I can't believe nobody came up with the idea of giving Worf an actual damn job. Why not make him the tactical officer, which would have made more sense for him to take over the security chief role? Honestly, I would have just made Geordi the chief engineer to begin with and made Worf the helmsman, but that would have robbed the show of the irony of a blind man as the pilot (which is what Roddenberry intended for the character). I also still don't know what the real difference is between an operations officer and a science officer. Functionally their role was the same. I understand that apparently the blue uniform clashed too much with Data's gold skin, or something, so they put him in gold and made up a new position for him. Why not make Data, the most dextrous crewmember, the pilot, make Geordi the engineer, Tasha the chief engineer and Worf the security chief? I never bought Yar as security chief anyway. Also, "Home Soil" sucks. It's just dull. I'd dump it, too.
First thing I would do is, maybe keep Wesley a genius, but give him the personality of a real teenager instead of the son of a 1950s sitcom family. Maybe give him more apprentice-type jobs rotating around the ship instead of a prominent bridge position, and although he can be a genius, not so smart that you have to make the adults act stupid to prove he's smart. Also maybe he should be Leslie Crusher. Fewer holodeck episodes, zero holodeck malfunction episodes. Put the ship in real deep space exploration, maybe a couple months travel away from the homeworld, and give more substance to the ship's civilian community to make them something interesting and something that exchanges ideas and interacts with newly discovered cultures, as opposed to just seeming to be a bunch of civilians who decided to live on a starship for no reason. Get the writers from seasons 3-7 in earlier.
I would switch Riker's and Troi's genders, a career oriented woman leaving her psychologist boyfriend behind is a bit more interesting than the ither way around beause "man leaving woman for his career" has been done a million times. I'd make Worf the chief engineer from the start, I'd drop the ops console and only have a single pilot in the front like the later shows. Data is the science officer and moves to the horseshoe. Yar is the civilian security chief, the civilian population of the ship is also significantly larger, I'd have a few hundred Starfleet officers and a few thousand civilians, the ship would have an actual civilian community and we'd see more of it, the mall that was supposedly on the ship, schools etc. Crusher would be a civilian doctor (medicine is not position that needs to be filled by starfleet when the majority of the ship's population is civilian anyway), male Troi is a civilian too and not just a psychologist on the ship but also the liason between the civilian population and starfleet. Wesley would be a regular teenager NOT a genius, that was so annoying. Geordi is gay and married to a civilian recurring character, a male nirse Ogawa maybe. Starfleet: Picard female XO Riker Science officer Data Chief engineer Worf Pilot Geordi Civilians: Crusher Yar Male Troi Wesley Recurring cast: Male Ogawa (geordi's husband, a nurse) Guinan (owner of the Ten Forward lounge and bar and an old friend of Picard) Barclay (pretty much unchanged from the actual show) O'Brien (one of Yar's deputies) Keiko (a starfleet scientist, O'Brien's girlfriend later his wife) Ro Laren (a teenager in wesley's grade) K'Ehleyr (one of Wesley's teachers, rejects almost all Klingon traditions)
^ Yar as a civilian security chief would make zero sense. Someone charged and trusted with the safety of the starship, with access to all areas even and especially the high-security ones, really has to be a Starfleet officer.
I guess I'd put holodeck malfunction episodes in the category of "Only if you have a REAALLLY good idea for it'. These kinds of stories really stretch plausibility that they wouldn't be able to fix this problem. To quote Riker in Future Imperfect, "[Geordi is] not capable of that level of incompetence!" They also serve as lazy narrative crutches.
^I suppose it depends upon how you view it. I thought that ship in a bottle was brilliant, for example. Then again, that isn't a holodeck malfunction episode, but rather an instance in which the holodeck functions too well
Depends what you mean by 'civilian', NCIS 'Agents at Float' and FBI aren't military, but are federal employees with equivalent high-level security clearance to 'security/intelligence community' military personeel. Federation Security (known as the Federation Security Agency in TrekLit) could easily be the analogue of the later and the SCIS (mentioned in at least one ebook) could be similar to the former.
That's kinda what I was thinking. In my opinion security should be outside the chain of command especially with such a huge civilian population on the ship.
