What if in the show, Riker took up the promotion when he got the chance to become Captain, leading Data to become first Officer?
What if Data was First Officer?
- Thread starter Snowdrop82
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He could be constantly challenged about his ability to lead (mostly by guest stars of the week). In one episode, he might be assigned an "assistant" whose actual job is to evaluate his performance critically and report to command. Picard would have words with the admiral Data's observer reports to.
Since one of the jobs of first officer is to be the ship's administrator-in-chief one imagines Data would do remarkably well at certain aspects of it. People being insubordinate or not recognising his authority would be more common than with Riker, but we already saw that. I think it invites two things that would be negative to Data as a character though: one, further direct comparisons with Spock; and two, a risk that given his childlike naiveté Data would become more like an "executive assistant" to Picard than a true executive officer, like those admiral's lackeys we see throughout the show. Now Worf, on the other hand... DS9 proves that absolutely could have worked.
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