How would you change or Re-Write TNG?

[Vger23]

Otherwise, I'm shocked and amused at all these fans wanting to hack the show! But each to their own, right? Federation ethics means toleration of all ways of life, even those you don't understand.

It was a great show at the time, and I faithfully watched every single episode. But, to be honest, it's aged very poorly. It's the only Trek show that, upon rewatch, is almost impossible to get through. It's just too sterile and passionless for the most part. It lacks any sort of dynamic punch. I don't really know how else to say it.

 

[WAMTNG]

It was a great show at the time, and I faithfully watched every single episode. But, to be honest, it's aged very poorly. It's the only Trek show that, upon rewatch, is almost impossible to get through. It's just too sterile and passionless for the most part. It lacks any sort of dynamic punch. I don't really know how else to say it.

I can completely understand this reaction, and respect it, but I think I have different criteria for 'aging badly' to most people... I seem to watch all things through a kind of acute awareness of its era. So, for instance, I recently re-watched the 1933 King Kong and found it amazing. Obviously the special effects are not-so-special today, but they're special to me because I think about them as an artefact of 1933 and that colours my enjoyment positively, if that makes sense. I don't even feel the need to add 'for its age'; I just enjoy all media as artefacts that have a history.

So too with TNG. That first season is so, so bad, but I watch it in the knowledge that it was 1987 and they're doing all this under the production conditions of a syndicated show and so on and so forth and I still love it for the matte paintings and the model shots, the munching on the scenery, and the wild ideas that went so very wrong. There's a charm to it that I find ageless.

But of course, your warp factor may vary.

 

[Vger23]

I can completely understand this reaction, and respect it, but I think I have different criteria for 'aging badly' to most people... I seem to watch all things through a kind of acute awareness of its era. So, for instance, I recently re-watched the 1933 King Kong and found it amazing. Obviously the special effects are not-so-special today, but they're special to me because I think about them as an artefact of 1933 and that colours my enjoyment positively, if that makes sense. I don't even feel the need to add 'for its age'; I just enjoy all media as artefacts that have a history.

So too with TNG. That first season is so, so bad, but I watch it in the knowledge that it was 1987 and they're doing all this under the production conditions of a syndicated show and so on and so forth and I still love it for the matte paintings and the model shots, the munching on the scenery, and the wild ideas that went so very wrong. There's a charm to it that I find ageless.

But of course, your warp factor may vary.

Good stuff here.

I actually meant that it had "aged poorly" in relation to how the rest of the franchise had aged, and not so much in relation to the era it had been released. I actually think for an 80's/90's production, it's pretty crisp. Maybe "aging" isn't really what I meant. It's more the style and pace of the storytelling than anything to do with production values.

And...speaking of "your warp factor may vary"...I actually find that the 1st season, as flawed as it could be at times, contained much more of the excitement, danger and mystery I'd prefer in Star Trek compared to some of the later seasons. The later seasons made space travel feel more like going with my grandparents in their Cadillac to the grocery store than an outerspace adventure.

 

[WAMTNG]

The later seasons made space travel feel more like going with my grandparents in their Cadillac to the grocery store than an outerspace adventure.

Not only do I know exactly what you mean, but I actually rather enjoy this aspect of the later seasons. I've always loved wild science fiction on the one hand and domestic drama on the other... having it come together in TNG suited me very well indeed (in DS9 as well, probably more so).

As for season one being more adventure-in-space - there is definitely more of a classic Trek hangover at the start. I keep mentioning this in the WAMs for season one - they're super-keen to have the audience know this is "Star Trek... continued". So it does rather feel like in the aftermath being rocketed so far from home in season two's "Q Who", Starfleet suddenly got cold feet and decided to just patrol its own borders quietly instead of exploring the great unknown. I imagine there were some rather wet underpants at Starfleet Headquarters after Picard's report on encountering the Borg!

 

[E-DUB]

Well, for one thing the saucer section should have it's own warp capability. Give it the ability to escape whatever menace necessitated separation in the first place. Liked the idea of making it almost a contemporary spin-off of the original . Heck, can you imagine DS9 (and even Voyager) as 23rd century Trek Shows?

