Why so few secondary characters in later Trek?

[Christopher]

I chalk it up to laziness and lack of regard for the audience's attention span.

Which is disproven by the fact that, as I said, Enterprise has a very large recurring cast, just as DS9 did. Sure, most of its recurring characters like Shran or Soval or Daniels or Degra were not members of the crew, but neither were characters like Dukat or Winn or Weyoun or the Grand Nagus.

In short, the premise of this thread is simply false. There was not a lack of secondary characters in later Trek -- at least, not in Enterprise. Sure, VGR didn't have as many recurring players as DS9 or ENT, but then, neither did TOS. Like VGR, it had a number of recurring crew characters who only appeared a handful of times each, like Kyle or DeSalle or Palmer, or bit background players like Leslie and Hadley, analogous to VGR's Ayala or ENT's recurring MACOs. TNG did manage to have a few significant recurring players such as Guinan, Barclay, and Ogawa, as well as non-crew characters like Q, Lwaxana, Gowron, Lursa, and B'Etor, but I don't think they outnumbered ENT's recurring players.

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps its more a case of what th shows did with there recurring characters? That could also be said to be true of background characters played by extras look at Morn on DSN, he only appeared in just over half of the episodes but even though he had no lines but he added to the universe of DSN. VOY had just as much potential to devolp its secondary and tertiary charctares as DSN did. And in my opinion they didn;t to this as well as they could have.

 

[R. Star]

I liked that Enterprise had a single admiral handing them orders the whole time. That seemed more real than just any old admiral dialing up Picard and giving him an assignment this week.

 

[Lance]

^ To be fair, TNG did reuse Admirals. Most notably Admiral Nechayev (who even crossed over for a couple appearances on DS9).

 

[Christopher]

Perhaps its more a case of what th shows did with there recurring characters? That could also be said to be true of background characters played by extras look at Morn on DSN, he only appeared in just over half of the episodes but even though he had no lines but he added to the universe of DSN. VOY had just as much potential to devolp its secondary and tertiary charctares as DSN did. And in my opinion they didn;t to this as well as they could have.

Well, first off, should DS9 be treated as the exemplar? I'd call it the exception to the rule; out of the five series, it's the one that developed the largest and deepest supporting cast.

And second, as I've been trying to get across, I reject the assumption that ENT did badly in this regard. If DS9 came first in terms of how rich a supporting cast it had, I'd say ENT came second, because it not only had a large and growing supporting cast, but it embraced continuity and evolving character arcs much like DS9 did. TNG would be third, with a more modest-sized stable of recurring guests and a more episodic approach, although it did have developing character and story threads that it intermittently revisited. And TOS and VGR would be about tied with each other in last place. Although given that VGR was in an age when TV was becoming more serialized, it would rank lower than TOS relative to expectations.

What I'm saying is that the problem isn't "later Trek." Only VGR fell short in this regard, not ENT. True, ENT did lose track of some of the potential supporting characters it set up, like Novakovich, Cutler, and Chang, but it made up for that with characters like Forrest and Shran and the more serialized narratives of seasons 3 and 4.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Was it wrong for me to think that "later Trek" meant TNG-ENT?

 

[Christopher]

^The first sentence of the original post specifies VGR and ENT.

 

[MacLeod]

Well with Cutler with the actors unfortunate death, they couldn't reuse her. But as you said Christopher VOY was airing in a time when audiance expectations where shifting tpwards more serialised shows (esp. in the USA), so perhaps as you say the expectations of some of the audiance where higher of what to expect in reagrds to that.

There is also perhaps the international factor to consider, perhaps viewers in other countries were already more familiar with more serialised shows. Even a show like DW (even in the classic era) given it's tme travel element had a degree of serialisation.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^The first sentence of the original post specifies VGR and ENT.

I was going by the title. Of course once I read the post, I knew what was meant.

Just reflecting on growing up with TOS (and TAS) and how relative a term like "Later Trek" can be.

