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characters or character development that went nowhere

...even DS9 suffered some from the Starfleet Must Be Bland ideology left over from the non-conflict Roddenberry days.

Well, let's be clear. I think you should mean the DS9 writer's interpretation of the Roddenberry ideology. I honestly don't think they (or many of the writers on TNG for that matter) ever really understood what he was getting at and in fact shot themselves and the ideology itself in the foot by perpetuating this Starfleet Must Be Bland myth that they themselves created out of ignorance.

Now I can't fault them entirely because the first season of TNG was so badly written in terms of characterization that I can see how they would have gotten that impression. However, Maurice Hurley seemed to understand the ideology pretty well and, in my opinion, really made it work in the second season. Michael Piller seemed to understand it pretty well too (ie. he got the philosophy) but he's also primary responsible for reintroducing the bland characters aspect in season three.

Now as far as this topic goes strictly, you really have to take the formats of the shows into consideration if you're going to talk about character development. Most of the shows were episodic and didn't really allow for character development that could span between episodes and seasons but that doesn't mean the character development was bad. You just have to consider it within the framework of the individual episodes themselves. In this case, it's more an evaluation of whether characters seemed believable and three-dimensional or experienced any kind of growth within a specific story. Episodic television is more like an anthology of short stories than a novel.

In some ways, DS9 is worse than the other series in this respect because they made a concerted attempt to be serialized but weren't allowed to go all of the way with it so it can have the effect of coming off as being half-assed if you put it under scrutiny.

With all of that said, I think the character development in TOS, TNG, and DS9 was quite good. As it's been mentioned, the only characters actually featured as primary players in TOS were Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and they did a lot of wonderful things with all three of them. The movies picked up on this and did a lot with Kirk and especially Spock, but poor McCoy got a little bit of a short shrift.

TNG was an ensemble enterprise (no pun intended) and I think they did quite a lot with most of their characters as well, at least starting in the second season. There were some glimmers of character in the first season but not many. Picard and Data and Worf of course are the stand-outs across the entire series but they did a lot with Riker as well, at least up until the fourth season. The wink links are Crusher and LaForge, who never really were that well fleshed out and ended up being a lot like the secondary characters in TOS. Troi, on the other hand, I think was actually quite well written but was just not focused on very much.

This post is getting a little long so I won't go too much into detail on what I think of the rest of the shows. I'll just say that I think DS9's character development was about on par with TNG (ie. as good as it got in television in the early nineties). A few characters really shined, most were well written and a few slipped between the cracks. DS9's strength of course was it's ability to have more serialized storytelling (which, as i said, also had it's disadvantages) and it's strong secondary characters.

VOY and ENT on the other hand pretty much exclusively had bad character development all around, which unfortunately stood out a lot more in comparison to their well written contemporaneous television shows. Of the few characters that got their moments of good writing there was usually no consistency to back it up.

Jeez, for someone who mostly lurks and occasionally makes the odd drive-by post, that was a pretty damn long post. :o
 
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Kes. She's this mysterious nymph from this weird planet who is slowly revealed to have powers... and the moment those powers begin to get interesting in episodes like "Warlord", she's swiftly shown the door and brought back later to go into super-villainess mode.

Kes was one of the worst-treated main characters in Trek. Jennifer Lien wasn't given much material to work with in VOY. They finally gave her some material in season three, like "Warlord", that showed off her talent. That should have been a clue that they needed to find more things for her to do. Kes continue to advance and she becomes a more interesting and useful character, and then they quickly write her off the series. WTF? I was always bummed that they dropped the character - Harry Kim and Neelix weren't exactly well-developed characters and were probably more expendable.
 
They were going to kill off Kim in "Scorpion" with the 8472 infection thing, but when Wang got into that TIME magazine list they felt they had to keep him. But since they were bringing Seven onboard they had to drop someone from the list and figure Kes. There was also that drug problem rumor to add to her departure.
 
A couple of characters went through some shit that should have changed them.

Picard lived about a hundred years with the Resikans, had children and grandchildren and was suddenly forced to give all that up and accept that it was a simulation. Sure it was not completely forgotten ("Lessons"), but we should have seen him deal with it over a long period of time.
I agree. I wish at least the show had kept the connection with "Inner Light", because all this lifetime spent had to have, a PROFOUND impact on the man.

