Yeah, you can tell Riker was affected when he talked to Pressman and wondered how many people materialized inside solid rock. It was gruesome... a scene like that would stay with you, like in "In Theory" when the woman was stuck between decks.
Episodes They Should've Done
- Thread starter Mojochi
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1. There was a bigger problem than Pressman... a mere captain did not authorize the development, construction, and/or field testing of a highly illegal piece of technology.
2. This episode did a couple of questionable things. First, it spawned "These are the Voyages". Second, it retconned Riker's age down by five years... instead of being 34 at the start of TNG (Frakes's actual age, and a good age for an outstanding officer to be offered his first command), he was suddenly only 29.
There's this informative bit of technobabble
Geordi said:
No one alive had realized this until right then. The Pegasus crew felt the ship was being endangered by the potential for explosion, if the cloak was operational too long & the intercooler levels became too elevated, on top of the already questionable legality of the mission altogether. They demanded an end to it. Pressman refused. They tried to relieve him, but Riker & some others took up arms to defend the captain, probably because they weren't in the loop on the tech enough to be familiar with the danger they were in.Riker said:
During the firefight, everyone was a bit too preoccupied to keep tabs on the intercooler levels while still cloaked, and just as they'd feared, they got too high, & that caused the explosion, crippling the impulse propulsion, setting them adrift, & causing a failure of the cloak, resulting in crew dying either in the explosion, from dephasing into rock, or in the vacuum exposure of being left alive in sections not in the rock.
The ship still being cloaked made it appear destroyed, though you'd think a competent & willing captain could've found it upon searching, or at least confirmed its wreckage/debris. It's possible that he never really wanted to know if any of them survived, given the deep doodoo he was now in. So, he just claimed they were dead, & everybody else there was too dumb to know any better... as they left everyone for dead.
Admittedly, this is somewhat hypothesized head canon, but it holds some water.
True, but the mission to conduct the experiment was likely not all on him either. That kind of project has some upper command implications, who were eager to sweep it all under the rug, & so long as there was no reason to suspect Pressman was wrong about the mutineers being responsible for their own deaths, it was quietly classified.
However, Commander Riker now knows the truth, that by having defended Pressman, he engaged in a firefight that likely aided the distraction from monitoring the cloak, which caused the explosion, and cost all those lives. Before learning of its real fate, he probably thought the cover story was true, that the mutineers did something wrong in trying to shut it down, after they'd fled, like Pressman had claimed. He probably did eventually realize that Pressman was in the wrong for conducting the experiments, but now he probably feels the full weight of all those lost lives much more directly, on his own actions.
How about a follow-up to “The Perfect Mate” --say Alric of Valt gets killed in a shuttlecraft accident, and his bride Kamala the mesomorph, is set free….she makes her way back to see Picard, since she really bonded with him.
[Apparently the script included an optional fantasy scene where Picard, just before her wedding to Alric, daydreams that he spoke out during the ceremony to claim Kamala as his own.]
[Apparently the script included an optional fantasy scene where Picard, just before her wedding to Alric, daydreams that he spoke out during the ceremony to claim Kamala as his own.]
"The Pegasus" can't be blamed for "THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...". It certainly didn't spawn it because the story was done within the same episode.
They were produced almost 12 years apart. It's Berman and Braga that get the blame squarely on them for using the events of the former episode for the ENT finale.
Wouldn't have been that hard, I wouldn't think. Just offer Alric a favorable trade agreement in exchange for Kamala's hand.
Data matching wits with an android created by another race using similar principles.
The had planned on revisiting Sigma Iotia II from 'A Piece of the Action' in the last season of TNG. They would found the population dressed in TOS uniforms and advanced communications of Star Fleet frequencies, thanks to McCoy's communicator and contact with Kirk's ship.
There indicatons that the Iotians did advance and leave the planet from references in other series, it was mentioned in another thread recently. The only referenxe I remember right now is that some Ferengi play Fizz-bin.
There indicatons that the Iotians did advance and leave the planet from references in other series, it was mentioned in another thread recently. The only referenxe I remember right now is that some Ferengi play Fizz-bin.
As far as we know, McCoy's missing communicator hasn't changed the planet's development...one iotia. *badum-ching!* 
On face value, their society really isn't a masterpiece beyond their view of it with its goofy state of "perfection", and where are the Borg when they were truly needed...
But in terms of the story narrative and season 5's penchant for slapping the viewer with one-sided arguments like a big sardine, it's quite the 4th wall-breaking sardonic joke. The only thing better if the title read on screen as "The Masterpiece Society". Or even bigger brownie points for using underline and bold atop the italics, too.