 

[Lance]

There is also perhaps the international factor to consider, perhaps viewers in other countries were already more familiar with more serialised shows. Even a show like DW (even in the classic era) given it's tme travel element had a degree of serialisation.

I've seen Doctor Who (classic) refered to as "a series of serials". In that a serial is technically any story that goes on for multiples of episodes, and Doctor Who usually limited those to four-six episodes at a time. So a season of Doctor Who might be made up of five serials, each of them with four episodes.

Of course, the other thing is continuity bleed. Doctor Who did this too. Most of the individual serials screened between 1980 and 1986 had some degree of continuity bleed between them, where the events at the end of one serial are picked up again at the start of the next one, giving the impression of a strong overall continuity that stretched across several years without them being strictly fully serialized at all.

My impression is that all of the newer generation Trek shows did something pretty similar to be honest. TNG had a rich vein of character continuity that stretched right the way through the entire series. DS9 exapanded on that format, with it's isolated setting meaning that kind of interconnectedness was taken for granted on a more episode-by-episode basis. VOY was hardly a slouch in this regard either, it having had far more 'shared continuity' than it often gets held up to (although maybe not as much as the audience had been hoping for, lol ). ENT of course played the serial card in full through most of season three and to an extent season four.

 

[The Wormhole]

In the context of this thread, it was pretty hilarious when Voyager brought back Carey after an absence of several seasons just to give him the Red Shirt treatment and kill him off.

It's worse than that. The character practically disappeared after the first season, and was only mentioned again as having been killed in an alternate timeline (Before and After). And then he only shows up in episodes featuring flashbacks to season 1 (Relativity, Fury) until coming back within five episodes of the series finale to get killed.

 

[Christopher]

Doctor Who did this too. Most of the individual serials screened between 1980 and 1986 had some degree of continuity bleed between them, where the events at the end of one serial are picked up again at the start of the next one, giving the impression of a strong overall continuity that stretched across several years without them being strictly fully serialized at all.

That was the pattern from the very beginning in 1963. The end of one serial would lead directly into the next. For instance, the last episode of "An Unearthly Child" ended with their arrival on Skaro for "The Daleks," the end of that serial ended with the event that opened "The Edge of Destruction," that serial ended with their arrival in the Himalayas for "Marco Polo," etc. In short, every episode ended with a cliffhanger, whether it was for the continuation of the current serial or the beginning of the next.

This is one of the things that puzzles me about all the novels and audios that have come out in the past couple of decades featuring the classic Doctors. There really aren't all that many places in the series, especially in its first six seasons, where new adventures could be inserted between serials.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Having never served or paid close attention, Bermaga failed to realize that there were actual crews on these ships, not just seven people pushing buttons.

 

[Anwar]

Having never served or paid close attention, Bermaga failed to realize that there were actual crews on these ships, not just seven people pushing buttons.

Naturally, the "Old Guard" come in to give the usual berating over how if you're not in the military you aren't a worthwhile person. Utterly predictable.

TOS wasn't any better in this regard either, they just had it easier because they only had 3 main characters in the first place. Easier to feature more secondaries when the primary cast is already pretty small.

 

[T'Girl]

Naturally, the "Old Guard" come in to give the usual berating over how if you're not in the military you aren't a worthwhile person. Utterly predictable.

And in some cases completely true.

 

[Anwar]

Well, at least there's none of that "Get off my lawn you worthless punks!" stuff going around.

 

[Christopher]

If we're going to make it about the crews specifically rather than the cast in general, let me point out that DS9 was just as bad in terms of focusing solely on the established command crew. They even had the same characters double as both the station ops crew and the Defiant crew, rather than having distinct crews for both. They had Kira and Odo along on Defiant missions when there was no reason for their involvement whatsoever. They had Nog, a cadet, and Rom, a civilian, working with the senior staff throughout the Dominion War rather than any of the dozens of more qualified and experienced Starfleet engineers that must've been around. They never bothered to establish any recurring junior officers in ops or the Defiant crew, since their attention was on Bajoran, Cardassian, Ferengi, and Dominion characters instead. The one time they tried to establish a recurring Bajoran junior engineer, it was only to set her up as a traitor in the first-season finale, and then the first actress they cast left so they had to introduce a second character in her place.

