First Officers

[GodThingFormerly]

McCoy quits Starfleet for a civilian practice of some kind - the unfilmed part of the script has him treating children AND tame lions and such!

Not at all. McCoy is (re)introduced treating the injured paw of some children's tame pet cheetah in Harold Livingston's teleplay for the Phase II pilot, In Thy Image (which formed the basis of ST:TMP), although this and other character/plot elements can be traced back to Gene Roddenberry's script for The God Thing:

"Scotty has become an alcoholic, and McCoy has given up treating human patients to become a veterinarian, loudly proclaiming animals as the only sensible patients he has ever had." - GR as quoted in Starlog Magazine (#3, January, 1977).

...outdated novelization...

TGT

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Emphasis mine

Not at all. McCoy is (re)introduced treating the injured paw of some children's tame pet cheetah in Harold Livingston's teleplay for the Phase II pilot, In Thy Image (which formed the basis of ST:TMP), although this and other character/plot elements can be traced back to Gene Roddenberry's script for The God Thing:

"Scotty has become an alcoholic, and McCoy has given up treating human patients to become a veterinarian, loudly proclaiming animals as the only sensible patients he has ever had." - GR as quoted in Starlog Magazine (#3, January, 1977).

Interesting that Roddenberry would want to make Scotty an outright alcoholic back in the 70s. The Roddenberry of the 80s and 90s would never allow such a thing to come of his precious engineer, especially since he claimed in those two decades that Ellison wrote him to be a drug dealer. Moreover, it's interesting that he'd allow a regular to be an addict but not a lower level crewman as seen in Ellison's original COTEF script.

I wished that we'd gotten the Roddenberry of the 70s when it came time for TNG. A Roddenberry still very much interested in showing the warts and all of human beings striving to be better than themselves and not the Roddenberry whose ego bought into the philosophical vision of his creation. A Roddenberry still interested in telling stories about people not some perfect, vague concept of "evolved humanity."

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Interesting that Roddenberry would want to make Scotty an outright alcoholic back in the 70s. The Roddenberry of the 80s and 90s would never allow such a thing to come of his precious engineer, especially since he claimed in those two decades that Ellison wrote him to be a drug dealer. Moreover, it's interesting that he'd allow a regular to be an addict but not a lower level crewman as seen in Ellison's original COTEF script.

"Few starships have ever completed a five-year mission, and none but the U.S.S. Enterprise has returned with its original crew virtually intact. Perhaps the explanation for so many of the crew volunteering for a second five years was their seeking the relative anonymity of space. Or perhaps these men or women cannot find the satisfaction in an ordinary life after so many years of the highest adventure experienced by humans." - Star Trek II: Writer & Director's Guide (Series Bible) by Gene Roddenberry.

I wished that we'd gotten the Roddenberry of the 70s when it came time for TNG. A Roddenberry still very much interested in showing the warts and all of human beings striving to be better than themselves and not the Roddenberry whose ego bought into the philosophical vision of his creation. A Roddenberry still interested in telling stories about people not some perfect, vague concept of "evolved humanity."

"Then the starship crew must be perfect humans?
No, you can project too optimistically. We want characters with a reasonable mixture of strength, weaknesses and foibles. Again, believability is the key here. What kind of men would logically and believably man a vessel of this type? Obviously, they'd be better selected and trained than the wild enlisted shore-leave group in "MR. ROBERTS." On the other hand, they have not gotten too stuffy to enjoy themselves and their senses on liberty in an exotic alien city filled with unique pleasures." - Ibid.

TGT

 

[hammerhead]

The first officer should at least be one of the bridge officers, I guess. Doubling as first officer and chief engineer? I doubt that would be practical. He/she would be in the turbolift half of the time.

Well Commander Trip Tucker in ENT was originally Archer's first officer on NX-01 and he was Chief Engineer, this was spoiled when T'Pol came aboard and was made first officer and Trip is annoyed at this in the first episode.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, we could once again theoretize that the premature maiden voyage of NX-01 was just as anomalious as that of the refitted NCC-1701, and that the originally intended XO (whom Archer might even have disapproved of) was left ashore for the duration of this milk run. It would probably pass Starfleet muster if Archer argued that he needed his best fri... uh, the chief engineer of the entire Warp Five project as his second-in-command for this trials run.

Once Archer was out there in the uncharted depths of space, there was little that Starfleet could do to force his hand on administrative choices. I wonder if they could even truly have recalled him if they so wanted, at the end of "Broken Bow"?

Timo Saloniemi