#tng season 6

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry [a fistful of datas, s6ep8] 'Worf Feeling the Part'

[malorisaurus]

*said in the style of the call and response portion of “Hey Ya!” by OutKast*

What’s more human than being human?

COMMANDER DATA

Alright alright alright alright alright alright alright

[bi-disaster-kirk]

I have been absolutely emotionally devastated by TNG Season 7, Episode 10: Inheritance 😭 Data I'm sorry that your mother never wanted you and that she imagined that you would be different and that the one thing that could help her understand you would also drive the two of you apart and so now you have to carry that burden AND the knowledge of what could have been

[tuttle-did-it]

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Malcolm in the Middle, Argo, X-Files, etc),

Faith Ford (Murphy Brown, We Have a Ghost),

David Huddleston (Blazing Saddles, The Big Lebowski, Star Trek TNG, The Wonder Years, Magnum PI, etc),

Clyde Kusatsu (character actor in dozens of things including M*A*S*H, NCIS, General Hospital, The Young and the Restless, Dollhouse, Samurai Jack, etc)

Bill Maher (Politically Incorrect, Real Time with Bill Maher, etc),

Ronny Graham (character actor and writer in dozens of things including M*A*S*H - also worked as a story consultant! and wrote several episodes!, Space Balls)

in 'Good-Bye Charlie' s6 e12 of Murder, She Wrote.

Episode aired Jan 7, 1990

[bloodyrusset]

Thoughts on tng season 6 ep 6: the game.. I enjoyed the cast turning evil but I couldn’t stop thinking how it wasn’t explained how Geordi got hypnotized. It’s established that the device 1. Snaps around your head, 2. Shoots something directly into your eyes, and 3. Is played using vision, all things that Geordi couldn’t do?? He’s literally completely blind without the visor and I don’t think they establish it at all.

Long ass explanation ahead of how I’d rewrite the episode to fix that and also be gayer.

So anyway if I wrote the episode, data would get shut off by crusher and left there in medbay. Later, geordi would ask about data, and it would be revealed that he ‘had a system failure but is alive’. They couldn’t hide data, so they’d have to let geordi see him and ask questions. He’d then ask why they didn’t immediately get him since he’s the best person on the ship to fix data.

They would have some soft excuse, then take the first chance they had to incapacitate him. Maybe they’d do it in the brig and claim he commuted some crime, or maybe they’d also lock him in a quarantine section in sickbay, claiming he has a dangerous infection. Either way, he’d be blind and stuck in a strange place until Wesley and Robin find data, realize he’s been attacked, and go look for Geordi to help them (since they know they’re the only two officers that couldn’t be affected).

They’d break him out in a tense spy-scene and get him to sickbay where he’d figure out how to get datas mobility back without his visor and just with the help of the kids (probably one would help while the other kept watch.) Geordi would finish just when footsteps were incoming, and tell the kids to run. Data wouldn’t get up and Geordi would cling then yell for him to wake while the hypnotized crewmembers locked him up again.

The rest of the episode would play out with robin being taken then Wesley running then being captured, just without Geordi. Data would show up with the light trick, the evil lady would talk then disappear, but before we get a goodbye shot with Wesley and robin, Wesley and a few others would meet geordi and data in engineering and ask how they were, crewmates clearly embarrassed about their actions. The pair would laugh it off and say something about how they figured out the solution. Data would ask a silly question, and geordi would comment how he now knows he can fix data without the bots help and ‘blindfolded’.

[thegeminisage]

letswatchstartrek.com is finally, FINALLY back, which means we can see the "1" episodes ahead of time again, which means i am back to getting DITCHED.

[generic-whumper]

Star Trek: Next Generation; season 6, episode: Chain of Command, Pt. 2

“From now on I refer to you only as, Human.”

[horsechestnut]

I’m watching the behind the scenes stuff and there’s a point where Marina Sirtis mentioned that she always envied Gates McFadden because McFadden always had so much stuff to play with, and in that moment I saw the thread that connects every Hollywood actor back to community theater.

