Thanks for the kind words. Pike and Kirk were both guys who had their share of self-doubt, but I get what you're saying about the writing of some shows. I think the problem is not that people want their protagonists to have some shades to their character but that it's often done using the same one or two clumsy - IMO - narrative approaches. The troubled backstory focusing on a traumatic event in the protagonist's service history comes up time and time again, always to be handled with a big expository lump. Which, now that I think of it, is the exact problem with Tressaurian's third act. Garrovick's dilemma is based in his backstory with the Tressaurians which he has to explain and ruminate over at length. If I had it to write over, the entire third act briefing room scene would go in the recycle basket to be permanently deleted.
The only thing going for the original version of that briefing room scene is it's the one place Richards connects with Garrovick and you get an idea of why she looks up to him, and clumsy or not the story needed that moment. That could have been done in another way, obviously...time to slingshot around the sun.
Yeah, that's true. Even without the problematic material, though, it needed a lot of cutting and sharpening. It was the pivotal scene in terms of Garrovick's arc, the way the two characters related to one another, and the plot solution - ten pounds of potatoes in a five pound sack. The last, particularly, seems a reach out at best, really out of left field...but would have been okay if the character bits had worked.
In retrospect I think it could have been handled without Garrovick ever explaining anything and finally having eager-beaver Richards confront him with what she knows and what she suspects is egging him on, and having him shut her down only to have to her follow in his footsteps but not come out so lucky.
Regarding the briefing room scene between Garrovick and Richards, I was never privy to the behind-the-scenes info regarding the problem with the scene. I never saw the script or the raw footage. I only see the final results. On that basis, the conversation between the two of them about duty and heroism works well. It's almost blink and you miss it, but it foreshadows Richards' fate, and that's significant.
It's ham-fisted as edited and having recently re-reviewed the workprint version prior to wiping a drive of raw footage (it's been 7 years, it was time) I can see a much better version could have been mined from the raw material.
I think the worst part of what's on screen in that scene has little or nothing to do with the interactions between Garrovick and Richards. Rather, it's the rewind to rewatch what Kosnett said about "collapse in," to hit us over the head with it. And while the computer graphics are interesting (I love computer graphics, and all of these are fine), given the following scene on the bridge when Garrovick reviews his proposal to Harris for feedback, the computer modelling in the briefing room is redundant. Modelling to ensure it's a promising idea is perhaps something the captain needs to do, but, because it's all explained in the following scene anyway, we do need to see it. So, I think the briefing room scene could just end right after Garrovick says, "You start to collapse... in on yourself.... That's it!" That would mean a dissolve, maybe, from around 35:29 straight to the starship shot at around 36:34, to indicate the passage of a little time, during which the captain presumably irons out his idea for presentation.
I hate the "Collapse IN!" line. Always have. Always will. I much prefer the earlier setup in which Harris makes the analogy of "throw another rock in the pond" which is what they end up doing by tossing the prototype at the big machine. All that viewscreen stuff at the end was silly. I thought the graphics should be the stuff Garrovick is poring over up til Richards comes in, not at the end. I agree that "Aha!" followed by him saying "We're going to destroy that thing out there!" and bolting for the door would have been more effective.