Things You Wish TOS Had Done

[Brutal Strudel]

Aside from get a good time slot and run five Roddenberry and Coon produced years, of course.

For me, I wish they'd established the friendship between Scott and McCoy mentioned in the writer's guide. They were both hard-drinking, passionate pragmatists a decade or so Kirk's senior. It would have been cool if they hit the flesh pots on Wrigley's together, the one stinking of Oban and Laphroaig, the other of Maker's Mark and Woodford Reserve.

(The old salt Scotty drinking with the green Chekov in "Tribbles" is one of the most charming moments in all of Trek.)

 

[Green Shirt]

Brutal Strudel said:
For me, I wish they'd established the friendship between Scott and McCoy mentioned in the writer's guide.

Right, besides a couple lines in "Turnabout Intruder" and "Mirror, Mirror", they hardly spoke in three years.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"Turnabout Intruder"--that's it! I wish they'd shown female captains!

 

[GodThingFormerly]

"26 July 66 An apparent opportunity has arisen to do a book of 8 short stories derived from scripts of the forthcoming TV series 'Star Trek' for a flat fee of $2000. That creates a dilemma. I need the money and could do the work quickly. On the other hand I don't like this kind of work and it's bad for the reputation to get involved in that sort of hacking. I suppose that the best way out is to do it under a pen name--and bear in mind that it might help to work for the show directly--especially since the producer will be at Tricon [1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland]." - A notebook entry by James Blish as recounted in Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish by David Ketterer (Kent State University Press, 1987).

TGT

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I'm sure we could come up with a laundry list of SF luminaries we wish wrote for Trek.

And yes, I too wish TOS had shown women in command and obviated the dog's breakfast of TI forever. That's one thing I was happy to see ENT ignore--perhaps the only thing...

 

[Esteban]

I like this original post.

I wish they could have brought back, and made recurring, some of the characters we only saw once or twice.

More Riley, more Rand, more Sarek, more Kor ( I know, they tried), more Kellowitz, more Kelso (RIP), more Mudd, I guess, and so on.

And whatever hapened to Tristan Adams? Or Miri? Or Commodores Stone and Mendez?

My point is that another couple of years could have given us great fun in seeing some--by then--old faces.

 

[Wingsley]

I think a new dimension could've been added to TOS if more off-ship stories had been done, like "Metamorphosis" and "The Galileo Seven". TAS gave us gems like "The Slaver Weapon", but we should've seen more. TREK is all about exploring, and it would've been interesting if we could've seen expedition-type stories (or even story-arcs) about certain officers taking command of a small unit and going off on some mission away from the mother-ship. It could've involved shuttlecraft or simply beaming a group down to a planet surface and leaving them there for a specific mission.

A thought occured to me: why does the Constitution-class starship have an indentation on the lower half of the aft of the secondary hull? Could that be a place where an expeditionary-style craft (or some other "mission module") could be attached, so it could be brought out to deep space before separating from the mother ship? Maybe junior officers could be given chances to command expeditions in "mission modules", that could be like temporary space stations or even TOS-style pre-runabout craft.

It would open up many story opportunities for "Slaver Weapon"-style stories if mamma starship is nowhere around and a junior officer like Sulu had to use his wits to deal with a situation. Think APOLLO 13.

Too bad TOS never evolved into something like that.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I wanted to know more about what happened with Mirror Spock and Marlena Moreau at the end of Mirror, Mirror.

It would have been interesting to see TOS take on a semi-serialized format a la DS9.

...and another vote for expanding upon the relationships among more than just the Big Three.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

It would have been nice to see Sulu and Chekov hanging out like Bashir and O'Brien.

 

[Mallory]

Esteban said:
I wish they could have brought back, and made recurring, some of the characters we only saw once or twice.

I agree. It would have been nice if people like Farell and DeSalle (along with the ones you mentioned) had been able to come back on occasion. It would have felt more like the ship really was off in deep space.

A few recurring red shirts would have been nice too.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I just wish DeSalle hadn't come back in "Catspaw." Uhura should have been in command.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Mallory said:
A few recurring red shirts would have been nice too.

There's another one--a recurring Security Chief!

Would've been nice to see more of the crew's recreational/off-duty life; maybe some "lower decks" focus on non-regulars. (We got a bit of that in episodes like "Balance of Terror" and "Shore Leave", but they never came back.)

The bowling alley! Or any example of the crew engaging in a recurring off-duty activity together, a la the poker games on TNG. The closest we got to this was Kirk and Spock playing chess.

In cases where a crew member was set up as an old, good friend of a regular (e.g., Gary Mitchell and Ben Finney), it would've been nice if they'd been able to spend an episode or two setting these people up, so we felt the impact a little more when they went bad. Finney, in particular, was a case of telling us everything rather than showing it.

Along the same lines, an on-ship love interest for one of the recurring characters who lasted more than an episode. Or a love interest for Sulu or Uhura at all. (TOS was very progressive for its day, but notice the two non-white recurring characters get virtually zero love interests...each got a moment of flirtation or two, that was it. Whereas Scotty and Chekov each got at least two episodes in which they had a significant love interest.)

Saucer separation!

 

[Wingsley]

I wish they would've established a "below decks" dimension to the crew: guest stars protraying crewmembers subordinate to the junior officers. Watkins was a nice touch in "That Which Survives", but he didn't last long, did he? Scotty needed some junior engineers, chiefs and senior chiefs to work with.

One great idea that was half-baked in TNG: "away teams". Put junior officers in command of recurring characters (Kelowicz seemed to be a start be he didn't last long, either).

And don't laugh, but I would've wanted to see Yeoman Rand in more eps. It's a pipe dream for '60's TV, I know, but Rand and Uhura should've been depicted more seriously as characters with career ambitions and the ability to get things done.

It would also have been nice if Kirk and company could've at least had communications with other, distant starships in nearby sectors. (You know, starships with crews that are still alive.) And it also would've been nice to see the Enterprise visit more space stations and starbases, where they could meet fellow space travellers, both Starfleet and non-Starfleet.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Having the Enterprise stop by a "planetoid colony" (the existence of which in the UFP was demonstrated by Kirk's mention of them in Friday's Child) would have made for a welcome change from episodes taking place on planetary surfaces. A matte painting for the interior vista and a faintly cylindrical rock with a few metallic bits glued to it for the exterior miniature is all that the VFX team would have needed to create the necessary visuals:

TGT

 

[Turbo]

Someone's forgetting Yolanda, methinks...

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Turbo said:
Someone's forgetting Yolanda, methinks...

If you are referring to Yonada from The World is Hollow, Etc., that was, A). an alien space vehicle, B). without any expansive interior volumes, and, C). the episode was from the Turd Season. AFAIAC is doesn't exist.

TGT

 

[erastus25]

klingongoat said:

Brutal Strudel said:
For me, I wish they'd established the friendship between Scott and McCoy mentioned in the writer's guide.

Right, besides a couple lines in "Turnabout Intruder" and "Mirror, Mirror", they hardly spoke in three years.

Wow - you're right. I never really thought about it. Even in The Deadly Years they barely interact! Incredible.

 

[The Old Mixer]

There's "Spectre of the Gun"...and is "The Tholian Web" the one in which they drink distilled Klingon nerve gas as an antidote?

 

[Plum]

^^^
I believe so, and it makes a good mix with scotch.

 

[Masao]

I wish the calendar year had been established definitively. Also, I wish they had shown or even mentioned more Starfleet ships.