[queen-of-love-and-beauty]

In “Man of the People” the Computer mentions there’s an ensign Janeway on board the Enterprise and I find that hilarious 🤣

[littledeadling]

U know, I rly gotta draw Riker and Deanna at some point. My favourite hets 💕

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry [tapestry, s6ep15]

'You're dead. This is the afterlife, and I'm God.' - q

[minomadamu]

God the ferengi episodes from ds9 fucking rule.

[humanconditionpoetry]

I also completely agree, like writers are also artist but in written format.

Also Here is another thought, why can it not be like both artist and writers.

Like hear me out or read this out rather 😉, 2-3 days set for Artist only, 2-3 days for writers and one day a combination as a lot of writers use art as means to express and a lot of artist use writing to get ideas and create.

What do you guys think?

Either way, I would love to see writers getting some of the much needed love on this site.

To my fellow writers, Keep doing what you do and note that someone out there also lives and enjoys your writing.

You know how tumblr @staff post lots of tumblr artwork like every week. Well i think they should set a day or two aside for the writers of tumblr.

[cryptid-crawly]

also I’m on season 7 of TNG I just forgot to post anything the entire time I’ve been watching sncjcjjfslspcospap whoops

[mylittleredgirl]

buckle up folks, it's deep dive about chakotay hours!

season 2, "initiations"

@isthereintruthnobeauty1968 asked a question about chakotay in this post about the scene above:

for an infamous leader of an anti-federation rebel group he seems to firmly believe in its authority and ideals And to have (at least externally) adjusted to the blended crew seamlessly. what's the deal?

see, i don't think chakotay ever wanted to be a rebel, or even a leader for that matter.

he wanted to be a starfleet officer.

season 2, "tattoo"

chakotay enrolls in the acadamy as a teenager as young as he legally can ("tattoo"). he tells seven ("one small step") that he joined starfleet because of his love of paleontology, and he only turned away from that out of responsibility to the maquis and now to voyager.

[get a snack for this one y'all]

season 6, "one small step"

it doesn't come up often, but whenever chakotay talks about his pre-voyager starfleet career, it's always about first contact or archaeology. in "emanations," he compares their exploration of an alien burial moon to a mission he went on as an ensign, all while demonstrating his anthropology expertise. add that to him nerding out in "blink of an eye," "one small step," the dinosaur episode, and a bunch of other examples, he's a social scientist both by training and by inclination.

in the original star trek, they had an "A&A officer," a specialist in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient civilizations:

tos season 2, "who mourns for adonais?"

we never hear that term again, but that's the role chakotay often fills on voyager, and he's very happy whenever he gets to do it.

now, realistically, i don't know how much time pre-maquis chakotay would have spent in a blue uniform, because those skills would not make him an obvious choice to lead a maquis cell. ro laren sets up his character (unnamed) in tng as a tactical specialist who resigns to join the maquis:

tng season 7, "preemptive strike"

(which is a very polite and noble way to do it, as compared to eddington's defection in ds9.)

if he was in fact ro’s teacher (i think so, despite a stardate conflict in some later dialogue), it seems very in-character to me that chakotay could have started out pursuing a sciences path before showing an aptitude for piloting, strategy, and/or command. given what we know of him, regardless of his own passions or preferences, if a senior officer noticed his skills and encouraged him to change career tracks, he would do it.

teen angst era aside, he respects authority. he argues against dogmatic ideology when it's inflexible to the needs of the moment, but he likes working within a command hierarchy, and for better or worse, he is easily swayed by charismatic leaders.

season 1, "caretaker"

not only does he yield to janeway's authority on voyager before she even asks him to, and then molds himself into the kind of first officer he thinks will help her most, he does the same thing with annorax in "year of hell." tom is the voice of ethical conscience and reason in that episode, and he organizes the rebellion—against chakotay's orders!

there's so much going on here:

season 4, "year of hell part 2"

despite his father's perceptions of him as a contrarian, chakotay only rebels as a last resort. he would genuinely rather not. he clearly talked about the maquis cause with ro and others before he left—and i bet that's why he resigned to a starfleet admiral in person, to make one last appeal. his preference is to try and change systems from within.

not to west wing about it, but chakotay is only The Guy when he has to be—he wants to be the guy the guy counts on.

