Dude. Our Ensign's Log Podcast DEPENDS on the underdeveloped characters in Star Trek!

It was touched on incredibly briefly in one episode, but I wish they had taken a closer look at the fact that back home, among full Betazoids, Deanna has a disadvantage that's practically a disability, but out in Starfleet where she chooses to work, she has an advantage. As a person with disabilities I found that fascinating, and I would have enjoyed watching them explore that idea.

I used to jokingly call Harry Kim "the world's toughest redshirt" 'cause he was always getting his ass kicked on away missions.He even technically died a couple of times. And he STILL didn't get promoted by the end of the show.

Garrett Wang apparently went to the producers and asked why his character wasn't getting a promotion. The answer he got was "But who's gonna be the Ensign? We need an Ensign."

Harry was a stone-cold badass with more emotional strength than most of the crew put together. One episode that stands out is when the ship is passing through a starless void: everybody else was going stir-crazy and he was just sitting on the bridge composing clarinet pieces. Janeway lucked out with him because if he had been less intrinsically motivated he would have checked out after 3-4 years of zero acknowledgement.

The absolute worst part about Harry not getting promoted was the fact that Paris was demoted and then got his rank back. Harry even commented on how he wasn't promoted!

I am pleased to always remember Uhura, under her console, rewiring stuff, telling Spock to sod off and leave her alone to do her job. And Spock leaving in a huff.

Concerning Troi: She did have that one episode where she infiltrated the Tal Shiar, though...that was awesome.

I just had a thought. In the Kelvin Timeline Uhura could speak Klingon, Romulan and a few other unnamed languages, and had superhuman hearing abilities that even Superman could envy. What if in TOS Uhura had the same ability and lost it when Nomad wiped her memory. It would explain why she couldn't speak Klingon in The Undiscovered Country, and why she became heavily reliant on the universal translator...

One of my favorite Uhura moments is when she needs to do that re-wiring of the ships communication system and Spock tells her how confident he is in her ability. I can’t remember what episode it was, but it was a great moment.

Pulaski wasn't beamed into space, she stepped into an empty turbolift shaft.

I think Ziyal is more of a wasted potential than Ezri. With Ezri's character they did all they could in one season. With Ziyal they did not bother. We can see how other characters in the show seem to care about her, but it's difficult to care about her as a viewer. She seems nice and she has a few scenes where she seems intelligent and funny, but not enough to become an interesting character. It's a pity because she was important to Kira, Garek and Dukat, but not really to the viewers. A half Cardassian half Bajoran character seems great on paper. A huge wasted potential.

I think Porthos could've had a more well-rounded character arc; his most interesting development was when he turned into a Rottweiler in the mirror universe!

In Enterprise, I was very disappointed at how Ensign Hoshi Sato was a greatly written characters with a few interesting episodes at the beginning. But then they just choose not to use her character much anymore.

As far as Harry Kim is concerned, one thing that always came to mind for me is that there was a huge opportunity wasted with his big thing being Tom's Best Friend. I would have liked Harry to have developed a BFF relationship with B'Lanna instead. Literally his first major character interactions were with her on the Caretaker's Array and later on they always worked well together and played well off of each other whenever they had episodes together. That could have made for some really great character development for both of them.

Personally, I think Keiko was the most underutilized character on DS9. Which is odd when you consider how hard they worked to get couples together on the show for story purposes, and how well used everyone else was. And then Keiko just kind of fades into Mrs O’Brien instead of Keiko pretty early on, and just shows up to usually fight with Miles. And come on, you know it was Harry. I think even Chakotay has more wasted potential than Travis, and Chakotay is practically 3D compared to Ensign Kim.

I never even realized that Harry Kim did not get promoted during his time on Voyager. The Captain even let him be in charge of the Captain chair(I can not remember what the correct term for watching the ship on the bridge when that Captains not there) during the night shift.

DS9 was written so well that even secondary characters were so fleshed out that they had their own episodes.

As much as Bones was a main staple of the original series, I’m a firm believer of his character being incredibly under utilised.

I think almost every character on Voyager should be high up on the wasted potential list. Chakotay's base premise in particular could have made for a very interesting character if built upon properly. Instead we got... what we got.