I think the biggest thing that I would do is have a bigger minor/recurring cast rather than relying mainly on the core "stars". At least twenty or thirty rotating consistently through at least a season. For example, replace Guy Vardamann (Darien Wallace, Wesley Crusher (photo double), Data (photo double)) with an accredited actor so you can leverage the over 60 episodes (plus Generations) the character appeared in, do the same with Ensign Gates (46 episodes) and Gretchen "Jae" Naylor (62 episodes & 3 movies). I pretty much agree with the above, which would mesh pretty well with an idea I had of combined Troi & Yar into a "Contact Specialist (leads the away teams). Could even follow up the "career-focused" element, by having her be replaced by Elisabeth Shelby and/or Ro Laren mid-show. Don't think Worf as ChEng would work, probably have him as Duty Officer running the bridge most of the time (taking either Communications or Tactical when the Captain is on the bridge). I agree with you on a single Flight Control console at the front, but I think I'd just keep the pilot as one or more minor recurring characters not a main character (see above about Gates, Wallace & Jae) and have LaForge as a PoV engineer (promoting to ChEng mid-series). I think having Wesley as a recurring character in episodes focusing on teen/career development would be a big improvement, rather than dropping the 'genius' plotline entirely. I'd also shift to him to mostly acting as Science Officer Data and the Engineering team's research assistant rather than "important" in his own right. Given the disaster that Geordi was with women I have no issue with this if handed right, particularly as it might allow both characters more development. Yar as a federal agent outside the normal of command and Dr Billy Riker, a civilian psychologist and former boyfriend of the Contact Officer who (along with Guinan and maybe Mott) act as the voices of the civilian complement sounds good. Not sure about Crusher as a civilian per se (though Interspecies Medical Exchange would be okay), but I'd definitely drop the late-series idea that she's in the chain of command. My (partial) line-up: Starfleet Starfleet: CO Captain Jean-Luc Picard XO Macha Hernandez Science Officer Data Senior Engineer (later Chief) Geordi LaForge Duty Officer (Lt) Worf Senior Chief Miles O'Brien (Chief of Boat, works with Transporters because he finds them challenging, but can help out with security or general engineering as needed) Civilians: IME Doctor Beverly Crusher FSA/SCIS Special Agent Tasha Yar Ship's Psychologist Dr Billy Riker (or Devin Troi if you prefer) Guinan (owner of the Ten Forward lounge and bar and an old friend of Picard) - Ship's "Mayor". Recurring cast: Crewman (later Midshipman) Wesley Crusher, Engineering and Sciences Trainee. Bridge Officers, including but not limited to Crewman 1st Class (Helmsman) Gates, Engineer Wallace and Engineer Naylor. Lieutenant JG (later LT) Alan Ogawa (Geordi's husband, a nurse) Lieutenant Selar, Starfleet bioengineering specialist who assists Dr Crusher in sickbay (I think she works better as a recurring than K'Ehleyr). Crewman 1st Class (Medical Technican) Tarses (pretty much unchanged from the actual show) Lieutenant JG Reg Barclay (pretty much unchanged from the actual show) Keiko Ishakawa (a Starfleet scientist, O'Brien's girlfriend later his wife) Sito Jaxa (a teenager in Wesley's training group) Ship's Barber Mott. N/B: The recurring cast list is indicative, not exclusive, what I most want to see is a full vibrant plausible ship's population that uses it to the fullest, rather than only focusing on a handful of "main players". The Galaxy-class can accommodate up to fifteen THOUSAND people for at least a short period of time, I doubt TNG developed more than FIFTEEN in even a cursory way.
So the Romulans are bit like the current North Korean Regieme? Make threats and loud noises but never amounting to anything.
Heh, I'm tempted to start that thread. Put great later episodes through the season-one-izer! What's the result for "Cause And Effect" or "I Borg" or "Inner Light" if you develop those ideas through the season one creative process...
You can argue over the execution, but Naked Now is critical for Data's humanization arc. He has to do Tasha. Their relationship is one of the few things referenced in later episodes.
Inner Light: Picard would teach them how to be civilized. All the cuts back on the Enterprise would have Troi experiencing Picards various emotions throughout the story; and at the end, Picard and Riker would philosophize about the events. Cause and Effect: The episode would still be good, but they'd rename it "Time Squared" or something...
I, Borg (season 1). Everyone agrees that they should just send the Borg back to where he belongs, with some of the Federation ideals he saw on the ship now in his memory. There happens to be one alien guest on board (who at first seems to be there for totally unrelated reasons) who has lost his sister due to an earlier Borg confrontation (off screen of course), and he wants his revenge, but his motives are uncovered and he gets his comeuppance in the end. The remaining screentime is devoted to some scenes sprinkled throughout the episode with various crewmembers explaining to Wesley how they are Starfleet, evolved beyond such petty and base motives as revenge, that Wesley should never allow revenge into his thoughts, and 'revenge never really solves anything, wishing for revenge is bad'.
Maybe, but Data could do Tasha under any other circumstance that isn't a cheap contrivance. In working out what that might be, I'm now infected with the mental image of Data's emotionless middle distance staring c*m face. Dammit.
It makes me wonder, how would Moriarty have functioned as an adversary for Spock, via the TOS "hologram room" on the rec deck. I think I really should start my concept thread, TOS characters encountering TNG scenarios, and how they would respond / how the episode could be rewritten with a TOS slant.