How To Fix TNG Inconsistencies Within 60 Seconds...

Now it's time for TNG... fixing inconsistencies with just a little dialogue.

I actually found it harder to do TNG than DS9 and VOYAGER because of the episodic nature of TNG. The premise of both DS9 and VOYAGER lend themselves to serialization, which makes it much easier to notice the inconsistencies.

The biggest issue, for me, is the fact Data never got past Lt. Commander... in 15 years. This is even more egregious than what happened to Harry Kim, particularly since there were already 2 full commanders when the pilot aired. (Riker and Crusher.) It was bad enough that Data didn't get a promotion after the Borg incident (which, had he not made his breakthroughs, the Federation would be all Borg now), or uncovering the Duras sisters' involvement during the Klingon civil war, or had already demonstrated on several occasions that he was a good XO and was already Second Officer on a ship with 1,000 people... but the final straw was instead of him being a full commander, we get Troi getting promoted by ordering a hologram to their death.

I'm glad the writers gave Troi something meaty like that to do, but Data should have gotten that pip first.

So we're going to rectify this.


(Ready Room, chime rings)
Captain Jellico: "Come in."

Data: "You asked to see me, sir?"

Jellico: "Yes, Data. Have a seat. I have relieved Commander Riker of duty. Therefore, you will be serving as my First Officer as of now. Please note the date and time."

Data: "Understood, sir."

Jellico: "Before you go back to the bridge, I have something for you." (Jellico walks toward the replicator, it makes a sound. He walks back to Data.) "On a ship of this size and amount of personnel, a First Officer is to be of a rank of no less than commander. Now, since you will be serving as my First Officer, you will therefore need to be promoted."

(Jellico brings a solid pip. He moves to Data's collar, removes the hollow pip, and places the shiny new solid pip.)

"Congratulations... Commander Data." (Jellico extends his hand, Data shakes it.)

Data: "Thank you, sir. I shall endeavor to perform the functions of this role to the best of my ability."

Jellico: "Given your record and how you have performed thus far since I took command, I have no doubt of that. Your first task is to find a replacement Operations Officer. Please go through the personnel files and let me know when you have selected one."

Data: "Yes, sir. And... thank you, sir."

Jellico: (nods) "That'll be all, Commander."



Obviously, this takes place during "Chain Of Command, Part II". What makes this work is that even after Picard gets rescued, and Riker becomes XO again, Data can go back to being Second Officer and Operations Officer, and because of how large the ship is, still retain this promotion.

I always found this to be a problem, so I fixed it. Probably be done within a minute of screen time.

What about the rest of you folks? Any fixes you can come up with for whatever scenario you see fit?

Temba, his arms open.

 

Riker: Data, how come you can't use contractions when you could on occasion in our first year on the Enterprise? Aren't you trying to become more human all the time?
Data: Do you remember Lore said I was made less human on purpose? That was the truth, sir. However, it turns out I had not run yet the latest software patch that Dr. Soong gave me, sir. Once I did, I couldn't ... I mean I could no longer use contractions, sir.

 

Aside from a few episodes, I wish someone could have re-written TNG's Seasons 6 and 7. I'm almost finished with Season 7. And I must say that I was not impressed by those two seasons, along with the first one.

 

I'd be tempted to include season 5 with those. Season 1 was hit or miss, but it was at least finding itself and there were a number of neat ideas - enough to not freak out viewers, plus the show had a certain look and feel despite it all as, in 1987, little sci-fi was available and Doctor Who was no longer a crowd-pleaser, nor was it as lush looking, and nobody was going to import "Star Cops" either... But seasons 5-7 happened after the show had established itself definitively. Enough fans loved it at the time, and I wish I was at the sci-fi bookstore to ask people what they thought at the time. I do remember a friend, whose brother mentioned - in 1993 - how despite how rough and gruff the earlier episodes were, they felt like they had more going on and were more exciting. How much of that is due to plotting versus incidental music, though after reruns s1 seemed to have more of both...

 

0:33

*runs for cover*

 

DARN RIGHT he should have. And that scene serves to humanize Jellico a bit.

For my first entry, rather than cut and paste a huge amount of text, I'll just post a link to it. It's a little more extensive, maybe a gauze pad and a wrap instead of a band-aid... but it really clears up some ugly inconsistencies: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/when-the-bough-breaks-a-story-in-one-better-ending.311302/

 

Haha, my local public television station did. I recall it looking way more low budget than Doctor Who, however.

 

A couple of comments on the scene with Data and Jellico.

Because Data is Data, and probably has his personnel files memorized, I think it would more be...

JELLICO: "Your first task is to find a replacement Operations Officer. Please go through the personnel files and let me know when you have selected one."

DATA (brief pause as he reviews said files in 0.47 seconds): "I believe that Lieutenant Gwendolyn Fitzpatrick would be an ideal choice. She has eleven years' seniority, and her personnel reviews have been uniformly excellent."

JELLICO: "Very good. Notify her of her new assignment."

DATA: "Aye, sir. I will also replicate a uniform in the appropriate color."

Jellico: (nods) "That'll be all, Commander."

DATA: "Yes, sir. And thank you, sir."

‐--------------

Now, addressing an issue of my own, in the same episode...

PICARD: "THERE... ARE... FOUR... LIGHTS!!!"

He staggers out, refusing assistance from a guard.

PICARD (v.o.): "Captain's log, stardate 46XXX. After several weeks of counseling and evaluations, Starfleet has finally declared me fit to return to duty. Counselor Troi will be seeing to any further counseling I require."

