rewrite a Star Trek character

[Temis the Vorta]

Pick ONE character you'd rewrite (and/or recast) who you think really needed it more than any other, and/or had potential to be far more interesting.

My choice is Travis Mayweather. In the 22nd C, Earth shouldn't be so Starfleet-perfect and the Boomers in particular should be wild pioneer types who go off into space for fun & profit & freedom, without the blessing of any government. They should be a bit like those charming folks from Deadwood and Travis should fit right in with that crowd, while also being able to reign himself in, to fit in with Starfleet. He would always have that good/bad tension - he can play the Starfleet role to perfection, but you're always aware that with him, it is a role.

He should have a dangerous, unrestrained edge you didn't see from any of the rest of the cast (which would have made him good to pair up with repressed-nut Reed and naive good old boy Trip - three wholly different characters who could have played well off each other). Since Boomers know what's out there, Travis rather than T'Pol should have been Archer's guide to the universe, being able to draw upon an extended network of family, friends, and allies of various degrees of trustworthiness.

Travis would be a unique asset, which would allow him to get away with behavior that Archer might not tolerate in the rest of his crew. He would introduce a loose cannon element, or at least the risk of it.

I'm not sure if the role would need to be recast. Travis was so underwritten that I never got a read on Anthony Montgomery's acting skills - not a fair test. But if I did recast it, I'd try to get Taye Diggs for the role.

 

[Kegek]

She is an ancient being which has the wry wisdom of centuries, astonishingly perceptive, raucuously witty, and easily bored by self-importance. An expert on the sciences who has not only worked with, but moulded the greatest minds for generations. She's also around eight years old, and she's currently slumming it with Ben Sisko, who back in her previous old man body used to enjoy the odd debauchery. Her incongruous appearance is often a source of discomfort; as her cheerful schoolgrader voice explains arcane scientific data or a scintillating tale with equal ease. And yet, for all that, there are times when she simply wants to be a child and experience the joys of youth with those who are her own age.

Understandably I don't have any ideas for an actress, but clearly Terry Farrell would be a little old for the role.

 

[Intelligence]

Temis you are dead right on the Travis issue -- I couldn't add more. As Enterprise was essentially Voyager they should have looked at Neelix' pattern for the navigator instead of relying on the 'funky alien' part only and giving it to the doctor.

As for rewriting a character, I think it would by Riker I would rewrite ... better saying write. His original intention was to become a Starship Captain as fast as he can, but somehow for a mere 15 years he played the same role. Best and plausible chance for rewriting the character's goal would have been start of season 4, Picard was essentially already written out of the series. The twist with Riker facing his alter ego (a young ambitious first officer) was also already added to the story line.

 

[Triskelion]

I would not have given Data a hero's death, but the death of an old man
(like the Godfather). (But Shinzon wouldn't wait).

 

[JiNX-01]

Pick ONE character you'd rewrite (and/or recast) who you think really needed it more than any other, and/or had potential to be far more interesting.

My choice is Travis Mayweather. In the 22nd C, Earth shouldn't be so Starfleet-perfect and the Boomers in particular should be wild pioneer types who go off into space for fun & profit & freedom, without the blessing of any government. They should be a bit like those charming folks from Deadwood and Travis should fit right in with that crowd, while also being able to reign himself in, to fit in with Starfleet. He would always have that good/bad tension - he can play the Starfleet role to perfection, but you're always aware that with him, it is a role.

He should have a dangerous, unrestrained edge you didn't see from any of the rest of the cast (which would have made him good to pair up with repressed-nut Reed and naive good old boy Trip - three wholly different characters who could have played well off each other). Since Boomers know what's out there, Travis rather than T'Pol should have been Archer's guide to the universe, being able to draw upon an extended network of family, friends, and allies of various degrees of trustworthiness.

Travis would be a unique asset, which would allow him to get away with behavior that Archer might not tolerate in the rest of his crew. He would introduce a loose cannon element, or at least the risk of it.

I'm not sure if the role would need to be recast. Travis was so underwritten that I never got a read on Anthony Montgomery's acting skills - not a fair test. But if I did recast it, I'd try to get Taye Diggs for the role.

I love this. I would recast, using an actor closer to Archer's age. Someone who can play gruff but still be likeable (Ed Asner in the Mary Tyler Moore show is what I have in mind. "I hate spunk.").

As for a character I'd like to rewrite, I nominate... Phlox.
He'd be Doctor Mark Phlox and he'd human.

He would have a couple of years of interspecies medical exchange experience, but he wouldn't be Super!Doctor! who can cure anything anytime anywhere with osmotic eels or lyssarian larvae. People would die on his watch. People maimed would stay maimed. He wouldn't be able to drop in on a planet where aliens are being wiped out by pandemics they have struggled to cure for decades and he figures out what is wrong and what to do about it in a matter of days.

