Would you have liked more episodes dedicated to Picard's Borg recovery?

[lesliecrusher]

I always secretly wanted him to have some kind of breakdown epiphany with Beverly where he connected his Borg trauma to his artificial heart trauma. Sort of on emotional par with the scene he has with Troi in "Generations" in which he momentarily crumbles over Robert and Rene's deaths.

 

[Qonundrum]

Partial tangent - another episode showing not merely the battle, but captured crew being Borgified would have been the icing on the cake. Which may have been too much for 1990, but definitely used to really great effect in "Dark Frontier" (VOY). Used to great effect in STFC too.

 

[Qonundrum]

That's because Rick Berman didn't have any control over the commercials.

Ah, that makes perfect sense, thanks!

I think people harp on Berman too much and I think he overall did a very good job running Trek. But his views on music in TV were atrocious and really hurt that era of Trek. Thank goodness he didn't bring the same approach to the films he produced.

Berman did do a lot of great things, but season 5-7 of TNG too often pale and pallid with bizarre music choices. Only recently did it occur to me that, perhaps, the idea was to sell the music as if the audience were 24th century humans as a metatextual idea. But for almost every single episode? And yet, while some episodes suffered worse for that, as "Power Play" definitely needed an actual score to complement its suspense and action with, other episodes using the same style didn't feel any worse for the new style at all. So glad "The Next Phase" got to have a custom script to suit its strengths, regardless.

 

[PatB1974]

I understood that Picard was a singularly strong individual, and highly above average in terms of intelligence and toughness. But I still felt it was rushed. To go through an experience like that should haven taken at least a season to get over and get back to some semblance of normalcy.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

If TNG had gone into trauma mode for Jean-Luc we'd have had a trauma for each season, and then some (and I'm not even going into the earlier seasons with traumatic events like in Lonely Among Us or Time Squared). Season 4 would have been him dealing with the Borg aftermath, season 5 then brings it up again in I, Borg but while it's at it there's also Inner Light happening already, which would have gone waaay into season 6 but oh then there's Chain of Command happening already, too... only TNG's "Character experiences majorly traumatic event? Oh whoops, it's forgotten in the next episode" design made it all these episodes even possible. If they had tried to make things realistic regarding Jean-Luc's traumatic experiences half of the entire show would have been about him dealing with trauma. They tried to with the Borg trauma, I'll give them credit for it, but TNG's episodic nature prevented anything more substantial.

 

[Mudd]

No.

 

[TRON JA307020]

We got the fanily episode and a few nods to it in later seasons. Thst was more than enough. Captains of starships are highly trained as any officer but are usually the best of the best. Basically they are resilient. They can move on. To put it in perspective would we have wanted to see follow up episodes or scene of kirk dealing with the decision to let Edith Keeler die? I wouldn't. He made the decision and knew it saved countless lives. He kept his sorrow and pain to himself and got back to being the captain of thr enterprise. That was all we needed to know.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Given that log-keeping is so ingrained into Starfleet life, I imagine they're able to work out a good deal of problems that way.

 

[Phoenix219]

I understood that Picard was a singularly strong individual, and highly above average in terms of intelligence and toughness. But I still felt it was rushed. To go through an experience like that should haven taken at least a season to get over and get back to some semblance of normalcy.

I think it was a good chance to shake up the status quo. I think it was a huge missed opportunity. Somewhere on here I read the suggestion that Picard should have taken on an ambassadorial role, and I already wanted to keep Captain riker, Shelby and Data as the main trio, to not completely destroy the impact of Best of both worlds entire arc..... Considering a lot of early Picard stories were diplomatic in nature, I think this could have been the perfect blend to keep him in a position of authority and importance to the show while not kneecapping everything else they had done up to this point. It wasn't my idea but I will be pushing this every time the topic comes up now LOL.

 

[Snowdrop82]

I would have had a few episodes of him recovering from the Borg and going over his Trauma with the crew.

 

[BillJ]

No, I was good. I wanted to get back to flying around the universe.

 

[Phoenix219]

No, I was good. I wanted to get back to flying around the universe.

Me too - with Captain Riker.

I was 12. I wouldn't have missed Picard in the slightest.

 

[Riley]

Me too - with Captain Riker.

I was 12. I wouldn't have missed Picard in the slightest.

Same here! I was thirteen, and while I came to like Picard by season two, I liked Riker a lot more. I also felt the show lost the sense of adventure and fun of the first two seasons after Riker continued passing up command offers and decided to stay put on the Enterprise.

