Not to get too far afield from laughing at Wil Wheaton, the behind the scenes stuff that has come out over the years from the first three or four years of TNG is really interesting. Between Roddenberry sniffing his own farts and deciding an unrealistic future where men had perfected themselves to the viper's nest that was the producers and how they drove the best writers away to how catty the actors have been over the years makes for some compelling reading.
I'm saddened to learn Wil listens to Soma.fm. Hopefully he donates...
I absolutely can and will, simply because they showed up.
"His mom is really fucking hot and I was trying to get into that uniform."
It actually makes sense in a way. The USS Enterprise D wasn't just a military vessel. It was more like a roaming military/science base/embassy. Normally housed 1000 crew and family members, and I guess in roddenberry's ideal future entire families of starfleet personnel would venture off into the unknown... full of danger the entire time. Same thing with DS9, if you think of it like an overseas US military base in South Korea or something, it makes more sense. It's also why the Enterprise D had the saucer separation thing, so if it actually was needed for a strictly military operation they could leave the saucer section with all of the civilian and non combatant workers at a base/port/whatever and pick them up later. On top of that, it was supposed to house 12-15k people "comfortably" for a rescue operation, and more if absolutely necessary(on cots in cargo bays, etc.) as a disaster relief vessel. Remember, Starfleet wasn't purely a "military" organization by that point. It was practically a space UN cruise ship really. Voyager, the NX-01, originaly 1701, and 1701-A on the other hand were around the size of the drive section of the Enterprise D.
Clearly something had changed. Obviously in TV, show formats had changed somewhat. TOS was very much a Kirk/Spock/McCoy with the other six being recurring characters while on TNG the show was designed as an ensemble show color TV was the norm so the brighter colors of TOS gave way to a more muted color palette, the sets could no longer look like a studio backlot in late 1960s Burbank, and we had fewer and fewer human aliens in favor of forehead aliens. But something else had changed. TOS was very much an action show, which reflected the late 60s, where Kirk would just as readily throw fists and shoot a phaser and fire photon torpedoes as the next guy. And Picard was supposed to be an older, more reflective Kirk-type character while Riker was supposed to be a younger and more brash Kirk-type character. But TNG didn't have the same kind of action. Worf would get thrown around like a rag doll just to show us how dangerous the badguy was, but Riker rarely got into a fistfight. Kirk would gladly admit humanity was still striving to be better and would keep trying while Picard would pretty much just pontificate about how humanity got it all figured out (in the space of 80 years or so). The emotional drama of Spock working through his problems to get to the point where he could fix the technological hurdle was replaced with LaForge just running a diagnostic and then [TECHNOBABBLING] the [TECHNOBABBLE]. They even brought on Guinan as Picard's confidant, which essentially gave her Troi's job.
TOS was based off the idea Starfleet is a future Space Navy. By the Motion Picture Gene wanted Starfleet to be of a Futuristic Version of NASA. Hence why the Enterprise-D had families. After Gene's Death Berman and the writers notably Ronald D. Moore made Starfleet see the folly in that when they redesigned the Fleet post Wolf 359 with the new ships not having family spaces and being for Starfleet Officers and Enlisted only even creating the Defiant Starfleet's 1st war ship. Voyager had some kids on it only because they were lost in the Delta Quadrant and Naomi was born on the ship and the Borg kids were refugees. Voyager wasn't built to have kids on board though.
That's an interesting point I hadn't really considered. We know that the other actors were in the middle of a three-way tug-of-war with them and the writers and the producers from the beginning. Wheaton was 14 or so when he was thrown in the middle of a real toxic situation and was the only kid his age. And we know once Roddenberry was basically kicked off his own show Berman changed a lot of the dynamics and I guess didn't give Wheaton the same latitude Roddenberry had. He was probably a little resentful and it showed (because that's how teenagers are) and Berman gave it right back to him. There's the story about Wil asking for a particular episode off so he could go shoot some movie, Berman told him no, and Wil missed the movie. Just to rub salt in the wound, Berman made Wil sit that particular week out anyway for daring to ask for it off in the first place. Who knows, though? That could just be Wheaton's take on it where he's the victim, but a lot of Hollywood producers have a mean streak a mile wide and don't hesitate to stomp on actors.
That's fair, although I never took the TOS or TNG Starfleets to be exclusively Navy or NASA as much as something like the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th century. They were a military when they needed to be, supported scientific, or diplomatic, or colonial operations, or law enforcement, or anti-slavery, or whatever else the Crown or Parliament needed them to do at any particular moment.
I grew up watching Dr. Who in the 80s in NYC. Channel 31 UHF was leased to the BBC. Evenings we watched Dr. Who, Later on at night was Benny Hill. Also a good diet of Blake's 7. I was the weird kid in school who talked about TV shows no one ever heard of lol. That's what happens when your dad is an anglophile.
There's a bit of a fandom-gag that after Berman took over, really attractive females started appearing as the helm officers - almost like an apology, "we're sorry for Wesley, have some eye candy."
God I always hated that shit as a kid because I got the impression he was a simp, violating rules to favor the son of the redhead doctor he was banging (ngl I thought she was a hot milf at the time lol)
Rager was fine af and my favorite but all of them were fit
Agreed, Wheaton has a similar mental disease to Boogie2988's.
De Lancie (Q) gets more invites than Wil.
