All Good Things for Seasons 1 & 2

[Arpy]

Watching the Picard Season 3 teaser earlier I thought about how different this series — which I like — is from my beloved TNG, and how different that series saw the characters in the future in “All Good Things…” vs. how PIC sees them at about the same time period. And I thought about how different the characters/universe were in later seasons of TNG vs. earlier ones.

So I find myself wondering, and posing it to others, how might the characters from the first couple of seasons find themselves in the parallel dimension where that show ran seven seasons and reunited for an eighth in 2022?

The Data that used contractions and seemed to have some emotions…do we bring Tasha into this…would Picard and Crusher and Troi and Riker have children, grandchildren by this point…would helmsman La Forge be captain of the Enterpsie, with O’Brien as his No.1?

 

[Oddish]

Riker stayed a Q. He then deleted the Borg, scared the Romulans into making nice with the Federation, zapped the Cardassians off of Bajor, blipped Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant, and had romantic liaisons with an almost inconceivable number of mortal women.

 

[at Quark's]

Riker stayed a Q. He then deleted the Borg, scared the Romulans into making nice with the Federation, zapped the Cardassians off of Bajor, blipped Voyager back to the Delta Quadrant, and had romantic liaisons with an almost inconceivable number of mortal women.

Why blip Voyager back to the DQ though?

 

[Arpy]

Why the rest of it? No seriously, what would have happened to those characters as written in Seasons 1 & 2?

 

[Kor]

Why blip Voyager back to the DQ though?

We never saw the aftermath of Voyager returning to the Alpha Quadrant. Perhaps there was huge galactic controversy over things that Voyager and its crew and captain had done along the way, enough to split the Federation. And then when Janeway is promoted to the admiralty, she makes an enormous mess of things. And Q-Riker decides it would have been better if Voyager had stayed in the Delta Quadrant instead of coming home. So with a snap of his fingers, they go back.

But seriously, I think Oddish may have meant to type Alpha instead of Delta.

One thing about if TNG had continued along the lines of S1 and 2... Dr. Crusher may have stayed at Starfleet Medical, and we end up stuck with grouchy Dr. Pulaski for the rest of the series instead.

Kor

 

[Oddish]

Why blip Voyager back to the DQ though?

Because I'm a @$#*!-ing idiot and meant to say ALPHA Quadrant.

But Kor's theory works too.

 

[at Quark's]

Riker stayed a Q. He then deleted the Borg, scared the Romulans into making nice with the Federation, zapped the Cardassians off of Bajor, blipped Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant, and had romantic liaisons with an almost inconceivable number of mortal women.

That entire Dominion War might have gone subtly different as well, with Riker-Q popping in, proving to Weyoun there are beings several orders of magnitude more powerful than his supposed 'gods'.

 

[Oddish]

And turning the Jem'Hadar into bunnies, or something else similarly cute and harmless.

Of course, when he got to Voyager and found that it was in "ship of the Valkyries" mode, he might have decided that he liked it that way.

 

[WAMTNG]

So I find myself wondering, and posing it to others, how might the characters from the first couple of seasons find themselves in the parallel dimension where that show ran seven seasons...
The Data that used contractions and seemed to have some emotions…do we bring Tasha into this…would Picard and Crusher and Troi and Riker have children, grandchildren by this point…would helmsman La Forge be captain of the Enterpsie, with O’Brien as his No.1?

At the risk of being a miserly balloon popper, Lieutenant Yar is dead and O'Brien is just a bit player. If you wipe out the later seasons, we have no reason to imagine Colm Meaney's character has any more significance than Dr Selar. Also, I don't see any sign of Troi and Riker getting back together if we're extending season one and two (honestly, even up to season seven regular continuity, they didn't...), and since LaForge takes engineering at the start of season 2 he presumably doesn't go back to the helm.

Here's my rather meta take. The show never enters the golden era of the real season 3, so the stories never get good, and Patrick Stewart leaves the show after the season 3 finale. Riker is promoted to Captain, and considers it inappropriate to keep working with Troi with him in the big chair, so she is transferred to wherever Starfleet need someone to state the obvious, but still pops in as a guest star from time to time.

So we end up with Captain Riker, first officer Data, Wesley at ops, Worf as head of Security, LaForge in engineering, and Dr Pulaski down in the sickbay. There's a new character added as a love-interest for Riker (or possibly Wesley) - perhaps she's transporter chief - but nobody likes her.

The show is cancelled by the end of season 4, no further movies, no spin offs, no reason for Viacom/Paramount to pick over the bones of the franchise in the 21st century. But the diehard fans really wonder what would have happened if only they hadn't killed off Denise Crosby in the first season...

 

[Arpy]

The show started out with Riker being Picard’s protégé in a way. Well, I could see the last episode being Picard, now fully in a relationship with Crusher, seeing Riker off to command his own ship, along with his new wife Deanna. And the ascendancy to first officer of Pinocchio, the mechanical boy who grew up. And I can see Worf then taking over at Ops; what a statement that would be, a Klingon now second officer on the flagship of the Federation.

Wesley goes off in season 3 to the Academy. He’s a recurring character throughout the series and also returns an officer proper to begin his career in the finale.

