OBrien’s decision to move to DS9 without consulting Keiko is made even worse if you remember that DS9 was even more of a nowhere station before the wormhole was discovered.
@@PaceFilmsProductions He did. People are forgetting she references this a couple times in the show. They both do. "When we agreed on you/me taking this assignment..."
They were expecting DS9 to be a nice quiet assignment where O'Brien could just be an engineer without having to worry about constant danger to his family. Nobody knew DS9 would end up being as important as it became.
While it would have been nice to see the consultation on screen, there were lines of dialog suggesting it happened. I think it's more of a problem from the writers, I'm going to reference I agreed to this one line, then next line turn around and bring up stuff as if it's new when it definitely should hae been in that referenced conversation like is this a good place for our kid? Seriously, you're telling me they talked about this, but that didn't come up before they moved in? Poor Keiko, the writers seemed to treat her like an obstacle to write around.
I actually love what they did with Keiko. She was a civilian botanist living on a space station perpetually balanced (and sometimes not so balanced) on the brink of war, so her character was always going to be really tough to find stories for. There just were not many ways of working her into the plot on a regular basis without constantly reducing her to a damsel or a distressed wife/mom. Most shows would have killed off her character or had her divorce Miles so they didn't have to even worry about her anymore, and I always appreciate it when a show chooses another path. However, even if we assume that fridging Keiko would never have been an option, I still think that DS9's treatment of her was great on it's own merits. I know that a lot of people may not have gotten the message, but the show actually does a great job of lampshading the fact that Miles was kind of a dick for dragging Keiko away from the life she loved without giving her much choice in the matter, and it explicitly acknowledges that her anger with Miles was justified. Bashir tells Miles that building an arboretum will not make Keiko happy because Miles is trying to turn her profession (botany) into a hobby (gardening). Bashir then rightly points out that neither himself nor Miles would be remotely happy if someone expected them to be content with the hobby versions of their own careers and so it is not fair or reasonable for Miles to expect Keiko to be content with it either. As a female scientist, I adore that scene because I have had people, on more than one occasion, treat my career as if it were a side hustle selling Avon products for "extra money" rather than something I wanted and spent my whole life working for. Keiko's career is no less important to her than Miles' is to him. I love that Miles comes to understand that and encourages Keiko to continue on in her work even though it meant months of separation from her and Molly because it shows how much he respects her and values her needs. I'm more than willing to forgive DS9 using Keiko less often in exchange for modeling a damn good relationship between two career-driven individuals trying to figure out how to make things work under very difficult conditions.
I just wish we occasionally got episodes focused on her. Would it have killed the writers to give us one or two less Torture Miles episodes to have occasional episodes showing Keiko solving a scientific mystery during one of her botany surveys?
While you are right that it was going to be difficult to write for her especially once they were at war, the space station she was on was next to a planet that was having trouble feeding their people. Having her be a bigger part in some of those episodes could have helped a lot in making it feel as if her character was at least good at her job.
Even though they didn't focus on it much, I like that she took her scientific knowledge and became a teacher because she saw all the kids on the station that needed it. The focus on balancing science with religion stood out to me since I'm from the Texas Panhandle, where teachers are regularly harassed by conservative Christian parents.
The leftover crew from the Equinox that joined Voyager and then were never seen again. You have a ship that's stuck in the Delta Quadrant that hasn't had a new crew member in years, there's suddenly an influx of 5 new crew members, and the writers never capitalize on that.
@@keiths81ca Give me a Voyager reboot with an extra large helping of Battlestar Galactica, make Voyager s damage stick more, then they could limp into some advanced friendly territory or stumble on some tech or resources and fix up voyager, install new tech in friendly spacedocks as well as slowly power up Voyager as she moves through the delta quadrant. Make the Borg years BRUTAL, terrifying, then they get Seven and really start getting cool tech. There's so much potential in Voyager. The show I dream of is something like Voyager x BSG x GoT,
I mean, I am one of the people that love Voyager (way more than DS9 :x :P), but even I admit that, looking back now, there was much potential for awesome developments they just didnt take (always thought that they wasted soooo much character potential tho, but that was the same in the other ST series at this time in my opinion) It sure is understandable for the time, that they have gone with the "save way" so to say, but a Voyager with more of a Battlestar Galactica(2000s) vibe could have become the pinnacle of all ST shows :x
I felt that the writers favored Nog's story arc over Jake's. It was really noticeable especially after Season 5. When I went to Creation con at the beginning of Season 6, fans really complained especially since Jake was one of the very few positive black teen role models on television. It's sad that they did that to him because they could have shown him going to art school on Bajor or setting up an artist colony. Just lost potential!
Sometimes, late in the night shift, transporter accidents happen. People get accidentally beamed into space from their beds. Nobody mentions it in logs. They are marked as AWOL on their next duty shift. Nobody questions how you can be AWOL on a starship. It's just an accepted thing.
Since Steve (Shives) already covered what kind of guy Geordi was around women, I see things unfolding differently. He creept, she complained, she lost her Job. It was the 90s after all.
in the voyager episode "Learning Curve", Tuvok trains some Maquis the "star fleet way". how could they not even mention that Tuvok was a spy on the Maquis ship??? didn't they watch the pilot?? that's the character arch I would have liked to see: Tuvok somehow familiar to the Maquis, still somehow hated for being a spy but not that much because star fleet isn't the enemy anymore. instead he's the most star fleet guy possible with no understanding of the Maquis whatsoever. sad.
I always loved the O'Brien clan on both TNG and DS9. Having grown up in a military family myself I saw their relationship as a kid as "hey, this is kinda like my family." Keiko definitely deserved way more than what she got, but what we did get was a pretty accurate representation of what a military spouse would actually deal with. She was an highly educated woman who married a career military man (an engineer, like my dad). They have a kid, and then along comes a transfer AND a promotion (seriously, transporter chief to Chief Engineer of a freaking space station!). Although clearly not happy about having to move to what amounts to a former War Zone to a base that doesn't even work half the time WITH a small child and almost zero opportunities for her own career, she supports her husband in what is basically the most significant career move he could possibly be offered...as you do. Sure there's friction as she struggles to find things to do to fill them time since she can't really be a botanist, but this woman decided "Hey, there's all these kids here, kids need education, I'm gonna give them one. Piss off Wynn!" Rock on Keiko! PS, how are the O'Briens the only married couple regularly portrayed in the entirety of Star Trek? what's up with that?
As being an adademic Keiko O'Brien would had much more potential then just be the teacher. As a part of the Administration of the Station she would worked a lot with Odo and Bashir.
@@fluffysheap I have forgotten so many things the last two months. I had been trying to remember while I was writing and couldn't come up with a single other couple.
@@katelafontaine7119 Like Will Riker and Deanna Troi or Sarek and Amanda? Well there are a few couples, but until now their relationships had been kept a lot more... erm... private. I totally agree with your assessment of Keiko tho, having a military background in my family too. Although my sisters, being 11 and 13 years older than I am, had to suffer more from my dad being transfered. Heck, I'm just now realising how familiar the O'Briens are to my experience, as my mom had been a teacher too. Gosh, I need a nice cup of Earl Grey after that revelation...
There have been several black characters through various Star Trek shows that had more than one appearance, but never really seem to get real development. From TOS, I was always curious why we never saw more of Doctor M’Benga or Lt. Boma, who seemed to have the potential to be interesting people and could’ve have been groundbreaking characters for the 60s if allowed to blossom. In DS9, Kasidy Yates kind falls into the same narrative trap as Keiko. I always felt what we heard about her life was more interesting than what we saw about her life. Also, I always wished it were possible to get to know Calvin Hudson a little more before he was revealed to be Maquis.
Apparently, Gene Roddenbery at one point toyed with the idea of a Doctor M'Benga led spin-off on a medical ship - at least, there's a story of the actor finding out well after the fact that the idea had been under consideration. However this is just kind of a word of mouth story, so I think there's probably a big difference between Gene Roddenbery idly musing about something and there being any actual development.
You forgot Blacula himself, Dr. Daystrom played by the venerable late William Marshall. It would have been nice to see a rehabilitated Dr. Daystrom trying to make amends for past crimes.
One missed opportunity I see for Voyager (more for Robert Beltran and Kate Mulgrew than for Chakotay and Janeway, but still) is that, IIRC, at one point Chakotay asks Janeway what she would have done in his shoes; would she have accepted serving as Chakotay's #2 if Voyager was the sacrificial lamb, and the Valjean was the ship to survive the Kazon fight in Caretaker? They never did an episode where Janeway was put into an alternate timeline where she had to live through that experience, and I feel like they could have made quite a lot out of it, especially if they let the interaction between Chakotay and Janeway in that scenario impact Janeway's behavior towards Chakotay going forward. (That would, of course, require the writers of Voyager to allow anything at all to impact characterization at any time, but that's a separate issue.)
@@gregbauer4433 I've always wished that Tomalak had been the Romulan officer who showed up and offered Picard assistance during the fight against the Scimatar in Nemesis. Would have been a nice throw back to TNG the series, as well as a nice way to round out the character's arc, even if it would have just been a glorified cameo.
One of the characters with the most wasted potential had to be Hugh on Star Trek: Picard. Great character, great actor, great setup... Would have loved to see him become a regular.
His character, and his plotline (like basically everything on the reclamation facility) was a giant waste of potential. There was no reason for that person to have been Hugh; it served no purpose at any point.
@@JosephDavies What little we saw of him was great but they probably should have kept for for the next season. But waste of potential was pretty much the name of the game with Picard. Dahj, Laris, Maddox, all characters who should have been more prominent than they were.
I agree with that. To makes matters kind of worse, I don't think Seven of Nine being a best "replacement" of him to help the ex-Borgs or anything like that...
Hugh was a waste of potential but Picard has only just finished season 1, so pretty much all its living characters will have plenty of time to progress.
Looking back on Keiko, and I feel the same way as Deanna Troi, she had a profession underutilized. To touch on Troi briefly, we should have gotten more to show the harmony was because of counseling. That could have gone a long way back in the late 80's and early 90's to destigmatize counseling. But, digress. Going back to Keiko, we all know she was a botanist. She should have been written as a civilian consultant to the Bajoran Ministry of Agriculture, given dedicated labs and work spaces, collaborated with Dax, other scientists, and engineers on how to detoxify Bajor for agriculture through selective breeding, chemistry, and machines. She should have been given 2-3 cargo bays for the selective breeding of new crop variations that could thrive in the damaged environment left by the Cardassians. She should have also overseen a chemistry lab developing new fertilizers and means to detoxify the soil. Plus, have a machine shop to show her working on ways to improve the reclamators and other farming machines with input from her husband. Moving to DS9 should have been an opportunity for her, as well as Miles. But once getting there, allow the conditions of DS9 to sour her mood a bit, but use the hard work of Miles and his team as a way for her to express her love and appreciation for Miles as the station is repaired and becomes a wonderful home. Edit: That could have become her arc after the whole school debacle. Keiko discovers a means to make farming in one area easier after an expedition early in season 2, over the course of the rest of the season she rises to prominance in the eyes of the Bajoran government, and Sisko is ordered to provider her with facilities to use. Kai Winn would have hated this woman she saw as a blasphemer being the leading expert the Agricultural Ministry relies on. To add stress to Miles, Keiko would remain on DS9 in season 6 because Wayoun would insist, on the basis of "friendship with Bajor", Keiko's work continue. Giving her an opportunity to be a major player in the resistance.
While most of Chakotay is lacking, he does have one of my favourite Voyager moments when one of his previous rebels says they want to go back to doing things the old way, so he floors the guy with a punch and asks him how he liked the old ways. I could have gone for a lot more of that personality.
