Romances of the week. What if...

I wonder if she and Thomas ever crossed paths...

 

Anything's possible. Maybe we find out that they wound up at the Cardassian labor camp together, fell in love, escaped, and now live a quiet life together on some obscure Federation colony.

 

Sounds like a good idea for a fanfic story.

The one thing that redeems Nemesis in my book is the fact that Will and Deanna get married, so eventually they work out their issues. Given that the Enterprise is a ship full of families and plenty of people show that it's possible to both work and live together, Troi's objections to a relationship with Riker as long as they're serving on the same ship don't really make all that much sense to me. I guess they wanted to leave both of them free to explore romances of the week with other people, but by the end of the 5th season or so they pretty much stopped that. I would've loved it if they had become a couple again by the end of the show...

It's just too bad that things didn't work out between Aquiel and Geordi.

 

Nemesis should have ended with the Riker-Troi wedding, and Riker headed off to take command of the Titan. And Data FINALLY takes his rightful place in the first officer's chair.

EDIT: And just delete the rest of the movie. Maybe do a DS9 movie instead.

 

Can you imagine if Data had been found by a Vulcan ship, and all of his early role models had been logicians who sought to dispense with emotion, something he did naturally. How might Data have turned out under those circumstances?

 

Tom and Ro hooked up when they formed the Star Trek equivalent of Dark Avengers with Nick Locarno and Lore. And maybe a new Shinzon. And Laas.

I was wondering about that a month ago because I was wondering if Data had been found by Klingons, would he just decide he's going to join the KDF or something.

 

Did you make that up or is that one of those badfic storylines from the Novel verse?

 

stupid alternate timeline idea: Crusher and Ronin the candle ghost enter into a LTR. There's not enough time to explore it in the last half of Season 7, but there's a throwaway line that in Generations that someone from Starfleet Corps of Housekeeping accidentally put out his candle and vaporized it, while tidying up her quarters mistaking it for a GOOP candle, a banned toxic substance everywhere in the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

 

A funnier fate for Nick Lacarno is that after he gets expelled, he knows that he will never accomplish anything with his life, so he spends the next 16 years getting blind drunk in Marseilles, finally dying at 37 when he tries to beam himself home to the tiny little apartment in a seedy neighborhood where he ekes out his miserable and meaningless existence... but accidentally sends himself 500km straight down, where he is burned to a crisp in the Earth's mantle and finally put out of his misery. Because no one cares about a solitary career drunk, there's never an investigation; the transporter logs aren't checked, so no one ever figures out what happened... he just didn't show up at Sandrine's one day and they figure he switched watering holes to run out on his expanding bar tab.

However, before that happens in the "Non Sequitur" timeline, you would often see him and the equally disgraced Tom Paris sitting and pounding shots side by side.

 

I think it might have been interesting if Worf and Deanna got together earlier in the series, not just in the last season.
Mighty warrior and someone with emotional healing background, nice combination.

 

How dare you!
I made it up but I do kind of like the idea of there being a Dark Star Trek team running around made up of TNG-era "evil" counterparts, but in a kinda parody storyline, aping how Dark Avengers had all those villains dress up as the real Avenger. Even Ro counts as a counterpart to Kira, if you kinda squint, or maybe Tim Russ' Klingon from "Invasive Procedures" or Gul Macet ended up on the team with another Weyoun or someone else Jeff Combs plays.
But if I was writing a real story I think you could get away with Ro and Nick and have them in some leftover Maquis Dominion War era story where they rescue Tom and are working for Admiral Pressman or some other disgraced admiral.

 

There were parts in The Naked Now & Hide & Q where I got the feeling Yar might've been Geordi's last best chance at a shipboard romance.

 

Data and a fully intelligent Exocomp.

 

Come on, you can't tell me with a straight face that the scenario isn't something the Novel verse would come up with :-p

As a sort of fan casting it's fun though.
I guess Ro would be "Evil Yar" in this scenario
Tom Riker would be "Evil Riker"
Lore would be "Evil Data"
As you point out any number of Klingons could be "Evil Worf"
Either Morano or another Shinzon could be "Evil Wesley"
Maybe Crell Morset as "Evil Doctor Crusher"? Or else that lady doctor who experimented on dying patients.
Kilana (the Vorta lady) could be "Evil Troi"
Can't think of an "Evil Geordi" though..

I still say they should have paired him with Data.

