MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) Discussion > Riker is the most stagnate person of all...

Riker is the most stagnate person of all of Starfleet

posted 5 years ago by MickyMac (2938)
34 replies | jump to latest

He seems to be dangerously obsessed with being first officer of the Enterprise and being with Picard and terrified of moving away from his comfort zone and has turned down several captaincies because he just loves being on the Enterprise, we later learn his choosing to stay is having a damaging effect on up and coming candidates in Starfleet like in The Best Of Both Worlds who want to advance in their careers are held up by a man who will not move no matter how many ships he's offered, seems his only logic for staying because his friends are there, he's fond of the ship, he's fond of the captain and is just hanging around, some reason he's happy there and doesn't want to move. Think with all his constant passing up captaincies should have resulted in Starfleet comforting him and saying accept captaincy or sent you to cadet training school to train cadets or something.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Riker was pretty cool in the first couple of seasons but he just turned into more and more of a tool as it went on. I'm really hoping if he comes back in the new Picard series that he becomes a flat-out villain.

[–] MickyMac (2938) 5 years ago

Think him staying put would've resulted in him being kicked out of Starfleet.

[–] kwestmo (4114) 5 years ago

More like Picard's rent boy

[–] kwestmo (4114) 5 years ago

He never got over his crush on Picard

[–] PaladinNJ (20309) 5 years ago

As long as Picard was there, Riker would never be shunted out of the first officer position until he wanted to go. He was just too valuable an asset to let go. (From a practical purpose, the producers couldn't let Riker take another command because Jonathan Frakes was too much a fan draw to let go)

[–] aavfreak (2861) 4 years ago

As long as Picard was there, Riker would never be shunted out of the first officer position until he wanted to go. He was just too valuable an asset to let go

(From a practical purpose, the producers couldn't let Riker take another command because Jonathan Frakes was too much a fan draw to let go)

Both of these are perfectly reasonable conclusions. If they never showed a promotion opportunity, the fans would be on here asking why he was never offered a promotion to Captain and how it doesn't make sense.

They could have handled it better though. Make some reason why he couldn't get promoted, rather than just having him turn it down all the time. Maybe put him in an ambiguous no-win situation where he violates the Prime Directive, then Picard has to convince Starfleet to let him stay, so long as he remains First Officer on the Enterprise or some such thing.

[–] TexasJack (12515) 5 years ago

They might have appreciated a very experienced officer in the XO role since Enterprise is the Federation flagship and is always in the middle of the action. Speaking of Best of Both Worlds, if I were Riker I would have stayed put just to spite Lt. Cmdr. Shelby, who was an arrogant, presumptuous and insubordinate ass.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I couldn't stand Shelby, she almost single-handedly ruined the best Borg two-parter.

[–] TexasJack (12515) 5 years ago

And she was totally banging that old admiral to get ahead.

[–] strntz (10797) 5 years ago

LOL!

[–] TexasJack (12515) 5 years ago

Picard even noticed it. He said to the admiral "You seem rather taken with her."

[–] Otter (24464) 5 years ago

You know, they really should have covered that issue by having Riker fuck up or break regulations for some righteous reason, and have Picard heroically save his job and career by keeping him on against opposition. Maybe even have him demoted for part of a season.

Having Riker pass up promotion after promotion got to be a bit silly after a while, but if he had a big blot on his record that made promotion offers unlikely, everything would make sense.

[–] MickyMac (2938) 5 years ago

Being demoted back to commander would've been a more plausible excuse for staying like demoting Kirk back to captain for stealing and blowing up the Enterprise.

[–] CountJohn (579) 5 years ago

Yeah, I could maybe understand the reasoning early on if he'd prefer to be first officer on a big ship to being captain of a medium/small sized ship. But surely after the events of The Best of Both Worlds he could have gotten his own Galaxy Class ship. It started to stretch believability after a while especially in the movies where he'd been first officer for like 15 years. In TOS Spock was presumably promoted to captain after the five year mission which would have made sense.

[–] twinA (4826) 5 years ago

Given Riker's run in with section 31, they probably pulled some strings behind the scenes to ensure he would maintain his position within Starfleet while not appearing suspicious.

~~/o/

[–] MickyMac (2938) 4 years ago

This obsession with Picard and the Enterprise did blind him to more critical responsibilities. He was at an age where he should be captain, early on we did get the impression that he was at the end of his tenure as a commander.

[–] maximmm (3041) 4 years ago

There's a difference between being promoted when you want to, and refusing promotion because you don't want to leave your ship/crewmates. Spock got promoted only because the tv series was ended - lol. If TOS still kept going, Spock would still be first officer.

[–] MickyMac (2938) 4 years ago

Early on we did get the impression that he was quite close to the end of his tenure as a commander.

[–] Redsfan001 (6002) 4 years ago

His transporter twin doesn't have these issues.

[–] MickyMac (2938) 4 years ago

The transporter filtered out these character flaws.