The character that speaks to me as wasted was Worf's Brother Kurn. Yes he had a part with the whole Klingon civil war with the Duras Sisters, but he literally was written out of the story arc after they altered his mind in DS9's Sons of Mogh. To me he was the equivalent to Keiko O'Brien, essentially a useful character to have around for plot but generally ignored. I mean, they could have had Kurn come around during the Dominion War and become a successful and heroic captain etc... But essentially they eliminated his character entirely. This character always bugged me who had a lot of potential, but essentially written out was Lt. Commander Shelby who was Starfleets lead researcher in developing technology to fight the Borg. I mean COME ON that speaks to me as a 6 part mini series!!! The last one was Sito Jaxa, where she is intrduced with Weasley's character and then later blown up by Cardassians while attempting to flea in an escape pod. She could have easily been added to DS9 as well for she was a Bajoran.
Regarding Jake Sisko: I disagree that his potential was wasted. We saw him go from middle/high school aged kid to young adult pursuing a career outside of Star Fleet. To some extent, this puts him outside of the scope of most of the episodes but we saw him progress through that portion of his life and have some good footing for pushing his career and life forward after the end of DS9. Number 1: As you mention, a lot of this got cut by the production staff largely due to the fact that the dog they chose for the role was not trained for it at all (they were one of Patrick Stewart's rescue dogs IIRC) so they were difficult to work with. Perhaps during the hiatus they can start working with a trainer to see if it's possible to get them to a point where the character can be useful in the show but I strongly doubt that's going to happen. Keiko O'Brien: Yeah, they dropped the ball on her character.
By mid season 7 it would've been a bit late for that. Also we kind of did see more of the characters of that group. Nurse Ogawa was already a regular at that point, and would reappear in two TNG movies, and Taurik's Alexander Enberg would return to play the Vorik on Voyager who - let's be frank - as another Vulcan engineering ensign might as well be the same character. (spoiler alert) With Sito Jaxa dead this only leaves Sam Lavelle unused, and he really wasn't an interesting or particularly sympathic character, reminded me too much of Riker with his drive for success.
Steve s character I felt had wasted potential was Commander Shelby from Best of Both Worlds part 1 and 2 play by Elizabeth Dennehy. Would have loved to seen Shelby come back in some more episodes of The Next Generation or maybe even DS9. She was featured in a lot of the Star Trek novels and went on to become a Captain but none of that is Cannon of course.
The reason Grace Lee Whitney left the show was because she was sexually assaulted by an executive associated with the show. She never revealed who it was, other than that it was an executive and NOT one of the actors, but there is some evidence that it was Roddenberry himself. We DO know that the person who did it later apologized to her, and gave her a polished stone as an apology gift (something Roddenberry was known to do). I have a feeling her character would have received a lot more development throughout the show if not for that.
I can totally Gene doing something like that. I'm just glad that it wasn't one of the actors. Didn't Gates Mcfadden(I am not sure if I spelled that right) who played Beverly Crusher have some kind of problem like that? I'm on my phone so it's hard to research right now.
@@blockmasterscottI've heard a lot of different stories, but none of them involved sexual assault. Just more day-to-day misogyny, like being angry that McFadden had suggestions on how to stage and compose a camera shot, or that she wanted more screen time with her character's son. You know, "stay in your place" kind of stuff.
Remember that time they gave Kirk a brother only to kill him off immediately and leave behind a son named Peter who later lost his mother and had two brothers die off screen?
One more addendum! Voyager could have been renamed Star Trek: Wasted Potential, but they seemed to specialize in queueing up a lot of minor characters like the Equinox survivors and the Delaney sisters, and then doing nothing with them or worse, leaving them as an awkward punchline. But holy crap did Joe Carey get the rawest deal ever for a minor character... completely neglected for five seasons, then brought back just to kill him off just before they get home. Not great, especially when he had potential as a strong colleague and foil to Torres even past the first season.
Apparently all of this was because Berman didn't want to risk any of the minor characters becoming fan favorites which could lead to the actors wanting more money. Which is part of why they invented a whole new character for the episode Ashes to Ashes, even though there had already been a character created a season prior who had been a gold shirt who had a crush on Harry Kim that died. The writers also apparently just flat out forgot that Samantha Wildman had actually survived at the end of Once Upon A Time. That also was a loss of potential IMO. Sure, we had the single parents on a starship thing with Dr. Crusher, and even on a station with Sisko, but the big difference there is that really at any time (in universe that is), if either of them had thought their kid would've been better off planetside, they had the option to request a transfer. Samantha Wildman did not have that option with Naomi (one of very few child characters in Trek to not suck, and all of the rest were on DS9). And then there's the unexplored potential of her relationship with Seven of Nine... Oh, wait, that last one was just my fan fic. My bad.
I know it was a one-off episode, but I always wanted to know what happened to Tam Elbrun after he joined with the sentient ship! It was such a touching episode, in retrospect, and the character of the ship, voiced through Elbrun's impressions of it was portrayed beautifully through the wonderful acting of Harry Groener.
@@NeilHighley Goatees are not a requirement for MU characters; Mirror Stamets, Mirror Lorca, Mirror Bashir nor Mirror Georgiou have goatees. Its unclear if Mirror Tilly has one or not.
Janice Rand did get a lot of development later in the movies. She was transported chief in TMP, and went on to be Sulu's comms officer on the Excelsior seen in the Voyager episode Flashback and of course Star Trek VI where that episode mainly takes place within
My vote would go to Andreas Katsulas. Tomalak was used in a rather utilitarian way. And then the actor went on and worked in babylon 5 and just OMG look what he did there!!!!
There are a couple people/groups that I'd like to mention that didn't really get much development on screen, but had a pretty decent run in Novels: Robin Lefler (according to "New Frontier" she ended up like Empress to the Thallonian Empire) The Talosians (During the Dominion War they got invaded by the Dominion who was attempting to release a "Meme Bomb" designed to kill or cripple Telepathic species, the resistance was led by a Psychic Projection of Chris Pike) The First Federation (Literally Galaxy exploring Pacifists with an extreme level of development, literally next door to the UFP, and we just get a single episode, and occasional mentions of Tranya. They even set up a cultural and tech exchange at the end of the "Corbonite Gambit" episode...And they were never heard from again) Alyssa Ogawa (Basically a Nurse/Doctor on the Ent-D, got pregnant, stuck around...Never got much out of her, or about her background, about her child, or her Partner. In the Novels she does go on to becoming the CMO of another ship) Dr. Selar (Ditto for above minus the Pregnancy, becomes the CMO of the Excalibur under Captain Calhoun ["New Frontier"] had a pretty interesting and intense story-arc) Montgomery Scott, Post Rescue (What exactly in the Hell happened to Scotty?! I know, I know...SCE, read the books, but it would of been nice if Geordi kept up with the old man, like mentioned he got some transmissions talking about Engineering and all the Whiskey and Risian women he was enjoying in his semi-retirement or whatever. You don't just lose track of one of the most LEGENDARY FIGURES IN STARFLEET HISTORY.) Kai Opaka (Basically she was doing her thing on the Planet that was keeping her alive, did she survive the Dominion War? Did she negotiate a truce between the Ennis'? STO has her returning to Bajor and becoming Kai again, but as far as TV goes, dead silence) I can go on.
Glad you covered Ensign Sonya Gomez. She came to mind during the previous video... Sad that a Character given such a brief yet memorable introduction wasn't allowed to stick around in Engineering as "backup", until they had time to revisit her or Captain Picard needed some more Hot Chocolate...
On the other hand what could they have done with her, other than keep her around as a clumsy inexperienced girl for comedic relief? If she had gotten development there would've had to be a major traumatic event to her maturing to give her the necessary distinction to make the viewer care. It's a problem with TNG in general, a lot of the characters just lack meaningful backstory or personality shaping events, they're defined through their posts. And no, "he also plays trombone" isn't a personality trait or something worth caring about.
I guess Nana Visitor was too good to just wear a loose fitting uniform smock and stand behind consoles a lot like they normally did when an actress was pregnant. She had to steal a baby from a less interesting character.
@@terryhinch It was out of necessity really. Nana Visitor got pregnant (blame Siddig for that), and they decided to work it into the show rather than have her hide behind consoles. That really does limit what an actor can do in a role. Could they have come up with a better way for Kira to get pregnant other than taking Keiko's baby? Maybe, maybe not.
A few more characters or species I wish we had seen more of: OS: Kevin Riley / Andorians / Orions / Tholians NG: Dr. Solar / Kaylar (both played by Suzie Plakson!) / Duplicate Riker / Binars / The primitive Vulcan people Voyager: Seska / Vidiians
I personally think that ensign sito jaxa from tng had so much more story. I always thought she would turn up alive somehow. If not on next gen but DS9. She would have been a great addition on the station. With Captain Sisko being aware of her past. Or even being rescued by the DS9 crew. As dark as DS9 was I think that a tortured and broken sito jaxa rebuilding herself would have been a perfect fit for the tone of the show
I always wished she'd come back too. Given her history both with the Nova Squad coverup and then being captured and definitely imprisoned and probably tortured, and possibly worse, her story would have been a great addition to the show.
I'd also like to have seen the fourth member of the squad again - Nick kinda morphed into Paris(they're identical if you squint), Wesley became a Timelord, Sito Jaxa died honourably(or did she..?), but there's still Jean Hajar to account for.
@@juanmiguellucero3578well said. Being that the story format of tng was one off episode that had little impact on future episodes. Regarding ds9 in the long arc she would have been much more engaging than worf in season four. A redemption arc not unlike Nog but much more personal. Nog lost a leg against the dominion and o'Brien held a grudge against cardassians. Sito held the face of prejudice/forgiveness more than kira or rolaren ever could.
I imagine as Miles is telling Keiko that he's accepted the new assignment, she just looks back at him with the same expression she has in that still-shot used in this video.
But we should have seen them in more modern takes such as TNG DS9 and VOY, esspecially since like Andorians and Tellerites they were a founding member of the Federation.
@@Knight121198 The Caitian are a playable race in Star Trek Online. Also a few Caitian Ships can be used by Fed Players. This is currently the only modern star trek media that shows Caitian I know of.
Never knew that. Just wish like others there would be more focused Caitian main characters. I think in a future Star Trek animated Comedy series "Lower Decks", there is I think a Caitian Chief Medical Officer. Hope he/she is not wasted in the series. Still I wish this kind of characters/race deserve more then being sort of reduced to a Comedy show.
If Chakotay was going to end up as basically Janeway's advisor, it would have been nice to see why that happened. Maybe we could have had an arc where Chakotay is very obviously falling in love with Janeway and THAT'S why he rarely butts heads with her. Yes, that relationship potential was kind of explored in one episode, but hinting at it like that may have actually made the fact that nothing meaningful was ever done with it even worse. Similar to TNG, it was as if the writers on Voyager were so concerned with maintaining the status quo with most of the characters (focusing on plots of the week instead of lasting character development) that every character except Janeway, Seven, and the doctor was developed either in a limited way (Paris and Torres get married and eventually have a baby) or practically not at all (Chakotay, Kim, and Tuvok).
Chakotay only got any lasting romantic development because Seven needed to be more human AND IT'S NOT GONNA BE HARRY! (tom & tuvok were already married) a romance with The Doctor would've made more sense...
Actually it would have been great to see a lot more of Captain Ransom of the Equinox. For that matter a whole spinoff based on the travels of the Equinox even better.