 

[suarezguy]

There would be no feature length version of "Best of Both Worlds Part 1 and 2". The best thing about "Best of Both Worlds" is the cliffhanger at the end - in the feature length version it falls completely flat as the story just rolls on and the cliffhanger is completely destroyed! It's a crime against Trek in my view

Usually kind of hate cliffhangers, loved that one and most of them in TNG and yes they should be preserved.

Likewise, I would make it easier to get "All Good Things" as two episodes. I don't think I've ever seen this as two episodes (is it possible to see this...? Is there any cut of this as two episodes at all...?) Since it aired as a feature length movie, this is more a matter of taste, but just as "Encounter at Farpoint" got two separate episodes for syndication, despite airing as a movie-length double, I want this for "All Good Things". If anyone knows of such a thing, please do let me know as I don't think I've ever seen it as two separate episodes and I'd love to do so.

I think part of what made AGT better was its feature-length/double-length form, think it would be less good even as back to back episodes. But that split in two version presumably is what still airs in repeats now including where TNG is generally aired now the H&I channel.

Petty but I do wish first episode "Encounter at Farpoint" had started with a teaser as I've heard the two-part version does.

 

[WAMTNG]

Petty but I do wish first episode "Encounter at Farpoint" had started with a teaser as I've heard the two-part version does.

Aye, I'm pretty sure I have seen the two-parter version of this - it ends with Elizabethan Q warning them to "go back or you will certainly die!" It was odd watching the pilot again for WAMTNG and watching it open with the credits (I didn't manage to get hold of the separate episode versions and had to use the screenplay to work out the splits).

Nice to find somebody else who appreciates the 'form' of a TNG episode as much as I do!

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

More episodes about exploring, and less focused on the crew's own personal drama. Especially Data.

Don't get me wrong, I love Data, but the whole thing became 'The Data show' by the end, IMO. Thanks to his sub-plots, every other scientist now in ST has the last name Soong... and I am pretty sick of it. Its like the writers don't understand that not only is it extremely rare for the offspring of a brilliant scientist to also become a brilliant scientist, but for every one of them to have the same type of personality and even be super-famous for it? 'Scientist' isn't inherited, that only works for royalty, politicians, and entertainers.
In the original pilot, the security personnel DID have a separate insignia, which was later dropped for the show. There was also a separate 'away team' uniform (grey), which SNW has at least given a nod to (and I believe Enterprise also may have done this at least once), and originally, every ship was supposed to have its own uniforms and insignia-badge (not the insignia itself - just the shape of the badge - only Enterprise was supposed to have that boomerang-looking one), but all of that was dropped to simplify things (but it does explain why we see so many different uniforms and insignia around - it was actually meant to be that way from the beginning). As for the now missing insignia for security - its the one that looks like a 'C' in this pic, and you can see it on the 'bridge guards' in The Managerie.

Where did you get this chart, or the images in this chart? I recognize most of these insignia, but some I do not. The "no insignia" version must come from the Kelvin, and the Security one is from one of the new shows, is it not? I have no idea where the communications and special services insignia come from, but they look like something from the show.

 

[Dee1891]

I wouldn't bother. Honestly, I wouldn't bother rewriting or rebooting any of the Trek shows.

 

[Oddish]

Honestly, most of Riker's best material came pre-BoBW. So, I'd have completed his logical arc in that show by having him move on to his own command. Keep Jonathan Frakes handy for directing, guest appearances, and maybe a show or two set on his ship. But I thought it was just lame that he showed total command suitability in BoBW2, but it never went anywhere.

 

[Admiral Archer]

I love TNG exactly as it is, but I'm not going to pretend it is the perfect option for the first live action Star Trek TV spinoff. If I were to rewrite or otherwise redo TNG, it wouldn't even be TNG anymore, at least on face value; actually, I would probably have to say that in my ideal world they should have not waited until 1987, but started 10 years earlier with Star Trek Phase II, or Star Trek II or whatever the title for the unmade show was.