Most of the time he'd be stumped by what he comes across.

 

[exodus]

I would have rewritten Kes.

I would have made her much more curious & child like in the begining. I would have made her asking all types of questions about the ship, Starfleet, The Alpha Quaderant, etc. By second season I would have always had a book or PADD in her hands learning everything she could. I would have kept her as the EMH's friend but I would have never made her a nurse. As her knowledge grew, so would her wisdom. Due to her innocense & curiosity(at first), she would be the reason Voyager would explore and often get into trouble going where they don't belong. While Neelix was incharge of supplies & trade, I would have made her the Ambassador for Voyager. I think she had a better way of dealing with people than Neelix did.

I would have kept her mental powers and used them to take members with her to other relms of existance. I also would have kept "Fury" but gone into better detail on how her powers corrupt her and over use causes her to go all "Dark Pheonix".

 

[Anwar]

You forgot a more interesting take on the Ocampan lifecycle by having her be a kid to begin with and then with each season she ages physically and mentally (10 years old to begin with, then 14-15 next year, then 18 next years, then early twenties year after that) so she starts off as a curious young kid but within a few years is as mature and intelligent as an adult.

 

[exodus]

You forgot a more interesting take on the Ocampan lifecycle by having her be a kid to begin with and then with each season she ages physically and mentally (10 years old to begin with, then 14-15 next year, then 18 next years, then early twenties year after that) so she starts off as a curious young kid but within a few years is as mature and intelligent as an adult.

Yeah, that too.


I also wanted to tie in her mental powers to her aging.
Being that she is psychokenetic and can control things on a molecular level, I wanted to make her keep her own molecules in check and slow down her aging that way. However the trade off would be, if she needed to turn her focus of her powers elsewhere, her aging would increase.

It would help keep the Special EFX budget in check but still giving a solid reason why she couldn't always use her abilities.

I also liked how in "Coldfire" they hinted Ocampian powers are intune with nature. I was thinking also about using a small amount of her ability like a human tricorder, where she can "sense" the "life energy" in things.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Riker.

I would've kept him the same, then have him get out of TNG, and lead VOY some years later.

I promise you, I'd have loved VOY with Riker at the helm - at least he'd be Captain. In TNG, he rejected the Captain offer like, 4 times. And for no reason.

Really, Riker stopped being a real character, and the show stopped giving him that early attention, post season 2. He became a real secondary character. Nothing more or less.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If we need an actor who is long past the greenhorn stage (and that sounds like a good idea), I might give the role to Christopher Judge, who is 44 (but doesn't look it - the charcter could be in his 30s).

Kes is another great candidate. Just keep her around as a dangerous, powerful being who nonetheless is very useful to the crew because of her power, and of course she's their friend.

And the new Borg character could be played by a male actor. No need to boot Kes to "make room."

 

[Anwar]

Being that she is psychokenetic and can control things on a molecular level, I wanted to make her keep her own molecules in check and slow down her aging that way. However the trade off would be, if she needed to turn her focus of her powers elsewhere, her aging would increase.

It would help keep the Special EFX budget in check but still giving a solid reason why she couldn't always use her abilities.

So you'd make her the Trek equivalent of Kid Psycho from the old Legion of Superheroes comics? Not bad.

 

[flandry84]

Chakotay
The man you should bet on in a Klingon dagger fight,a man trained as a starfleet officer,who has learned that the rule book doesn't cover every contingincy.And a guy who doesn't retreat to his quarters blithering on about spirit-guides(WTF was he on?)

And Harry Kim......rewrite him as the first of Voyagers crewmen KIA

 

[stj]

Data. There's something wrong with a robot that wants to become human, but doesn't know that means mental failures, physical inadequacies, aging and death. His programmed motives should have been obedience to command, desire to fulfill commands, desire to explore. The emergent drives to take over in all perilous situations, to correct the errors of the captain's other subordinates and re-engineer the ship should provide any internal conflict desired. He should not have been in the chain of command as such, merely heading specific tasks within set parameters. Recast with some younger actor who can do arrogant and clueless---Hayden Christensen?

 

[JD]

First off I want to say that I did like Ezri quite a bit, but I think it would have been alot more interesting if they had brought in a male host for Dax after Jadzia died. Perhaps he could have been a guy in about his 30 who was fully trained and ready to become a host. I think it would have been interesting if he ended up somehow being forced to work with Worf, perhaps as some sort of a security officer or something. At first he could have wanted nothing to do with him, but over time he would have come to see him as someone completely different from Jadzia, and they would have slowly started to become friends. He also could have tried to go back to the Curzon/Ben Sisko relationship we hear so much about during the earlier parts of the show, although now we would get the conflict between Sisko being an older family man and this new Sisko being a younger ladies man.