Another underdeveloped character on TNG was Chief O'Brien. He seemed to shift in rank and duty throughout his early stint on the show, more due to their lack of continuity than just lazy writing. Also, his most established characteristic was being the married guy who becomes a father. I'm just glad they gave him some proper character moments in DS9.

I must respectfully dissent when it comes to Ensign Ro. As you point out, the producers (okay, Ron Moore) wanted to develop her more on DS9, but Michelle Forbes didn't want to commit. I don't think we can say that's "wasted" potential so much as "lost" potential. And while I can't disagree with anything you said about Troi, I think Dr. Crusher was also pretty thoroughly wasted. How would you describe her character beyond "she's a doctor" and "she's Wesley's mom"? Troi got her "badass Tal'Shiar spy" episode and her "I'm in command of the ship" episode (where she faced off with Ro), and Beverly got a "faking an orgasm with a space ghost" episode. To me it's a toss-up. Still, let me say I'm in agreement with pretty much everything else, especially the Harry Kim thing. Compare DS9's treatment of Ensign Nog to Voyager's treatment of Ensign Kim (oh wait you did that). And is it disturbing that nearly all of the "wasted potential" characters are PoC or women or both? I'll let you decide. But the answer's yes.

Steve: Which character has the most wasted potential? Me: He's going to rant about Voyager. Steve: *rants about Voyager* Me: *Stuffing popcorn in my face and loving it* Called it.

The really sad thing is that Uhura was in 70 of the 78/9 episodes, more than any other character except the big three (even more than Scotty) and was sidelines the most.

We actually see Troi's wasted potential turned around in her appearance on ST:Picard. Gone are the setups to her psychic abilities, and she's just able to know and empathize with Picard and Soji in a much more natural way. She counsels both Picard and Soji, giving both of them reasons to begin to trust each other, although Kestra helps with Soji, as well. Best of all, she was written as a person, not just a T&A character as she was throughout much of TNG. If this version of the character was in the show, we wouldn't be asking if Guinan would have actually been a better counselor than Deanna. As for her personal life, with just a few lines, we know exactly how much it hurts that she's lost her son, and how much she loves her daughter. We see that she still loves her friend Jean-Luc and would help him any way she could. We also see that Troi and Riker's romance shouldn't have waited until the second-to-last movie to start up again. Her detour in dating Worf should have been spent rekindling her spark with Will. That's a character development arc that was introduced in the pilot and should have been paid off by the series finale.

Oh, you forgot one series! Star Trek: The Animated Series is often forgotten (like you had noted before!), and only having a handful of half-hour episodes meant that a lot of character development wasn't possible. But TAS did add bridge officers that were distinctly non-human: M'Ress, a cat person (voice by Majel Barrett), and Arex, a humanoid with a third arm in his chest (voiced by James Doohan). It was an interesting idea to do this, but they were really just background characters that fared worse than even the previous supporting cast in the cartoon. But man, while M'Ress got a little bit of something (I think she flirted with Scotty in an episode?), they literally did *nothing* with Arex. So it seemed like a *bit* of wasted potential. But heck, in the end even the three-armed random animated guy bit player probably got a better deal than Travis.

THANK YOU for saying Harry. It's so hard to watch him sit on the sidelines the whole time. He could have become an iconic actor for Asian Americans, just like George Takei. Sigh...

It's a shame that the Voyager concept didn't get put off until the current era of ST shows. I think they'd be willing to serialize it, go darker and actually create genuine story and character arcs that were very powerful. Voyager's concept is still a fantastic one but the alien/medical/pickle of the week format definitely kept it from reaching its true potential of a lonely, stranded ship far from home.

When it comes to characters who got the most unexpected development I think the DS9 Farengi in general especially Rom got good treatment, it's hard to imagine at the start how all their stuff would end up being such a large side part of the show.

RE: Discovery, I'd make the argument for Detmer over Owosekun for similar reasons to why Harry and Travis had the most wasted potential on their shows. Detmer had a built in arc regarding her past with Burnham. It was implied early on in the show that Detmer did not like Burnham due to the events of the Battle of the Binary Stars which sets up some real potential for a character arc surrounding how the two of them cope with serving together again. I know some of that ground was already covered by Saru, but it's pretty much never touched on again and by season two we're seeing the two of them getting along reasonably well (probably thanks to both being friends with Tilly) with the potential for tension quietly forgotten about. Plus they gave her some fancy prosthetic.

