You know how sometimes you have a long-running comfort show that you definitely love but after watching it like ten times or more you have some things you think were done differently in the Good Timeline?
So, Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Tasha does not die
- Geordi is allowed to be gay
- Frankly anyone is allowed to be gay, queer or whatever, it’s a non-issue
- Beverly doesn’t disappear for a season (Pulaski can still exist, as a supporting character)
- Deanna wears a normal uniform
- Riker gets to start with the beard
- People only tell Wesley to shut up when he’s being obnoxious, not in “Datalore” where he had an important point and was actually scared and they were mean
- The women characters generally get more focus episodes that are about the challenges of their jobs and relationships without some bland man of the week being shoved in as a love interest (“Remember Me” is a good example).
- “The Naked Now” didn’t happen (this bullet point endorsed by Tasha Yar)
- But the line where Worf sympathetically tells Data “I don’t understand their humour either” can show up somewhere - the one part of that weird creepy horny episode I want to salvage
- Guess who else doesn’t die, K’Ehleyr
- Worf is still kind of a useless dad but he’s a useless dad trying to co-parent with his long-distance ex
- Musical episode courtesy of Q (everyone is angry about it except Beverly who has frankly always wished this would happen, Worf who goes Full Opera, Data who doesn’t do anger and finds the whole thing fascinating, and Riker who outwits the requirement to sing by communicating entirely in trombone noises)
- Data adopts Timothy (this is a personal hobbyhorse), is a good albeit often puzzled parent
- It is somehow possible to have more Lore episodes without exhausting Brent Spiner; it is established in the course of these that Data doesn’t actually need the emotion chip Lore stole and is able to develop his own form of emotions gradually; this has been happening all along but he didn’t recognise it because it didn’t look how he expected based on his human friends
- Lore doesn’t do that gross thing with his fingernail that I can’t watch
- The episode “Code of Honor” is replaced by another episode which is not weirdly racist and is instead fun, but still called “Code of Honor” because that’s so obviously a Klingon Episode Title, and it focuses on the friendship between Worf and Tasha. Worf wants to go on a special Klingon camping trip/ordeal/quest that he should have been able to do with his mum and dad as a child but missed on account of being orphaned, on which one does various challenges designed to teach a Klingon kid the Code of Honor. He doesn’t have any family around to do the quest with him but Tasha offers to go and they have an adventure and Worf realises he can’t exactly recover the experiences he’s missed out on but still feels validated in his Klingon identity. At the end Worf comes over all heartfelt and tells Tasha that she would have made an excellent Klingon and he would like to make her part of his family and Tasha is like “oh shit is he asking me to marry him this is very awkward” but he just wants to be blood sibs and all is well. Later on Alexander will enjoy seeing Aunt Tasha.
- Data gives Worf parenting advice.
- Q declares his love to Captain Picard in the most insultingly condescending and reluctant proposal since Fitzwilliam Darcy. Picard throws a book at his head and he leaves in a huff. They may or may not sort it out later, I haven’t decided.
- Durango Troi holodeck episodes (at least two). Tasha can play her sidekick.
- The movies simply do not happen, or there are different movies in which Picard’s adorable nephew does not die offscreen (or on, he doesn’t die is my point, René Picard lives and thrives) and Worf’s life on DS9 is acknowledged by his friends and Captain Kirk doesn’t have such a sucky death and Spock and Bones are actually part of that story as they should be.
#I accept all of this#Can Lal also live?
She dies for the pathos, as in the original, but later on a way is found to bring her back.
Actually, both she and a deactivated Lore are in Bruce Maddox’s Daystrom Institute lab and he manages to get both of them going again (there was nothing functionally wrong with Lore, Bruce just made the mistake of reactivating him to get ideas for how to help Lal). Lore plays on Lal’s vulnerability and fear and the fact Data never told her much about him to convince her that he’s her good, nice long-lost uncle and she needs to break them both out of there (Lal, being a good girl, has the run of the lab while Lore, being a reprobate, is temporarily a head on a desk). They go on the run together (initially Lore is carried in a bowling bag, which he does not enjoy, and an early priority is to acquire materials to build him a new body) and Lore keeps working on Lal with the idea that humans will never accept them and that her father is well-meaning but weak (after all, when humans wanted to take her away from him, he couldn’t stop them, could he? He couldn’t save her life, could he? Lore does not allow her to dwell on the point that a human who had benefited from his acquaintance and correspondence with Data managed to reactivate her, thus redeeming himself from weird creep status) and it’s just the two of them against the galaxy. Data must find them and persuade Lal that she can trust him again before Lore can corrupt her totally. A moving two-part episode, wins Emmys.
I think we’ll just bring them more into line with their later depiction in DS9 - they’re still lecherous money-grubbing little weirdos, but no attempt is made to set them up as a serious threat or imply that they eat people. Everyone is more annoyed by them than anything else, but sometimes they present a genuine obstacle, eg the Daimon who blamed Picard for the death of his son and tried to take revenge on him, or Marauders who, rather than going around whipping people, go around interfering in negotiations between different galactic power blocs and just wear the whips as a dashing fashion accessory.
However I do insist that we retain the thing where whenever they Skype with the Federation they are off-puttingly close to the camera and there’s a plain white background so you can’t see what their ship interiors look like (the Ferengi do this to protect Trade Secrets, everyone else speculates and spreads rumours about what they’re really hiding). That stays the same throughout.
The implication in that one crossover episode that Quark and Riker have some sort of romantic Past will be loud-pedalled.