Missed opportunities to revisit old characters

Yes. I just rewatched that ep the other day and I felt there was room for more character development there.

 

The android in "Little Girls" was Ruk.

 

You are correct, sir, I was thinking about the one time I met him at a con. You may be right about weight/health issues. He was such a large man, who carried it well, though he had obviously gained some in the intervening years.

My comment about it being a poignant sendoff stands, though.

 

I wish they could've given Lt. Leslie a cameo like they did with Lt. Kyle in TWoK.

 

That's why I was asking, seemed the closest match!

On the whole, I'd sooner leave Ruk alone... far more interesting as the last remnant of some lost alien race, amoral in a sense, but just because 'our' current day concerns are of no interest to him, than turn him into a major character in a major movie where he'd have to be either villain or ally.

 

In TWOK, there was (at least initially) some thought of hiring Madlyn Rhue to play Marla McGivers again, but her health problems would have made appearing in the movie difficult to impossible.

If the end result was his wife in the oval office? I think he'd do it.

 

In re: bringing back Madlyn Rhue to reprise Marla McGivers;

They called her and offered her the role. She turned it down, citing her health problems as the reason why. At that time, she was embarrassed at how big an impact they had on her mobility, and didn't work as an actress for a long time, until she finally decided to accept it, and move on to taking the roles she could play with her disability. Rumor has it they offered to write Marla's death scene so she wouldn't have to move around, but she still said no.

 

The actor Nimoy hired was terrific (maybe the only thing I like about his 'direction' for SFS), and works better for me than Mudd would have.

I always ALWAYS thought it should have been Kor in TFF. Even the name suggests it, plus you'd figure the Shat would still be high on hiring Canadians.

I've often wondered if that was the idea of the original writers on TUC,where they wanted Kirk & McCoy to run into various characters in prison that they knew from the series.

 

The Kirk Saavik baby idea is rough, but is it any worse than the Spock Saavik one that Bennett tried to get in and Nimoy aborted?

 

Rats

 

Obligatory mention: Valeris should have been Saavik.

It would have made her betrayal that much more... relevant.

 

I'm still not convinced that T'Lar from TSFS couldn't have been T'Pau instead. Granted, T'Pau was a politician first, and T'Lar seemed like more of a mystic, but to the vast majority of the audience, I'd wager the two characters were pretty much interchangeable: "Elderly Vulcan female officiating at an important ceremony on Vulcan on Spock's behalf." Would have been a nice nod, I think -- even if Celia Lovsky was gone by then.

A few other thoughts regarding TFF: I'm not completely sure of this idea myself, but I thought I'd throw it out anyway. In place of Sybok (the heretofore-unknown half-brother of Spock), could they have used a reformed-yet-still-insane Garth of Izar -- as if he found religion and started seeking God instead of playing God? Especially since they went with the shapeshifter angle not long after in TUC.

Or how about the three Ambassadors? Especially for the human and Klingon representatives, they played up the "disgraced" angle pretty well. Perhaps the human ambassador could have been Captain Ron Tracy, trying to redeem himself? On the Klingon side, General Korrd even had a similar name to Kor (they would have had to invent a disgrace for him, though -- perhaps in Klingon terms he's still recovering his honor after being "defeated" by the Organians.)

The Romulan role could have been another spot for the Enterprise Incident Romulan Commander, also in disgrace but rebuilding her reputation after her ship's cloaking device was stolen.

 

You say nice nod, I say gratuitous small-universe syndrome. What, is Vulcan just a village rather than a whole planet with billions of people? They've only got one important elder female in the whole world?

 

One word: Gary Mitchell

Also, Valeris should have been Saavik.

 

I would have liked to see where Finney (from Shore Leave) wound up after the academy.

He could have been a great peer rival for him in Starfleet. If he didn't get himself court-martialed he'd probably wind up advancing rapidly instead with all that energy he had.

 

I really can't figure why in the heavens (edit)Finnegan hadn't a cameo in ST2009

If he just had got that snarky "captain" line spoken by Uhuru during the Kobayashi maru test, I would be happy.

 

Finnegan was in "Shore Leave." Finney was in "Court Martial."

 

I don't understand the desire to re-use characters over and over. If you keep going back to the same few characters, how is the universe suppose to grow?

 

me too that could have been fun

 

Nah, we've had enough of Mudd by then. 2 episodes from TOS + 1 from TAS.

Also I love Yoda ( I like to call him Yoda -- not only he speaks backwards but he has big ears)

Coming to think of it, all of Nimoy's (and Bennet's) ideas were bright, they really made Star Trek detail by detail.