What mental ideas did the writers float but not do?

[AntonyF]

Rewatching TNG and this time really listening all the documentaries and commentaries you realise the writers would have done some batshit crazy stuff if not restrained by the producers.

For example:

• Killing off William Riker and replacing him with Thomas.
• Having Wesley commit suicide in First Duty.

I was curious to whatever other examples I've missed, and sort of compiling a list to the "Are you mad?" moments of the TNG writers.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They were gonna do an episode where Sarek went through the Guardian of Forever and became Surak. Because the writer thought it was funny their names were so similar. The episode eventually became "Yesterday's Enterprise" IIRC

 

[somebuddyX]

Young Spock and Old Spock team-up via the Guardian of Forever for Season 2.
Chekov was gonna be a former POW turned Ambassador to the planet that imprisoned him and come aboard the Enterprise to help diplomatic relations with the planet. He was gonna makes friends with Worf and it is revealed he is plotting to use the Enterprise to get his revenge.
Kill Spock offscreen in "Face of the Enemy"

 

[D Man]

I seem to recall they first wanted to blow up the ship and crash the saucer in “Descent” (not sure if that would have been end of S6 or beginning of S7) but it was too expensive so they waited for the movie.

I’ve always liked the idea of offing Will and bringing in Thomas. Would have been pretty wild.

 

[FredH]

The Borg in TBOBW taking both Picard AND Data and frankensteining them together into what would have been a single Locutus.

 

[somebuddyX]

I seem to recall they first wanted to blow up the ship and crash the saucer in “Descent” (not sure if that would have been end of S6 or beginning of S7) but it was too expensive so they waited for the movie.

I’ve always liked the idea of offing Will and bringing in Thomas. Would have been pretty wild.

So apparently they wanted to turn into it like a cruise liner and split the crew up and then during the course of heading home to do that they have to do the ship split and crash the saucer. The only reason I bring that up is I was thinking about that the other day, thinking "Man that's a lot for one episode!" Like the saucer crash feels like enough to cap off some episode, let alone the out of the blue retirement of the ship and splitting everyone up. I guess maybe it could work but it feels weird to me.

 

[knightgrace]

Something really, really intelligent. Something no one has imagined as of yet.

Okay, let's back up, the original intent was to entertain intelligent fifteen year old boys...

Not an intelligent general audience.

This lead to a problem. We all know it. Not enough actual thought was applied to revise the scripts before filming began. This means that a great many scripts had to be rejected.

But why? Because setting up a properly executed episode would be too expensive. Furthermore this would have reduced research time by using actual stars, at reasonable interstellar distances.

A known example: the episode 'Friday's Child's the freighter is mentioned as having a top speed of warp factor two.
In a star system this is relatively realistic. But beyond this is the episode 'Where No Man Has gone Before'... Using six thousand light-years derived from the show's Bible height of the galaxy of 12,000 light-years is more than pushing matters. And, yes I recently reread the Bible.

Editing, editing, and more editing.

To put it another way MONEY.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Chekov was gonna be a former POW turned Ambassador to the planet that imprisoned him and come aboard the Enterprise to help diplomatic relations with the planet. He was gonna makes friends with Worf and it is revealed he is plotting to use the Enterprise to get his revenge.

I heard about this, and I later wondered if I could make it work as a story for the Strange New Worlds short story contest Pocket Books used to run.

I called it "Sons of the Rodina," "rodina" being a Russian word for the motherland. I wrote it as a Deep Space Nine story. The aliens had not tortured Chekov; rather, they had murdered his son in the 2330s. And Chekov steals the Defiant to exact his revenge.

Conceptually, the idea works. A relationship between Chekov and Worf as sons of Russia works. (I worked a conversation between Pierre and Andrei in Tolstoy's War and Peace about the meaning of life into a conversation between, respectively, Worf and Chekov.) There wasn't enough room to work with, though, and my writing was rough.

The real problem, imho, is that Chekov is the bad guy in the story, and that feels like something that you really shouldn't do in a piece of tie-in fiction. I think Koenig probably would have relished the opportunity to portray the tragic downfall of a long-ago hero on screen, though, and it's a pity that it never came to be.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Okay, let's back up, the original intent was to entertain intelligent fifteen year old boys..

You keep saying this. Source?