Riker’s Biggest Flaw Was Just Bad Writing
TNG should have handled Number One’s career much more elegantly
Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Will Riker demonstrated a bundle of character flaws over the years.
Many of them, particularly involving his womanizing and his general approach toward women in general, can be chalked up to the time that the series’s time existed in during the late ‘80s, or sort of baked in from series creator Gene Roddenberry’s own dubious treatment of women.
None of these flaws can be blamed on the work of Jonathan Frakes, the actor who portrayed Riker.
Both in front of the camera — and later behind, as a skilled director of two films and a large number of episodes across multiple series — Frakes, in fact, has been one of the true MVPs of the franchise.
(Ironically, nervous to step back into the role of Riker for Star Trek: Picard, Frakes actually turned in one of the best performances of Picard’s third season and it was that performance that really helped ground that season and carry it until its heroic conclusion began to unfold.)
But one of the biggest knocks that would plague the character was his fear of leaving his post as first officer in order to take a starship command of his own.
This emerged as a key dramatic point in the epic, two-part, cliffhanger TNG episode, “Best of Both Worlds.”
Riker’s disinterest in leaving the Enterprise-D to captain his own starship was a dramatic device to help create conflict with Commander Shelby (Elizabeth Dennehy) and became a running part of the episode’s storyline.
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Only problem is that, in so doing, writer Michael Piller and the rest of the Next Gen creative team were writing themselves — and Riker — into an uncomfortable corner.
The problem was that TNG couldn’t actually give Riker his own command without writing a central and very popular character out of the series entirely.
That left Riker aboard the Enterprise, but wounded from a dramatic and narrative perspective.
It would result in fan backlash and complaints like the one aired in this video:
By focusing on his decision to give up the captaincy and remain as first officer, it made Riker appear indecisive, needlessly clingy towards Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) — and honestly more than a little impotent.
But again: it was the writers and producers who put the character in this box.
It was a problem they wouldn’t actually solve for years, until the very final TNG theatrical movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, when Riker finally accepted command of the USS Titan and married Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis).
The TNG production team should have seen what they were doing to weaken the Riker character, even during the series’s original run.
Simply, again, it seemed unlikely that they were ever going to write Riker and Frakes out of the series.
Piller, et al, should have either come up with a different device with which to create conflict in “Best of Both Worlds,” or at least devised some fairly elegant way out of that trap for the character that could have been written into a subsequent episode.
I just simply believe that all of the angst and animosity that fans have had for this “flaw” in Riker’s character over the years should have been better directed at the TNG team behind the scenes.
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