How about a video of characters who were seemingly throwaway, but came into their own later. I'm thinking Rom as a prime example of that. He went from a bumbling idiot for Quark to beat up on to a vital part of the engineering team on DS9
I would have loved to see more stories with Vash and Tom Riker. Surprised Guinan wasn't mentioned...unless she was listed in the previous vid in which case, my apologies. Whilst guinan made a lot of appearances, I think she had much more to give.
The Next Gen character Dr. Selar was mentioned several times, but only appeared once, played by Suzie Plakson (a favorite of mine), who also played Worf's love interest, K'Ehleyr. Dr. Selar could've appeared more. She's a character in the New Frontier series of Star Trek novels, which I'd recommend to readers. I also think it would make a good TV series.
I would add to this list, "The Crew" of any ship in any of the series. Not that every single crew member would be / could be fleshed out, but it would have been good to see crews as more than just a few people you pass on your way to the turbolift. Most ST plots follow the "The Main Characters Do Everything" trope. Exceptions did exist, like TNG Lower Decks and VOY Good Shepherd. BSG did a better job of it, you would see dozens of people working in various spaces around the ship and you got the feeling of a crew as a social construct. Another one would be "The Ship." It has always frustrated me that you don't see ST ships as cohesive, functioning vessels - they are just presented as a collection of spaces with similar color schemes. On Firefly or Lexx, the ship was almost another character and you got a really good idea of how all the spaces related to each other and how the characters interact with the vessel.
My favourite is from Voyager. That astronomer tech women from Voyager in the Future's End episodes in which they travel back to 1996. Sarah Silverman. As a kid i hoped to much for her to join the crew....
I'm upset you didn't mention Morn, honestly. I'd seriously watch an entire season of Morn escapades, cleverly filmed so that he never actually SAYS anything, or DOES anything of note, but it's implied he's the hero.
If we're talking about wasted potential, I can't think of anyone more slighted than Chakotay. You had the build-in high drama of Starfleet vs Maquis stuck on ship, forced to work together to survive that could've played out over the course of the whole series, and they did absolutely nothing with it. Nadda. There is an alternate reality out there where Voyager is the best Star Trek series.
They made a mistake at the end of the pilot. They destroyed the Maquis ship. If both captains had been essentially equals with their own agendas, and neither ship had adequate resources individually, you might have had something.
Your take on Keiko really helps me appreciate DS9 even more. I hated her because I saw her as a rare instance of lazy writing using the shallow trope of the nagging wife. You completely nailed it though. The only thing lazy was not expanding her character more, which come to think of it, they did do a couple times. I just wasn't paying attention because I didn't like her.
A high ran academic only a teacher? I would let her join the bajorian bureaucracy on the Station. Odo was Chief of the Police, Bashir the doctor - but there so many other roles too.
They really did expand on every character in that show didn't they? Even Molly got her time to shine. They did an entire episode on a character that never speaks and he still never spoke the entire time.
I actually remember watching the animated Star Trek on Saturday mornings. Vaguely as I was very young, but the series was my introduction to Star Trek.
STEVE. Just had a thought. What if Picard gets back to Earth at some point during Season 2, and Number One acts differently around him because he's a synth now???
Here's something that bothers me a bit about all Star Trek shows. It's something I've been thinking about for years, actually. I feel that as a military organization, non-com crewmen are the biggest wasted story potential in the entire cannon. We get to know only a few crewmen even by name, even though enlisted crew make up 90% of a ship's force. Chief O'Brien is the only enlisted man to have a semi-regular speaking role, that I can think of. As a retired Navy Chief, it's something I've really honed in on. Most of the security to go down on away missions would be enlisted, not officers. Also, one major job posting that is always ignored in Star Trek is the COB, or Chief of the Boat. Or as it's sometimes called, CMC (Command Master Chief). That's the job of the highest ranking enlisted person on the ship (or command) that acts as an advisor to the Captain, shadowing him or her almost always, ready to guide when it comes to dealing with the crew or enlisted personnel. The COB would be on the bridge, would be training those young Ensigns and Lieutenant JGs, and would be arguing face to face with the ship's Number One about personnel issues. But mainly, I think good writers could use it to make the ships in Trek seem more realistic, lived in, and reflective of how things are, and how they undoubtedly will still be four hundred years from now.
personnel conflicts seem boring in comparison to deadly aliens... they got close to that dynamic with DS9 as they had bajoran militia & starfleet. Kira sounds like a CMC edit: personnel conflicts seem boring IF they're written that way. written well, it's an easy source of drama & character development
Speaking of Picard's housekeepers, I didn't get why he needed Elnor. He had two ex tal shiar people at his house with him, and the two of them curb stomped that attack team that showed up. Why not take them?
I wish they'd shown up at the end to help save the day, all sneaky-like. They could have found their way to the Artifact(it was known that Picard had got himself permission to be there, and if Starfleet know it, Laris can find it out) and bluffed their way in, then been perfectly placed to help sort out Narissa...
Elnor basically loses every fight he's in, after the first (which Picard kinda-instigated). He's left to protect someone, between episodes they're separated and his protectee is captured (somehow), and then killed (for no reason that served the plot or characters). He's one of many characters that _exist_ in ST:Picard, but with barely an arc and no purpose in the story. Someone wanted an Elven Ninja in the show.
Most overlooked, I would say mr. Homn. His only dialog came in his first appearance in Haven. Every subsequent appearance of Lwaxana he was more and more moved to the background. In Lwaxana's final TNG episode (Dark Page) he isn't even present, only mentioned. In all 3 of Lwaxana's DS9 appearances it is as if Homn never existed. As time goes on you expect the personality of characters to grow, but with Homn his personality only diminished.
Enterprise: Crewman Cutler. A junior officer who's given a major introduction in "Strange New World" and the foundations for a budding friendship and work relationship with Dr. Phlox in a later episode and then is pretty much dropped. Actress Kellie Waymire would die in a tragic health crisis while working on another series so they couldn't have brought her character back after about 2003 unless they recast her but Cutler's failed potential is one of the standout missed opportunities in ENT.
‘Charlie X’ was actually Yoeman Rand’s first episode. A shame that her character had to deal with that bullshit in her first appearance. One of my least favorite episodes of my second favorite Trek show.
Charlie X is so difficult to watch, the entire premise being a teenage temper tantrum Q basically. Basically the only part I like is when Kirk tries to tell him that guys doing lighthearted locker room hijinks is very different when it's in a different context, with a woman, where no one was expecting anything like that to happen. Of course he doesn't actually do that well at all, either, just stumbling over his words and shit.
In Production Order (the best way to watch TOS 😈) Rand's first episode was "The Corbomite Manoeuvre", where she did that coffee pot thing Steve mentioned
I think O’Brain should have been noted for TNG he got a few small little plot points but really nothing about being a tactical officer, who then becomes a helmsman before becoming a NCO... I also think ensign Ashley Judd (don’t recall her character name) who shows up and hints that her and Wes have known each other and possibly been a relationship for awhile and then just gone
I think the character of Sonya Gomez was re-written to become Reginald Barclay. Perhaps because the actress was not available, or "we wanna use this guy from A-Team" or some other reason.
Fun Fact: Lycia Naff, who played Henson Sonya Gomez, was also on the Pilot episode of the 1990-1991 series The Flash playing the Villian Pike's Henchwoman/Girlfriend Lila
Keiko: Since it felt so deliberate that they wrote her out of the series, I always thought this was because maybe the actress didn’t have time or was occupied otherwise or something. So I didn’t think she was overlooked. Jake Sisko: As was said, he has some great character development. The reason why he was in the background for some time was maybe just that there was simply no time and opportunity in what all was going on at that moment. So I don’t think he was overlooked.
What about Ensign Wildman? They could have had a whole thing about her losing her baby and getting the replacement baby, or that her husband is on the other side of the galaxy and her attempting to teach her child his culture...she's a xenobiologist who could have been drafted as a nurse or helped the Doctor with exotic aliens. All we get are a few glimpses of her and know that she's the mother of Naomi
I literally mentioned this earlier this week, that Wildman was probably the most qualified to be transferred to the medical staff. Paris only had one course in biochemistry, Wildman has a full biology degree which includes anatomy.
I think the secret to why Wesley became a more interesting character after he left the show is that Wil Wheaton got older and the writers were no longer trying write for a "kid."
RE : The O'Briens . I never had a problem with Keiko, I think if you think that Keiko nag's O'Brien then you have unhealthy expectations of what a partnership is. Also they totally discussed it, the move to DS9, They both decided that it was best for Miles career. This was when he was going to be promoted to Ensign O'Brien when he had the single pip during the the first season. I always viewd Keiko doing other things, and sometime telling Miles off was just her finding her own feet within the series, her ability to be a mother, wife, teacher and botanist on a post at the far end of space from her home always lent her a quiet strength in my eyes. Now that i think about it, the O'Briens, Nerys, Dax and Worf inter-relationship are some of my favourite moments on the show
Would of loved if Kaga the owned of the Klingon restaurant would of have been featured more, would of been great to see a Klingon who wasn't the stereotypical warrior. Also would of really liked if voyager did more with Crewman Chell, always really enjoyed every time he was on screen or even mentioned
One thing I'll say about number one... I give full credit to Patrick Stewart for wanting to highlight the Pitbull as a breed for people here and now watching the show. I do think they're unfairly maligned. However, it's a bit disappointing that they suggest (inadvertently, probably) that people are still cropping ears in the 24th century. It's an unnecessary practice that is banned in some places today. I'll go a step further and say that for me personally, I don't think we should be breeding dogs at all - at least not for specific traits that we want. Hopefully by the 24th century all dogs will be mutts.
Keiko O'Brien suffers from "Skylar White Syndrome". Basically any time there is a popular male character who is challenged by a female character, that female character is branded a nag or worse. Skylar White in Breaking Bad is the epitome of this.
In general, O'Brien is a sensible, likable character. Anyone opposing his position on a topic is going to be placed automatically in the audience's mind as an antagonist by default, and the writing needs to overcome this intentionally. I don't think they ever really managed to do so with Keiko, in fact they often amplified it instead.
How sweet would it have been if Number One had come along for the ride when Picard left Earth, much like Porthos (another great animal character). Instead, he suffered the same fate as Spot, being treated as a nuisance best left out to save time filming. Ensign Gomez was so overlooked I had forgotten she got left out, but when Steve started to talk about her as a character who had been on two episodes and was set up for more, I was thinking of Ensign Robin Lefler. Granted, it would have been hard to keep Ashley Judd on, but she was a great character, and her interactions with Wesley seemed like they could be going somewhere.
I always dreamed of a Nelix after Voyager story line where he founds a "Second Foundation" like mini federation in the asteroid. The Telaxian colony grows into an economic powerhouse based off holodeck technology! At first as a recreational Hub (like Deep space 9) and hundreds of holosuites then later making Federation like mutually beneficial agreements with other Voyager "Species" like the "Collective" Borg" and then adding new civilizations into the mini federation like a research outpost for 8472, The ocampa, the Viidians etc etc etc !! As Nelix grows in power as a negoitator and having conversion with his friends from voyager in the alpha quadrant to get advice some fun guest appearances from voyager characters. as his "son" grows up to be a swashbuckling Talaxian with his own advanced Holo generating Ships. (small efficient ships that can seem Huge on the inside and look like anything on the outside) initially conflicts against the Mining consortium.. etc etc .. SO MUCH POTENTIAL !! sgh...
Here's one, not because he didn't get screen time, but because the actor himself was underutilized. Chief O'Brian. Any DS9 fan who watched through Hell on Wheels has to agree with me here. Colm Meany is incredible in that show. Steals every scene he is in, even all the scenes he shares with Anson Mount.
