Bill Riker
- Thread starter Borjis
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I only remember the one time in The Naked Now.
It was only in the very early episodes of that season. No doubt another reference to Shatner.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
According to the TNG Companion:
Basically, they tried it twice and then dropped it.
Basically, they tried it twice and then dropped it.
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Was it intentional, or a mistake that got left in?
As previously suggested, I suspect it was changed to Will just to distance it from Shatner. Frakes already resembled him a little bit in his babyface days before the beard. Maybe Marina kept popping her B's.
Or it could have been an in-joke since they had Wil Wheaton aboard. It's one of those oddities where a character has the same name as one of the actors, like McCoy.
Or it could have been an in-joke since they had Wil Wheaton aboard. It's one of those oddities where a character has the same name as one of the actors, like McCoy.
As stated, the original TNG bible called him "Bill." It's worth remembering that the title character of Roddenberry's first TV series, The Lieutenant, was US Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant William T. "Bill" Rice. (T for Tiberius, in fact.) Perhaps "Bill Riker" was changed to "Will Riker" to distance him from that character -- although doing so just made it more obvious that he was a thinly veiled reworking of Will Decker from Phase II/TMP. (Much of TNG was just Phase II with the names changed. Picard was the older, more seasoned Kirk who had matured into more of a mentor role, Riker and Troi were Decker and Ilia, and Data was Xon, the emotionless science officer seeking to understand and emulate humans -- crossed with Questor, the android lead from Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes pilot. Roddenberry was a master of recycling.)
Also, "Ryker" was supposed to be prejudiced against Data for being an android -- something that was hinted at in the pilot and then completely dropped. And Worf wasn't even in the original bible -- he was added as an afterthought, which was why his post was "any bridge station that isn't already manned" for most of the first season. (Although there is a corresponding naval position for that, the officer of the deck or watch officer.)
That bit about Tasha wasn't necessarily contradicted, though. "Legacy" did show the hellhole Tasha's home had become, and did mention that Picard had met Tasha before she joined the Enterprise crew (something that "All Good Things..." evidently forgot). Although when I depicted that first meeting in my novel The Buried Age, I didn't have it take place on Turkana IV.
Also, "Ryker" was supposed to be prejudiced against Data for being an android -- something that was hinted at in the pilot and then completely dropped. And Worf wasn't even in the original bible -- he was added as an afterthought, which was why his post was "any bridge station that isn't already manned" for most of the first season. (Although there is a corresponding naval position for that, the officer of the deck or watch officer.)
That bit about Tasha wasn't necessarily contradicted, though. "Legacy" did show the hellhole Tasha's home had become, and did mention that Picard had met Tasha before she joined the Enterprise crew (something that "All Good Things..." evidently forgot). Although when I depicted that first meeting in my novel The Buried Age, I didn't have it take place on Turkana IV.
Pretty sure Picard remained French for the whole series. A Frenchman with an affection for tea and Shakespeare, but French none the less.
Yeah because we all know Brits are the only ones IN THE WORLD who can have affection for tea and Shakespeare, right? And everyone of French ancestry MUST sound like Pepe Lepew, right?
His French pride was definitely less emphasized as the show went. The early episodes seemed to have made it a point to mention that he's French.
In a painfully stilted and caricatured way much like Chekov's Russian pride in TOS. It was undignified and unbelievable, and I'm glad they played it down. The show did still acknowledge his French heritage in subtler ways -- his vintner's heritage and love of wines, his occasional singing of Frere Jacques in appropriate contexts, things like that. They just didn't overplay it the way Roddenberry tried to do in the earlier episodes.
For more of Riker being called "Bill" and all the early installment weirdness you can imagine, check out Diane Carey's Ghost Ship. Written prior to TNG's premiere, it even features a Riker who is very nasty to Data.
I really can't see anyone thinking ``we need to avoid calling Frakes's character by the same nickname used on The Lieutenant for a similarly-named person'' motivating the shift. I mean, for one, how many people even remembered The Lieutenant by 1987? Of even the Roddenberry fans who knew it existed, because the Star Trek Compendium told them it did, how many had even seen an episode? (Honest question: has it gotten a release on Hulu or Netflix or the like, or been glommed up by MeTV or RetroTV for cheap rerun purposes even now? And did the Compendium even name Rice in its mentions?)
If I were to try assigning any reason for the change, it might just be that the actors and writers found something about ``Bill'' not sticking to the character while ``Will'' did. It happens; my father and I have the same name but in social contexts the name ``Joe'' adheres to him in a way that it will not to me, and ``Joseph'' to me in a way that feels ill-fitting to him, and there's really no rationalizing it.
A possible slightly stronger reason might be in the uses of naming. The same dialogue addressed at Riker has different connotations depending on whether it's given to ``Riker'', ``Commander Riker'', ``William'', ``Will'', and ``Bill'', and it may be they just there weren't many situations where the difference in intimacy between ``Will'' and ``Bill'' was dramatically useful. This might be a side effect of how the Riker/Troi romance got forgotten for all but about three episodes. It might be significant that the only ``Bill'' uses were the first-season episodes where the romance had some bearing on the plot.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
It could very well also be a matter of legal clearances. Perhaps research determined that "Bill Riker" was not a name suitable to be used, legally, on television but "Will/William" was acceptable.
I know it's a stretch, but knowing what I know about such things from my own job (I work in the writer's office of a show at ABC Studios), it's not altogether far-fetched.
I know it's a stretch, but knowing what I know about such things from my own job (I work in the writer's office of a show at ABC Studios), it's not altogether far-fetched.
Yeah, you're probably right. I just thought it was worth pointing out where the name (and Kirk's middle name) originally came from. Roddenberry really did swipe from himself an awful lot. (Although plenty of authors do the same with their old, rejected or forgotten ideas. Heck, one of my Star Trek: Titan novels is expanded from an unsold Voyager short story and the other is reworked from an original spec novel.)
"Starship School for Children"?
......... Starfleet Reading Rainbow?
I like that they just have Picard call him "Number One", it's something only a first officer should earn. Contrast that to "Yesterday's Enterprise" where the two are more adversarial and he calls him "Commander" instead of "Number One".
Or as Stewart says, "Numbah One".
Or as Stewart says, "Numbah One".
Well, I think the idea is that subordinate officers have to address a superior officer by rank or by "sir." So "Number One" is an address that only the captain would be permitted to use anyway.
Apparently "Number One" is a traditional Royal Navy address for a first lieutenant/executive officer. It's a title that defines the officer as a deputy or subordinate, so only the person to whom the first officer is subordinate, i.e. the captain, would get to address him or her that way.
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