The whole "TV executives prevented a female second in command" was quite well refuted in "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story" by Robert Justman - the execs definitely wanted females in prominent roles, they just didn't want Roddenberry (a married man) casting his mistress there! Of course, Gene could hardly tell Majel that, so the "meddling executives" story was born.

I was also very confused by Uhura having her memory erased. When she's being re-schooled she is speaking Swahili, so are we to believe she's had her memory erased except for early childhood? Even then, how the hell is she supposed to be educated enough to be a Star Fleet officer within the incredibly short amount of time given? If they can educate people from child level to Star Fleet officer level so quickly we should see a lot of very young Star Fleet officers.

RE: Harry's rank I'm reminded of Father Mulcahy in MASH. Even he got a few episodes devoted to him being frustrated about his rank.

Agreed the heck out of this. I only take issue with the claim that Uhura was the only female cast member in TOS. I would say that Yeoman Rand and Nurse Chapel were just as prominent in the series, (or at least the first season) even getting their own episodes. It is only the movies that demoted their status in the cast.

I have watched all of Enterprise twice and when you got to it I thought Hosie, not because it was right, but because I forgot that Mayweather existed. A shame because he's a good concept for a character. He wasn't just the fresh faced young man. He had grown up in space and if they wrote him that way could have known more about living on a spaceship than anyone on the crew. Imagine if they had bothered to write a character who was both the lowest ranking person on the bridge as knowing more about many of the situations they were going into than the captain.

I'm a dipshit talking about star trek while wearing the cap of a fictional baseball team. This is why I enjoy your videos. You don't take it too seriously, and you're able to maintain perspective.

I'd actually argue Wesley deserves at least an honourable mention for TNG

Uhura definitely! Once i saw Uhura’s skills in the mirror universe, I knew they were desperately wasting Nichelle Nichols talent. Next definitely Pulaski, her character had the most potential for growth.

I totally called Travis from the start. I loved the guy, he was such a happy, enthusiastic character, more of a puppy than Porthos, and he had the weird position of being both the rookie, and the person with the most experience in space of anyone. He could have got a lot of mileage out of that paradox, but then they basically dumped him front and centre on the bridge where he was apparently expected to be very quiet and to pretend he didn't exist. Also, the Harry Kim promotion thing got so much more egregious after the Equinox two-parter "Equinox". Janeway suddenly gets this dump of a handful of new crew, all of whom are in the shit for being murderers, including at least one new ensign (Marla Gilmore), and Janeway couldn't make them take over whatever Ensign-level scut work that Harry had to be doing so she could reward what is probably the most accomplished ensign in the history of Starfleet with a nominal increase in rank? REALLY? Hell, by the end of the franchise, Seven had more authority than Kim, and she wasn't even commissioned. Alas, poor Harry.

Once Tom Paris gets demoted, then promoted again, I just threw my hands up in frustration. He gets the chance to be the captain of a cloaked ship in “Nightengale”, and I was strongly hoping he’d just take the captaincy, and like the Last Starfighter, rebuild the legion.

YES, Travis Mayweather was THE most underutilized and underdeveloped character in ALL of Star Trek. There is one particular episode of Enterprise where T'Pol is chasing a fugitive and Archer and Mayweather are helping her. Archer's involvement was COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY. This was a perfect opportunity to develop Travis as a character. Or the episode "minefield"; Sulu, Riker, Ro, Crusher, Rager, Paris, & Dax could NEVER fly a starfleet vessel through a cloaked Romulan minefield, with a mine attached to the hull while the captain and weapons officer are EVA on the hull disarming that mine! In my book that makes Travis Mayweather THE BEST pilot in all of Star Trek!!

The Trill, as a whole culture, were badly neglected in DS9. The series explores Bajorans, Cardassians, Ferenghi, the Dominion, but strangly we learn hardly anything about the Trill, even though there are two main characters. They are just like humans with spots and symbionts, and I feel both Jadzia's and Ezri's character are suffering from that, Jadzia being like a Klingon with spots...