Riker reverting to commander after achieving his dream of being captain ultimately killed the character. That was what we were shown he was gunning for and what he'd given up Troi and so much else for. Instead, he decides to stay on the Enterprise with Picard and becomes a miserable character who was a shadow of his former self.

I think I might have been the one to suggest that Riker stay in command while Picard get treatment, though it's certainly not an innovative idea. I thought it would have revitalized the show to have Troi and Beverly stay on Earth to aid in Picard's treatment while the Enterprise went back out with Riker. I know she wasn't interested, but I'd have loved to see Dr. Pulaski return. Instead, Selar could have become CMO (Suzie Plakson more than deserved to become a regular or semi-regular) or a new doctor could have come aboard with a new counselor.

Data could have been promoted to XO and Worf could have gone to Ops and position of second officer, with a new security chief joining.


Patrick Stewart often lamented not getting as much theatre time as he liked during production, so this could have worked out. If/when Picard returns as captain, Riker could have gone off to a new ship but still appeared occasionally, leaving Frakes to direct episodes when Riker wasn't involved.

 

[Phoenix219]

Same here! I was thirteen, and while I came to like Picard by season two, I liked Riker a lot more. I also felt the show lost the sense of adventure and fun of the first two seasons after Riker continued passing up command offers and decided to stay put on the Enterprise.

Riker reverting to commander after achieving his dream of being captain ultimately killed the character. That was what we were shown he was gunning for and what he'd given up Troi and so much else for. Instead, he decides to stay on the Enterprise with Picard and becomes a miserable character who was a shadow of his former self.

I think I might have been the one to suggest that Riker stay in command while Picard get treatment, though it's certainly not an innovative idea. I thought it would have revitalized the show to have Troi and Beverly stay on Earth to aid in Picard's treatment while the Enterprise went back out with Riker. I know she wasn't interested, but I'd have loved to see Dr. Pulaski return. Instead, Selar could have become CMO (Suzie Plakson more than deserved to become a regular or semi-regular) or a new doctor could have come aboard with a new counselor.

Data could have been promoted to XO and Worf could have gone to Ops and position of second officer, with a new security chief joining.


Patrick Stewart often lamented not getting as much theatre time as he liked during production, so this could have worked out. If/when Picard returns as captain, Riker could have gone off to a new ship but still appeared occasionally, leaving Frakes to direct episodes when Riker wasn't involved.

I am an absolutely huge Pulaski fan and wish she had stayed or even been there from the beginning. She brought so much to the show that went unappreciated at the time. If she had been McCoy's granddaughter and the reason for his visit in farpoint right at the beginning, she would have been a beloved legacy character and no one would even have questioned her Data interactions. Selar would have been great as the third CMO, a Vulcan trying to balance logic with compassion from that role could have opened up a lot of storytelling.

Either way the first three seasons are where the Sci-Fi cool stuff was for sure. I've always said it was downhill after the best of both worlds and I think it's a good place to skip to first contact. The symmetry with TOS is nice.... Three seasons then skip to the second movie, a follow-up to the show.

 

[Oddish]

Picard had multiple events in his life that he really needed to spend some time recovering from. The Borg, his experience with the Kataan probe, and his torture by the Cardassians to name three.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

"Family" was the first time we see our heroes without their "makeup", so to speak. They're people with families, flaws, feelings, the whole nine yards. It was incredibly refreshing to have the off the ship (even though Worf was still on) and doing things real humans do. We'd never seen something like that in Trek.

Should it have persisted? No, not at that era of television (1990s). The one episode is enough to show he dealt with it, and the random references in later seasons showed it was still ligering.

Besides, we DID get a lot of extra episodes of Picard dealing with his Borg trauma: namely, one movie and two new seasons in the 2020s.

 

[korblborp]

I thought one of the off screen things on the Enterprise D was a shopping mall. Or was that a fan joke / rumor?

at least one of the official tech manuals/blueprints sets has a multilevel section in the saucer labelled as a mall.

The transcript makes it read more like they went to a planet, which makes more sense as (a) the ship has replicators and doesn't need vendors

maybe there's some sort of licensing thing going on and starfleet replicators can do x set of things but not proprietary stuff (unless you program it in yourself). or maybe the mall exists as more of a "get out and do stuff" thing when the crew and/or passengers don't have a good planet to stop off at for funsies (and sometimes the ones they do stop off for funsies are really stupid, so people stick to the mall)