 

I get your point, & it's not an bad idea thematically, (It might be really good in novel form) but it doesn't work on that show for the same reason that Tom Riker replacing Will Riker, where Data becomes 1st officer doesn't work.

In both cases it supplants or interferes with the fact that Data, as a character, already has a significant role & arc, in just being Data. Featuring him revolves entirely around him being Data, this most unusual of characters. He is the specialty character, even more so than Worf.

Much of how Riker is featured is in how he is 1st officer, or captain in training. Data can't take over that spot without sacrifices upon his current narrative. Much of Worf's featuring is in his culture or his parenting, the former kind of having run its course at a point, & the latter never really working or gaining traction as a solid theme for him. That's kind of how they ended up with him & Deanna, for good or ill. There just wasn't much else they knew how to do with either of them anymore (though they could've done better than that old crutch imho)

But Data? Data's gotta keep being what he is, & being featured within that growth, because he's the specialty, & the breakout sensation character as well. We all want to see that develop. Having him in any long-term relationship with another regular pulls us out of that into a new thing, that frankly isn't as special.

Sure, it would work for Geordi. He needed anything to give him more substance... & so did Yar imho, which is why Crosby probably bailed. Yar wasn't panning out to be all that significant a character among the dynamic either. That's where you put your onboard romance, instead of maybe doing the O'Brien/Keiko stuff

 

There was another possibility, ensign Tyler in 'Phantasms' had a crush on Geordi but for some reason Geordi wasn't interested.

 

I dunno - The Orville has gotten some very good mileage out of the Isaac/Clare relationship, primarily because of the questions it raises about how a relationship works with a being that doesn't think the same way we do and cannot fully express (or even have) emotions.

 

@Mojochi I see what you mean with Data already having a lot on his plate. (I'd argue the Thomas Riker situation would be different though since he'd be, in some ways a wholly new character and there'd be heaps to explore with how the crew would react to him and his psychological damage for being stuck alone on a planet for years)

I still think Geordi would have been an excellent choice for Star Trek's first gay character. I briefly took thought about pairing him with O'Brien to create a very non-stereotypical gay couple, but that would probably nix O'Brien being on DS9.
So maybe a secondary character would be better either a civilian or maybe a scientist from astrometrics. (or maybe Barclay)
That could have been the wedding in Data's Day. It would have had a lot more impact if it had been two characters the audience already cared about. Instead of one secondary character and one (I think) we hadn't seen before.

 

Oh I totally agree it would've been an excellent direction... for Riker, with ALL kinds of possibilities to write, but the consequence of it, having Data be the new #1, destroys what he was in lieu of this new Data who is now what Riker was, the captain in training, & 2nd in command. Some, if not all of his character growth becomes about that, instead of what had been so successful about his character before, that unique guy thing we were exploring. Some of it gets put aside. Now if there were a way to sub Tom for Will, without moving Data (or passing him over for a deserved promotion) then I'm with you.

Ideally, my dream for Tom replacing Will is that right after you introduce Tom, some Borg stuff blows into town, & Will accepts his own command, & a now more ranking Shelby comes back aboard, & Picard ends up taking Hanson's earlier recommendation of having her be his #1. Data stays right where he is, without too much insult.

Honestly, I think you really need not look much further than Barclay if you're looking for that kind of development. Who better to forge a personal relationship that helps both of them grow away from their awkwardness?

However you write it, or with whom, Geordi was probably the best option for having a budding romance on the show. My 1st best choice would've been Yar though. I like the idea of her character, but between the acting & the writing, she floundered & something like that could've made it work for her too

Or, merging with my earlier thought, if Tom Riker were aboard, & only able to manage a job like helm on Picard's bridge, because everything else was filled, then that leaves a LOT of room for him & Deanna to be the budding romance

 

Shelby would probably have been the best possibility to replace Riker, yeah.

And I can understand that you'd prefer Yar with Geordi since she was an established character who desperately needed something after having her role greatly reduced in several scripts where she originally had been an active participant.
But I can't see a serious relationship arc blossoming in Season 1. I just don't see it. In season 1 Roddenbery's idea of causal sex and "playing at love" was too prevalent (at least as much as they could getaway with for a show in the 80s), I feel, to develop a proper relationship.
Hence I was only thinking of the "Geordi Romance arc" being started in later seasons, P. Y. (Post Yar)
And I agree that Barclay would probably be the most logical and interesting choice. Really considering Geordi's interactions with him in his introduction episode it'd be easy to develop a romance from that.