Living a 100 years in just a mere minutes is... Astounding. Not to mention, psychologically straining.
 
They were going to kill off Kim in "Scorpion" with the 8472 infection thing, but when Wang got into that TIME magazine list they felt they had to keep him. But since they were bringing Seven onboard they had to drop someone from the list and figure Kes. There was also that drug problem rumor to add to her departure.
Yeah Lien & Kim were both rumored to be problems on the set. From the rumors I also heard, they gave them both a chance to get their acts together. As far a I know Wang did but Lien didn't, so she got cut.
 
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Which might make sense from a backroom perspective, but it's bad drama. Wang might have got his life in order but he was still being written as and performing a very boring character. Besides, as I heard it Lien got the cut rather than Wang because Wang got mentioned in a top twenty hottest men on TV in some mag.

Kes was one of the worst-treated main characters in Trek. Jennifer Lien wasn't given much material to work with in VOY. They finally gave her some material in season three, like "Warlord", that showed off her talent. That should have been a clue that they needed to find more things for her to do. Kes continue to advance and she becomes a more interesting and useful character, and then they quickly write her off the series. WTF? I was always bummed that they dropped the character - Harry Kim and Neelix weren't exactly well-developed characters and were probably more expendable.

Got to agree with this, except I feel Neelix was pretty developed. Not well-developed, but developed.
 
^
Which might make sense from a backroom perspective, but it's bad drama. Wang might have got his life in order but he was still being written as and performing a very boring character. Besides, as I heard it Lien got the cut rather than Wang because Wang got mentioned in a top twenty hottest men on TV in some mag.
Harry Kim was written to have almost no personality, some people just do. Is it boring for drama, yes but they weren't developing Kes' personality to be anymore interesting no matter how good of an actress she could have been. Kim stayed because he had a position on the ship, the EMH didn't really need a nurse. Putting Kes in sickbay cut down on their creative ability to use her or focus on her.

Wang was at least getting lines, I can't remember Lien saying anything but "Yes, Doctor." beyond the end of season 2.
 
Any character that wasn't on DS9 got screwed.
Not true, DS9 dropped the ball when it came to Jake Sisko.

They had a chance to really focus on this character as a writer/reporter during the occupation of DS9 by the Dominion. They failed to do so.

During "The Vistior" Jake can't seem to let his father go, he needs him. We never see Jake grow to be the man that doesn't need Ben Sisko by WYLB. So, many are left wondering why isn't Jake crying knowing his father is technically gone?
 
DS9 had the exact opposite. Character changes that were sudden and almost made some of those guys look schizophrenic.
 
Harry Kim was written to have almost no personality, some people just do. Is it boring for drama, yes but they weren't developing Kes' personality to be anymore interesting no matter how good of an actress she could have been. Kim stayed because he had a position on the ship, the EMH didn't really need a nurse. Putting Kes in sickbay cut down on their creative ability to use her or focus on her.

In plot terms, we didn't really need Kim when Seven came onboard. Look at the show in the early seasons, and there are these scenes where people stand around Kim's station doing science babble. They vanished from S4 on, those became Astrometrics scenes. And frankly, had Kim been removed Seven could have just taken his spot.

But I agree: They dropped the ball on Kes by pushing her to the background as a nurse and giving her few lines. Which is why I singled her out to begin with. Harry Kim does not exactly have the ring of lost opportunity, but she does.
 
DS9 had the exact opposite. Character changes that were sudden and almost made some of those guys look schizophrenic.

I don't agree. I watched Emissary recently and was amazed at how some of the characters had progressed. The characters developed appropriately as well. The young, inexperienced Bashir and the newly discovered prophet Sisko went through massive change while the more seasoned O'Brien and Dax went through relatively less change. It seemed to progress naturally and not too drastically (with some exceptions, obviously).
 
^^^

Kira Nerys was the only character who appeared to be consistently written and focused upon on DS9, it seems.

There appears to be less complaints in regards to the development of her character from Nana Visitor than there are from some other actors from DS9.
 
I was thinking about this (again) after re-watching the best of both worlds - there is some wonderful character development in that two parter, where we see Riker step up to the Captain's role and make the big decisions, take command and take action.