For those who don't know, Phase II would have been something like this: picture the pilot episode being the same basic plot as "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", only for a new TV show on a new Paramount Network, with a TV budget, with uniforms that look much more like TOS uniforms, with Decker and Ilia surviving the pilot, and with no Spock (he would have been replaced with a young full-Vulcan character named Xon, played by the guy who wound up being the Epsilon IX Space Station Commander). Test footage exists, and the Enterprise refit would have been slightly less cinematic in detail, but the set design would be largely similar or the same, just with more red and less blue in the aesthetic. Chekov would have even had his own little targeting console for weapons that actually looked really cool. I'll include some videos I found for reference of what Phase II would have looked like:

The Bridge

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Engineering

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[Mres_was_framed!]

I love TNG exactly as it is, but I'm not going to pretend it is the perfect option for the first live action Star Trek TV spinoff. If I were to rewrite or otherwise redo TNG, it wouldn't even be TNG anymore, at least on face value; actually, I would probably have to say that in my ideal world they should have not waited until 1987, but started 10 years earlier with Star Trek Phase II, or Star Trek II or whatever the title for the unmade show was.

For those who don't know, Phase II would have been something like this: picture the pilot episode being the same basic plot as "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", only for a new TV show on a new Paramount Network, with a TV budget, with uniforms that look much more like TOS uniforms, with Decker and Ilia surviving the pilot, and with no Spock (he would have been replaced with a young full-Vulcan character named Xon, played by the guy who wound up being the Epsilon IX Space Station Commander). Test footage exists, and the Enterprise refit would have been slightly less cinematic in detail, but the set design would be largely similar or the same, just with more red and less blue in the aesthetic. Chekov would have even had his own little targeting console for weapons that actually looked really cool. I'll include some videos I found for reference of what Phase II would have looked like:

The Bridge

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Engineering

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The Enterprise

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What would the door next to the weapon's station be, as there are already two turbolift doors? I thought the four green lights in that location in the movies were already present in the Phase II design, and that they were designed as a transporter direct to the bridge, that thankfully was never used per Roddenberry's advice that they need to use the turbolift to have conversations before getting to the transporter room. (That spot is shown up close near the beginning of Star Trek III.)

 

[Dukhat]

The biggest change I would have made would have been to have the show take place only 20 years after The Voyage Home, not 70. The Enterprise as seen in the show would have been the B, not the D, but otherwise it would have been the same ship. There was literally no reason why such a huge span of time was needed to differentiate TNG from TOS other than Roddeberry wanting to distance the show from both TOS and the movies, which in 1987 he had disowned.

 

[WAMTNG]

There was literally no reason why such a huge span of time was needed to differentiate TNG from TOS other than Roddeberry wanting to distance the show from both TOS and the movies, which in 1987 he had disowned.

Well to be fair, they had disowned him after The Motion Picture... it ran so far over budget, he was kept on a short leash after that. The desire for distance between the elements of the franchise almost certainly flowed from this bitter pill.

 

[Dukhat]

The biggest change I would have made would have been to have the show take place only 20 years after The Voyage Home, not 70. The Enterprise as seen in the show would have been the B, not the D, but otherwise it would have been the same ship. There was literally no reason why such a huge span of time was needed to differentiate TNG from TOS other than Roddeberry wanting to distance the show from both TOS and the movies, which in 1987 he had disowned.

As an addendum to my original post, I always felt that the reuse of both movie filming models and stock footage of things like the Excelsior, the Reliant, the Grissom, Spacedock, Regula One, the K’T’inga, the Bird of Prey, etc. as budget-saving measures always made TNG look cheap, especially since there was such a long span of time between the movies and TNG that most of those ships/space stations should have been quite outdated by TNG’s time frame.

If it had been up to me, I would have had more new filming models built than just the 6-foot and 2-foot Enterprise-Ds. I would definitely have had Andrew Probert’s original Ambassador class design built as the regular ‘guest’ starship (which would have replaced all those Excelsior stock shots), and a smaller vessel for any ships that the Enterprise comes across with problems or ends up getting destroyed (a role the Reliant and Grissom models ended up having.) I would also have built a new space station model like what Probert envisioned, to be reused as different Starbases. Finally, I would have had a new Klingon ship for the very first season (I know Roddenberry was adamant that the show have no Klingons, but c’mon…you can’t have Worf without other Klingons…)

 

[haddie moonfall]