(hot take: with how he rationalizes the calculated sacrifices annorax is making in "year of hell," i don't think chakotay would have left starfleet for the maquis if it wasn't personal. but it was personal, so here we are!)

maquis chakotay is a disillusioned idealist, but he's never that disillusioned. he believes in the stated ideals of the federation, sometimes more than janeway does.

season 3, "scorpion part 1"

and it's a fundamental character trait that he looks for the best in people and situations, often to his own detriment (tuvok, seska, annorax, that time janeway and tuvok and tom all lie to him for half a season, the list goes on).

and it's easy to see good in starfleet, especially when most of his career was during the height of federation utopia before "the best of both worlds," at which point starfleet remembered it's also a defensive force and started building the defiant—which was the very first starfleet ship ever designed solely for combat.

the cardassian situation in tng is shown as an aberration in a largely peaceful era. the off-screen "border wars" were fought by officers who expected to go their entire careers never firing a phaser.

tng season 4, "the wounded"

for decades since making peace with the klingons, and with the romulans keeping to themselves, starfleet has been mostly goodhearted nerds who are committed to exploring and making friends. even if chakotay was a tactical officer, that was the starfleet he signed up for and served.

and, in fact, the reason why the federation abandoned the colonists in the dmz in the first place and wouldn’t help bajor during the cardassian occupation is because the federation and starfleet are devoted to the ideals of peace and noninterference to a fault.

tng season 5, "ensign ro"

chakotay doesn't object to starfleet's actions, but its inaction.

which, side note, is why janeway's choice in "caretaker" makes it easy for him to rally behind her. by choosing to protect the ocampa, even though it's a huge sacrifice and puts her in a prime directive gray area, janeway specifically addressed the exact trust gap he has with starfleet.

season 1, "caretaker"

that's what he wanted them to do back home!

chakotay defends his starfleet uniform in the kazon scene that inspired this whole essay, and he believes what he's saying, because he's right: that's not what a starfleet uniform represents, either in theory or in practice. especially in the mid-24th century, regardless of the political issues, the federation and starfleet do not conquer planets or enslave alien cultures by force.

(of course, they wouldn't have helped the kazon free themselves either, but that's not the question on the table.)

to op's main question: it's an interesting (or boring?) doylist choice to make chakotay such a platonic ideal of a Starfleet Officer™️ (which, for the record, has always included going off-leash at the expense of one's career whenever ethics overwhelm regulations).

season 1, "prime factors"

star trek went to a lot of trouble to create the maquis for the voyager premise of two crews... and then quickly brady-bunch'd them into one happy family and let deep space nine wrangle the maquis problem instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

chakotay being so willing to put himself and his crew into starfleet uniforms (even though some members of both crews objected to it) cheated us out of some potentially rich drama, but it does hold water with what we see of him as a character on screen, and his relationship with starfleet. it has disappointed him, but he still believes that it's a force for good, and chakotay will always err on the side of seeing the good in something and thinking he can change it for the better from within.

--

tl;dr: chakotay is a starfleet officer by training and at heart, who was temporarily out of uniform because his family and tribe happened to be directly in the middle of starfleet's messiest ethical quagmire.

he made a personal, moral decision to join the maquis, not because he was anti-federation, but because that was the only way to protect federation civilians—which was part of his starfleet oath to begin with. he worked hard when he was younger to earn this uniform and i think, in spite of everything, he feels honestly proud to get to wear it again.

[horsechestnut]

I feel like the Next Generation writers learned the wrong lesson from season 4. Season 4 is great because of how character focused the stories are, but season 5 and so far 6 have had so much focus on character that it feels segmented. An episode ones, we learn this is an episode about one character, and then we see that character deal with things with maybe one other character. But I feel like what made Season 4 so good was the character focused stories where we saw them interact with each other. “Data’s Day”, for example, isn’t fantastic because it’s about Data, it’s fantastic because of the interactions we see between him and the rest of the crew. Meanwhile an episode like “Tapestry” is a great exploration of Picard’s character, but it’s not overly interesting because Picard is the only character present that we care about. It’s okay to have those episodes once and awhile, even in season 4 there are a few like that, but by this point it feels like it’s every single episode. It feels like we rarely see the whole crew just interacting with each other anymore.