Spin-offs and poor treatment of TNG?

I think that ALL of the best parts of Star Trek lie in the nuances. The first time I watched the episode "Blink of an Eye" I was fascinated by the scene where they beam the Doctor down to the planet, and from his perspective three years pass even though he is only gone from the ship for minutes.

Another similar thing is when Picard lived what he thought to be his entire life on that planet ("The Inner Light"), to waken and find only 30 minutes has passed. How the hell do you reintegrate yourself into the present after living your whole life?

 

Good point. And I really think Stewart sold that last one so well with subtlety, not just in those final scenes in this episode, but also in subsequent ones, for example any time he plays that flute.

 

Yes, I liked that they didn't just drop the flute thing and it stayed with him.

Another great time where the nuances really make the episode for me is Voyager's "Infinite Regress". In this episode Voyager brings aboard an advanced piece of Borg technology from a salvaged Borg cube, and Seven begins to take on the personalities of the people assimilated by the cube during the battle of Wolf 359 ("Best of Both Worlds"). Jeri does an amazing job jumping from personality to personality... one of the personalities is a woman looking for her son who was a crew member aboard one of the ships lost in the battle. It is such a small part of the episode, but I am endlessly fascinated by the scene, because it makes the battle, the Borg assimilation etc. and the situation seem almost "real".

 

They came pretty close. Don't forget they sh*t canned Gates McFadden after season one. If they didn't replace her with someone exactly one hundred and fifty seven times worse, she may have never returned full time. Who knows what might have happened.

The Beverly Crusher character might have come back in some stupid one-off episode, after she grew increasingly more bitter that Picard killed her husband. She's turned into TNG's version of angry Kes (without the psionic abilities of course). She plots to kill everyone on the crew by injecting them with a killer virus she engineered (and to short circuit Data's positronic brain by getting it wet), only to be gunned down by Wesley in a bittersweet climax, him saving the ship and the universe once more.

Fortunately, Gates came back before this could happen.

 

Been thinking about this a bit and at this point I can only offer a very incomplete reaction.

I think what makes a character 'interesting' to me is how much I can identify with a character or his/her issues. So, for example, Picard is interesting to me because I know the voice insisting on taking the ethical course of action from inside my own head (not claiming I always take heed to it, sadly). Worf is somewhat 'interesting' to me because I can, on some microscopic scale, identify with his struggle of having to live in a society with different norms than the one he got from his cultural heritage. Data is interesting to me because he reminds me of my childhood days when sometimes my intellectual capacity outstripped my capacity to understand things emotionally. Troi on the other hand is not that interesting to me because I don't have a 'supernatural' gift nobody else has, and they made that her defining characteristic. Neither are Geordi (I don't know what it is to be blind), or Riker (I'm not as career minded as he is and neither do I have that daredevil streak) that interesting to me (they might be to other viewers).

I suppose when we are talking about larger groups of audiences and the writers, they tend to go for the greater common divisor, and also , one character might be "easier" to write interesting stories for than the other. How come we got several stories about Worf and his "warrior" cultural background and how he had to cope with living in the Federation, but virtually none about how Geordi had to cope with being blind (or at least seeing differently than the people around them) beyond a few short remarks? Leaving initial actor ability out of the equation, could it be that it also is a feedback cycle? 1. It is initially perhaps easier to create a well-written character driven story for Worf than for Geordi (enough people come from other cultures, but writing stories around a 'handicap' is potentially very sensitive topic so perhaps avoided), so more stories get created over the years for Worf than for Geordi. 2 Because more get created the character gets fleshed out more, making him/her more "interesting", resulting in turn in 3. Because the character gets fleshed out more, there's more source material to base new stories on in turn?

Loose remark: I though Paris was a somewhat interesting character, too. Missing the boat and parental expectations early in life he's shown getting a second chance and taking it, gradually changing his personality from 'con man' to loyal husband and dependable team mate over the years, even if he always kept a bit of flair in 'showing off'. I've seen that happen around me, and parts of it I recognise in myself, too.

Sorry for my thoughts perhaps not being more interconnected and coherent than they are, but I'm still thinking about this...

 

I thought about this a little after reading your post, and I think I tend to like the "superhero" characters best. Worf, Seven, The Doctor, Spock, Data, etc. The characters that have rich mythologies and seem to have their shit together, and are very intelligent or focused. I think that's why I even like the Wesley Crusher character. Each of them is a superhero but they have a personal conflict with their alter ego that they must deal with. I don't relate to any of these characters really, except I have the ego of Q, and wished I had his powers to smite my enemies.

I don't think it's a loop. You can write an interesting character-driven story about Worf because the character is unique, interesting, likable and complex. His origin, his story, his culture, his interaction with other Klingons, his reactions to situations, the situation with his Klingon father... all of these things are unique and complex. I guess a writer would have a wealth of interesting things to explore and create with the character, and each interesting story would just lead to more. The character drives the stories. I don't see how they could sustain multiple story lines with a Geordi character.You could write a story or two just about Geordi, his blindness and his VISOR and, if you're lucky they might be genuinely interesting, but the character just isn't interesting or complex enough to sustain anything beyond that. It's a supporting part, and most of the lines the character says could be rewritten for anybody. Even when a character like Geordi takes the lead, the part can usually be re-written for another crew member. In this case, the story drives the character.

