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What would you have 'fixed' on Star Trek: TNG?

posted 5 years ago by TMC-4 (20491)
31 replies | jump to latest

https://www.quora.com/What-would-you-have-fixed-on-Star-Trek-TNG/answer/Kevin-Winslow-6

I’d have included more of the “Navy” feel as done by Nicholas Meyer in “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Undiscovered Country”.

NO KIDS ON THE ENTERPRISE! Seriously, you’ve seen the danger the ship gets into! Diseases, hostile takeovers, time travel paradoxes, and hell, there was a section of the ship that was removed by the Borg! You want to put kids through that?! It’s one of the most insane decisions I’ve seen. On Deep Space 9, a space station orbiting a planet, having kids around makes sense given the circumstances… but on a Starfleet vessel heading out into the unknown, it does NOT.

The uniforms. They’re not practical or functional. I’m sorry to people who like jumpsuits and onesies, but if you’re exploring new places, you need some pockets and utility.

The attitude/smugness. TNG was decidedly smug about themselves, sometimes almost to the point of arrogance.

I really appreciated Nick Meyer’s interpretations of the Star Trek universe, where people make mistakes, science can be overwhelming, and space is a dangerous place. Even when these lessons were driven home, the effect was temporary, at best. I really appreciated the original series films because life and death were constantly hanging in the balance.

Actual fighting.

I can’t even say how sick to death I am of the lame hand-to-hand combat on Star Trek shows. It’s had already been about 20 years since the original show when TNG came out, and somehow, they made fighting look even WORSE than the silly fistfights Kirk used to get into. TNG’s fight choreography was abysmal. These people are supposed to be explorers, yes, but they should know how to fight, too. I’m so sick of a single palm strike or a Tai Chi class on TNG supposedly being some ‘advanced Klingon martial art’.

Keep the optimism… but temper it with the knowledge that humanity isn’t perfect yet, and needs to keep working hard.

It’s actually why Ben Sisko is my favorite Star Trek character. In the course of “Deep Space 9” we see him as a character grow and change. It’s hard to argue that Kirk, Janeway, or Picard really change very much in their shows; by contrast, Sisko has to with being a grieving widow, a Starfleet commander, a religious icon to a religion he doesn’t even believe in, (while being a Federation citizen, which appears to value atheism over religious ‘superstition’), and a father. By the end of the show, he’s grown in every area, has explored his brighter and darker elements to his personality, (seriously, watch “In the Pale Moonlight”) gotten re-married, and actually considers retiring to Bajor. More like Ben Sisko, please!

More transfers, and more promotions! Starfleet should be able to shake up the roster as needed.

Captain Jellico became Captain of the Enterprise while Picard was on a dangerous mission. He was only the Captain for two episodes, but he quickly became one of my favorite Captains in all of Star Trek! Even though he was only there for a short time, his demand for professionalism changed Deanna Troi for the rest of the series, (and the films), as she stopped wearing her casual clothes and dressed in uniform ever since… she even became interested in chasing a promotion and being in command!

Jellico also had a completely different management style, outlook, and history than Picard. For two glorious episodes, the social dynamic on the ship was completely turned around… and personally, I would have loved to have seen more of this! Characters got pushed and changed by a Captain with a different outlook… I would have loved to have seen what would have happened if Jellico had stayed. Would Riker have finally decided it was time to become a Captain himself and left the ship? Would Data have been promoted permanently to first officer where he was now in charge of Riker’s old job… but without Riker’s charm?

It was also amazing to see a very competent, very capable, yet very different Captain step onto the Enterprise. There’s no doubt in my mind Jellico could have been an excellent Captain for the flagship for the long haul, and it would have been a very interesting switch.

Ensign Ro Laren is another great example. She came in with fire and rebellion, and had a character arc that took her many different places. Her presence also started challenging other members of the crew and opened up a lot new possibilities. Like I said, I loved TNG because they DID have good ideas, they just always kept coming back to the status quo with the main cast instead of letting these characters continue to evolve.

Not everyone should be on the ship forever; but if they’re in our line of sight, we should be seeing them growing and changing.

I love Geordi! Levar Burton was one of my favorite TV show hosts on “Reading Rainbow” when I was a kid, and THE reason I tuned into every episode I could of “TNG”. But what killed me was that Geordi never really changed… ever.

[–] kenburke (2397) 5 years ago

I agree with you about putting kids on the ship. I've always suspected some know-nothing Hollywood executive thought up a "sure fire" way to get kids to watch the show, and putting them on the Enterprise was it.

