Tuvok was promoted explicitly. Not sure about Torres. Paris was demoted and promoted, and Kim called it out which made it worse.
Tuvok was promoted, complete with a party, in "REVULSION", early season 4.
Kim calling it out was worse. It kind of felt like slap in his face, and to anyone following VOY who was eyeballing and wondering why he still only has 1 pip.
("UNIMATRIX ZERO" is easily a contender for worst in the franchise for the various things it completely undermines.)
If we ignore costuming errors and go for actual pips shown he was demoted shortly after Prime Factors, which makes sense.
However it was most likely just corn, as Jet pointed out in LDS.
I stand corrected.
I stand double-corrected.
As per old instructions, moving the Harry discussion to the relevant topic.
Regarding Ro, it may be that they had difficulty finding places to slot her character (the ensign with the bad past and the attitude problem) in in a meaningful way. TNG was NOT the the series you went to for interpersonal conflict.
Regarding Ro, it may be that they had difficulty finding places to slot her character (the ensign with the bad past and the attitude problem) in in a meaningful way. TNG was NOT the the series you went to for interpersonal conflict.
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Wheaton's departure was more complex than that. He had a big dispute with Rick Berman. Yes, he wanted to appear in a particular movie, but his departure was more motivated by the dispute that ensued. According to Wheaton, Berman would not work with him on opportunities to appear in other things like he did for some other actors. When Wheaton asked for some time away to do a movie, Berman told him he couldn't because the episode they would be shooting was so focused on Wesley Crusher. However, once Wheaton had turned down the movie offer, the episode was re-written to basically eliminate Wesley. Wheaton took that to be out of spite.
Now, Wheaton's recollection of events could be wrong and he may have misinterpreted things also, but I think there was definitely more to his departure than just wanting to do movies.
I thought she was Lt.jg for the whole run, in spite of some costuming errors.
In this shot from "Drive" (Season 7) she has the black bar/gold bar pip for Lt. jg.
You're probably right, Voyager's sloppiness with rank pins makes it tricky.
She was explicitly promoted in Parallax though.
To Chief Engineer, but I don’t recall her get promoted in rank.
At the start of the episode she has a lieutenant j.g. pin, then they promote her, at the end of the ep she wears full a full lieutenant pin.
Again, that sloppiness means that they soon dropped her costumed rank back down again...but she was promoted in that ep regardless of what came later.
Or they put the wrong pin on.At the start of the episode she has a lieutenant j.g. pin, then they promote her, at the end of the ep she wears full a full lieutenant pin.
Again, that sloppiness means that they soon dropped her costumed rank back down again...but she was promoted in that ep regardless of what came later.
It's certainly possible that they accidentally gave her a higher rank pin in the episode where she gets promoted.
She keeps on wearing it for at least eight more episodes too. (I haven't bothered to check exactly when she gets her demotion, but she's still full Lt. at least as late as State of Flux.)
Yeah, that's kinda the double-edged sword of her being such a very dynamic character, part of what gave her that spark was her clash with the others, and that same clash is something that they just did NOT do with TNG's characters in general. Like you hear Geordi say in her introduction that she's someone he wouldn't trust at his back on an away mission, yet the two occasions that we have of them being paired together (briefly in the attempt to catch the Ux-Mal prisoners in a force field in Power Play and then as the central focus for The Next Phase), nothing of the sort is even acknowledged, let alone part of their interactions.
Sure, she got used as a voice of disagreement in Disaster, but even Michael Piller believed they ended that on wrong note for her - instead of backing down and saying "I was wrong," she should have said "I could still have been right, I stand by the call I would have made, and you just were lucky that you were right." And the only other episode that really had her as a source of friction was in Conundrum, and even that was done more for the humor of pairing her up with Riker once they all lost their memories.
I mean, one of my favorite uses of her in the books from the time, when they were limited to episodic one-offs over ongoing continuity, was in the novel Requiem, where, with Picard missing, Riker has her step up as his acting first officer BECAUSE of her contrary opinions and wanting a voice at his side who will stand up to him if they believe he's wrong. And when she does offer an unconventional option, he actively struggles with accepting it before agreeing to accept it. It's a good showing of them both pushing each other and developing their characters in the limited ways that those novels were allowed. And it's the kind of conflict that TNG in general was averse to.
I mean, when I think of the most memorable guest characters in TNG, it IS the ones who cause discomfort to the others - it's what MAKES them memorable, because these characters demand that the crew, who are, by Roddenberry edict, going to get along and be understanding and accepting of each other, react with discomfort, are pushed out of the "safe" boundaries. Ro Laren, K'Ehleyr, Pulaski, Lwaxana, Shelby, even Barclay or Alexander... All of these characters force the other characters to do things that they wouldn't normally, which is what gives those characters depths, exploring them when pushing them to limits, whether they be external pressures or personal limits, seeing them react and grow because of the situations they're pushed in to because of these characters who bring them to different states than they would normally choose to be in.
That was the *entire point* of my post.
It was used as some lofty reason when someone left (not just Trek, other shows too) but was often not the reason. At least not completely. Denise Crosby, Wil Wheaton and Michelle Forbes I've all heard "they want to do movies" said about them.
Part of what made DS9 do great was its ability to use characters like that: expand on them, make them dynamic, and weave them into a greater narrative.
After watching "Ensign Ro" earlier this year I wondered what did happen on Garon II. Should that have been followed up in a story or better left alone?
Oh man, I really wish it had. There had to have been former crewmates from The Wellington, who were none too happy to find out she's serving on Picard's home for the wayward & indigent, aboard The Enterprise. 8 of them died because she refused to follow orders.
The thing that puzzles me (and deserves expounding) is that I got the impression that, even with the disastrous outcome, Ro never really expresses a change of mind about the decision, like maybe she still doesn't think it was the wrong call, which would track for her personality. Imagine spending time in lockup for getting 8 people killed, & still having the audacity to buck command, on board the only ship that gave her a 2nd chance, when she's routinely confrontational with Riker or somebody else.
Plus, there's her stance in Disaster, where she's really adamant about wasting no time abandoning the crew. Makes me wonder if she cut loose that away team similarly, & if so, HTF does she not have any cause to reevaluate herself? TBH, with how she ends up betraying her mission for Picard, it seems like she just makes a call & then every other bridge is burned, in its wake. Wild.
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