Ot, just bad production design on TNG's part.
The One Thing You Could Change, TNG Edition...
- Thread starter Farscape One
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They only had so much money for sets...
The Sickbay is really also rather small for a ship of 1000 people...
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RichT
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In 2016 the USA had 2.77 hospital beds per 1,000 people and 2.45 doctors per 1,000 people. I'd say that even if the sickbay complex isn't significantly larger than we see on screen, as indicated by the published blueprints, it's actually a pretty reasonable facility given the size of the crew. (Of course, the crew of the Enterprise-D is stupidly small for a ship its size, but that's a separate issue.)
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RichT
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I'm reminded here of Babylon 5, which had a budget that was tiny compared to Trek's (~$800,000 per episode vs TNG's ~$1.3million); they had significantly more limited resources and sets at their disposal, but gave a better impression of being "really" on a 5-mile-long station through clever matting and virtual sets than TNG ever did of being "really" on an enormous spaceship. And yes, B5 wasn't always terribly successful in this, and they didn't do it all the time or even really all that often, but we still saw that the station commander's office was in an "outdoor" office block overlooking the internal garden of the station, we still saw that the core shuttle ran through five miles of the station's interior, we still saw vast docking bay complexes. TNG never really did this. There's no mention of the main engineering we see on screen being "the control office" for a vast engineering complex; there's no mention of sickbay being part of a much larger hospital complex. Every indication, on screen and in dialogue (with only three exceptions that come to mind*), is that the Enterprise is just an endless maze of small beige rooms and corridors. Hell, even when we see the arboretum it just looks like a regular miscellaneous room with astroturf, and far less interesting than anything we see on the holodeck, including obvious "outdoor sets" like the forest in "Encounter at Farpoint" or Barclay's fantasy in "Hollow Pursuits". They didn't even modify the Ten Forward set with lots of plants looking out into a vista of space, or matte in a background showing it to be an annex to a much larger area on the ship; it's just a small dull beige room.
*Those three exceptions are – mentioning the dolphins in "The Perfect Mate" (though it's barely audible, and also believable that they might have been talking about a holodeck program in context); the main shuttlebay, glimpsed as a scale model in "Cause and Effect"; and the interior of the warp nacelle in "Eye of the Beholder".
I would edit the destruction of Wesley Crusher which took place in "Journey's End". That was downright insulting to the character.
His mistakes in "The First Duty" were acceptable, I mean everyone can screw up. He made his mistake but did the right thing in the end and, as the example Sito jaxa show, there's always a way to correct some of the past mistakes.
It would have been interesting to see Wesley return to the ship as a Starfleet Officer who could prove to Picard and the others that "OK, I screwed up but I managed to graduate from Starfleet Academy and now I'm doing my best to be a good Starfleet Officer.
Instead he returns and behaves like an idiot, before running off with that slimy Traveler. What a sad end to a promising character.
Not to mention that those in charge screwed up the chance they had to come up with some future series linked to TNG. Why not a series with Wesley, Lavelle and some other promising former cadets?
I hope they have the decency to make him show up in "Picard" without further ruining the character.
I'm not a super fan of Wesley but I find him a good and interesting character who deserved something better than what we saw in "Journey's End".
His mistakes in "The First Duty" were acceptable, I mean everyone can screw up. He made his mistake but did the right thing in the end and, as the example Sito jaxa show, there's always a way to correct some of the past mistakes.
It would have been interesting to see Wesley return to the ship as a Starfleet Officer who could prove to Picard and the others that "OK, I screwed up but I managed to graduate from Starfleet Academy and now I'm doing my best to be a good Starfleet Officer.
Instead he returns and behaves like an idiot, before running off with that slimy Traveler. What a sad end to a promising character.
Not to mention that those in charge screwed up the chance they had to come up with some future series linked to TNG. Why not a series with Wesley, Lavelle and some other promising former cadets?
I hope they have the decency to make him show up in "Picard" without further ruining the character.
I'm not a super fan of Wesley but I find him a good and interesting character who deserved something better than what we saw in "Journey's End".
I guess I'd cut down on the technobabble which would also result in fewer "space anomaly of the week" episodes. Replace those with character episodes or more adventure centric stuff.
Less humans, more Andorians, Tellarites etc among the senior crew, its supposed to the flagship of Starfleet representing the UFP not NASA in the 24th century
exactly - tng needed to be a lot more like tos. i never understood what changed all that stuff - a certain iowa farmboy would have been court martialed every other week if he had somehow stranded in picard's starfleet.
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... but the they needed to be relatively close to them in the first place (if we somehow got ftl we would go to alpha centauri first not to romulus)
do ferenghi, romulans, klingons and whoever have prime directives, too?
maybe klingons: shoot first, bellow orders later
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that would be only logical considered their upbringing
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I'd rewrite the episodes where the Enterprise-D is inexplicably overpowered due to extreme incompetence, just make it more believable. Those episodes always stuck out to me like a sore thumb, I mean Iike Rascals a lot, but I can never actually get over the fact that the Federation flagship was taken over by Ferengi in outdated Klingon ships. Starship Mine, for example, did it well enough to the point where you can semi-believe it.
That includes Generations.
That includes Generations.
Actually, if anything it was probably the opposite, as during the TNG era Stage 8 the bridge, observation lounge and ready room didn't fit together on the set, whereas for the Voyager set they did fit in.
That reminds me. Along with Voyager, I'd have them stop doing experiments/tests with forcefields and beams, right in front of the warp core in middle of Main Engineering. There should have been proper laboratories and other facilities for that sort of thing...
I wish they had put more clearly defined limits on Troi's powers so they could be used and addressed more often and in interesting ways. I think it could have made interesting stories if, for example, she had the ability to influence others' emotions, which is helpful as a therapist -- but it was difficult to successfully use without the consent of those being affected. I can think of a story where, for example, a patient on the Enterprise refuses to allow Troi to use her powers on them, despite the fact that their mental health issues are causing performance problems for them -- this could spark a debate about whether it is reasonable or should be allowed for them to refuse. The ability to use her powers with difficulty in hostile situations would also be more justification for her to be included on missions and in away teams.
More redshirts on away missions 
More gold and blues too. Why send the department heads? Especially in plots where they're really not needed. Any security Joe or science Jill could fill the slots sometimes.More redshirts on away missions
let redshirts be redshirts (again)
She's an empath: a half Betazoid who lacks their full telepathy but can sense emotions and telepahically communicate with those close to her (Riker, her mom, etc.); what other limits does she need?
I think the point was to have defined parameters for her range.
For example, one episode she can tell you there's a whole planet worth of people around on a cloaked world, the next episode she can't tell you any amount of people on a ship directly in front of them.
For example, one episode she can tell you there's a whole planet worth of people around on a cloaked world, the next episode she can't tell you any amount of people on a ship directly in front of them.
How about not being able to passively pick up emotions through the freaking void of space and thousands of kilometers away?
Yeah, that's what I meant, thanks -- emphasis more on the "defined" than the "limits." I wouldn't have necessarily minded her abilities being more powerful if it was clear what they actually were, or when and how they worked. For example, I believe her telepathic communication with Riker was established in the first episode, but there are many situations where it seemes like that link would have been useful but wasn't used or even addressed.
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