[Bridge]

(Picard and Riker enter. Troi is still in her blue uniform. Data is back in his gold one, but still has three pips.)
JELLICO: "Captain on the Bridge. Welcome home, Jean-Luc."
PICARD: "Thank you."
DATA: "Welcome back, sir."
PICARD: "Thank you, Mr. Data. And congratulations; I was pleased to hear that Starfleet confirmed your promotion."
DATA: "Thank you, sir."

 

Competently composed, but the phrase "eww" popped into my mind as there's a certain rating of movie that uses that schmaltzy style, which seems a little out of place given the context of that scene. Still, even that "eww" had more tonal depth to it than most of seasons 5 through 7 combined - where the term "wallpaper music" is an impressive understatement. "Power Play" was a great example of the new incidental music style not melding with the scenes - in this case for being too dull and farty. For an example of what's arguably at the sheer opposite end of the scale, the Doctor Who story "Remembrance of the Daleks" quickly comes to mind as it's as too hyper and still just as much out of place for key scenes... If the goal is to guide the viewer's emotional response to the scene, should the scene itself not be strong enough via plot and acting, both these episodes don't do the greatest at complementing or, worse, supplanting the drama that the plotting and acting need to sell from their core first and foremost. IMHO, but some people to this day still re-watch incessantly "The Mind's Eye" VHS tapes from the early-90s, like how often I do:






Zero plot whatsoever, so there'd better be visuals and sound, which get more repetitive than dating too... and it's bizarre how the VHS version looks better in some ways compared to the LaserDisc, when generally it's the opposite is true... depends on what one's looking for and how both sources were digitized into the computer before being rendered... (the VHS generally had more terrible blooming and noticeable edge sharpening, and I'm certain that grain/noise removal would also be a factor... plus, the VHS's magnetic medium would degrade faster, the LD wouldn't unless bit rot consumed the data layer - at which point the LD would not be playable or have massive distortion effects; VHS would just look softer. and maybe a few scan line dropouts... whee... )

 

Here's a little one from "Where Silence Has Lease".

Picard and Riker have just fired up the Enterprise's autodestruct sequence.
COMPUTER: "Indicate time interval."
RIKER: "We can do that now?"
PICARD: "Yes, I had Mr. Data rewrite the sequence; we can now set the count for anything from ten seconds to one hour. He also got rid of that silly LED clock... I don't know why they did that in the first place."
RIKER: "Maybe the person who programmed it liked old sports movies."

 

One thing I always wondered... why did they change the wall in the Observation Lounge which removed all the previous ships named Enterprise?

I never liked the change... it made the room look too generic, for lack of a better term.

If they were going to do that, it should have been done right after the Borg incident when the Enterprise was getting the refit and repairs, not between season 4 and 5.

Anyone want to try to tackle that one?

 

That episode has always bothered me. Troi passes a test and suddenly outranks Data.

 

Deanna shouldn't even have passed the test anyway. It was a test of character, of the willingness to make an appalling decision for the greater good. They played it like it was a puzzle to be solved.

Basically, if your ship is about to go pfoom, you don't have an infinite number of retries to get the solution right. You either do what must be done, or everyone onboard pays the ultimate price.

In the corresponding Voyager episode, Tom, at least, deserved to get his hollow pip back... it's just that Harry deserved his a lot more.

 

What's also weird is that this test is part of the engineering qualification. You'd expect that to be about knowing technical procedures, and a test of character to be part of, say, bridge operations.

While it's true that in real life, you don't get an infinite number of retries in a crisis situation, you do get them in a simulator. I guess apprentice pilots do stuff wrong, possibly leading to virtual crashes many times in simulators before they get it right. I have no objections to infinite retries of such a scenario as such. Except that this is a formal qualification test rather than just any regular course exercise, and you usually don't get an infinite number of retries on those.

 

Troi didn't deserve the promotion for one simple reason... she failed that part four times, and only passed because Riker gave her a hint. Troi herself said she couldn't make the decision and didn't deserve it, right before Riker said "Congratulations, commander."

At least have some period of time required between retaking the test. Something as important as that should take a few weeks, at least, to study, reflect, analyze, etc. before being allowed to try again.

While all the other parts of the exam she passed without an issue, the ability to be able to potentially send someone to their death is important because leaders do have to be able to make those hard calls to save a greater amount of people.

 

Agreed. It was an excellent test. Troi simply did not produce the correct answer.

It's doubly ludicrous when Data, who seems to save the Federation about once a year, can't get past LCDR.

 

You're wrong about one thing. It's not doubly ludicrous...

It's triply ludicrous. (One ludicrosity for each pip...)

 

Another point for DS9. Every single main character who had a rank in Starfleet or the Bajoran militia ranked up properly. The only people who weren't promoted during their tenure had just received one elsewhere.

 

All of this talk regarding Data not being promoted and Troi being promoted ignores the fact that this was the story they wanted to tell. It makes little sense from the perspective of real life but we are talking about a fictional TV show here. As much as that episode annoys me, it still makes for better drama than Troi staying in her lane and Data being promoted. Remember, TV writers and producers want to tell entertaining stories most of all, not be married to logic and what always makes sense.

It's also equally perplexing how Riker was presented early in the series as a driven officer who wanted to be captain most of all and then he's shown to turn down multiple promotions to captain. It makes little "sense" to me and you. However, those were the stories they wanted to tell. That's really all the explanation needed.

 

Data is - in essence - immortal; what's his rush?