Will Jenkins The writers said in commentary that Colm Meany is so good at playing the suffering engineer that they had to make an “O’Brian suffers” episode every season. It’s not that they didn’t like the character, on the contrary they loved the character, which means that he needs stories, and to have stories you need drama, and to have drama the character had to suffer.
It would have been nice to flesh out _any_ of the antagonists, especially considering how much screentime Narek, Narissa, and Oh collectively had (Oh had the least, but we still could have been informed about her through Narissa). They only seemed to serve the purpose of sponging all of the energy and momentum out of any episode they appear it, and their motivations can almost entirely be summed up as "Romulans are bad, they are Romulans, therefore they do bad things; they're also Zhat Vash so they're especially bad towards synthetic life". We receive no insight on their personal feelings about "The Admonition" except that they believe it 100% and wish to act in a way that fulfills the prophecy they hope to avoid, making them evil _and_ stupid.
They explained it, it just sucked. She and Narissa were brainwashed by that alien AI Macguffin, then she used a combination of persuasion, intimidation, and mild melds (which seems to transfer the brainwashing) to get others to do her will. It's shitty, but it's explained. What's not explained is her heel-face-turn in the last few scenes. That was completely out of character, so it needed to be at least lampshaded. But nope.
(spoiler alert) Especially the motivation to just peace out and abandon the plans your secret order had been working towards for hundreds of years with all life in the galaxy at stake just because Pizza belly Riker turns up and throws a snazzy one liner about kicking ass.
Joseph Davies I didn’t mind Narek, but I think it was more the acting than the writing. At least many people were asking what happened to Narek when the season ended
17:45 : I thought after the events in TNG's episode "Power Play", Keiko and/or O'Brien may have pushed for a lower-key assignment for a lower danger factor that became more of a priority after the discovery of a stable wormhole. Couple of character that might have had potential that I think he missed would be Nurse Ogawa from TNG and Mr. Stiles from the TOS episode "Balance of Terror".
I think with Keiko, she was a minor guest character connected to a minor regular character on one show. And then the actor for the minor character gets a new job as a regular on a different but related show. I have to assume it's hard to get a commitment from the actor who played his wife in two episodes to play a more significant role in a different show.
Agent Sloan (the head of the ultra secret, ruthless Star Fleet intelligence branch, Section 31). Although he was only in 4 episodes of ST:DS9, he was definitely one of my favorites. The fact that he was arguably the most influential/powerful person in Star Fleet, and yet, apparently no one outside of his organization even knew that he existed (before he contacted Bashir), and the fact that he could appear and disappear while no one was looking, without a trace, and knew many dark things that virtually no one else in the entire Federation knew, and the fact that he was capable of doing literally anything he felt nessicary to preserve the Federation, yet apparently still lived by some kind of moral code, made him a very complex and interesting character. Although he could be chilling, he didn't give off the kind of snakelike vibe that Gaul Dukat did. However, I absolutely HATED Jake Sisco. Right off of the bat, he was just an obnoxious, stupid, self-centered brat; whose main purpose seemed to be to cause trouble for other people. And when Starfleet is evacuating the station, he secretly stays behind, because he wants to be a famous reporter. And is actually surprised, when the head person on the station, representing a totalitarian regime, which is bent on the destruction of the Federation, and the conquest of the entire quadrant, censors his reporting. "Gasp! You mean...you're NOT planning on letting me tell the whole galaxy about the way that you're oppressing people here? I thought that you represented a NICE empire!". He's absurdly lucky that the Dominion didn't use him as a hostage, or just plain torture him to death, and then send a video of it to his father as a warning. Which is what would have realistically happened. But Nog actually had a REAL character arc, and had the most amount of personal development of any character in the show. Over the years, we gradually watch him go from a trouble-making profit-obsessed, typical Ferengi adolescent, who can't even read, to a mature (if uptight) Starfleet officer. We also see him go through the pain of dealing with PTST after losing his leg in battle; and his road to physical, emotional, and mental recovery, isn't something that just resolves itself in one episode.
One thing that always bothered me about Chakote is his relationship with Janeway : I agree that he could have been more antagonistic, preferably not in a black and white way but with intelligent arguments for both. There's also that unresolved romantic relationship : I get that having the first female captain dating her first officer is not a good idea but in my opinion either you set no romantic subplot at all or you do it in a way that suggest that nothing will happen until they reach Federation space and one is not under the other's orders. I also hated how Seven of Nine had feelings out of nowhere for Chakote towards the end. Wait, what? Have her do something interesting, for God's sake. But who am I kidding ... they never agreed on what to do with their characters on Voyager, especially Chakote.
It strikes me now that you mention it that The First Duty is possibly an early idea/glimpse into the possibility that the Federation and Starfleet aren't as pure and perfect as TNG often makes them out to be which then goes on to be at the core of the entire Picard series. That not all these young cadets that will go on to be future ship captains are really of the same calibre as the Enterprise crew.
I was actually reading a Vulture interview from 2012 with the actress who played Sonya Gomez , and her expected role did come up. In it, she mentioned that her role was expected to become Geordi's love interest, but it looks like the conflict of her character being a comedic relief alongside trying to be a potential love interest didn't really sit well with someone(s). Shame - it may have saved Geordi from some awkward scenes later in the series... Anyways, I think another place the writers missed an opportunity was Ethan/Barash from "Future Imperfect". Riker talks the kid down from the mind-reading holodeck kidnapping going on, offers him a place on the Enterprise, they beam up, and... that's it. They could have had him bond with Alexander... sessions with Troi on not fitting in on the -D. A bit of hero worship of Wesley? Riker adopting him, and future one-off scenes with Worf discussing the difficulties of a single parent raising a child? (Or perhaps he was kidnapped by a jealous Sonya Gomez who wanted the mind-reading holodeck technology for herself to woo Geordi away from the Leah holoprogram and into her own.)
I wanted to say Nurse Ogawa was had wasted potential but thinking about it I think she got a lot of use for a minor character. She was important in several episodes and didn't she even get promoted in an episode? Heck I even remember her doing the ads for Star Trek Christmas ornaments. I guess not seeing a character you like as often as you like doesn't mean the character was wasted.
@@Rick-cx1yr I think you'd be right. Pitties get a bad reputation because of how bad owners have used them. I fostered a pit bull puppy that even our cats wound up loving. He also seemed to defy physics by taking poos bigger than what we'd been feeding him.
awwww man i missed Number One too, but as i read it was a rescue dog and somewhat difficult to work with. Aslo , omg has anyone considered how Number One will react to Picard's new synth body?!! Does the synth body have a smell? :o
Want to talk missed opportunities with Keiko? She could have developed into an amazing politically charged character through the end of the series. Hear me out. During her first estrangement with Miles when she went on her botany-survey hiatus she could have befriended former Bajoran resistance members (turned farmers) on Bajor. She could have used her status as a non-Starfleet Federation citizen to discretely smuggle in seemingly harmless equipment and supplies to illegally help Bajor's faltering agriculture. That initial smuggling endeavor could have created a bridge of trust and blossomed into more and more influential assistance with settlements and colonies in the vicinity... including potential dealings with the struggling Maquis. Without ever picking up a weapon, Keiko could have become a secret expert in the supply lines, logistics, infrastructure, and contacts of an entire resistance movement. Such knowledge and connections could have made her not only helpful but absolutely indispensable when the Cardassians took over DS9. She also could have used her contacts and knowledge to great effect helping Kira train and organize Cardassians during their uprising against the Dominion... all from humble beginnings as a well-meaning and understandably distraught botanist.
I love M'Ress (as you can perhaps tell 😉), and Arex too. Thank you for including them! I particularly like Peter David's characterisation of them in his New Frontiers novels. I'd love to have seen that as a TV show or film series!
How great could the Enterprise-D be for Keiko when she had to have her baby delivered by Worf because the ship was in a crisis again? At least they had already moved to DS9 by the time it crashed on Veridian III
I felt like Wesley got much more interesting and a lot more likeable when he left the main cast and became a guest performer. Episodes like The First Duty really show the character at his best.
Man, people still sleeping on Lon Suder. How do you get an actor like Brad Dourif playing such a compelling role and only use him in two episodes, killing him off no less?
OBrien’s decision to move to DS9 without consulting Keiko is made even worse if you remember that DS9 was even more of a nowhere station before the wormhole was discovered.
PaceFilmsProduction they establish pretty early on he didn’t really consult her about it
@@PaceFilmsProductions He did. People are forgetting she references this a couple times in the show. They both do. "When we agreed on you/me taking this assignment..."
They probably thought it would be a nice, safe assignment after all the danger on the Enterprise. Damn wormhole!
They were expecting DS9 to be a nice quiet assignment where O'Brien could just be an engineer without having to worry about constant danger to his family. Nobody knew DS9 would end up being as important as it became.
While it would have been nice to see the consultation on screen, there were lines of dialog suggesting it happened. I think it's more of a problem from the writers, I'm going to reference I agreed to this one line, then next line turn around and bring up stuff as if it's new when it definitely should hae been in that referenced conversation like is this a good place for our kid? Seriously, you're telling me they talked about this, but that didn't come up before they moved in? Poor Keiko, the writers seemed to treat her like an obstacle to write around.
I actually love what they did with Keiko. She was a civilian botanist living on a space station perpetually balanced (and sometimes not so balanced) on the brink of war, so her character was always going to be really tough to find stories for. There just were not many ways of working her into the plot on a regular basis without constantly reducing her to a damsel or a distressed wife/mom. Most shows would have killed off her character or had her divorce Miles so they didn't have to even worry about her anymore, and I always appreciate it when a show chooses another path. However, even if we assume that fridging Keiko would never have been an option, I still think that DS9's treatment of her was great on it's own merits.
I know that a lot of people may not have gotten the message, but the show actually does a great job of lampshading the fact that Miles was kind of a dick for dragging Keiko away from the life she loved without giving her much choice in the matter, and it explicitly acknowledges that her anger with Miles was justified. Bashir tells Miles that building an arboretum will not make Keiko happy because Miles is trying to turn her profession (botany) into a hobby (gardening). Bashir then rightly points out that neither himself nor Miles would be remotely happy if someone expected them to be content with the hobby versions of their own careers and so it is not fair or reasonable for Miles to expect Keiko to be content with it either. As a female scientist, I adore that scene because I have had people, on more than one occasion, treat my career as if it were a side hustle selling Avon products for "extra money" rather than something I wanted and spent my whole life working for. Keiko's career is no less important to her than Miles' is to him. I love that Miles comes to understand that and encourages Keiko to continue on in her work even though it meant months of separation from her and Molly because it shows how much he respects her and values her needs. I'm more than willing to forgive DS9 using Keiko less often in exchange for modeling a damn good relationship between two career-driven individuals trying to figure out how to make things work under very difficult conditions.
I enjoyed reading this take on the character.
I just wish we occasionally got episodes focused on her. Would it have killed the writers to give us one or two less Torture Miles episodes to have occasional episodes showing Keiko solving a scientific mystery during one of her botany surveys?
While you are right that it was going to be difficult to write for her especially once they were at war, the space station she was on was next to a planet that was having trouble feeding their people. Having her be a bigger part in some of those episodes could have helped a lot in making it feel as if her character was at least good at her job.
Even though they didn't focus on it much, I like that she took her scientific knowledge and became a teacher because she saw all the kids on the station that needed it. The focus on balancing science with religion stood out to me since I'm from the Texas Panhandle, where teachers are regularly harassed by conservative Christian parents.
The leftover crew from the Equinox that joined Voyager and then were never seen again. You have a ship that's stuck in the Delta Quadrant that hasn't had a new crew member in years, there's suddenly an influx of 5 new crew members, and the writers never capitalize on that.
