When SHOULD Riker have left?

I don’t think he ever should have left the Enterprise. The show should have stayed true to the concept of a 20 year deep space mission. That way the only sacrifice Riker makes is turning down the Drake before Encounter at Farpoint. He’s making a choice that being second on a prestigious ship on a long mission is better than captain of a minor ship in mostly known space. Plus, early Riker plays it like he’s co-captain, not XO. With the generation ship angle gone Riker seems like a complete idiot and coward turning down ship after ship.
Barring that, I think Picard should have been killed off in BoBW and it should have been the Riker/Shelby show. It was a much better dynamic than what Picard and Riker had at that point.

 

He should never have been promoted past the rank of Lieutenant. His insubordinate nature frankly makes him unsuited for positions of command and I'm frankly baffled that he was offered Captaincy multiple times when he is demonstably unsuited for positions that require responsible decision making.

 

^I like that this is clearly coming from an unbiased source.

 

Didn't Jellico get blown up by the Prometheus?

 

Nope. The only starship that was destroyed by USS Prometheus during its brief hijack by the Romulans was the Nebula-class USS Bonchune, not the Excelsior-class USS Cairo. In fact, no Excelsior-class appeared in the episode at all.

 

Though there's no reason to believe Jellico was still captaining the Cairo by that point...

 

Jellico was a badass and PIcard was a total wuss.

 

No, but there's even less reason to believe that he's captaining the Bonchune specifically.


Canon doesn't mention him at all after Chain of Command (TNG) but Leslie Wong is CO by In the Pale Moonlight (DS9), so he's probably moved on (New Frontier places him on Starbase 5, TrekLit non-contradictorially places him at Starfleet HQ during the Tezwan Affair and the Borg Supercube Crisis. He was Starfleet C-in-C/Chief Admiral during the Destiny War, but resigned afterwards.

 

For the life of me I can't remember whether he gets mentioned during the S31 fallout...or rather, I know he gets mentioned but I can't recall whether there's any discussion of his whereabouts or such.

 

Picard was pretty badass being able to resist torture in those episodes

 

He was one of the former brass arrested by Federation Security in Available Light, as far as I know, that was the last we heard of him.

 

Even though he didn't know there were five lights?

 

That sounds right. I would have liked his viewpoint on that. Barring the Tezwa situation he generally seemed like one of the saner admirals we'd seen.

 

For Jellico he would have used shift rotations.

Madred: Tell me... how many shift rotations do you need? You know you only need 3.
Jellico: THERE ARE FOUR SHIFTS!

 

Jellico begged Riker to help him after being a douche with him and Picard was tortured but didn't break down. So.... what?
But lets not make this another "Jellico Picard" thread. Deep down we all know Jellico was in 2 episodes and there's no way to know him as well as Picard.

 

Riker did leave in the end of 'Second Chances', the other one.

 

Maybe considering that one of the biggest recommendations on Riker's résumé was from Eric Pressman, & he only got it by helping to cover up a mutiny over illegal practices by the captain, which led to the loss of a ship & nearly all hands, he never actually should've been on the Enterprise to begin with, & when it came out, that's when he should've left... or been removed.

 

Jellico and Picard broke some treaty & risked a war on the secret mission to destroy a biogenic weapon in order to save many many lives, Pressman broke a treaty to make cloaking tech also to save many many lives.

They could have used tech like that to get in and out of Picard's mission without being detected or rescue him. Maybe Riker wasn't entirely wrong back then, they don't show the events playing out

Seems revealing Pressman's tech at the end there was one of the few times Picard trying do the right thing, was actually the wrong move

 

Let's ask him

Seems he's got a pretty good idea what the right thing to do was after much time to deliberate it.

 

Maybe he got a bit soft on that one

 

It seems a little far fetched that Starfleet didn’t forcibly promote him during the Dominion War.