Tora Ziyal..."in terms of execution." I see what ya did there.

From a potential story perspective I feel as though Troi's potential was honestly the biggest waste in the franchise for one reason. Sure Travis and Harry could have had a lot of character growth through their respective series we didn't get to see, but we've had the 'New Blood' story many times before, including IRL since that's something we can experience ourselves really depending on our place in life. But exploring the depths of what it could mean to be Psychic, and better yet, what it means to be a little Psychic fish swimming in a big Psionic pond, all the while surrounded by even smaller fish who aren't Psychic at all. All the different experiences she would have to translate to people who can't feel them on their own, all the different phenomena she alone would have to deal with, or perhaps only be able to deal with, the way she might be closer to the universe than her peers, and what that might mean for her opinion of them and their kind as opposed to hers. What sort of culture and philosophy would a species of Psychic beings have in regards to other races who in their eyes are basically crippled? Lacking in a fundamental sense to really thrive in the universe? We got bits and pieces of that sort of thing, but it felt very surface level, I suppose a proper exploration of such themes would have taken the entire show in a completely different direction, although with the likes of the Borg and Q's lessons already delving into what it means to be a person, that look into Psychics and how all things considered they may as well be the next stage of sapient evolution considering the 'Higher Beings' all being esoteric and with great personal power over the cosmos, it really wouldn't have been out of place IMO.

RE: TNG, I have to put my foot down here and stand up for Ensign Sonya Gomez. She started out as a very promising addition to the cast. Surrounded by the best of the best on the Enterprise she comes across as a more down to earth, relatable character, she's actually excited to be assigned to the enterprise, eager to impress the senior crew, if not a bit clumsy and awkward making mistakes. She basically acts like how one of us would if given the chance to serve on the enterprise, a very down to earth relatable character whose ideas eventually get reused in Barkley and Tilly. What really upsets me though is for one, she's the only Latina character I can think of out of all of Star Trek until Rios came along THIS YEAR (though granted I'm just finishing DS9 now so there's still room for me to be wrong here). For a show priding itself on its diversity and inclusiveness, it's surprising to see them barely work to have more racial representation than TOS, especially given the state of the world and how important representation can be (where's my Muslim character, my trans character who isn't an alien trill, an African character FROM Africa). Outside of that she had really REALLY good chemistry with Geordi, proving that the writers could have given him a meaningful relationship WITHOUT making him a creepy weirdo, it's clear the writers had plans to make her a love interest for La Forge in the couple episodes they had of her and once those plans fell through she was just gone. Hell, she was important enough to get introduced alongside the god damn Borg! She could have been the Tilly of the TNG era if the writers just stuck to their guns and found a way to keep her on, but I guess once you spill coffee on the Captain you're out the airlock.

I don't know how common this knowledge is, but Deanna Troi was not originally a "mental health professional." Her title was "counselor" because she was the Captain's "counsel" (or military adviser) which is why she was sitting on the bridge next to him. In season 2 they realized how difficult it was to write for her without most of her lines being "I'm sensing..." so they started to shift her towards being more of a therapist, although that didn't mean "I'm sensing..." went anywhere, really.

re: troi , "...almost never actually said or did anything intelligent or useful" lol i love it. her episode on picard is a great example of how good the character could be .

I agree about Pulaski. They could've brought her back for guest spots. Ensign Ro actress did not want to carry on. Kira is a continuation.

Agree on Harry Kim. He was established to either transform and become a more important character or doesn't transform and doesn't make it. But VOY producers chose an odd middle ground where he dies but doesn't change, weird.

I thought the MACOs in enterprise, or at least their CO could have had a bit more development. Or an episode of their own.

3:56 “Like, remember in ‘The Changeling’, when Nomad wipes Uhura’s memory, and she *never gets it back*?” *YES*, I remember that. It’s bugged me ever since I saw that episode. I don’t know if it’s a sexist thing saying that she doesn’t actually need any specialized skills to do her job, or what.

Uhura lost out a lot. Do you have any idea the kind of technical expertise a communications officer requires? She should have been brilliant. Instead she just told the men in charge who was calling.