Voyager writers missed so much, I dream of a Voyager reboot.
Starfleet vs Maquis vs Eqinox crew members? Man, that sounds like an entire series of plot right there, without even leaving the ship.
@@keiths81ca Give me a Voyager reboot with an extra large helping of Battlestar Galactica, make Voyager s damage stick more, then they could limp into some advanced friendly territory or stumble on some tech or resources and fix up voyager, install new tech in friendly spacedocks as well as slowly power up Voyager as she moves through the delta quadrant. Make the Borg years BRUTAL, terrifying, then they get Seven and really start getting cool tech. There's so much potential in Voyager.
The show I dream of is something like Voyager x BSG x GoT,
I mean, I am one of the people that love Voyager (way more than DS9 :x :P), but even I admit that, looking back now, there was much potential for awesome developments they just didnt take (always thought that they wasted soooo much character potential tho, but that was the same in the other ST series at this time in my opinion)
It sure is understandable for the time, that they have gone with the "save way" so to say, but a Voyager with more of a Battlestar Galactica(2000s) vibe could have become the pinnacle of all ST shows :x
@@barneyrubble4293 Give me a Voyager reboot that follows the show's concept for longer than the pilot episode.
What about Alyssa Ogawa (Nurse Ogawa) from TNG? She seemed to have great potential for interesting stories.
I've always loved Jake's character arc because it shows that there are many people in the Federation who do not join Starfleet.
I felt that the writers favored Nog's story arc over Jake's. It was really noticeable especially after Season 5. When I went to Creation con at the beginning of Season 6, fans really complained especially since Jake was one of the very few positive black teen role models on television. It's sad that they did that to him because they could have shown him going to art school on Bajor or setting up an artist colony. Just lost potential!
Picard totally had Sonia Gomez transfered for spilling hot chocolate on him.
Sometimes, late in the night shift, transporter accidents happen. People get accidentally beamed into space from their beds. Nobody mentions it in logs. They are marked as AWOL on their next duty shift. Nobody questions how you can be AWOL on a starship. It's just an accepted thing.
Since Steve (Shives) already covered what kind of guy Geordi was around women, I see things unfolding differently. He creept, she complained, she lost her Job. It was the 90s after all.
To the kiushu where she was one of the first assimilated at wolf 351. That was his favorite shirt...
Isn’t she a captain in Lower Decks?
in the voyager episode "Learning Curve", Tuvok trains some Maquis the "star fleet way".
how could they not even mention that Tuvok was a spy on the Maquis ship??? didn't they watch the pilot??
that's the character arch I would have liked to see: Tuvok somehow familiar to the Maquis, still somehow hated for being a spy but not that much because star fleet isn't the enemy anymore. instead he's the most star fleet guy possible with no understanding of the Maquis whatsoever. sad.
I always loved the O'Brien clan on both TNG and DS9. Having grown up in a military family myself I saw their relationship as a kid as "hey, this is kinda like my family." Keiko definitely deserved way more than what she got, but what we did get was a pretty accurate representation of what a military spouse would actually deal with. She was an highly educated woman who married a career military man (an engineer, like my dad). They have a kid, and then along comes a transfer AND a promotion (seriously, transporter chief to Chief Engineer of a freaking space station!). Although clearly not happy about having to move to what amounts to a former War Zone to a base that doesn't even work half the time WITH a small child and almost zero opportunities for her own career, she supports her husband in what is basically the most significant career move he could possibly be offered...as you do.
Sure there's friction as she struggles to find things to do to fill them time since she can't really be a botanist, but this woman decided "Hey, there's all these kids here, kids need education, I'm gonna give them one. Piss off Wynn!" Rock on Keiko!
PS, how are the O'Briens the only married couple regularly portrayed in the entirety of Star Trek? what's up with that?
Didn't Paris and Torres get married late on Voyager? And now we have Culber and Stamets on DISCO, who are either married or as good as.
@@lorcannagle yeah Culber and Stamets are/were married
As being an adademic Keiko O'Brien would had much more potential then just be the teacher. As a part of the Administration of the Station she would worked a lot with Odo and Bashir.
@@fluffysheap I have forgotten so many things the last two months. I had been trying to remember while I was writing and couldn't come up with a single other couple.
@@katelafontaine7119 Like Will Riker and Deanna Troi or Sarek and Amanda? Well there are a few couples, but until now their relationships had been kept a lot more... erm... private.
I totally agree with your assessment of Keiko tho, having a military background in my family too. Although my sisters, being 11 and 13 years older than I am, had to suffer more from my dad being transfered. Heck, I'm just now realising how familiar the O'Briens are to my experience, as my mom had been a teacher too. Gosh, I need a nice cup of Earl Grey after that revelation...
That impression of the Picard Speech for Weasley was on point!
There have been several black characters through various Star Trek shows that had more than one appearance, but never really seem to get real development. From TOS, I was always curious why we never saw more of Doctor M’Benga or Lt. Boma, who seemed to have the potential to be interesting people and could’ve have been groundbreaking characters for the 60s if allowed to blossom. In DS9, Kasidy Yates kind falls into the same narrative trap as Keiko. I always felt what we heard about her life was more interesting than what we saw about her life. Also, I always wished it were possible to get to know Calvin Hudson a little more before he was revealed to be Maquis.
Apparently, Gene Roddenbery at one point toyed with the idea of a Doctor M'Benga led spin-off on a medical ship - at least, there's a story of the actor finding out well after the fact that the idea had been under consideration. However this is just kind of a word of mouth story, so I think there's probably a big difference between Gene Roddenbery idly musing about something and there being any actual development.
I thought Cassidy got a fair amount of time in the show. And she couldn't be a regular because being a freighter captain, she was gone a lot.
I would have like to at least seen her ship.
You forgot Blacula himself, Dr. Daystrom played by the venerable late William Marshall. It would have been nice to see a rehabilitated Dr. Daystrom trying to make amends for past crimes.
One missed opportunity I see for Voyager (more for Robert Beltran and Kate Mulgrew than for Chakotay and Janeway, but still) is that, IIRC, at one point Chakotay asks Janeway what she would have done in his shoes; would she have accepted serving as Chakotay's #2 if Voyager was the sacrificial lamb, and the Valjean was the ship to survive the Kazon fight in Caretaker? They never did an episode where Janeway was put into an alternate timeline where she had to live through that experience, and I feel like they could have made quite a lot out of it, especially if they let the interaction between Chakotay and Janeway in that scenario impact Janeway's behavior towards Chakotay going forward. (That would, of course, require the writers of Voyager to allow anything at all to impact characterization at any time, but that's a separate issue.)
You have to wonder if that would have been the writer's decision or Kate Mulgrew's because goodness knows they didn't always agree.
Romulan commander Tomalak was an outstanding villain - a joy to watch. They could have done so much more with him.
I think playing Gkar on B5 took up most of the actor's time.
@@hankrearden20 Gkar was a much jucier part.
@@gregbauer4433 I've always wished that Tomalak had been the Romulan officer who showed up and offered Picard assistance during the fight against the Scimatar in Nemesis. Would have been a nice throw back to TNG the series, as well as a nice way to round out the character's arc, even if it would have just been a glorified cameo.
One of the characters with the most wasted potential had to be Hugh on Star Trek: Picard. Great character, great actor, great setup... Would have loved to see him become a regular.
His character, and his plotline (like basically everything on the reclamation facility) was a giant waste of potential. There was no reason for that person to have been Hugh; it served no purpose at any point.
@@JosephDavies
What little we saw of him was great but they probably should have kept for for the next season.
But waste of potential was pretty much the name of the game with Picard. Dahj, Laris, Maddox, all characters who should have been more prominent than they were.
I agree with that. To makes matters kind of worse, I don't think Seven of Nine being a best "replacement" of him to help the ex-Borgs or anything like that...
Hugh was a waste of potential but Picard has only just finished season 1, so pretty much all its living characters will have plenty of time to progress.
Looking back on Keiko, and I feel the same way as Deanna Troi, she had a profession underutilized.
To touch on Troi briefly, we should have gotten more to show the harmony was because of counseling. That could have gone a long way back in the late 80's and early 90's to destigmatize counseling. But, digress.
Going back to Keiko, we all know she was a botanist. She should have been written as a civilian consultant to the Bajoran Ministry of Agriculture, given dedicated labs and work spaces, collaborated with Dax, other scientists, and engineers on how to detoxify Bajor for agriculture through selective breeding, chemistry, and machines. She should have been given 2-3 cargo bays for the selective breeding of new crop variations that could thrive in the damaged environment left by the Cardassians. She should have also overseen a chemistry lab developing new fertilizers and means to detoxify the soil. Plus, have a machine shop to show her working on ways to improve the reclamators and other farming machines with input from her husband.
Moving to DS9 should have been an opportunity for her, as well as Miles. But once getting there, allow the conditions of DS9 to sour her mood a bit, but use the hard work of Miles and his team as a way for her to express her love and appreciation for Miles as the station is repaired and becomes a wonderful home.
Edit: That could have become her arc after the whole school debacle. Keiko discovers a means to make farming in one area easier after an expedition early in season 2, over the course of the rest of the season she rises to prominance in the eyes of the Bajoran government, and Sisko is ordered to provider her with facilities to use. Kai Winn would have hated this woman she saw as a blasphemer being the leading expert the Agricultural Ministry relies on. To add stress to Miles, Keiko would remain on DS9 in season 6 because Wayoun would insist, on the basis of "friendship with Bajor", Keiko's work continue. Giving her an opportunity to be a major player in the resistance.
While most of Chakotay is lacking, he does have one of my favourite Voyager moments when one of his previous rebels says they want to go back to doing things the old way, so he floors the guy with a punch and asks him how he liked the old ways. I could have gone for a lot more of that personality.
The character that speaks to me as wasted was Worf's Brother Kurn. Yes he had a part with the whole Klingon civil war with the Duras Sisters, but he literally was written out of the story arc after they altered his mind in DS9's Sons of Mogh. To me he was the equivalent to Keiko O'Brien, essentially a useful character to have around for plot but generally ignored. I mean, they could have had Kurn come around during the Dominion War and become a successful and heroic captain etc... But essentially they eliminated his character entirely.
This character always bugged me who had a lot of potential, but essentially written out was Lt. Commander Shelby who was Starfleets lead researcher in developing technology to fight the Borg. I mean COME ON that speaks to me as a 6 part mini series!!!
The last one was Sito Jaxa, where she is intrduced with Weasley's character and then later blown up by Cardassians while attempting to flea in an escape pod. She could have easily been added to DS9 as well for she was a Bajoran.
Regarding Jake Sisko: I disagree that his potential was wasted. We saw him go from middle/high school aged kid to young adult pursuing a career outside of Star Fleet. To some extent, this puts him outside of the scope of most of the episodes but we saw him progress through that portion of his life and have some good footing for pushing his career and life forward after the end of DS9.
Number 1: As you mention, a lot of this got cut by the production staff largely due to the fact that the dog they chose for the role was not trained for it at all (they were one of Patrick Stewart's rescue dogs IIRC) so they were difficult to work with. Perhaps during the hiatus they can start working with a trainer to see if it's possible to get them to a point where the character can be useful in the show but I strongly doubt that's going to happen.
Keiko O'Brien: Yeah, they dropped the ball on her character.
How about every character in the TNG episode Lower Decks? I wish they had given that set of characters regular appearances.
