What are certain elements do you think, if missing from a particular series/franchise, would make it a stronger/better one?
For example, I might like the Star Trek series more if they just remove the holo-deck, and all the craziness that come from it (Borg can be killed by weapons created from a holo-deck, huh?)
And Heroes would just lost that “everybody is related to everybody in some way” mega-plot I think I would watch more of it.
I no longer care how he met their mother, and the writers seem to agree, as that macguffin seems to have been dropped like some sort of droppping thing.
If Star Trek need to remove anything, it’s alternate universes.
Remove Jason Alexander from Seinfeld and the show might actually be watchable.
I would have preferred Firefly to have been a straight-up science fiction rather than this inexplicable mix of SF and the old west.
There are two things I might have removed from the last couple of Star Trek series’.
I would remove the underground complex from Buffy.
Empress Hoshi orders you to kneel and grovel for your life to be spared!
Yeah, apart from “Through a Mirror, Darkly”, (which was straight up AU, without anyone from ‘our’ universe over for a visit, and did I mention the Gorn fight and plenty o’panda?) they should have left that well alone. Did TNG do any AU’s (apart from that final season one with Worf bouncing from uni to uni and ending up married to Troi and torpedoing Psycho Beard Borg-World Riker?)
Midichlorians and Jar Jar Binks
Transporters. I’ve always hated the transporters. They raise way too many questions (& I’m not talking about philosophical; why in the history of Star Trek did nobody ever think “Gee let’s beam over a bomb the second their shields fail”).
In almost any SF vehicle for adults, children as regular characters are best avoided. Cases in point: Wesley Crusher and that annoying tot from the original “Battlestar Galactica.” This applies doubly to any pets such children may have.
Michael Scott.
I would remove at least 3 Saturday nights from Saturday Night Live every month.
That annoying little bitch from “War of the Worlds” that screams for 2 hours straight.
Going back to the 80’s for a second.
Bernice from “Designing Women.”
Nell’s mother on “Gimme a break”
The entire cast of Mr. Belvedere
Short Round from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”
In most shows, SF or not, children as regular characters are best avoided. Precocious and/or bratty children are not cute, they’re not funny, and they are nauseating. Plus most child actors seem to grow up, or not grow up, to be incredibly messed up adults.
In ST:TNG the holodeck was usually used when the writers couldn’t come up with anything better. I remember a couple of episodes when the holodeck was used to actually tell a better story. I have to admit, though, that if I had my own holodeck, I probably wouldn’t come out of it unless someone applied the Jaws of Life.
I liked Monk when it first started. Then they added a Quirky Neighbor (the guy who won a lottery) and that was one Quirky Character too many for me.
I used to watch House religiously, and then they started adding some gory scenes in each episode, apparently in an effort to push the envelope. If I wanted to watch envelopes being pushed, by Og, I’ll get a job in the Post Office, making sure the machines are working right. There was another medical/criminal drama that apparently had an Extremely Gross Scene as a requirement of each episode. Nope. Not gonna watch it.
Mostly, I’d remove Idiot Plots from any series. Sure, it might require the writers to break a sweat for a few minutes, but since just about everyone in Southern California seems to have a script or idea, maybe this would encourage some competition.
FInally! Another person who is annoyed by Steve Carell. The single weakest character on an otherwise great show with a great cast.
I would remove George Lucas from the Star Wars prequels entirely.
I do like how, on Enterprise, the writers recognized that the transporters, in the pre-shield era, would make a dandy little kidnapping tool.
Because once the shields fail, it’s a lot easier to hit them with phasers, disruptors, or photon torpedoes than it is to beam a bomb over. If the engines haven’t been disabled, for instance, it’s actually possible to hit a moving target with some degree of accuracy with them.
However, there are a number of transporter-based weapons. The remat detonators, which turns a ship or station’s own transporters into an anti-personnel weapon, by screwing up rematerialization; the modified TR-116 rifle used by Chu’lak in the DS9 episode Field of Fire; the organ-stealing guns used by the Vidiians. Probably others, but those are the ones I can recall offhand.