A lot of the less/under devolped characters in various shows, but especially TNG, sounded really interesting in the series bibles, but that just didn't translate in the actual episodes. Tasha is a prime example.
If Geordi had remained helmsman
- Thread starter suarezguy
- Start date
Honestly, I feel the reason Mayweather got de-emphasized was because Montgomery just wasn't a great actor. They gave Travis a fair amount of stuff to do in early season 1, but then in "Fortunate Son" he got the big dramatic speech in the climax and just didn't do it very well. And it was later on, maybe not right away but after that, that he started to get featured less and less. Sort of the opposite of how O'Brien started out as a nameless transporter chief but kept being given more and more to do because Colm Meaney impressed TNG's producers.
But LeVar Burton was already a multiple Emmy nominee when TNG started (one for Roots, several for Reading Rainbow). Indeed, when TNG started, Burton was easily the most famous cast member to American audiences (Stewart was big in the UK but not as well known over here). So I doubt the writers would've sought to marginalize him, no matter what his character's role was in the crew.
Yeah, and being first officer is a full-time job that would never allow enough time to be a full-time science officer as well. Welcome to the artifice of fiction.
The problem is that most of the writers of that bible got forced out of the staff by Roddenberry's clique, so many of the originally intended ideas fell by the wayside. And TNG's female characters suffered from a degree of marginalization as well.
But then, a series bible is just meant to be a source of potential ideas, so they tend to lay a lot of seeds that writers may choose to pick up on -- but not all of them end up getting used, either because nobody can work out a worthwhile story using them or because they end up going in a different direction instead (like how the stuff about Data being built by aliens was replaced with the Noonien Soong business).
And yet he was.
I don't think so, not to the same extent as Mayweather. Geordi had plenty of focus episodes over the course of the series. Could they have done more with him? Sure, but they still did a fair amount.
They threw Burton and the others a bone a few times a year. Never given the attention Stewart, Spiner and Dorn got.
Still, overall I think he was a criminally overlooked and underdeveloped character on the same level as Troi (though not on the same level as Dr. Crusher) . And don't forget while he did get some good episodes a lot of the others stunk, like his romance episodes.
Pursuing command seems like something that can't go too far and likely would be (maybe too much influence of Harry and it could have been done better) would just be two steps backward, one step forward repetition.
It's always easy to think of reasons why something can't work. They said a bald French captain would never work. The people who get things done are the ones who move past that first impulse and figure out ways they can work. Heck, that's what I do on practically every project as a writer -- start with "Oh, there's no way I can ever make this work" and then find a way.
And cherrypicking one piece in isolation is missing the point, which is that there were multiple possible angles for development built into Geordi's character from the beginning, even if not all of them were followed through.
If Geordi stayed at the conn they could've given him his promotion to full lieutenant and increased the opportunities for him to take command, whilst staying next to his BFF throughout the series. They could've also introduced Lieutenant Sonya Gomez as the new recurring (maybe even permanent) chief engineer and developed a romance between the pair.
Which would work with my idea that they should have added a third female character to the main cast to replace Tasha.
Though, maybe instead of Sonya, I'd prefer an alien. Though making her a bubbly tech genius who sips hot chocolate while she's working (especially during emergency situations) and says "thank you" to replicators (and generally to the computer when she's talking to it) would still have been possible, even with her being an alien.
More aliens would definitely be a good thing!
Geordi has the interesting friendship with Data and was generally personable. Harry was just there doing nothing.
Equality accomplished.
If Geordi was never moved out of the helmsman position, then we'd all have been subject to the "chief of the week" routine that we played through in Season 1.... or worse yet, we would've been stuck with Chief Argyle all those years.
Bottom line is that the series needed to move someone into the permanent position of Chief Engineer who managed all the techno-babble pieces parts. You couldn't move Data off the bridge... Worf wasn't moving. So that left Geordi....
Bottom line is that the series needed to move someone into the permanent position of Chief Engineer who managed all the techno-babble pieces parts. You couldn't move Data off the bridge... Worf wasn't moving. So that left Geordi....
Why assume that? They introduced Pulaski and Guinan in season 2, and that's also when Colm Meaney's generic background crewmember settled in as Transporter Chief and eventually got the name O'Brien. So there's no reason they couldn't have introduced a new chief engineer character as well.
And there's still my idea of making Worf the chief engineer and Geordi the security chief. People forget that Worf wasn't in security in season 1 -- he was the bridge watch officer, the guy who filled in at everyone's bridge posts when they were absent, which is why he filled in for Tasha after she died. There was no reason that particular fill-in had to be permanent.
Pulaski was introduced to REPLACE Crusher. You are correct about Guinan but she wasn't a main character, she was a recurring character with specific importance. I guess the more important question - and one I've never seen addressed - is WHY the show runners decided NOT to have a main character serve as Chief Engineer at the beginning of the series??? It was clearly a model that worked well in TOS and would be addressed in each of the subsequent series (see. Chief O'Brien, B'Elanna Torres, Trip, etc....)
I like that thought experiment... I wonder if Denise Crosby had decided to stay on with the series if Worf would've been chosen to migrate down to engineering. Hindsight is always 20/20, and the writers clearly played into Worf's Klingon heritage to dovetail into the security role... but there's nothing up to Crosby's departure that would indicate that he was more prone to Security vs. Engineering....
Considering that they weren't even going to build a Main Engineering set originally, it's not much of a stretch that they didn't have a chief enginner regular character planned originally.
Geordi, Data, and I guess ascending O'Brien to engineer instead of transporter chief were really the only options. Yar was supposed to be the butch tomboy and Worf was characterized as being kind of dumb at first so he wasn't going to be engineer. They could have added a new character but TNG had too many characters to start with, once they got it down to the core 7 it was a lot easier to balance the screentime and give everyone their moments to shine.
Although if we're talking about alternate character positioning, maybe have Yar be a hotshot pilot and have Geordi and Worf in their regular positions to start with. Her sitting next to Data up front would have also given them opportunity to build that relationship a bit more. Maybe Crosby never leaves the show in this instance with everyone having a clearly defined role to start with.
TNG did always seem to have a "hole" in the traditional senior staff (no one in engineering to start with, then later not really a consistent pilot)
Although if we're talking about alternate character positioning, maybe have Yar be a hotshot pilot and have Geordi and Worf in their regular positions to start with. Her sitting next to Data up front would have also given them opportunity to build that relationship a bit more. Maybe Crosby never leaves the show in this instance with everyone having a clearly defined role to start with.
TNG did always seem to have a "hole" in the traditional senior staff (no one in engineering to start with, then later not really a consistent pilot)
Similar threads
