we’re all on the same page?
Cut me some slack here.
I, too, am dubious that Denise Crosby was fired because of her Playboy pictures. Otherwise, why would they allow her to come back? Crosby returned as Tasha Yar in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “All Good Things,” and in “Redemption, Part II” and “Unification, Part II”, she played Sela, the half-Romulan daughter of Tasha Yar from the alternate timeline in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. I believe her explanation that she quit because her character was being relegated to the background and that she was not fired. The fact that she was rewritten into four subsequent episodes leads me to believe that if Tasha had not been killed, Crosby would have been welcomed back on a permanent basis, similar to how Gates McFadden was let go after the first season, but was rehired when Diana Muldaur, her replacement, proved to be not as popular.
All right. Look. Me (and the group of folks I run with) may be completely wrong here.
If we are, I apologise for relaying incorrect info.
I apologise if I seemed snippy or snide to anyone here. That is not my intent.
Matter/anti-matter engines don’t - inertial dampers do. Just as they stop everyone falling over when accelerating or decelerating with sublight engines, they should work to keep everything in the right place when accelerating up, down, left or right.
I didn’t really think that TNG was stupid exactly-- at least I don’t remember thinking that; I did continue to watch it, anyway. I did however find the early seasons gratingly formulaic in a lot of ways. As the adage goes: “Show, don’t tell.” Early on, TNG never bothered to establish character traits through action if they could tell you about it instead. They got better at that eventually.
The rigorously-adhered-to primary/secondary subplot structure was also damn annoying, especially when one of them (or both) often wasn’t very interesting to begin with. If the main plot isn’t complicated enough to last for a full episode, then work harder, scriptwriters; don’t just pad it out by cutting away to some totally unrelated parallel storyline about Data’s cat or whatever.
I thought the show had come together pretty well and worked out its big problems by season 7. If I could redo the show, I’d start from that general framework.
Some other revisions:
They’d start out on the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E from First Contact. Leaner, more adventurous-looking, no families on board; I could never fully endorse the blobby, cruise ship-style Enterprise-D.
Stylistically, those low-collar stretch uniforms from the first couple seasons were pretty hideous. TNG phaser design was also pretty sad.
We really didn’t need the Ferengi.
I agree that O’Brien was sadly underused.
The “Picard Maneuver” should have involved the use of an acting ensign as warp reaction mass.
Do you dislike the idea of a B-plot in general? I can’t think of a lot of TV shows that don’t do it.
I didn’t mean to contribute to piling on you. We all make mistakes, I’ve made more than my share. I was just looking at it from an angle no one had previously mentioned. If she had been fired for doing something bad in the first place, why would the producers have allowed her to return? And as her old character in two of the episodes? Why let her go for something that happened nine years previously? If she had posed for nude pictures after TNG had started production in order to capitalize on her fame, I could see something to it. But she would have had no control over old pictures someone took almost a decade earlier, especially if she signed a release. I don’t mean anything personal by it.
Well I don’t know what to say about that. All I know is that TNG did it a lot, and I found it really annoying. So either I dislike the idea in general, or else TNG did it worse than most shows.
Tonight’s episode: the Enterprise crew fights an invasion of skin-eating doppelgangers. Also: Wesley’s first pubic hair.
I apologise for sounding defensive. You folks knocked me off balance mentally. 
The demands for explanations and justifications caused me to second guess myself.
Basically, my case is thus:
Tasha Yar/Denise Crosby’s character was unique in that it remained the only main character killed off on screen.
All other characters were “transfered” to other duties:
Worf, O’brien, Keiko transfered to DS-9, to bring familiar and popular faces that TV spin off. Nothing new or unusual there.
Dr. Crusher transfered to “rear area” post because Gates Mcfadden needed some personal time off due to the pregnancy and birth of her son in 1991, IIRC.
Wesley was transferred to SF Academy. I thought Wil Wheaton left because he wanted to complete college or something like that, but it’s not mentioned in his wiki entry.
It was my belief at the time that Mrs. Crosby was “let go” because Paramount was worried about the potential public back lash when Playboy went public with their old photos. (Maybe Mrs. Crosby forgot about them, and didn’t warn Paramount about their existance.) The back lash did not materialise, however, and she returned in an alternate timeline episode, and also played a Romulan offspring of hers.
The official reason given was that her character seemed redundent with Worf’s, and that she was unhappy with the minor roles she did get.
(In any event, she was not killed off to introduce “uncertainty” in the viewership.)
In contrast, LaForge’s character up to that time was simularly underdeveloped by that point (he was merely a helmsman, who was blind). He did not get the ax. Eventually, the character managed to blossom on his own and become Chief Engineer.
Wheaton’s character actually got more of a negative fan reaction than Mrs. Crosby’s from some ST fans, yet he lasted four seasons. heh.
The only difference I could think of between Mrs. Crosby’s case and the others was the (non) scandal of the Playboy pictorial.
There you are. I admit freely, it is circumstantial.
To get back on topic: I think that killing off main cast members on a semi regular basis has good and bad points.
Good, because danger would seem more “real”, and adds tension to the drama.
The possible bad points being that it may take a season (or more) for the fans to “get to know” a new face. New background would have to be developed, but not really explored (because they may die soon). An extremely popular character may be killed off before the producers realised that they had a winner on their hands. The fans might become dissatisfied with that.
Face it, the reason Denise Crosby was fired was because she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag and her character was boring and superfluous. No need for her when you have Worf. On top of that she’s not in the least bit pleasing to the eye. She was an obvious casting mistake that the producers corrected as soon as they could.
