General Trek Questions and Observations

and you feel that a standard uniform costume wouldn't do that? the uniform costume for the actresses included padded breasts for just the reason you're attributing to the seven costume. when Kate mulgrew refused to continue to wear the padding the appearance change was pretty obvious. all the actresses costumes had the aspect of "eye candy."

jeri ryan was a good performer, and a asset to the series.

 

And I said as much in the part of message you cut out of the quote.

 

I wouldn't let Tom or Will hear you say that.

 

Bah... Crusher said almost exactly that right in front of both of them, & they just had to suck it up lol

 

Tehy really didn't get enough millage out of the idea of Will and Thomas Riker. If they had that idea in Season 3 or 4 there's so freaking much they could have done with it!

 

The Pegasus stuff alone is an entire episode. Tom's assigned to the Gandhi when Will outs them for aiding the coverup, probably testified, & lost respect among his crew, which might have stalled Lt. Riker's career, & begun his decline into disillusionment.

Frankly, after TNG's Second Chances (Which in hindsight is such a cruel name considering Tom's overall fate) I'm SOOO much more interested in how Tom's life played out than Will's. In less than 2 years from being rescued, after being stranded 8, he looses the aspiration of rekindling with Deanna, he gets a posting but soon after gets disgraced for a mutiny coverup, he loses faith in Starfleet, turns rebel & ends up imprisoned. That's a shitty decade. Then, 8 years after he went to the Lazon II Labor camp, Will ended up marrying Deanna after all, to make matters worse.

I can't even look at Will being a captain or admiral or husband/dad or whatever, & NOT think about how shitty things turned out for Tom because of him. I probably mention this too much lol. It really sticks in my craw Tom might still be out there! Did Kira even ever go back for him? That dude's been forgotten more than Khan

 

As I said in the other thread, the best thing they could have done after Best of Both Worlds is introduce Thomas in Season 4, then promote Will to be Captain of another ship and have Thomas join the Enterprise crew in Will's place at a much lower rank.
That way they could have had a much more dynamic character, while keeping the actor and even have Will for guest appearances.
And really Thomas/Deanna would have been a lot more realistic than Will and Deanna rekindling their relationship after spending years and years as semi-platonic friends.

 

And while all of that is 100% true, & I do think the Riker Deanna relationship would have been more interesting, & the writing for Riker would've been more interesting in general, there is some stuff that might have been sacrificed with him being permanent

I do feel like the things I find most intriguing about Tom's story as it is, might have lost some intrigue had he been a regular on the show. For one thing, the Pegasus story is harder to write, if Riker isn't the 1st officer. Plus, if Pressman wanted someone he can coerce or bully into the Pegasus mission, he'd certainly go bother CAPT. Riker on his own ship, rather than modest Lt. Riker on a ship with a whole chain of command over him. The whole reason Pressman likely chose the Enterprise for that mission was because he figured he had a confidante in a command role.

My point is, to swap Rikers at that time, while "Riker" becomes a more interesting character than the one we got, the Tom Riker we did get is actually probably going to be less so. I like what you were saying more in this thread, that we should've had more Tom Riker being an ongoing issue on TNG. I actually think it could've been easily as much or more interesting than Data's doppelganger

Ugh... that is one reason to not have more of the Riker doppelganger. We already had one main character with one of those running around

 

I always liked the early idea they had of killing off Will Riker at the end of the episode and replacing him with Tom Riker. It would essentially be what that did with Jadzia/Ezri on DS9.

Plus it means you introduce the new dynamic of Data as first officer. Picard trying to live with not being able to save Will with Will being on the bridge with him as the new Ops officer.

It might have helped season 7 be better than it was.

 

The thing is, by then there's only 4 ranking officers on that bridge, (Plus a helmsman & pt time counselor) 3 of whom are the top three in the chain of command. It would be a really hard sell to suggest that a lieutenant, who'd been out of service for 8 years & cut off from civilization, ought to immediately be given one of those heretofore described as highly coveted postings on the flagship. It's kind of absurd.

 

Not really. They had ensigns and Lt. JG's serving on the bridge all the time, it's just that most those characters weren't main characters for the show so they didn't stick around.

And there's no reason Tom Riker couldn't have the conn or ops station, anyway. With Will gone, that probably bumps Data up to XO (which would also have been really interesting and fun to watch), Wesley left eventually anyway, and Worf and Geordi stopped being helmsman way earlier so both the forward stations would have been available for a new character.

 

And don't forget that she 'needed' high heels...

 

So did Captain Kirk.

With all the ships in the fleet, why would Tom Riker be assigned to the flagship with "the best of the best?" As pointed out he has effectively been out of Starfleet service for several years.

Or with a little cleaver camera work, have them both on the same ship, the same bridge, the same away teams?

 

For the same reason as Barclay, Ro, Wesley (after his official censure) or any of the various other screwups we saw on the crew. Because the ship isn't limited to having only outstanding, perfect officers in every position. It never has been.

 

One thing that has bugged me for ages: Starfleet is supposedly a multi-species military (or totally not-military) organisation. But not only are the starship crews we see overwhelmingly human (90% or so... it's a bit diffeent on DS9, with half the crew Bajoran, due to the fact that Bajor is not in the Federation yet) - virtually ALL the admirals we ever meet are human! I mean, I know that HQ is on Earth, plus humanity seems to be the specialest of special species, but really... And all those admirals were no regulars, so it would have been easier to put someone in alien makeup for a brief appearance.

 

A harder sell than acting Ensign Wesley flying a ship of 1000+ people around? Doubtful.

 

Wesley: Absurdly gifted, still in active training, Has no 8 year isolation mental issues to overcome, & has an in with the senior staff, specifically a captain who has a major guilt complex about him, to move him ahead of the line

Tom Riker: None of the above apply

 

Tom:
Actual Starfleet officer, graduated Starfleet Academy, good few years active service aboard a starship under his belt and did enough as an ensign to secure a promotion to lieutenant.

Wesley:
An admittedly very clever fifteen year old boy.

Absolute no brainer!

 

Except Tom would need major time in recovery & refresher training before he could even really hold a post, let alone one that integral. Plus, it's not a competition between them. Tom isn't going to just settle being the ship's driver, like Wes was. Whatever job he got on the Gandhi was probably back on the command track he had been on