Because of the on going nature of Discovery and Picard, I only feel confident considering the characters who’s arcs are closed. For Picard, I think the winner is Dahj. She’s set up as a potentially interesting character, but that potential is sacrificed to kick off Picard’s hero’s journey. For Disco, I think the argument can be made for the prime universe versions of its season one captains. We spend an episode and a half with Georgiou prime, and then the writers spend some time •telling• us she was exceptional instead of having shown us that she was; which I thinks really hurts the impact of meeting her mirror universe counterpart. But that’s still better than Lorca prime got. This is a character we never meet, we just get someone pretending to be. All we every really know about him is a few fleeting mentions by Admiral Cornwell about how the man she had known was different. No flashbacks. No Short Trek. Nothing. Such a wasted character.

~18:00 there's an episode when Paris gets a promotion and Harry mentions "I didn''t find a box on my chair", guess he never gets one.

On Uhura's wasted potential: I agree with what you're saying completely but at least some of the problems with her character development are due to the limitations of the way television shows were written at the time. All shows were one off episodes, written by separate writers. The Original series is more like an anthology centered around the same characters and situations, rather than a modern series with plot continuity and series long story arcs. Shows only develop the characters that this week's writing team want to write about and the show runners would balk at a story that gave too much time to a secondary character. Apparently so did William Shatner. There's a story that Shatner tossed a fit when Spock started getting as much attention as he was. Spock was originally intended to be a second tier character, like Mr Scott or Mr Sulu. The fans were the main reason that Spock started coming up to the front of the stories.

Nowhere Man was an awesome show! It would be so cool if you did a episode about it. I even have the DVDs.

DS9 is so superior that they intentionally wrote in a character with wasted potential that is the most interesting being in the galaxy. I love you Morn!

Well, if it makes you feel any better, Uhura did take over the Enterprise in that animated series episode where the male characters were all besotted by the space sirens.

For wasted Characters in TNG i ve one Question. What about Guinan? I mean what do we know about her? She is not a normal "creature" . Why Q seems to feel uneasy in the presenece of Guinan. I think there is so much more potential with Guinan. Hopefuly we get much more development in Star Trek Picard Season 2

I would like to point out one character on DS9 who had literally unlimited potential and never got their fair share of spotlight. Full of wisdom, wit and charisma, a true friend to his friends, a ladies' man yet always respectful, with loads of awesome stories to tell yet we never see any of them fully explored. Plus he is also hilarious, but not in a goofy way and he would have made a great representative of a species whose culture we still have to further explore. I get it that with him already having some of the series' most memorable dialogue the showrunners were probably worried he might overshadow the main cast, but I do not think it would have been too much to ask to have at least one episode to focus on the true lad that is Morn.

A friend of mine met Garret Wang at a comic con in England a few years ago and asked why he was never promoted. Wang replied that basically somebody HAD to be the ensign and thats why...

The rank issue with Harry Kim is a general issue I have with Star Trek - Data should’ve been a Commander by First Contact, dammit! - but here’s where TV & reality can clash. In a military structure people get promoted and/or move on to new postings all the time but we want to see our characters stick around. Saru for Captain!

Picard in Picard imo. His name is the show's name and he does a little bit but he often felt like he didn't belong on the show. Just along for the ride. Also Elnor. Epic and tragic backstory; just wings swords and that's it.

Ok, I know it will never happen but I want to just hang out and binge DS9 with you. Out of all my Trek friends throughout my entire lifetime I have never met one that had DS9 as their best Trek and damnit I want to watch it with someone who shares my love for it! Added bonus you just seem like a cool dude to hang out with, and thanks again for these amazing vids.

"The classic Trek crew made some movies...did you know about this?" loooool.

There might well have been more development of the Ensign Ro character. Unfortunately, Michelle Forbes declined a role in DS9. What a loss. That was a great character.

Nice shout out to the RLM Star Wars reviews. I love those reviews for both their humor and their actual film criticism. Thanks for another video, I love your content!

Am on season 6 of DS9 and unless something drastically changes would say the character they wasted was... Keiko O' Brien. She was a botanist and a schoolteacher. The latter lasted all of one season. The only thing they've done with her since then,for the most part,is ship off to Bajor on botanical expeditions.