As for B-plots…I think the problem is that TNG just did them so obviously.
I wouldn’t count Worf in that group. He moved to DS9 after TNG ended and after the first movie, and they found ways to bring him back in every single TNG movie; his DS9 time is irrelevant to his TNG role.
Alternative theory: Piccard is speaking French, but the universal translator renders it in English. He programmed the translator to give him that accent because it impresses the babes.
I only included him to be comprehensive.
That makes sense. Likewise, I only nitpicked to be a jerk. 
Gotta make my quota.
What a great thread and some great ideas. I never really realized how many flaws the show had until they were pointed out in this thread. Some of the things I’m listing are reinforcements of ideas people already stated:
[ol]
[li]No more Deus ex machina. While ST:TNG was one of my favorite shows ever, even as a kid, I couldn’t get past the idea that there was a technological solution for every single problem the Enterprise came across. I would’ve loved it if half the episodes ended with a battle-crippled Enterprise, held together by bubblegum and duct tape, limping back to the nearest starbase for repairs (and resulting finger-wagging from Starfleet about Picard’s risk-taking in battle). The crew should be put in more situations where they’re forced to rely on diplomacy, bluffing, or smoke-and-mirrors trickery to get out of a jam, since they simply don’t have the technology otherwise.[/li][li]Force Picard to deal with the black market at times. This would’ve given the Ferengi a solid place in the canon, and would’ve put Picard in some serious moral dilemmas. Additionally, it would add a nice bureaucratic element to Starfleet, whereas you can get from the black market much more quickly some parts or medicine which would take weeks or months to obtain through the normal legal channels.[/li][li]Much more actual exploration. The show was the perfect basis for creating all sorts of interesting astronomical and cosmological phenomena. Neutron stars. Black holes. Colliding planets. Hell, have Q knock the Enterprise to the edge of the expanding Universe. Bring back the Nexus from Generations. Deal with the issues and theories surrounding the birth and death of the Universe. One thing Star Trek writers never had the balls to do was challenge current scientific theories.[/li][li]Speaking of Q, I can’t agree with the other posters who said get rid of him. I thought he was a fascinating character and race. They could’ve done a lot more with him. In the interest of exploration, which was the main mission of the Enterprise, there are points in the series that Picard could’ve and should’ve swallowed his damn pride and said, “Q, we want to know what the Gamma quadrant looks like. Take us there and I’ll make you an honorary officer on my ship. I’ll play your little games if you let us use your power.”[/li][li]I agree that Data should’ve had moments where solutions the meatbags couldn’t see were so obviously laid before him. He’s a freakin’ computer, and a whopping powerful one at that. He should’ve been far smarter than anyone on that ship, and should’ve been assigned to multiple tasks since he had no need for sleep – eight hours science, eight hours engineering, eight hours command.[/li][li]Mandatory Troi/Beverly Crusher lovemaking scenes. Okay, I’m half-kidding. They totally wasted Troi’s character. Yes, she was brought on as eye candy, but instead of her having complete control over her empathetic powers, her half-breeding causes her to have full telepathic powers, but is only able to partially regulate them through practice and medication. Without her meds, she constantly hears every single thought of every single person on the ship, and it drives her insane.[/li][li]I agree that crew members should have conflicts and at least two absolutely can’t stand each other. I also agree that they squandered Chief O’Brien’s character. Colm Meaney was great. I would have stuck him in Engineering and made him a better engineer than Geordi. The two would’ve gotten in constant arguments about how to do things, often ending with Geordi pulling rank.[/li][li]Make Wesley a green Ensign who constantly makes brash mistakes but receives softer punishments because his father died under Picard’s command. The rest of the crew is always a bit pissed about this.[/li][/ol]
Dang I wrote a lot. Sorry for the length!
Q was the best thing about the show. He wasn’t that great in the first season, but who was? His later episodes were by far the most entertaining, especially the one(s) where he caught crap from the rest of the Continuum. I dare say he may have been one of the most in-depth characters they had, especially considering he was a walking, talking deus ex machina. He was written fairly well, and Picard almost always came off as the smaller person in their encounters. Most importantly, John de Lancie was absolutely great. I love the guy.
Then, somewhere in Season 3, they could run a two-parter where Picard was forced to send Wesley on a very dangerous Away mission. He agonizes over the decision, sends somebody less qualified (who ends up injured because of it) and Wes finally confronts Picard, they have a big scene full of drama where the past meets the present, Wes goes on the mission and 1) succeeds (barely) but wins the respect of Picard and the crew, or 2) dies within 15 seconds. Win-win, and better television that what we got.
After a bit of thought, there’s another change I’d make to the show, and it’s a pretty big one:
Get rid of the transporters.
Seriously- they cause too many problems. It’s too easy to teleport someone away from danger. It also means that it’s far too easy to get the crew to areas they couldn’t normally get to- like the insides of buildings, other ships, etc.
Getting rid of the transporter also solves the replicator problem. Need a spare part for the ship? No prob, here ya go.
It also resolves a lot of existential questions- if matter can duplicated with the transporter, why does anyone ever die? Just rematerialize them.
In addition, it explains the money problem Star Trek has always had- if you can replicate anything, why bother working?
Granted, they had workarounds for all of those situations (gold pressed latinum, limited pattern buffers, etc.), but each one is a kluge to fix an inherent problem- transporter technology makes things too easy.