 

[exodus]

Being that she is psychokenetic and can control things on a molecular level, I wanted to make her keep her own molecules in check and slow down her aging that way. However the trade off would be, if she needed to turn her focus of her powers elsewhere, her aging would increase.

It would help keep the Special EFX budget in check but still giving a solid reason why she couldn't always use her abilities.

So you'd make her the Trek equivalent of Kid Psycho from the old Legion of Superheroes comics? Not bad.

I've never read Legion of Superheros.

Besides Legends of the Dark Knight or some Vertigo titles, I've never read anything DC.

 

[Lilith]

I'm going to go with Troi and rewrite her as an actual character

First off all, she's going to ditch the strange uniforms and though keeping her main position as a counselor, add heavy duties in diplomacy, mediation and first contact missions.

Her empathy stays, but has to be more usefull. No more pointing out the obvious. Instead, when confronted with touchy situations, she'll be able to give and indepth emotional asessment of the other party if necessary. That, coupled with her diplomatic and psychological skills will make her a much more valuable advisor to Picard than she was in TNG.

Also, enough with the soft, touchy-feely demeanor. She's going to be more businesslike, though able to switch back to bestfriendmode easily when a particular situation calls for it.

Then:
-better choices in partners
-a bit of a darker facet
-formal demeanor and a regular (or semi-regular) uniform
-more command training
-still a ditz about technical mumbojumbo and physics

Overall, she should be commanding more respect and less protection

 

[Warp Coil]

I would have rewritten Kes.

I would have made her much more curious & child like in the begining. I would have made her asking all types of questions about the ship, Starfleet, The Alpha Quaderant, etc. By second season I would have always had a book or PADD in her hands learning everything she could. I would have kept her as the EMH's friend but I would have never made her a nurse. As her knowledge grew, so would her wisdom. Due to her innocense & curiosity(at first), she would be the reason Voyager would explore and often get into trouble going where they don't belong. While Neelix was incharge of supplies & trade, I would have made her the Ambassador for Voyager. I think she had a better way of dealing with people than Neelix did.

I would have kept her mental powers and used them to take members with her to other relms of existance. I also would have kept "Fury" but gone into better detail on how her powers corrupt her and over use causes her to go all "Dark Pheonix".

I would have made Kes more interesting and better utilized in the series. But I'd be more cautious about how "child-like" and "curious" I'd want her to be, just to avoid another Wesley debacle.

Speaking of Wesley, there's a great example of a character that needed to be re-worked and re-written. Of course, the same is true of Jake Sisko, Harry Kim and Travis Mayweather. These characters were either poorly written or just blatantly avoided for so long that they didn't contribue enough to the series.

 

[Balthier the Great]

I think I'd like a crack at Uhura. I think there was plenty of potential in having a female officer, and having an African background might be interesting too. In most of her screen time, she's basicly the AT&T lady in space. Only in Treskallon does she even go so far as having an opinion on something (refusing to fight er attack some alien guy). Even then, she doesn't get much speaking time nor a first name. Even when she's apparently being raped by the other thrall she's "liutenant". I mean really.

I think I'd give her a good reason for wanting to join SF. She'd definately have a first name, family back home that she'd talk about, and would probably be friends with Sulu or Checkov (personally, I think having her in love with a crewmate is kinda cliche, so I wouldn't do that). She strikes me as being a smart and independant woman, somebody who would speak her mind when pushed. I think she's quick to come up with a plan -- she did come up with a plan to distract Mirror Sulu.

For a modern series, I think I'd nerf Seven just slightly, and possibly make her have more serious problems becoming an individual. Think of how you'd act if suddenly everything you ever knew was taken away and you were in an alien environment where nothing is familiar. You couldn't possibly be functional in a few days. You wouldn't quietly go along with the program. I think she should want to go back to the Borg at first, and maybe run away a few times to try to get "home". She should maybe betray Voyager to the Borg at least once. Give Janeway some doubts that it's possible and maybe even make her wonder if she made the wrong choice. THAT would have been intersting. Instead, Seven instantly agrees to be an individual, within a week is a trusted engineer and for that matter a senior officer. Not very realistic IMO. Besides the fact that she is much too powerful to make the series interesting.

 

[Kirby]

I'd like to see one of the 'torture' characters like Geordi or O'Brien suffer some post traumatic stress disorder. Not just reference some counseling sessions, but really make them screwed up for a while.

Oh, and Neelix... his race should have a traditional greeting where any non-Talaxian would be required to kick the Talaxian in the balls everytime the see him.

 

[Furlong]

Kes, definitely.

I'd have kept the same actress, but the overall depection of her would have changed in the series. She would be Voyager''s version of Trance Gemini, the first season version, from Andromeda. A childlike innocence, but hints of a far greater power scattered here and there.