By mid season 7 it would've been a bit late for that. Also we kind of did see more of the characters of that group. Nurse Ogawa was already a regular at that point, and would reappear in two TNG movies, and Taurik's Alexander Enberg would return to play the Vorik on Voyager who - let's be frank - as another Vulcan engineering ensign might as well be the same character. (spoiler alert) With Sito Jaxa dead this only leaves Sam Lavelle unused, and he really wasn't an interesting or particularly sympathic character, reminded me too much of Riker with his drive for success.
Came here for Trek, got an entire Scooby Doo Mystery and Trek. Morning well spent.
Steve s character I felt had wasted potential was Commander Shelby from Best of Both Worlds part 1 and 2 play by Elizabeth Dennehy. Would have loved to seen Shelby come back in some more episodes of The Next Generation or maybe even DS9. She was featured in a lot of the Star Trek novels and went on to become a Captain but none of that is Cannon of course.
The reason Grace Lee Whitney left the show was because she was sexually assaulted by an executive associated with the show. She never revealed who it was, other than that it was an executive and NOT one of the actors, but there is some evidence that it was Roddenberry himself. We DO know that the person who did it later apologized to her, and gave her a polished stone as an apology gift (something Roddenberry was known to do). I have a feeling her character would have received a lot more development throughout the show if not for that.
I can totally Gene doing something like that. I'm just glad that it wasn't one of the actors.
Didn't Gates Mcfadden(I am not sure if I spelled that right) who played Beverly Crusher have some kind of problem like that? I'm on my phone so it's hard to research right now.
It's a really tragic story.
@@blockmasterscott Yes, Maurice Hurley.
@@blockmasterscottI've heard a lot of different stories, but none of them involved sexual assault. Just more day-to-day misogyny, like being angry that McFadden had suggestions on how to stage and compose a camera shot, or that she wanted more screen time with her character's son. You know, "stay in your place" kind of stuff.
No but guys, Fartyslartbast696969 could actually be out there making response videos about how Dukat actually loved Bajorans, and we should go check.
Don't forget his 90 minute rant video about how Kira is a Mary Sue, because he says so...
Well, he DID love them. Their women, at least.
Is that actually a real person?
Remember that time they gave Kirk a brother only to kill him off immediately and leave behind a son named Peter who later lost his mother and had two brothers die off screen?
Both Kirk and Scotty had nephews named Peter. Hmm. Wait...
Fuck, nobody tell Zack Snyder!
No, I don't remember.
@@gregbauer4433 Nope, that was “Operation - Annihilate”
One more addendum! Voyager could have been renamed Star Trek: Wasted Potential, but they seemed to specialize in queueing up a lot of minor characters like the Equinox survivors and the Delaney sisters, and then doing nothing with them or worse, leaving them as an awkward punchline. But holy crap did Joe Carey get the rawest deal ever for a minor character... completely neglected for five seasons, then brought back just to kill him off just before they get home. Not great, especially when he had potential as a strong colleague and foil to Torres even past the first season.
Apparently all of this was because Berman didn't want to risk any of the minor characters becoming fan favorites which could lead to the actors wanting more money. Which is part of why they invented a whole new character for the episode Ashes to Ashes, even though there had already been a character created a season prior who had been a gold shirt who had a crush on Harry Kim that died. The writers also apparently just flat out forgot that Samantha Wildman had actually survived at the end of Once Upon A Time. That also was a loss of potential IMO. Sure, we had the single parents on a starship thing with Dr. Crusher, and even on a station with Sisko, but the big difference there is that really at any time (in universe that is), if either of them had thought their kid would've been better off planetside, they had the option to request a transfer. Samantha Wildman did not have that option with Naomi (one of very few child characters in Trek to not suck, and all of the rest were on DS9). And then there's the unexplored potential of her relationship with Seven of Nine... Oh, wait, that last one was just my fan fic. My bad.
Sir Will yeah it’s probably best for Samantha Wildman that they never remembered that she wasn’t dead
I know it was a one-off episode, but I always wanted to know what happened to Tam Elbrun after he joined with the sentient ship! It was such a touching episode, in retrospect, and the character of the ship, voiced through Elbrun's impressions of it was portrayed beautifully through the wonderful acting of Harry Groener.
Little does he know, those were his kids from his future alternate self. o.o
Mirror universe Steve confirmed!
Ask him if they all had goatees
@@NeilHighley Goatees are not a requirement for MU characters; Mirror Stamets, Mirror Lorca, Mirror Bashir nor Mirror Georgiou have goatees. Its unclear if Mirror Tilly has one or not.
On DS9, not the actual characters of Bashir and Garak, But the wasted potential of their relationship. Especially in the last few seasons.
Janice Rand did get a lot of development later in the movies. She was transported chief in TMP, and went on to be Sulu's comms officer on the Excelsior seen in the Voyager episode Flashback and of course Star Trek VI where that episode mainly takes place within
Problem is that all of that development happens off screen but it was a nice little Easter egg for fans to notice.
i bet Sulu was a perfect gentleman to the women under his command. might be a choice posting among female officers
My vote would go to Andreas Katsulas.
Tomalak was used in a rather utilitarian way. And then the actor went on and worked in babylon 5 and just OMG look what he did there!!!!
There are a couple people/groups that I'd like to mention that didn't really get much development on screen, but had a pretty decent run in Novels:
Robin Lefler (according to "New Frontier" she ended up like Empress to the Thallonian Empire)
The Talosians (During the Dominion War they got invaded by the Dominion who was attempting to release a "Meme Bomb" designed to kill or cripple Telepathic species, the resistance was led by a Psychic Projection of Chris Pike)
The First Federation (Literally Galaxy exploring Pacifists with an extreme level of development, literally next door to the UFP, and we just get a single episode, and occasional mentions of Tranya. They even set up a cultural and tech exchange at the end of the "Corbonite Gambit" episode...And they were never heard from again)
Alyssa Ogawa (Basically a Nurse/Doctor on the Ent-D, got pregnant, stuck around...Never got much out of her, or about her background, about her child, or her Partner. In the Novels she does go on to becoming the CMO of another ship)
Dr. Selar (Ditto for above minus the Pregnancy, becomes the CMO of the Excalibur under Captain Calhoun ["New Frontier"] had a pretty interesting and intense story-arc)
Montgomery Scott, Post Rescue (What exactly in the Hell happened to Scotty?! I know, I know...SCE, read the books, but it would of been nice if Geordi kept up with the old man, like mentioned he got some transmissions talking about Engineering and all the Whiskey and Risian women he was enjoying in his semi-retirement or whatever. You don't just lose track of one of the most LEGENDARY FIGURES IN STARFLEET HISTORY.)
Kai Opaka (Basically she was doing her thing on the Planet that was keeping her alive, did she survive the Dominion War? Did she negotiate a truce between the Ennis'? STO has her returning to Bajor and becoming Kai again, but as far as TV goes, dead silence)
I can go on.
Glad you covered Ensign Sonya Gomez. She came to mind during the previous video... Sad that a Character given such a brief yet memorable introduction wasn't allowed to stick around in Engineering as "backup", until they had time to revisit her or Captain Picard needed some more Hot Chocolate...
On the other hand what could they have done with her, other than keep her around as a clumsy inexperienced girl for comedic relief? If she had gotten development there would've had to be a major traumatic event to her maturing to give her the necessary distinction to make the viewer care. It's a problem with TNG in general, a lot of the characters just lack meaningful backstory or personality shaping events, they're defined through their posts. And no, "he also plays trombone" isn't a personality trait or something worth caring about.
Amen on Kieko, they even took her own pregnancy away.
I guess Nana Visitor was too good to just wear a loose fitting uniform smock and stand behind consoles a lot like they normally did when an actress was pregnant. She had to steal a baby from a less interesting character.
@@terryhinch It was out of necessity really. Nana Visitor got pregnant (blame Siddig for that), and they decided to work it into the show rather than have her hide behind consoles. That really does limit what an actor can do in a role. Could they have come up with a better way for Kira to get pregnant other than taking Keiko's baby? Maybe, maybe not.
A few more characters or species I wish we had seen more of:
OS: Kevin Riley / Andorians / Orions / Tholians
NG: Dr. Solar / Kaylar (both played by Suzie Plakson!) / Duplicate Riker / Binars / The primitive Vulcan people
Voyager: Seska / Vidiians
Interesting you mention Journeys End: I've often wondered if the indigenous peoples colony was where Chakotay lived prior to joining the Maquis
Chakotay's planet is apparently never named, but I think it's quite implied to be the case.
It was going to be, but then they changed their mind to avoid paying royalties... same as why Tom Paris wasn't Locarno :/
I personally think that ensign sito jaxa from tng had so much more story. I always thought she would turn up alive somehow. If not on next gen but DS9. She would have been a great addition on the station. With Captain Sisko being aware of her past. Or even being rescued by the DS9 crew. As dark as DS9 was I think that a tortured and broken sito jaxa rebuilding herself would have been a perfect fit for the tone of the show
Bringing Sito Jaxa back after her apparent death would cheapen the impact of her sacrifice on that episode.
I always wished she'd come back too. Given her history both with the Nova Squad coverup and then being captured and definitely imprisoned and probably tortured, and possibly worse, her story would have been a great addition to the show.
I'd also like to have seen the fourth member of the squad again - Nick kinda morphed into Paris(they're identical if you squint), Wesley became a Timelord, Sito Jaxa died honourably(or did she..?), but there's still Jean Hajar to account for.
Are... are you my brother? He has said the exact same thing.
@@juanmiguellucero3578well said. Being that the story format of tng was one off episode that had little impact on future episodes. Regarding ds9 in the long arc she would have been much more engaging than worf in season four. A redemption arc not unlike Nog but much more personal. Nog lost a leg against the dominion and o'Brien held a grudge against cardassians. Sito held the face of prejudice/forgiveness more than kira or rolaren ever could.
I imagine as Miles is telling Keiko that he's accepted the new assignment, she just looks back at him with the same expression she has in that still-shot used in this video.
I’ll never know what Colm did to the writers to get shafted all the time. It’s a wonder poor o’brain never quit star fleet
We did get some Caitians in Star Trek IV in the Federation Council chambers.
But we should have seen them in more modern takes such as TNG DS9 and VOY, esspecially since like Andorians and Tellerites they were a founding member of the Federation.
Yes, and they looked great!
@@Knight121198 The Caitian are a playable race in Star Trek Online.
Also a few Caitian Ships can be used by Fed Players.
This is currently the only modern star trek media that shows Caitian I know of.
Never knew that. Just wish like others there would be more focused Caitian main characters. I think in a future Star Trek animated Comedy series "Lower Decks", there is I think a Caitian Chief Medical Officer. Hope he/she is not wasted in the series. Still I wish this kind of characters/race deserve more then being sort of reduced to a Comedy show.
Don't we also see them in the bar on Nimbus III in the Film That Shall Not Be Named?
If Chakotay was going to end up as basically Janeway's advisor, it would have been nice to see why that happened. Maybe we could have had an arc where Chakotay is very obviously falling in love with Janeway and THAT'S why he rarely butts heads with her. Yes, that relationship potential was kind of explored in one episode, but hinting at it like that may have actually made the fact that nothing meaningful was ever done with it even worse. Similar to TNG, it was as if the writers on Voyager were so concerned with maintaining the status quo with most of the characters (focusing on plots of the week instead of lasting character development) that every character except Janeway, Seven, and the doctor was developed either in a limited way (Paris and Torres get married and eventually have a baby) or practically not at all (Chakotay, Kim, and Tuvok).
Chakotay only got any lasting romantic development because Seven needed to be more human
AND IT'S NOT GONNA BE HARRY! (tom & tuvok were already married)
a romance with The Doctor would've made more sense...