 

[suarezguy]

I don't think the season 1 and 2 characters' versions of the future would be particularly different from what we did end up seeing in "All Good Things..." other than Riker and Troi being more likely to get together (with there not being or becoming the possibility of Worf/Troi and therefore estrangement between Riker and Worf), also Worf more likely to stay in Starfleet (and maybe ending up with Kehleyr), Wesley definitely continuing in Starfleet.

 

[suarezguy]

If Crusher hadn't returned to the cast in season 3 I can see her guest starring 2 to 4 times through the rest of the series, kind of like the Traveler actually did, and the writers shamelessly teasing that she is the best for Picard but it just can't practically work until it finally suddenly can in the last year.

 

[Arpy]

Tasha died in Season 1 but I still picture her in my seven season run. No Pulaski either, though maybe she came and went after a bit more story, something explaining her going and Crusher returning. Team-up to end a planetary pandemic?

More Lower Decks characters. Sonya Gomez, Miles O’Brien, Argyle, Singh, Selar.

 

[Jedi Marso]

So we end up with Captain Riker, first officer Data, Wesley at ops, Worf as head of Security, LaForge in engineering, and Dr Pulaski down in the sickbay. There's a new character added as a love-interest for Riker (or possibly Wesley) - perhaps she's transporter chief - but nobody likes her.

The show is cancelled by the end of season 4, no further movies, no spin offs, no reason for Viacom/Paramount to pick over the bones of the franchise in the 21st century. But the diehard fans really wonder what would have happened if only they hadn't killed off Denise Crosby in the first season...

Ha! the thought of the show going that way is so horrible it makes me want to die. I love it!

 

[suarezguy]

Another difference, I imagine Data's future fate would be presented as a little funnier and not quite as much of a success as esteemed professor, early days there was more humor more at his expense though still some possibility of him growing and succeeding a lot more.

 

[Vale]

Riker stayed a Q ... and had romantic liaisons with an almost inconceivable number of mortal women.

No change there then

 

[somebuddyX]

Watching the Picard Season 3 teaser earlier I thought about how different this series — which I like — is from my beloved TNG, and how different that series saw the characters in the future in “All Good Things…” vs. how PIC sees them at about the same time period. And I thought about how different the characters/universe were in later seasons of TNG vs. earlier ones.

So I find myself wondering, and posing it to others, how might the characters from the first couple of seasons find themselves in the parallel dimension where that show ran seven seasons and reunited for an eighth in 2022?

The Data that used contractions and seemed to have some emotions…do we bring Tasha into this…would Picard and Crusher and Troi and Riker have children, grandchildren by this point…would helmsman La Forge be captain of the Enterpsie, with O’Brien as his No.1?

I can't get my head around that version of Picard because first I'm more interested wondering how that show would look like after 7 seasons. It's kinda asking what if Maurice Hurley hadn't left or all the weirdness of Season 1 and 2 had stayed intact. No Ron Moore, no Brannon Braga, no Jeri Taylor and most importantly no Michael Piller. There goes a lot of the heart that was at the core or a lot of memorable episodes that I think elevated the show, but I also think the earlier seasons had more of an edge that might have got pushed more to the forefront if it had continued in that direction. Melinda Snodgrass left because of Michael Piller so maybe we'd have gotten her third Data centric episode that she's mentioned. I think the second encounter with the Borg, if they'd even returned at all, would have gone differently because Piller wrote some of his own thoughts and feelings into Riker and maybe they wouldn't have come up with the Locutus concept either. Maybe the Borg come to track down Picard to find out how he was able to jump 7000 light years but don't want him to join the collective and the Feds have to figure out how to beat an unbeatable foe that's on their doorstop. You keep the Borg as just straight up locusts coming to eat your tech. Beverly Crusher probably doesn't return because Gates doesn't want to work with Maurice Hurley. Would Diana Muldaur stay on for the third season or do you get a third doctor to join the show? I think whatever happens, there's no Picard/Crusher, although if she came back as a guest star you could potentially hook those two up. Without Ron Moore would they still do the Klingon storylines but just have someone else do them, and instead of The Best of Both Worlds they do that story where they were going to go to the Klingon Homeworld or whatever?
I realise I'm using production universe scenarios for an in-universe idea but it just seems to make more sense of why that universe would be different if the writers themselves were different.

 

[WAMTNG]

Ha! the thought of the show going that way is so horrible it makes me want to die. I love it!

It's important to me as a TNG fan that we ended up with the best of all possible worlds with the storylines that we did get. Otherwise the episode "Tapestry" was wrong about the metaphysical implications of inter-temporal causality, and I couldn't live with that!

 

[Oddish]

If "Nemesis" was the best of all possibilities, I shudder at the worst. The Enterprise E goes warp 10 and turns everyone onto salamanders, maybe?

 

[Arpy]

“Tapestry” might happen in multiple timelines, some of which are more horror stories because the alternate route would have been better. But even in those that played out as it did in this one, Picard might be a different man in each. Either because the past too was different in that timeline, or the circumstances around Picard were different. What if he were assigned to the Gallant instead of the Stargazer? He might be an admiral by the time the Galaxys were launched.