I also agreed with you about Captain Jellico - he trimmed away the fat and built up the muscle.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Devilman (450) 5 years ago

One thing I would do is soften all the crazy restrictions on the writing staff just because of Roddenberry's unrealistic future view. In TOS it was somewhat balanced but TNG had so many restriction that even writers used to complain that they couldn't actually have real character conflicts on board the Enterprise or space battle episodes.
Side stuff I'd do

- Remove Wesley's super genius kid status
- Make Ensign Ro a permanent cast member
- Picard would take more than one episode to recover from his Borg experience,I would have rather have him experience a total breakdown after that for a few episode a head of TBOBW2.
- Kept Riker as Captain after TBOBW until Picard recovers.

[–] Darren (1461) 5 years ago

Hmm... where to begin...

1) No kids on the ship. As others posted, having children on a ship that's part of the Federation's first line of defense is just stupid.

2) Bumpy head aliens/aliens of the week. Star Trek had waaaaay too many aliens who were just people with bits of latex glued to their faces, and who appeared one time to highlight some particular trait that the writer wanted to write a social commentary episode about. And having served their purpose, they'd never be seen again. Meanwhile, aliens from TOS, who could have been brought back to flesh out this fictional universe were completely ignored. Why didn’t the First Federation, with their superior technology, show up when the Borg started to menace the Alpha Quadrant? After all, they live there too, and the Borg would be a threat to them just as they were to all other sentient species. The Andorians are supposed to have been warlike. Why didn't we see them? Why weren’t the Zakdorn, supposedly the Federation’s premier tactical and strategic geniuses seen then either? Or when the Dominion War started? Seems to me that tactical and strategic geniuses would have been highly useful to the Federation in these instances. I could go on, but space doesn't allow.

3) Interspecies hybrids -- can't blame this on TNG. Roddenberry built it into Star Trek's DNA with Spock, but I hate it. Carl Sagan correctly pointed out that you would be far likelier to successfully cross breed a human being with an artichoke than you would with any alien species. We aren't biologically compatible with our closest relatives on earth, chimps, whose DNA is only 1.2% different, but we can have kids with green-blooded aliens with different internal organs. SMDH.

Continued...

[–] Darren (1461) 5 years ago

4) Ridiculous, one-note alien monocultures. All Klingons are space-Viking warriors. All Romulans are militarists. All Ferenghi are greedy and unscrupulous. All Vulcans are logical and aloof. Etc. etc. Look how varied cultures are on earth. So why is it ALL alien cultures are uniform, right down to all its people having the exact same haircut? None of the species in Star Trek started out that way, but the writers gradually turned them into one-not monocultures.

But the worse offender, to my mind is

5) Technobabble. Voyager made it even worse. But it got started with TNG. The problems are, first people don't talk that way. As a guy named Mike Wong once pointed out, the words spoken by Jim Lovell on the Apollo XIII mission, right after the accident were "we have a main bus B undervolt." 7 words, and he's done. If a TNG writer had put, say, Data, in the same situation, it would have come out something like: "we are currently monitoring a significant decrease in the electrostatic potential across the power coupling terminals on the secondary electron conduit." Far more words, no more information -- and meaning actually more likely to get lost in the word salad.

And worse, TNG writers relied on technobabble as a deus ex machina. The crew would get in a jam, and to get out it was just a matter of “we’ll just recalibrate the positron emitters and send a phased pulse into center of the temporal anomaly and it should cause the rift to close, blah, blah, blah…” and they've basically just magicked their way out of the dilemma. Bad writing that.

[–] Devilman (450) 5 years ago

Techno-babble gotten worst as the series and future spin-offs progressed but it wasn't as crazy as today's' Picard and Discovery where science evolved into Tolkien level magic.

[–] wrlord (1227) 5 years ago

After the second season, the characters became much more juvenile. It was like high school in space. Everyone knew everyone's business, and every b-plot had to be some silly first world neurotic hang-up that got resolved in 40 minutes. Look at the writing of the first season; it treated the characters as much more mature, much more fully formed.

[–] TimMC (9143) 5 years ago

I would have added MORE Tachyons.

[–] liscarkat (19418) 5 years ago

I never liked the self-righteous, nosey, meddling Troi, and it always bothered me that she wore that ridiculous unitard instead of a uniform like everybody else. I have nothing against the actress; I just would have recast her as a regular officer who wears a normal uniform.

[–] Otter (24464) 5 years ago

At least the series itself fixed that one, a few seasons in and she started wearing regular uniforms like a proper officer. If only they'd done the same with the kids!

And BTW, the one thing they did right about having Troi dress like a civilian was to give her a very limited wardrobe. That makes sense, she's an officer on a spaceship and may have to transfer to other ships with little notice, and everyone on the crew has to have a weight allowance when it comes to personal possessions. So instead of doing what most Hollywood wardrobe departments would do and give her a new outfit every week, when she was on duty she wore the same dresses and unitards over and over.

[–] liscarkat (19418) 5 years ago

OP's points are all good. I haven't seen the series in a long time, and don't remember Captain Jellico. I'll have to dig out my DVDs and revisit those episodes, if only to see Troi forced to lose that silly leotard and put on a real uniform.