At the end of the day, the show is relying on nostalgia and cliches so far and is doing new or creative.
Yes, they went with nostalgia to base a story around Picard's feelings for Data. Why does that mean Brophy deserves to be brought back?
Yes. Also, we've talked about Star Trek before; why are we still talking about it? And he did the job really well. Let's see what else the actor can do. Okay. So why not use the actor? So USE the character, actor and all. And if you don't, don't be surprised that heads will be scratched. Or a tweet. But if they want to hold a press conference (maybe catered?), hey, the story will still be told. I mean, they killed off two preexisting memorable characters here. Why wouldn't they expect people to wonder what's up? He apparently made well enough an impression on quite a few people here, and probably elsewhere too. We all remembered the face if not the name and he's shown up in the Treklit more than once. Just because he doesn't have Vaughn Armstrong's list of Trek credits doesn't make him insignificant. Why doesn't he "deserve" to be brought back? We have no idea why he wasn't, and they could have tried to proportionately woo the hell out of him, just didn't work out. Also...
Meh, same story regardless of recasting. I didn't remember the character much less the actor. TNG is over, get used to it. This whole Maddox actor issue is about as important as nacelle colors.
If that was the prevailing attitude of the franchise, this show would obviously not exist. Your argument makes no sense. "It's fine to bring back this old character for story purposes. But FUCK the actor, because TNG is over!"
I didn't say he sucked, i just said that he was one note character designed to be an antagonis and I don't think that Brophy's performance warranted asking the actor to return the role. Obviously they brought him back because of his connection to Data. But really the way the character has been used, they could have created a new character.
To be honest if I was Brian Brophy I'd legit spin some sob story about how evil CBS stopped me from playing my most iconic role and start some type of crowdfunding account. Let the rabid anti-cbs crowd give me their hard-earned money then abscond with it to some tropical island.
If I was showrunner, and I wanted to use Bruce Maddox for an episode, as he's integral to the story, and Brophy turned me down (even though all indications is that he wasn't even approached), I would still use Maddox and recast him with an age-appropriate actor. But I would then tell everyone what went down in the aftershow, just to end all this useless speculation. Unless Maddox is revived or brought back often via holograms and flashbacks, I don't know why they needed to recast for the one episode and like, three scenes. Accusing Theatre Professor Brophy of bad acting despite decades of onscreen appearances feels like armchair quarterbacking to me. I'm sure he can look upset, frantic and then in agony via poison or murder. Those are the easiest types of acting styles there are (in my expert armchair opinion).
My whole thing is that they did this HUGE build up to finding Maddox. If they hadn’t repeatedly invoked his name dramatically throughout EVERY episode, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the recasting. But since they did make him a big deal, the fact that it wasn’t the same guy kinda took me out of the episode, which was already getting a bit embarrassing with the Halloween bit.