I thought Pulaski fell into the turbolift shaft.

Yeah, Spock had a half-brother and adopted sister... and who knows how many other family members. Smells of desperation in the writing room.

Ezrai's love triangle with Worf and Bashir would have been an interesting platform. I would have pictured it as the Dax symbiote loved Worf, but Ezrai herself loved Bashir.

I always felt Harry Kim was deliberately picked on by the writers. No promotion for you, Harry and don't even try to have a relationship with a woman.

I, for one, am shocked and appalled that you didn't mention M'Ress from The Animated Series. For shame...

It's strange. Dr. Pulaski had more development in one season than Dr. Crusher had in six seasons. Pulaski actually had a character arc over the course of Season 02, in regards to her relationship with Data. At the start of the season, Pulaski views Data as nothing more than a machine that only looks human, but as the season progresses, she slowly changes her views and by the end of the season, she views Data as her equal. It's not much, but it's more than Beverly Crusher got over the course of SIX SEASONS.

Amusingly, in the still of Detmer you had on screen when you say she was friends with Airiam, the blonde sitting next to her is Lieutenant Nilsson, played by Sarah Mitich - who played Airiam in series 1...

Surely O’Brien is a main character that never progresses, he is a chief petty officer in TNG and still in the same rank in the final episode of DS9. I know O’Brien would have refused being an officer, but shouldn’t he been made a warrant officer (the highest non-commissioned rank)

The only character i can think of from ds9 who appeared more than once but didnt have their own arc or episode was the personal assistant to grand nagus zeck. I could argue that the guy never spoke and argue that it is hard to make an episode about them, but they managed it with morn! (Though admittedly he was absent from most of ‘who mourns for morn’). The fact that almost every character who appears more than once had a story revealing background or an arc is an impressive feat!

the beginning of the opening credits is Harry being like "promote me, janeway or i'll fly us into the fucking sun!"

A badly underutilized NextGen character is Ben, the waiter in Ten Forward. He appears in only one episode, "Lower Decks," but he radiates charisma and steals every scene he's in.

Yes to all. ENT- The interesting thing about Travis is that he has more experience in space than anyone else on the ship. But he needs to learn how to be an officer and how to lead people. TOS- Uhura- I think it is important to mention that Nichelle Nichols wanted to leave the show because she was tired just sitting there and answering the phone as you discussed, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her to stay saying even if you don't say anything, just you being there on the bridge is so important to the cause of civil rights. TNG- Troi- Yes! Troi and Riker were the ones who gave the promotions! So she is essentially the 3rd most powerful person on the ship... And the worst part is even when she did have episodes they usually featured Lwaxana too, so I never liked them. DS9- Ezri Dax. Yes, I think Ezri Dax is great. Is it wrong to say I like her better than Jadzia...well, I do. VOY- Harry is such wasted potential. He was even going to be written out wasn't he? I forget the details but there was that cliffhanger where he was dying and I remember reading that he almost did.

I’m certain you’ve already done a video addressing this, but it seems like Guinan took a lot of the potential Troi had. Like, they operated in the same space. Kim’s rank bothered me since it seemed he started out working above his rank, yet he can’t get a promotion? Really weird. I think that was more of a “behind the scenes” thing why his character got shafted.

Star treks aggressively episodic approach is something I've found harder to enjoy as I've gotten older. The primary creed was to always have everything reset by the start of the next episode. Each story is self contained to a fault. When DS9 and enterprise becomes more serialistic is when I enjoy it the most.

god man i've only just discovered you but i love you. throughout your closing statement, i was just deadpanning "it's mayweather .... it's mayweather .... it's mayweather ..." and then you're just like "it's travis." YUP!

I feel like Guinan (spelling?) had a lot of wasted potential too.

DS9 has so much untapped potential. Hngh I miss it so.

That was the fastest thirty minutes EVER! You kept my attention, you made me nod furiously in agreement, and actually made me giggle --- twice! Great episode! Thank you very much!

From one of the Discovery-Books, we kinda-sorta-know (since the books are not canon, it's just "kinda-sorta-know') that Detmer is born in Düsseldorf, Germany. Gotta say, as a German, it might be nice to have a supporting character in Trek being from your place of birth.

