For a humanist he could be oddly inhuman.he kid in "The Bonding" was originally supposed to recreate his dead mom on the Holodeck, but it became space aliens who did it instead because mourning isn't a thing in the 24th Century.
This was a huge missed opportunity, IMHO. Of course I'm assuming that if they changed Rikers that they would have written it in any way that anyone would have noticed.
I agree with all of these points. Minus "they should've kept Tom Riker!"TNG is a unique case, since it was a 1980s show reusing a format from a 1960s show. So it had a certain retro quality baked in and was never the trailblazing series it liked to pretend it was. When you compare it to one hour dramas created in and for the 1980s like Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, or L.A. Law, TNG lags pretty far behind.
By the 90s, sitcoms like Roseanne, Ellen, and Will and Grace were featuring regular gay characters while the best TNG and DS9 could do was science fiction metaphors for homosexuality like "The Outcast" and "Rejoined." TNG could've been a lot more groundbreaking than it was, but the powers that were chose not to be. David Gerrold wanted to do "Blood and Fire," a story that was a metaphor for the AIDS crisis that also featured a gay couple, in TNG's first season, but TNG and Roddenberry in particular chickened out on it.
Heck, even the ongoing character arcs that shows like Hill Street specialized in were anathema to TNG's standalone style storytelling. Remember when Dr. Pulaski told Geordi he could get artificial ocular implants in some second season episode or another? That was supposed to be the setup for an ongoing plotline for Geordi that also involved a romance with the Sonya Gomez character, but that went nowhere.
If you read The TNG Companion, it's FILLED with examples of more provocative & interesting sounding stories that the TNG writers & producers chickened out of. The bad guys in "Conspiracy" were originally supposed to be a rogue group of Starfleet officers who thought the Prime Directive was too restrictive, but they became space parasites instead because Starfleet officers could never REALLY go bad. Roddenberry didn't want Picard to lie to Moriarty at the end of "Elementary, Dear Data" to regain control of his ship, so that story just peters out instead of having an actual dramatic climax. The kid in "The Bonding" was originally supposed to recreate his dead mom on the Holodeck, but it became space aliens who did it instead because mourning isn't a thing in the 24th Century.
Even at the end of "Attached" in the very last season of the show, the writers chickened out of getting Picard and Crusher romantically involved, something they'd teased since at least episode two, with Crusher literally saying "Or maybe we should be afraid" when Picard suggests exploring their feelings for each other. Honestly, "Maybe we should be afraid" could've been the mantra for the whole show. I like TNG, but most of the time it was a long way from TOS' "To boldly go" / "Risk is our business" vibe.
To clarify, I wasn't really arguing that they should've made the Riker switch. I don't know if that would've been a good idea or not. But it was yet another example of the show wimping out and not doing a potentially risky move.
You can't just change Rikers midstream!
I like the chemistry between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy too. But I don't think it's unique to TOS. I'd watch Odo and Quark doing improve from the L.A. phone book.
I meant "conservative" as in "risk adverse" rather than in the American political sense. TNG didn't take a whole lot of chances, is what I was saying.
I'll have to get back to reading the Companion. I started reading it earlier this year when it was on sale, but I DNF'd it when I switched from reading on my Kindle Fire to a KOBO.If you read The TNG Companion, it's FILLED with examples of more provocative & interesting sounding stories that the TNG writers & producers chickened out of. The bad guys in "Conspiracy" were originally supposed to be a rogue group of Starfleet officers who thought the Prime Directive was too restrictive, but they became space parasites instead because Starfleet officers could never REALLY go bad. Roddenberry didn't want Picard to lie to Moriarty at the end of "Elementary, Dear Data" to regain control of his ship, so that story just peters out instead of having an actual dramatic climax. The kid in "The Bonding" was originally supposed to recreate his dead mom on the Holodeck, but it became space aliens who did it instead because mourning isn't a thing in the 24th Century.
I meant "conservative" as in "risk adverse" rather than in the American political sense. TNG didn't take a whole lot of chances, is what I was saying.
Although Steve Shives had a very good video a few years ago about exactly what in the world of Star Trek appeals to those with conservative political leanings. I seem to recall that part of it was that much of ST was about "The Good Guys" going off to solve the problems of faraway other places, rather than solving the issues in our own backyards.