The one really significant supporting crew character they had was Eddington. There was also Primmin, who lasted two episodes and who I think was probably just created to take O'Brien's place while Colm Meaney was on vacation. There was Muñiz, who appeared three times in later seasons before dying. There was a recurring Bajoran nurse in the infirmary who was such a spear-carrier that I don't even know her name. And there was Vilix'pran, a nonhumanoid who was never seen but only talked about as a running gag. That's a very, very sparse supporting cast. So it doesn't make sense to say that DS9 did better than the other series at establishing crew characters beyond the core cast. If anything, it did worse than most.

 

[TheGoodStuff]

Im really unsure about the validity of the point of this thread. Did TNG & TOS really have such a strong stable or recurring characters?

TOS: Nurse Chapel & Rand...uhhh...

TNG: Lwaxana, [Im not counting the admirals...they only made a handful of appearances], Q, Guinan, Ro, Barclay...

DS9: Nog, Rom, Quark, Damar, Winn, Dukat, Gowron, Garak...yeah loads and loads.

VOY: Q, Barclay, Icheb, naomi, seska, borg queen,

ENT: Admiral Forrest, Shran, porthos [lol], soval, silik, daniels..


Im not sure it is that uneven. DS9 really runs away with it. The others have about equal amounts it just depends on how many you personally want to count.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Having never served or paid close attention, Bermaga failed to realize that there were actual crews on these ships, not just seven people pushing buttons.

Come, you've watched the shows. You've a passing familiarity with TV. Most military based shows tend to focus on a small group of characters, even if the show is set on a base or ship with hundreds of people, whether not the shows writer/producers served is irrelevant to that. MASH, Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy did it. I'm willing to bet Combat and 12 O'Clock High did it too.

"Later Trek" was no different. As various posters have shown those shows had plenty of secondary characters in the form of reoccurring characters and extras, just like TOS. But the focus of the shows are always going to be on the regulars.

 

[Christopher]

Come, you've watched the shows. You've a passing familiarity with TV. Most military based shows tend to focus on a small group of characters, even if the show is set on a base or ship with hundreds of people, whether not the shows writer/producers served is irrelevant to that. MASH, Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy did it. I'm willing to bet Combat and 12 O'Clock High did it too.

Yeah... how many MASH units in Korea really got by with just four surgeons? They did have a couple of other recurring surgeons in the first season, but they got phased out.

And you can see the same thing with detective shows. In real life, a homicide in a major city will be investigated by a whole team of detectives, and there will be different detectives assigned to different cases. But in TV, usually you just have two to four cops investigating every murder that happens in the precinct. In Law and Order, you had the same two prosecutors always trying cases that were investigated by the same two detectives from the same precinct, rather than from all over the city. (And most likely an assistant DA in real life would have a much larger staff than just one assistant.)

Then there are all those shows that have one supporting cop character in the ensemble, and that cop is always coincidentally the one who's called in to investigate any plot-relevant crime. I see that contrivance so often (for instance, in Charmed, Birds of Prey, and the 2007 Flash Gordon) that I'm surprised TV Tropes doesn't seem to have an "Only Cop in Town" page (unless it's under some title I can't figure out).

Even on The West Wing, President Bartlet's senior staff was much smaller than the real thing would be, with the communications department consisting of two speechwriters and their secretaries, and with those speechwriters, the chief and assistant chief of staff, and the press secretary pretty much being the president's entire circle of advisors except on those rare occasions where a cabinet member or joint chief showed up.

And then there's Mission: Impossible, which started out with the intent of being about one lead agent who assembled various different specialists and impersonators as needed for each specific mission, but ended up being about the same five (later four) people doing every single mission with only occasional help from guest experts.

It's just the nature of series TV that a show focuses on an unnaturally small and insular group of regulars, both because it would be too expensive to hire more people and because you want to focus on the characters the audience knows and identifies with.