Fantastic - then the next episode he's back to being second in command and is happy about it. That entirely killed the character for me, I just used to watch it and think what is he still doing here? I just couldn't buy that he's undergo that ordeal, prove himself as captain and then not be busting for a ship.

Yes I know the real-world reasons he couldn't become a captain but giving him that character development for no real purpose just made the character seem paradoxically more weak and confused in the long-term.

What characters do you feel were particular ill-served by the real world constraints of the series? who's characters developed in ways that made no sense?

I have to agree with you on riker more than anyone else. He should have left after BOBW2. He could have been in Family even choosing his command and getting ready to officially leave the ship (more reason to make Family a 2 Parter of it's own). But besides a few good Riker episodes after BOBW2 (First Contact, Future Imperfect, Schisms, Frame of Mind and Second Chances) his character was dead to me.

Janeway also had development in several episodes that went nowhere as did T'Pol's drug use and any development during TOS really too.
 
If you're limiting it only to the TV shows and not the movies, the TOS characters have the least development; if anything, they went backwards because by season 2 everyone had an easy familiarity and a sense of family, but in season 3 all that mattered was "Plot, plot, plot!" and characterisation was for the most part cut to the minimum.

Outside TOS, the main characters who noticeably changed over the run of their shows were Picard, Data, Worf, Sisko, Kira, Odo, O'Brien, Bashir, Quark (until his furious rebuttal of the changes to Ferengi society at the end of S7 ;) ), the Doctor, Seven and T'Pol.

Apart from them, very few characters changed much from their first appearance on TV to their last. Riker and Torres arguably became less uptight, if that really counts as change, Paris acquired responsibility (though it shouldn't have taken him seven damn years!) and Jake changed in the sense that he, y'know, grew up!

Some of DS9's secondary characters - including villains - got more development than the heroes of some of the other shows. Imagine how Harry Kim felt when he got home to find he was outranked by Nog... and deservedly so.
 
In plot terms, we didn't really need Kim when Seven came onboard. Look at the show in the early seasons, and there are these scenes where people stand around Kim's station doing science babble. They vanished from S4 on, those became Astrometrics scenes. And frankly, had Kim been removed Seven could have just taken his spot.
He was good if they ever needed a victim.:lol:

Seriously, Harry was so wishy-washy that you kinda enjoyed when he was kidnapped or smacked around. Frankly, I think the Hirogen should have been shown abusing him more. None of the other members, not even Neelix was weak the way Harry was.
 
Picard and Beverley went nowhere.

Counselor Troi had no development either. A Riker/Troi dynamic should have been seen developing throughout the series.

On VOY, aside from Seven/EMH and Tom/B'Elanna there was no significant character development.
 
Troi - she really improved when she became the command officer. I would have liked to have seen where she would have gone in that direction versus the predictable route with becoming Mrs. Riker. However, since most of the cast was wasted in the Next Gen films, all potential for Troi was gone.

Uhura - always regretted that she never really got 'her own' episode (Sulu, Scotty, or Chekov usually got most of the supporting cast spotlight).

Kor - TOS era - a shame that they never could workout a time for Colicos to reprise his role - it would have been glooorrious!

Kurn - did not like what that DS9 show did to his character.
 
For Trek 6 they should have used Kor as the Klingon General instead of making Chang. Colicos is a fine actor and it would've been great continuity.
 
Can I mention the starship Voyager here? I haven't seen Voyager in a while, and to be honest, I can't remember any scene that makes me want to see it again, so this is definitely a biased opinion ;)

But I just think that VOY could've been so much more. Instead, the ship and its crew stayed in an annoyingly good shape so far away from home. I would've loved to see some actual long-term ramifications of being stranded. Or at least, not have that damn starship and its crew look so damn squeaky clean and bland every episode. The Maquis shouldn't have been given Starfleet uniforms and the ship should've been that old Cardassian War veteran as originally pitched (and designed by Sternbach), slowly falling apart without dockyard repairs. Just see how BSG did it (at least in its first season). IMO, the characterisation of the entire series was flawed. They played it safe, and it didn't go anywhere. Even worse, it had no impact on the rest of the Star Trek universe either.

Ok. Rant over :P
 
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