Actually it would have been great to see a lot more of Captain Ransom of the Equinox. For that matter a whole spinoff based on the travels of the Equinox even better.
How about a video of characters who were seemingly throwaway, but came into their own later.
I'm thinking Rom as a prime example of that. He went from a bumbling idiot for Quark to beat up on to a vital part of the engineering team on DS9
I always thought that they were setting up a spinoff for a Wesley and the Traveler show.
I would have loved to see more stories with Vash and Tom Riker. Surprised Guinan wasn't mentioned...unless she was listed in the previous vid in which case, my apologies. Whilst guinan made a lot of appearances, I think she had much more to give.
The Next Gen character Dr. Selar was mentioned several times, but only appeared once, played by Suzie Plakson (a favorite of mine), who also played Worf's love interest, K'Ehleyr. Dr. Selar could've appeared more. She's a character in the New Frontier series of Star Trek novels, which I'd recommend to readers. I also think it would make a good TV series.
I would add to this list, "The Crew" of any ship in any of the series. Not that every single crew member would be / could be fleshed out, but it would have been good to see crews as more than just a few people you pass on your way to the turbolift. Most ST plots follow the "The Main Characters Do Everything" trope. Exceptions did exist, like TNG Lower Decks and VOY Good Shepherd. BSG did a better job of it, you would see dozens of people working in various spaces around the ship and you got the feeling of a crew as a social construct.
Another one would be "The Ship." It has always frustrated me that you don't see ST ships as cohesive, functioning vessels - they are just presented as a collection of spaces with similar color schemes. On Firefly or Lexx, the ship was almost another character and you got a really good idea of how all the spaces related to each other and how the characters interact with the vessel.
My favourite is from Voyager. That astronomer tech women from Voyager in the Future's End episodes in which they travel back to 1996. Sarah Silverman. As a kid i hoped to much for her to join the crew....
I'm upset you didn't mention Morn, honestly. I'd seriously watch an entire season of Morn escapades, cleverly filmed so that he never actually SAYS anything, or DOES anything of note, but it's implied he's the hero.
We actually hit on why we are glad they left him as is, in our live stream because a lot of people mentioned him 😅
Well Quark did complain about him never shutting up.....
If we're talking about wasted potential, I can't think of anyone more slighted than Chakotay. You had the build-in high drama of Starfleet vs Maquis stuck on ship, forced to work together to survive that could've played out over the course of the whole series, and they did absolutely nothing with it. Nadda. There is an alternate reality out there where Voyager is the best Star Trek series.
Voyager should have been Battlestar Galactica, but Star Trek, but instead they ignored everything interesting about their premise.
They made a mistake at the end of the pilot. They destroyed the Maquis ship. If both captains had been essentially equals with their own agendas, and neither ship had adequate resources individually, you might have had something.
Your take on Keiko really helps me appreciate DS9 even more. I hated her because I saw her as a rare instance of lazy writing using the shallow trope of the nagging wife. You completely nailed it though. The only thing lazy was not expanding her character more, which come to think of it, they did do a couple times. I just wasn't paying attention because I didn't like her.
A high ran academic only a teacher? I would let her join the bajorian bureaucracy on the Station. Odo was Chief of the Police, Bashir the doctor - but there so many other roles too.
They really did expand on every character in that show didn't they? Even Molly got her time to shine. They did an entire episode on a character that never speaks and he still never spoke the entire time.
I actually remember watching the animated Star Trek on Saturday mornings. Vaguely as I was very young, but the series was my introduction to Star Trek.
STEVE. Just had a thought. What if Picard gets back to Earth at some point during Season 2, and Number One acts differently around him because he's a synth now???
Here's something that bothers me a bit about all Star Trek shows. It's something I've been thinking about for years, actually. I feel that as a military organization, non-com crewmen are the biggest wasted story potential in the entire cannon.
We get to know only a few crewmen even by name, even though enlisted crew make up 90% of a ship's force. Chief O'Brien is the only enlisted man to have a semi-regular speaking role, that I can think of. As a retired Navy Chief, it's something I've really honed in on. Most of the security to go down on away missions would be enlisted, not officers. Also, one major job posting that is always ignored in Star Trek is the COB, or Chief of the Boat. Or as it's sometimes called, CMC (Command Master Chief). That's the job of the highest ranking enlisted person on the ship (or command) that acts as an advisor to the Captain, shadowing him or her almost always, ready to guide when it comes to dealing with the crew or enlisted personnel. The COB would be on the bridge, would be training those young Ensigns and Lieutenant JGs, and would be arguing face to face with the ship's Number One about personnel issues. But mainly, I think good writers could use it to make the ships in Trek seem more realistic, lived in, and reflective of how things are, and how they undoubtedly will still be four hundred years from now.
personnel conflicts seem boring in comparison to deadly aliens...
they got close to that dynamic with DS9 as they had bajoran militia & starfleet.
Kira sounds like a CMC
edit: personnel conflicts seem boring IF they're written that way. written well, it's an easy source of drama & character development
Speaking of Picard's housekeepers, I didn't get why he needed Elnor. He had two ex tal shiar people at his house with him, and the two of them curb stomped that attack team that showed up. Why not take them?
I wish they'd shown up at the end to help save the day, all sneaky-like. They could have found their way to the Artifact(it was known that Picard had got himself permission to be there, and if Starfleet know it, Laris can find it out) and bluffed their way in, then been perfectly placed to help sort out Narissa...
Elnor basically loses every fight he's in, after the first (which Picard kinda-instigated). He's left to protect someone, between episodes they're separated and his protectee is captured (somehow), and then killed (for no reason that served the plot or characters). He's one of many characters that _exist_ in ST:Picard, but with barely an arc and no purpose in the story.
Someone wanted an Elven Ninja in the show.
@@JosephDavies The purpose of Elnor was just for the plot line of Picard having abandoned everyone counting on him after quitting star fleet.
Most overlooked, I would say mr. Homn. His only dialog came in his first appearance in Haven. Every subsequent appearance of Lwaxana he was more and more moved to the background. In Lwaxana's final TNG episode (Dark Page) he isn't even present, only mentioned. In all 3 of Lwaxana's DS9 appearances it is as if Homn never existed.
As time goes on you expect the personality of characters to grow, but with Homn his personality only diminished.
Enterprise: Crewman Cutler. A junior officer who's given a major introduction in "Strange New World" and the foundations for a budding friendship and work relationship with Dr. Phlox in a later episode and then is pretty much dropped. Actress Kellie Waymire would die in a tragic health crisis while working on another series so they couldn't have brought her character back after about 2003 unless they recast her but Cutler's failed potential is one of the standout missed opportunities in ENT.
‘Charlie X’ was actually Yoeman Rand’s first episode. A shame that her character had to deal with that bullshit in her first appearance. One of my least favorite episodes of my second favorite Trek show.
Charlie X is so difficult to watch, the entire premise being a teenage temper tantrum Q basically. Basically the only part I like is when Kirk tries to tell him that guys doing lighthearted locker room hijinks is very different when it's in a different context, with a woman, where no one was expecting anything like that to happen. Of course he doesn't actually do that well at all, either, just stumbling over his words and shit.
In Production Order (the best way to watch TOS 😈) Rand's first episode was "The Corbomite Manoeuvre", where she did that coffee pot thing Steve mentioned
I think O’Brain should have been noted for TNG he got a few small little plot points but really nothing about being a tactical officer, who then becomes a helmsman before becoming a NCO... I also think ensign Ashley Judd (don’t recall her character name) who shows up and hints that her and Wes have known each other and possibly been a relationship for awhile and then just gone
I think the character of Sonya Gomez was re-written to become Reginald Barclay. Perhaps because the actress was not available, or "we wanna use this guy from A-Team" or some other reason.
No disrespect to Barclay intended but I think Gomez would have 100% kicked ass in 'The Nth Degree'. She would have made an amazing Barclay!
Sam Kirk. We find out Jim has a brother the day he dies.
Also, I completely agree with you, Keiko gets way too much unnecessary hate.
Fun Fact: Lycia Naff, who played Henson Sonya Gomez, was also on the Pilot episode of the 1990-1991 series The Flash playing the Villian Pike's Henchwoman/Girlfriend Lila
Keiko: Since it felt so deliberate that they wrote her out of the series, I always thought this was because maybe the actress didn’t have time or was occupied otherwise or something. So I didn’t think she was overlooked.
Jake Sisko: As was said, he has some great character development. The reason why he was in the background for some time was maybe just that there was simply no time and opportunity in what all was going on at that moment. So I don’t think he was overlooked.
The Sisko-Picard relationship - more on that would have been interesting
Nurse Ogawa? (Patti Yasutake)
Leland T. Lynch?
(He was an engineer in a s1 TNG episode. Come on, the name alone is... interesting!)
What about Ensign Wildman? They could have had a whole thing about her losing her baby and getting the replacement baby, or that her husband is on the other side of the galaxy and her attempting to teach her child his culture...she's a xenobiologist who could have been drafted as a nurse or helped the Doctor with exotic aliens. All we get are a few glimpses of her and know that she's the mother of Naomi
I literally mentioned this earlier this week, that Wildman was probably the most qualified to be transferred to the medical staff. Paris only had one course in biochemistry, Wildman has a full biology degree which includes anatomy.
I think the secret to why Wesley became a more interesting character after he left the show is that Wil Wheaton got older and the writers were no longer trying write for a "kid."
The last scene in DS9 with Jake and Kira was a call back to a scene in “The Visitor” which was cool because some part of the future came true.
Westley's first return was "The Game" (First Duty came later).
With the appearance of Ashley Judd who grabbed the major share of attention on that episode
Was just going to post this myself.
ArgonTheAware who they make it seem she’s known Wes and quite possibly had a relationship with him before vanishing again
RE : The O'Briens . I never had a problem with Keiko, I think if you think that Keiko nag's O'Brien then you have unhealthy expectations of what a partnership is. Also they totally discussed it, the move to DS9, They both decided that it was best for Miles career. This was when he was going to be promoted to Ensign O'Brien when he had the single pip during the the first season.
I always viewd Keiko doing other things, and sometime telling Miles off was just her finding her own feet within the series, her ability to be a mother, wife, teacher and botanist on a post at the far end of space from her home always lent her a quiet strength in my eyes.
Now that i think about it, the O'Briens, Nerys, Dax and Worf inter-relationship are some of my favourite moments on the show
Would of loved if Kaga the owned of the Klingon restaurant would of have been featured more, would of been great to see a Klingon who wasn't the stereotypical warrior. Also would of really liked if voyager did more with Crewman Chell, always really enjoyed every time he was on screen or even mentioned
14:24 I remember seeing her in a bar on Mars, if I remember rightly, she made me wish I had 3 hands :D
One thing I'll say about number one... I give full credit to Patrick Stewart for wanting to highlight the Pitbull as a breed for people here and now watching the show. I do think they're unfairly maligned. However, it's a bit disappointing that they suggest (inadvertently, probably) that people are still cropping ears in the 24th century. It's an unnecessary practice that is banned in some places today. I'll go a step further and say that for me personally, I don't think we should be breeding dogs at all - at least not for specific traits that we want. Hopefully by the 24th century all dogs will be mutts.
Keiko O'Brien suffers from "Skylar White Syndrome". Basically any time there is a popular male character who is challenged by a female character, that female character is branded a nag or worse. Skylar White in Breaking Bad is the epitome of this.
In general, O'Brien is a sensible, likable character. Anyone opposing his position on a topic is going to be placed automatically in the audience's mind as an antagonist by default, and the writing needs to overcome this intentionally. I don't think they ever really managed to do so with Keiko, in fact they often amplified it instead.