..Better made uniforms that you don't have to tug on
.. Warf's hair long from the get go and not always suggesting the 'wrong' thing
.. Deanna being able to perceive things that would actually help the crew/mission
..Geordi w/out the visor, at least after season 1
.. More day in the life like Data's Day (i know i'm weird).. poker games, 10-4ward time (i love to get to know the characters)
.. I thought Wesley had a good character arc.. i liked his character, i love reading about the traveler's in ST literature

...i love episodic star trek and throwing in some 1-3 part sagas AND i loved having 25+ episodes per season

I still love TNG and have re-watched several times (currently in another re-watch up to Season 4 right now).
To me, it's aged just as well at TOS.
The tugging on the uniforms has started to get to me this time around (re-watch),
but i try to just laugh about it. Why don't people fix things when they're so obviously a problem?
I love this show so much and looking forward to Picard Season 3

 

[WAMTNG]

As an addendum to my original post, I always felt that the reuse of both movie filming models and stock footage of things like the Excelsior, the Reliant, the Grissom, Spacedock, Regula One, the K’T’inga, the Bird of Prey, etc. as budget-saving measures always made TNG look cheap, especially since there was such a long span of time between the movies and TNG that most of those ships/space stations should have been quite outdated by TNG’s time frame.

Wow, that's almost the polar opposite of my feel on this! It's probably my admiration for the challenges involved in overcoming production limitations (something I'm mentioning a lot in the weekly WAMs), but I love the reuse of all the studio miniatures. Rather than making it look cheap, it gives the show a lush movie-quality. Just compare the ILM special effects in 1985's Enemy Mine to 1987's first season TNG... I really think they did an amazing job on this show, and the reuse of models is what made it possible.

Now I know that you're coming at this from a different place - your position is presumably something like 'given that this is supposed to be so long afterwards, the appearance of these older vessels feels wrong', and then from that intuition, the accusation of cheapness. But this was not a cheap show - it was incredibly expensive for a TV show. I feel like our fanon can easily cover the gaps in between here, because the resources that would go into building a starship surely justify a long term of service.

In this regard, consider how long a 20th century warship remained in service. Swedish minesweepers commissioned in 1941 for World War II did not get decommissioned until the first decade of the 21st century, more than 60 years later. I'd like to think the Federation's technology could be built with even greater resistance to obsolescence... But as ever, your warp factor may vary.

 

[Dukhat]

Now I know that you're coming at this from a different place - your position is presumably something like 'given that this is supposed to be so long afterwards, the appearance of these older vessels feels wrong', and then from that intuition, the accusation of cheapness. But this was not a cheap show - it was incredibly expensive for a TV show. I feel like our fanon can easily cover the gaps in between here, because the resources that would go into building a starship surely justify a long term of service.

No, that's not quite what I meant. I am not debating the expensive nature of producing a science fiction show like TNG. I am pointing out that if you're going to make a show that takes place 100 years after TOS, then you're going to have to accept that sometimes certain budget monies will need to be allocated in a logical way.

Case in point: TNG's "Measure of a Man" and Starbase 173: This starbase is established as being brand-new. Yet every exterior shot of it was stock footage of Regula One from The Wrath of Khan. The producers opted to use this footage in lieu of building a new space station model in order to save money. But not only is the design 80 years old, it is wildly out of scale in relation to the Enterprise-D. But the producers didn't care about that. Unfortunately, what they did choose to spend their money on was a $10,000 futuristic 'wheelchair' from the previous season episode "Too Short a Season," which didn't work correctly and wasn't even particularly necessary to the story. That money could have went to building a new studio model for that starbase.

And fanon explanations about the longevity of technology is fine, to a certain point. After a while, though, it starts to look like technology just stagnates in the Star Trek universe.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Hmm, I'll need to give this some thought and come back with my ideas.

The question is whether to just tweak the original elements in new ways or to radically overhaul everything, decisions decisions.

 

[WAMTNG]

After a while, though, it starts to look like technology just stagnates in the Star Trek universe.

Aye, I can understand this position. I think for me, though, I prefer to imagine a future that overcomes planned obsolescence and keeps things in service for as long as possible. I take your point about Starbase 173, though... it shouldn't have been justified as brand new, and perhaps should have been explained as having been towed their from somewhere else instead (refitted rather than newly constructed).

Thanks for the exchange on this, though! Very interesting to spar over these issues.