Whoa, hey, hey, what, hey, whoa…wait a sec, hey, whoa…
…hey…
I… don’t have a ready reply to that.
Riker was much closer to Will Decker in TMP than he ever was to Kirk. (They even had the same first names!)
About the last thing Picard needed was someone like Kirk as his XO. Kirk would have hogged the limelight and taken incredible risks; Riker was content to remain in Picard’s shadow and do his best to keep the Captain out of both danger and trouble.
IIRC, there was a late-series episode in which one officer was a cowboy-type and Picard et al. narrowly averted a disaster after following his advice. But I can’t recall the name of the episode or anything else about it.
“That boy ain’t right!”
The scenario: “We’re sending you on a top-secret espionage mission. We don’t know how you’re going to get in and out safely, but that’s not important right now. You can figure it out on your own. You will, however, have to convince everyone you’ve gone crazy and thrown away your career by committing an act of war on your own authority. Oh, and you absolutely, positively have to succeed, since what you’re going to try to steal is of vital importance to national security. Don’t worry about any potential repercussions to your personal reputation or effectiveness as a commander; we’ll kind of just sweep everything under the rug and hope everyone in your crew keeps their mouth shut.”
Now then: As recommended in the Star Trek Writer’s Guide, apply that to a present-day example; say, a US Navy captain in command of a ship in the Persian Gulf.
Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong! :dubious:
[EDIT]: Whoops, someone just did! Amazing! :eek:
Damn! I left out the most important part: “Remember, you must do everything you possibly can to keep us (your superiors) off the hook, however many of the 430 people you’re putting at risk end up getting killed, and even if your state-of-the-art vessel is destroyed or falls into enemy hands intact!”
But Data essentially was invented yesterday. As I recall, Doctor Soong created him and then dropped out of sight and was believed dead, so Data was unique (or considered so at the time since no one was aware of his “siblings”) and no one even totally understood how he worked.
Meh. I am a Star Trek fanboi. (I don’t speak Klingon, but I liked all of the TV series. Yes, even that one.)
I, too, struggled with whether Data was a cleverly programmed machine or a sentient being. Over the years, I accepted the opinion of his crewmates in the show, as I guess they are in the best position to judge.
But I could be talked out of it! 
Short answer: “Original Series over Next Generation but Picard over Kirk.”
Other than Nancy Kovack, what is there to like about “A Private Little War”? The gorillacorn?
I don’t think the series held my attention long enough for me to have made the acquaintance of this Doctor Soong. Either that or I dozed off during the salient portion of that episode.
Do you really* need *any other reason than Nancy Kovack?
Her knobs were sufficient reason for TV itself to exist, let alone an individual series.
While I agree that “The Inner Light” was certainly a great episode, I disagree about it as a choice of first episode one sees. It would lose most of its impact if the viewer were not already familiar with the character of Picard.
The [del]gumato[/del] mugato, you mean.
I’ll cheerfully grant that the espionage plot of “The Enterprise Incident” has the sturdiness of overboiled pasta (related, it makes no sense to send Picard on a commando mission in “Chain of Command”). What saves this episode (and “Chain of Command”) from the absurdity of its premise is the character drama.
Nice.
Incidentally, there two of them, so [del]gumati[/del] mugati.
TOS is better
even the bad episodes of TOS, most of them are still fun to watch for how bad they are (like Spock’s Brain)
bad TNG is bad and boring
TOS all the way.
Writing. Character driven.
TNG = special effects driven - except they’re not very good. Horribly dated.
I’ll take TOS - even at it’s cheesiest - over boring TNG.
As someone else said up thread - TNG seems more dated to me than TOS!
I didn’t even like TNG when it was new.
Loved the first season of DS9 though …
They are too different to compare. TOS has aged better, except in a few sexist places where it’s far worse.