How sweet would it have been if Number One had come along for the ride when Picard left Earth, much like Porthos (another great animal character). Instead, he suffered the same fate as Spot, being treated as a nuisance best left out to save time filming. Ensign Gomez was so overlooked I had forgotten she got left out, but when Steve started to talk about her as a character who had been on two episodes and was set up for more, I was thinking of Ensign Robin Lefler. Granted, it would have been hard to keep Ashley Judd on, but she was a great character, and her interactions with Wesley seemed like they could be going somewhere.
I always dreamed of a Nelix after Voyager story line where he founds a "Second Foundation" like mini federation in the asteroid. The Telaxian colony grows into an economic powerhouse based off holodeck technology! At first as a recreational Hub (like Deep space 9) and hundreds of holosuites then later making Federation like mutually beneficial agreements with other Voyager "Species" like the "Collective" Borg" and then adding new civilizations into the mini federation like a research outpost for 8472, The ocampa, the Viidians etc etc etc !! As Nelix grows in power as a negoitator and having conversion with his friends from voyager in the alpha quadrant to get advice some fun guest appearances from voyager characters. as his "son" grows up to be a swashbuckling Talaxian with his own advanced Holo generating Ships. (small efficient ships that can seem Huge on the inside and look like anything on the outside) initially conflicts against the Mining consortium.. etc etc .. SO MUCH POTENTIAL !! sgh...
Here's one, not because he didn't get screen time, but because the actor himself was underutilized. Chief O'Brian.
Any DS9 fan who watched through Hell on Wheels has to agree with me here. Colm Meany is incredible in that show. Steals every scene he is in, even all the scenes he shares with Anson Mount.
The Hebrew Barrister I think the writers had it in for him for some reason, something bad has to happen to someone, why not o’brain... again
Will Jenkins The writers said in commentary that Colm Meany is so good at playing the suffering engineer that they had to make an “O’Brian suffers” episode every season. It’s not that they didn’t like the character, on the contrary they loved the character, which means that he needs stories, and to have stories you need drama, and to have drama the character had to suffer.
You should do some Orville videos to. This is still the best “Star Trek” today. It’s more Star Trek then picard or std
In Picard, I would have LOVED to have seen more exploration of Commodore Oh's motivations.
It would have been nice to flesh out _any_ of the antagonists, especially considering how much screentime Narek, Narissa, and Oh collectively had (Oh had the least, but we still could have been informed about her through Narissa). They only seemed to serve the purpose of sponging all of the energy and momentum out of any episode they appear it, and their motivations can almost entirely be summed up as "Romulans are bad, they are Romulans, therefore they do bad things; they're also Zhat Vash so they're especially bad towards synthetic life". We receive no insight on their personal feelings about "The Admonition" except that they believe it 100% and wish to act in a way that fulfills the prophecy they hope to avoid, making them evil _and_ stupid.
They explained it, it just sucked. She and Narissa were brainwashed by that alien AI Macguffin, then she used a combination of persuasion, intimidation, and mild melds (which seems to transfer the brainwashing) to get others to do her will.
It's shitty, but it's explained. What's not explained is her heel-face-turn in the last few scenes. That was completely out of character, so it needed to be at least lampshaded. But nope.
(spoiler alert) Especially the motivation to just peace out and abandon the plans your secret order had been working towards for hundreds of years with all life in the galaxy at stake just because Pizza belly Riker turns up and throws a snazzy one liner about kicking ass.
Joseph Davies I didn’t mind Narek, but I think it was more the acting than the writing. At least many people were asking what happened to Narek when the season ended
17:45 : I thought after the events in TNG's episode "Power Play", Keiko and/or O'Brien may have pushed for a lower-key assignment for a lower danger factor that became more of a priority after the discovery of a stable wormhole.
Couple of character that might have had potential that I think he missed would be Nurse Ogawa from TNG and Mr. Stiles from the TOS episode "Balance of Terror".
I think with Keiko, she was a minor guest character connected to a minor regular character on one show. And then the actor for the minor character gets a new job as a regular on a different but related show. I have to assume it's hard to get a commitment from the actor who played his wife in two episodes to play a more significant role in a different show.
Agent Sloan (the head of the ultra secret, ruthless Star Fleet intelligence branch, Section 31).
Although he was only in 4 episodes of ST:DS9, he was definitely one of my favorites.
The fact that he was arguably the most influential/powerful person in Star Fleet, and yet, apparently no one outside of his organization even knew that he existed (before he contacted Bashir), and the fact that he could appear and disappear while no one was looking, without a trace, and knew many dark things that virtually no one else in the entire Federation knew, and the fact that he was capable of doing literally anything he felt nessicary to preserve the Federation, yet apparently still lived by some kind of moral code, made him a very complex and interesting character.
Although he could be chilling, he didn't give off the kind of snakelike vibe that Gaul Dukat did.
However, I absolutely HATED Jake Sisco.
Right off of the bat, he was just an obnoxious, stupid, self-centered brat; whose main purpose seemed to be to cause trouble for other people.
And when Starfleet is evacuating the station, he secretly stays behind, because he wants to be a famous reporter.
And is actually surprised, when the head person on the station, representing a totalitarian regime, which is bent on the destruction of the Federation, and the conquest of the entire quadrant, censors his reporting.
"Gasp! You mean...you're NOT planning on letting me tell the whole galaxy about the way that you're oppressing people here? I thought that you represented a NICE empire!".
He's absurdly lucky that the Dominion didn't use him as a hostage, or just plain torture him to death, and then send a video of it to his father as a warning.
Which is what would have realistically happened.
But Nog actually had a REAL character arc, and had the most amount of personal development of any character in the show.
Over the years, we gradually watch him go from a trouble-making profit-obsessed, typical Ferengi adolescent, who can't even read, to a mature (if uptight) Starfleet officer. We also see him go through the pain of dealing with PTST after losing his leg in battle; and his road to physical, emotional, and mental recovery, isn't something that just resolves itself in one episode.
One thing that always bothered me about Chakote is his relationship with Janeway : I agree that he could have been more antagonistic, preferably not in a black and white way but with intelligent arguments for both.
There's also that unresolved romantic relationship : I get that having the first female captain dating her first officer is not a good idea but in my opinion either you set no romantic subplot at all or you do it in a way that suggest that nothing will happen until they reach Federation space and one is not under the other's orders.
I also hated how Seven of Nine had feelings out of nowhere for Chakote towards the end. Wait, what? Have her do something interesting, for God's sake.
But who am I kidding ... they never agreed on what to do with their characters on Voyager, especially Chakote.
It strikes me now that you mention it that The First Duty is possibly an early idea/glimpse into the possibility that the Federation and Starfleet aren't as pure and perfect as TNG often makes them out to be which then goes on to be at the core of the entire Picard series. That not all these young cadets that will go on to be future ship captains are really of the same calibre as the Enterprise crew.
After all, they very nearly got away with it.
I was actually reading a Vulture interview from 2012 with the actress who played Sonya Gomez , and her expected role did come up. In it, she mentioned that her role was expected to become Geordi's love interest, but it looks like the conflict of her character being a comedic relief alongside trying to be a potential love interest didn't really sit well with someone(s). Shame - it may have saved Geordi from some awkward scenes later in the series...
Anyways, I think another place the writers missed an opportunity was Ethan/Barash from "Future Imperfect". Riker talks the kid down from the mind-reading holodeck kidnapping going on, offers him a place on the Enterprise, they beam up, and... that's it. They could have had him bond with Alexander... sessions with Troi on not fitting in on the -D. A bit of hero worship of Wesley? Riker adopting him, and future one-off scenes with Worf discussing the difficulties of a single parent raising a child? (Or perhaps he was kidnapped by a jealous Sonya Gomez who wanted the mind-reading holodeck technology for herself to woo Geordi away from the Leah holoprogram and into her own.)
I have to agree about the Maquis. There would have been so much material to mine for drama that was just completely ignored in the series
They set it up and it whimpers by the Season Two premiere "The 37s"
I wanted to say Nurse Ogawa was had wasted potential but thinking about it I think she got a lot of use for a minor character. She was important in several episodes and didn't she even get promoted in an episode? Heck I even remember her doing the ads for Star Trek Christmas ornaments. I guess not seeing a character you like as often as you like doesn't mean the character was wasted.
Missed Opportunity: No. 1 could have mauled one of the Romulan assassins.
Woof! Nom-Nom.
I have a feeling that given the reason Stewart chose his breed, having him attack would be counter productive.
@@Rick-cx1yr I think you'd be right. Pitties get a bad reputation because of how bad owners have used them. I fostered a pit bull puppy that even our cats wound up loving. He also seemed to defy physics by taking poos bigger than what we'd been feeding him.
yomand rand was promoted to lt commander IN Star Trek VI
awwww man i missed Number One too, but as i read it was a rescue dog and somewhat difficult to work with. Aslo , omg has anyone considered how Number One will react to Picard's new synth body?!! Does the synth body have a smell? :o
M'Ress is a fairly large character in Peter David's BRILLIANT Series Star Trek New Frontier (Post destruction of the Original Excalibur)
Want to talk missed opportunities with Keiko? She could have developed into an amazing politically charged character through the end of the series.
Hear me out. During her first estrangement with Miles when she went on her botany-survey hiatus she could have befriended former Bajoran resistance members (turned farmers) on Bajor. She could have used her status as a non-Starfleet Federation citizen to discretely smuggle in seemingly harmless equipment and supplies to illegally help Bajor's faltering agriculture. That initial smuggling endeavor could have created a bridge of trust and blossomed into more and more influential assistance with settlements and colonies in the vicinity... including potential dealings with the struggling Maquis.
Without ever picking up a weapon, Keiko could have become a secret expert in the supply lines, logistics, infrastructure, and contacts of an entire resistance movement. Such knowledge and connections could have made her not only helpful but absolutely indispensable when the Cardassians took over DS9. She also could have used her contacts and knowledge to great effect helping Kira train and organize Cardassians during their uprising against the Dominion... all from humble beginnings as a well-meaning and understandably distraught botanist.
I'm surprised Icheb and Hue weren't seen as more wasted potential, with all their background rooted in different series, than the dog 😐
Keiko went from working on the Ritz in space to working at a grotty B&B in Space Afghanistan. I don't blame her at all.
My new favourite character is Jett Reno. No nonsense engineer.
Didn't mention the episode "Parallels" when Wesley was on the bridge as the tactical officer.
I love M'Ress (as you can perhaps tell 😉), and Arex too. Thank you for including them! I particularly like Peter David's characterisation of them in his New Frontiers novels. I'd love to have seen that as a TV show or film series!
I really missed Worf's son Alexander --- a very cool little boy
I don't recall, did O'Brien have a choice when it came to being reassigned?
Yes, he choose to go to DS9 because it was a stable place for his wife and child, of course it became far more then anyone would have thought.
How great could the Enterprise-D be for Keiko when she had to have her baby delivered by Worf because the ship was in a crisis again? At least they had already moved to DS9 by the time it crashed on Veridian III
I felt like Wesley got much more interesting and a lot more likeable when he left the main cast and became a guest performer. Episodes like The First Duty really show the character at his best.
I feel like he missed an opportunity of talking about Aaron Harvey holding his kids hostage as a reveal that he was Aaron Ekhart playing Harvey Dent.
You weren't the only one thinking this.
Man, people still sleeping on Lon Suder. How do you get an actor like Brad Dourif playing such a compelling role and only use him in two episodes, killing him off no less?
Couldn't agree more. That was a very interesting character
I imagine Number 1 will not take well to robo-Picard whenever he gets back to earth. 'My dog is a speciest!!' will be a major plot point of season 2.