I think it’s quite interesting that with older Trek shows, it’s a main character who gets the most wasted potential title, but with Discovery and Picard, it’s the recurring cast character who is most wasted. It makes me wonder if perhaps new Trek writers have noted the issues of wasted story potential of the past and worked to make sure that their main cast all got something interesting 🤔 And with Owo and Detmer, and with Laris and Zhaban, I think future seasons of both shows will actually deliver on giving more of them story points. Given that Discovery has shed some of its former main characters in the past, I think it leaves room for Owo and Detmer to fill in the spots. And given Laris and Zhaban’s popularity over season 1, no doubt the writers have taken notice and will bring more of them into season 2. I have good feelings about both shows.

Wesley Crusher and the Traveler. That was a series just waiting to happen.

I think that Lieutenant Hawk deserved a mention from the TNG movies. I've always been curious about him.

A meeting between Worf's brother Kurn and his adoptive human brother Nikolai could've been interesting.

Actually you forgot Uhurah's technical skill. In one episode, for one scene (don't recall which episode) she's single handedly fixing the whole comm system. Sadly she's not doing it fast enough, to Spock's annoyance (the scene is pretty shit, honestly, but it establishes that she keeps stuff running apparently more than we see). I'm not saying she wasn't wasted, I'm saying you just forgot that bit.

Was that a slight jab at RedLetterMedia's hackfraud-in-Chief Mike Stoklasa in the beginning? Let's not forget they have Internet superstar Rich Evans from the Ellen Show on their channel - a sign of pure superiority! Oh how I would love a debate between Steve, Mike, and Rich about Star Trek! By the way, I always liked Ro Laren and would have loved to have seen her becoming a main character.

I'll tell you at least the most undervalued Tom Paris. The man starts off mainly as a pilot , takes on duties as a field medic, assists Belana with engineering, oh and designs a whole new shuttlecraft from spare parts oh did I mention he accomplished Transwarp? By the time he made it back to Alpha Quadrant he should be a dam captain himself.

Totally right about Travis, but to me for the wrong reasons. Travis was our gateway to the unexplored area of trek; non-starfleet humans in space. He was Boomer, so might have been young and not as tech savvy or proper as much of the crew, but had likely spent more time around aliens and in space than the captain! That dynamic, young Frontiersman now army scout, almost writes itself.

After Picard you're going to say Voyager had the most wasted potential of the entire franchise? Dude.... I mean, if it weren't for those two Romulans the ENTIRE CAST would have been that. Apart from Data. WHEN did Seven even have a scene with her new love interest!? Also yes, definitely Travis.

Ro Laren had so much more potential than TNG gave her. It's nothing short of a crime that she never appeared on either DS9 of VOY. But, ultimately that lays at the feet of actress Michelle Forbes. Wouldn't have been cool if there had been a story where the newly recruited -to-the Maquis, Ro Laren had rescued Tom Riker from the Cardassian penal colony? They they just fall in love and run off together. Has no one ever thought of a story like that? The fanfic gauntlet has been thrown down. Get to it!

Ezri definately grew on me. At first I was a bit resistant, cos nothing could replace Jadzia. But once they gave her a bit of time, she really was her own person. I woulda loved to see where she went. She was a young character, so presumably she had another 30-40 years of Starfleet ahead of her and could have easily have been ported into another series, had there been a follow up series to the events of DS9

I've mentioned this elsewhere but I definitely feel like Troi was a character they didn't know what to do with. Psychiatry and therapy were booming in this time period but nobody knew enough or maybe could be bothered to research enough to build her role. Also the role of a counselor does not led itself to episodic storytelling. There's no quick fixes so to show her treating anyone and doing her job would require ongoing cuts to her doing it mid show and wouldn't let episode of the week stories to be self contained. However, Ezri shows us that even in self contained episodes, you can have stories focused on a phsycologist type character. She treats Nog, Garruk and even assists in profiling and catching a killer. It would have been nice to see some ongoing story arcs but considering how late they added her they didn't have the time to build that up so I can forgive them this.

I want a new Trek show with bisexual silver fox Captain Harry Kim, finally over Tom Paris and kirking his way across the universe.