I disagree that Voyager always sucked; the series premiere sucked, and the episodes in which they REMEMBERED THEIR BASIC PREMISE (there may have been as many as six of them) were good. And probably I should have written “overcome” rather than alleviate. Though in fact, as photogenic as the bazingos in question are, they didn’t actually help. Seven’s idiotic catsuit was part of the suckage and was a distraction from Ryan’s actual talent.
“Okay Jeri, we want to shoot that last scene over again. You’re still emoting too effectively. Remember, your character has grown up without knowing any authentic human feelings.”
“Can’t… breathe…”
“Perfect! Try to keep that glazed look. Now angle your torso toward the camera a bit more, and try not to move your face too much. It distracts from the outfit.”
If only I had known you were Robert Duncan McNeill before I swore off evil. Stupid no-more-releasing-velociraptors-to-eat-people oath.
Next Gen was still prefaced as episodic television. The premise of episodic television is that large dramatic changes in cast, story, etc are rare. The reason for this is it allows a common ground for various different writers to work from. They had many writers working independently crafting stories that had to somehow come together into a semi-coherent flow from week to week. Story-arc shows weren’t common at the time - they didn’t take off until Babylon 5 showed they would work. DS-9 pulled in some of the story arc formatting. But Next Gen predated that. So having major characters die off periodically would have been problematic from a show logistics standpoint.
Note that in Next Gen, Miles O’Brien wasn’t really a character, he was a set dressing. They had to have someone operate the transporter, so they had the same actor play the role of “transporter operator” because apparently the computer couldn’t take voice orders and do all the manipulation required automatically. They finally fleshed out Miles when they took him to DS-9, and Colm Meaney really delivered.
That was the fault of TOS. Getting rid of the transporters for Next Gen would be like trying to explain our culture suddenly stopping all use of internal combustion engines, and only relying on electric scooters and bicycles (or horse-drawn buggies) for transport. You can’t get rid of some extremely useful and well-integrated technology without a significant justification, like it was discovered that long term transporter use makes people unstable and they turn into Reavers.
Like she did in The Practice? 
O’Brien’s grandfather, Inches O’Brien, just didnt measure up. Now, Mile’s father, Foot O’Brien, was much better. He actually came this > < close to being a Yard man at the starship construction facility.
Jonathan Frakes sat in on the album Hoist by Phish. He played on the track called “Riker’s Mailbox”.
You mean L.A. Law. The Pratice had more than its share of insanity, but not that.
The novel Federation actually touches on a good reason why they might stop transporter technology. The very early ones didn’t actually move the person; it downloaded the person, destroyed the body, sent the information, and used matter creator tech at the other side to reconstitute the body. There’s serious moral/ethical questions with that kind of transporter, and I could see the Federation choosing to forgo the use of the technology. Hell, they voluntarily chose not to use cloaking tech. “Luckily,” of course, they quickly invented real transporter tech that didn’t destroy the original body.
You’re going to that bit of hell where you’re forced to listen to knock knock jokes for all eternity and are jabbed up the backside with a red hot poker when you don’t laugh loud enough.
He would’ve made it, too, if they hadn’t found a kilo in his locker…
So why did he look so silly in the show?
They never would have found it if it weren’t for those lousy stoners. And the dog too, of course.
Maybe playing the trombone just looks silly. Or he wasn’t used to playing along with recordings (or himself or someone else).
People have some really good ideas in this thread, although making the show more arc-oriented and less episodic would probably have lost viewers. It makes for great shows but viewers have trouble getting in in the middle, I think. It did make DS9 special among Trek shows and I still think it may have been the best of all the shows.
The early TNG episodes I’ve seen just reek of cheesy, feel-good after school specials. Character problems aside I think the writers just wanted to teach lessons about the future, and they let it get in the way of telling interesting stories.
Don’t blame the writers, blame Roddenberry. His (lack of) vision is what kept the show crippled.
I don’t buy that. Roddenberry prevented the writers from creating interesting stories?
One of the all-time favorite episodes from TOS revolved around little wads of shag carpeting.
Crafting interesting stories is the writer’s job. If it can be done with carpet samples, it can be done with anything.
John DeLancie’s last big gig before Star Trek was a four year stint on Days of Our Lives. Soap opera acting can lend itself toward a slightly larger than life portrayal.
Or he was pretending to be worse at it than he is (you know, acting!). Riker (as opposed to Frakes) was supposed to be just an amateur, maybe self-taught trombonist. Most of the main characters were depicted as having at least one hobby, after all. Remember we never really got to hear him play more than a few notes before somebody cut him off or Red Alert sounded.
One of my favorite moments in all of TNG is the scene between Troi and Riker where she goes to him for advice – I think it’s the ep where she decides to take the command exam? – and he’s practicing. He uses the trombone to “greet” her and ask her what’s wrong. Deanna then snarks somethin glike, “You know, you should really stick to this mode of communication. It’s much clearer than your usual conversation.” His trombone then basically blasts a raspberry at her. Heh.
This was a character moment that felt very natural, and I would (in my revamped TNG) include a lot more of them. All of the characters’ hobbies – Picard’s flute/archeology/riding, Data’s painting/poetry, Crusher’s acting, Deanna’s chocolate (okay, not really a hobby…), and everyone’s poker-playing… this stuff was precisely what was needed – adding new dimensions to the characters, realism and humor – in a show that always veered towards being too sterile. When the writers allowed the characters to behave and interact like normal humans, the actors shone. And usually so did the writing. That’s what I’d push in my redo.
A plot/B plot was an awful way to run a show. It’s one of the main differences between TNG and Star Trek. It distracts from the main point of the episode, and it limits the ability to fully develop the central plot. It should have been relegated to occasional use, as in the episode where Data is writing the letter to someone about his day on the Enterprise, and there is an underlying plot about the Vulcan “ambassador” to the Romulans who turns out to be a Romulan spy returning home. One of the great thing about most of the Borg episodes is that they jettisoned the B-plot for those episodes, usually.
Ditch the concept of “parallel societies.” Remember that episode where everyone seemed to have grown up in Africa, even though none of them had been to Earth? Dumb. I’d also ditch the whole concept of people “wanting to be in touch with their roots.” Or, if you’re going to do that, have everyone else think that they were a wanker.
Make the show multifaceted, give us a contrast between the Enterprise and other parts of Star Fleet. Let us see what goes on in other ships, colonies, etc. Have conflict between those out exploring and those stuck on a nice, safe planet.
Have a rotation of cadets show up on the ship at the start of the season. They can work with the central characters and periodically one of them gets killed off, flunks out, or resigns.
Oh, and if Picard surrenders the ship, he should be court martialed. Period. Paragraph.