It's all in the nuances.

 

To me, Seven is a superhero in the sense that Xena is a superhero. She's flawed. She makes mistakes (the plot of "The Voyager Conspiracy" begins with her overreaching, her biting off more than she can chew). She's done some VERY bad things in the past.

She can be aloof and/or difficult. She's not always nice.

I relate to her more than any other character in the franchise. To me, she's the closest thing to a real living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human being in the Trek Universe.

The others strike me as basically good people running around doing good things; they just don't seem human. They're too perfect.

 

I agree with the main thrust of the post this quote is from. Wholeheartedly disagree with this quote itself.

 

Welllll.... I don't think he's a very good actor. "Galaxy's Child" is hard to watch, as is "Booby Trap". Maybe it's the character then.

 

I think his is not written very interesting.
They give him silly stuff to do that isn't really about him very much.
He is a device as a means to an end of a situation.
Most of the other characters we see a lot of back story, but not very much about Geordie. Not his fault.

 

Well, life is full of flawed people. Our bosses, co-workers, families, teachers, politicians, doctors and lawyers. People we meet on blogs. Real life is flawed. I want my superheroes to be perfect.

That aside, where do you get this idea that the characters are perfect?

Did you see the scene in "Equinox" where Janeway was close to torturing that guy, and Chakotay had to stop her? Tom was in prison. The doctor is snarky, short tempered and often ill mannered. B'Elanna is hostile, and borders on self-loathing. Kira is hostile to nearly everyone. Sisko held a lot of hatred and resentment against Picard for the loss of his wife. Quark was greedy self-serving and verbally abusive to his brother. Odo barely hid his contempt for humanity until he could hide it no more, he was profoundly self-serving. Kes came back and wanted to kill everyone. The prophets knew what was really in Kai Winn's heart. La Forge holo-raped Leah Brahms. Barclay was a loon.

And so on.

So, I think you're reaching a little with the perfection bit. Many of these characters are good people who aspire to do good, as it should be.

 

I was never a fan of how angsty Worf became on DS9...the guy was morphed into an angry teenager in temperament. As a matter of fact, anyone that migrated from TNG - or made a guest star appearance - became grouchier and darker (just look at O'Brien). To be quite frank, I find DS9 such an aberration in the franchise that it is sad how this bastardization is touted as "The best Star Trek." in some circles; there are only a few episodes worthy of the title. Thankfully, that series never received any films and is unlikely to enjoy a revival.

 

First Contact did started this crap, but I felt the episode should've been as you put it "isolated" but it wasn't Jon and the gang came in and started doing things against the Borg which was more efficient and effective. My goodness this was supposed to be an advance alien race where our 24th Century counterparts had nothing but headaches with them and seemed to gain victories with a stroke of chance. ENT we had a 22nd Century doctor figure out how not to be Borg, something the 24th Century still has trouble figuring out and managing to defeat them in one episode where TNG had many episodes. All in all it made Archer's crew pretty great stopping an advance race from the future but in turn didn't make my heroes from TNG look good. The episode is written from the perspective as they know everything about the Borg than just being completely frighten that this being is something they never seen before, and advanced alien race.

To me, its a blown opportunity to make "Regeneration" an isolated Section 31 episode, no Archer no NX-01, and we journey in this secret society to see them face or investigate the Borg. After they defeat one or barely beat them, Section 31 would come to the conclusion the time line has been altered and this would form their crusade.

 

Please no more Section 31. Eww.

 

Worf’s not the same person on DS9 that he was on the Enterprise, but its since been revealed that the same can be said for Riker on the Titan on LD. Meaning, no one was their true self on the Enterprise. They were all restraining themselves.

People skip history classes they shouldn’t skip. Top secret incidents get filed away and wrapped in red tape. Healthcare patents get filed. All valid reasons as to why the 24th century unnecessarily struggled against the Borg after Archer's encounter with them.

And the blown opportunity is not knowing if Section 31 ever did follow up on the Borg or made preparations for their eventual return, considering it was revealed that Reed worked for them at one point.

But that would fuel the idea that the Battle of Wolf 359 really was an inside job.

 

Yep! 24th Century Starfleet are completely stupid, while 22nd Century Starfleet were brilliant.

 

Maybe they were Worf and Riker from that era and they changed over time as people do. So what they were on TNG were what they were at that time.

 

Environment also plays a part in who you are. The Enterprise was a fancy, pretty hotel. DS9 was not. It was also a place where he was learning a new chapter of his career: command.

 

Marina Sirtis, is that you?

 

I personally am of the opinion that, while DS9 might have partially escaped the Star Trek mold, and for that reason perhaps might not have been 'good Star Trek', escaping that template absolutely made it a better series than it otherwise probably would have been, much as I do love Star Trek.