• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Wasn't their suppose to be a character in a wheelchair in season 2?

Jayson1

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Does anyone remember when their was lots of talk about this? Lot of discussion about what kind of chair it should look like and how much import should be placed on future medicine being able to help people when disabled better than we can do today. I guess they must have dropped the idea and maybe that had something to do with show creator turnover.

Jason
 
They've shown a wheelchair bound crewmember a few times in both seasons, but he's never spoken a line.
 
I don't recall it was ever meant to a big thing on the part of the producers, he's just been around in the background a few times in both seasons.
 
I don't there being a thing made of it, but there was a guy called Christopher Pike...

Yeah, I remember the background guy as well, but perhaps the discussion you remember was just a forum thing and not a producer thing. I suppose I could have missed something that had been said though.
 
There was a background character who wheeled past while Ash was having a top secret Section 31 conversation... in the middle of a corridor.


Wasn't there supposed to be a man in a skirt, a la early Next Gen? Had anyone spotted that?
 
But Nahn is not a mahn. I'm sure we were promised a man in a miniskirt.
misread your post--sorry Daniel---all I could find on the SKANT and unisex uniforms came from an i09 article..........it quotes Gersha Phillips as saying there was a background actor in the last few episodes that was wearing one........however, that could have got lost in the edit.
 
Does anyone remember when their was lots of talk about this? Lot of discussion about what kind of chair it should look like and how much import should be placed on future medicine being able to help people when disabled better than we can do today. I guess they must have dropped the idea and maybe that had something to do with show creator turnover.

Jason
I remember a really involved discussion (here) on this, some feeling a wheelchair is still an appropriate apparatus for the future setting and others suggesting that medical advancements would depict something else.

From Succubint's link:

Chief Engineer Reno of the USS Hiawatha... Here are the details on Reno:

“Female, between 25 and 45.

Due to a physical situation, required to be in a wheelchair, despite this, they need to be extremely physically fit as this role will be demanding physically.

Chief engineer Reno is high-energy and bordering on boisterous, she is happiest when she’s fighting a stubborn bolt, a real gearhead."
 
Yep, seen the guyin the wheelie chair, seemed out of place..

I mean, You can rebuild a human into a cyborg with Airiam.. but can't fix a normal human so that he/she doesn't need a wheelchair? Plus, there's the thing of, unless your on some kind of light duty, as in you got hurt and your recouperating.. wouldn't you be mustered out of the service, or not let in if you were handicaped like that? I can see exeptions like a scientist or something for a short term.. then there's antigravity.. why does it have wheels?
There have been aliens that needed a chair because Earth normal gravity is bad for them..

I don't know.. just seemed out of place.. to me
 
misread your post--sorry Daniel---all I could find on the SKANT and unisex uniforms came from an i09 article..........it quotes Gersha Phillips as saying there was a background actor in the last few episodes that was wearing one........however, that could have got lost in the edit.
Discovery's take on the skant includes what are essentially pants underneath, so they could have been easily overlooked - Nahn's skant barely registers to me as such half the time...
 
I speak as someone with disability...... though not wheel chairbound

I don't know how I feel about active duty personnel with disabilitys.

Starfleet is military and its active frontline crew should be in peak health.
Some disabilitys like blindness sure, technology can get around and a desk job on a star base I don't see a problem with someone in a wheelchair.

But on a frontline ship? Seems a little silly
 
It does seem like by thr 23rd century, with rare exceptions like Pike (total radiation damage to his body and tissues), it would not be that difficult to either rebuild, print or otherwise provide working prosthetic that would be more useful than wheel chairs. It may not matter in some cases but in others, like finding a space in an evacuation pod: it might matter a great deal. I get WHY they put the character in there, but isn't a future where people don't HAVE to be in wheelchairs the kind of Star Trek optimism we're looking for.

Cybernetic legs would have been cooler.
 
The man in the wheelchair was in season 2 as an extra.. He can be seen at Airiam's funeral in the video below starting at the 1:12 mark (behind the 2nd "S" in "U.S.S"):

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
It does seem like by thr 23rd century, with rare exceptions like Pike (total radiation damage to his body and tissues), it would not be that difficult to either rebuild, print or otherwise provide working prosthetic that would be more useful than wheel chairs. It may not matter in some cases but in others, like finding a space in an evacuation pod: it might matter a great deal. I get WHY they put the character in there, but isn't a future where people don't HAVE to be in wheelchairs the kind of Star Trek optimism we're looking for.

Cybernetic legs would have been cooler.
I've always thought that Geordi's visor was a bit big.

Gauging the 24th-century's level of tech, I'd figure he could have had implants or at least a smaller "camera" system sending signals to his brain.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top