Good lord no. That episode was bad enough. We didn't need a sequel.
Yeah, my suggestion was only half serious. Picard would resist Kamala again, after some deep conversation on archeology and Shakespeare. Riker, though, might be another story.
If Alrik was dead or otherwise out of the picture, and she was free to marry who she wanted? I have my doubts. Maybe the 90+ Picard of PIC, but the lusty and healthy TNG Picard would think Christmas had come early.
What would have been funny would be if she accidentally bonded with Worf instead... Alric of Valt would have been in for a wild wedding night.
That society they had going in 'The Masterpiece Society' feels like the individuals are the masterpieces but as a whole it might not have worked in the long run.
A Data prequel episode, about his activation, Lore, Soong, the Crystalline Entity etc. He has this mysterious backstory and they... never do too much with it.
Except talk about it to no end. I apologize for having one suggestion I shoot down, which isn't my intention, but in this one instance, I think they more than covered Data's backstory, & this is from a guy who loves Data. In fact, by leaving it unshown, it left room for a more fertile backstory than any other character got on the whole show, even Picard.
We know when Data was activated. We know a wealth of info about his functions & abilities. We know how many other attempts existed before Data. We know pretty much how all of those attempts went. We know quite a lot about the man who attempted them and the woman he loved, who was there. We know the general totality of their relationship. We know a fair amount about the public's reactions to those attempts on the world they happened. We know some of how Data developed there. We know how it all ended there, and who was responsible for that, and why. We literally know the who, what, where, when, why, & how of all of it. It was a huge part of the show over the years. IMHO there is almost nothing left to ask, & therefore not much else worth showing
Contrarily however, one major example of some backstory we know almost nothing at all about, which dramatically affected a total of 3 of our handful of major characters, is the death of Jack Crusher. WTF went on there? Undoubtedly the linchpin worst day of 3 main characters' lives, & I couldn't even tell you wtf happened to the guy. Some away mission where Picard made a call that got him killed or something? Brother, is that coffer empty. Almost no show ever leaves that much on the table, unchewed
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I agree. I think TNG should've unravel the mystery of what happened to Wesley Crusher's father; it could've been a Picard/ Wesley character piece. Wesley discovers something that compels him to confront Picard about what happened to Jack or Beverly finds out Wesley has visited to site where the incident happened so all have to express the story as it happened so long ago.
You do have a point here. That could have been interesting.
I would also have liked to see an episode where Wesley Crusher decides to go back to Starfleet in season 7. I think they ruined and destroyed the character in the episode Journey's End.
I would also have liked to see some crossover episodes with DS9 with adventures and events in the Gamma Quadrant.
Here's a thought... in "Tapestry", Picard had a disappointing career (though I think Q was exaggerating things a bit; an officer of Picard's competence would not have been stuck at JG for 30 years). But what if there had been other compensations? Picard didn't send Jack to his death, another captain did. With no guilt trip holding him back, Picard expressed his feelings to Beverly a few months after Jack passed and they got married, and are living quite happily on the Enterprise together. One "tapestry" unraveled, but another takes its place.
I'd through in a line to the effect of, "That's what the California-class ships are for!"
The most obvious episode they should have done was the return of the alien slug creatures from Conspiracy. They built up their threat in the story and earlier on and even left the finale with a possible continuation but alas they never did bring them back or reference them again!
JB
I know the backstory that the slugs were the start of the idea for the Borg, but I don't see why they couldn't have done something with them even after the Borg appeared. While they both take over someone, the Conspiracy aliens might just be more terrifying, since you at least see the Borg coming. Those slugs took over the admiralty with relative ease. After their loss in "Conspiracy," they could have found another way to infiltrate and this time not arouse suspicions.
I do think it's a testament to the writing staff (or maybe a condemnation of our creativity) that the majority of these suggestions are follow-ups. TNG did a great job of giving us a variety of episodes over the 7 years. They dabbled in different genres (You've got your horror episodes, your love interest episodes, your comedy episodes, a little Noir/private detective, fantasy episodes, etc.).
I think, really, the only thing missing is a musical episode. The crew could have encountered a species that communicates only through music and song. Or Q could force them to sing instead of talk. With the latter, imagine a tense situation with the Romulans, where Picard can only sing to communicate with them in an attempt to diffuse the situation.
On the other hand, maybe it's for the best we never got a musical episode!
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