resisting li Exacerangutan rakath idk who else

ds9 the station was originally going to be able to move around like a ship which. lol. ok.

People who Were Almost Sisko:

Peter Capaldi

Anthony Head

Richard Dean Anderson

James Earl Jones

(can you imagine)

Alexander Siddig

Almost Odo: Robert Patrick, who only didn't get the role because they were worried about terminator comparisons

Iggy Pop was almost a main actor on ds9

unknown as who

Vic Fontaine was almost played by Frank Sinatra Jr

Remember the episode of TNG with Bashir in it? That was originally Dax (which makes...900x more sense), but Terry FArrell wasn't available.

Peter Capaldi

Hooded Figure: I know

Vic Fontaine was supposed to get a human girlfriend

I...don't even know.

..didn't they do that the other way around in VOY

THEY SURE DID.

though, I mean

the EMH was more of a character than vic fontaine

Kira was originally going to have been A Cardassian All Along

The 30th Anniversary ep was originally going to be "Charlie X" and not "Trouble With Tribbles" related

I didn't like Vic Fontaine, largely because I felt like he was a reallyyyyy weird gap between Moriarty in TNG and EMH in VOY.

haha me either

apparently the sentiment is everywhere because they tried to make a Vic Fontaine show and the world went

"fuck you no."

EMH develops into a character pretty slowly over repeated usage. Just a natural evolution. Moriarty was a special case, accidentally programmed to be self-aware by Geordi's requirements

yes

Vic just...spontaneously is a person somehow

Vic Fontaine just............ IS a super self-aware hologram from his first appearance with absolutely no explanation and almost no one seems to notice it's even weird

like you've got a throwaway "wait, shouldn't this not be possible" line or two but that's it

So you have none of the explanation OR moral complexity of the other two options.

yeah it doesn't even make sense to me to put Vic in the same category

Vic Fontaine is this self-aware hologram who just conveniently has no dissatisfaction with his super limited life and presents no ethical problems for anyone

like, I guess bashir's friend just made a hologram and went "hey, you're a hologram" at it, and it was fine

he's just a holodeck character who knows he's a holodeck character

Yep

On Enterprise, Phlox was going to have turned out to have not been a doctor at all, but a vet

I have no idea how that would've worked or gone down

So it's weird and it's boring and it doesn't go anywhere in part because of what a late addition to the show he was, but there isn't even a, like, aborted character arc.

...I mean there's no reason really a simulation can't simulate knowing it's a simulation

Except that by the rules of the universe they don't, ever

and the other ones who do are immensely upset by it because it's an immensely upsetting thing

.......I mean if his world treats veterinary medicine as seriously as fully sapient people medicine, why not

well

Like there's a throughline from Moriarty to EMH that makes all kinds of dramatic narrative sense

Vic Fontaine is just this weird deviation on that line

that squiggles off to one side and doesn't accomplish anything and eventually returns to the original line

the question is, are they simulating someone who thinks they're real, learning that they aren't

Exacerangutan: well, there was a line about how he was expressly forbidden to treat humanoids

Archer was originally going to have been raised by Vulcans.

Which

or simulating someone who knows that aren't and is ok with it

canonicly doesn't work, so I see why they trashed it

None of them have ever been simulating a real person though

and I always figured he's just the latter

... oh, huh.

like EMH didn't think he was a real person ever

He didn't think he had real kids or anything

and Moriarty, as soon as he knew he was a hologram, also knew he was a fictional character

No, he knew he was a hologram. He wanted RIGHTS, but he didn't think he was a person

They don't experience existential horror because of what they've lost

Yeah

like they're ALSO important evolutions from Data

:: bookmarks to read more later, cause this is fascinating. ::

again there's a clear narrative throughline

......... //stares at his phone// ... it almost tricked me into sending a gif of a twerking bull

also I'm so sorry I'm completely derailing your list of interesting stuff that got changed

smartphones are so weird...

a twerking bull would never go amiss

Which is why episodes where they find out what happened to all the EMH1s in the alpha quadrant or the EMH accidentally clones himself into the future are important for their like

character growth

/nodnod

"Executives considered having a boy band featured in every episode of Enterprise."

....

I

PPFFFFF

did not think there was a way to make Enterprise MORE baffling

They were originally going to 7 of 9 Archer

ie: kill him off and replace him with someone quote-unquote sexier

._.

William Shatner was originally supposed to reprise Evil Kirk in the mirror universe episodes

but he was unavailable bc of a movie :/

that doesn't surprise me at all given how hard ENT tried to be The Sexy Star Trek

goddamn decon scenes

Remember how the finale of enterprise was a glorified tng episode

well

originally

it was going to be a glorified voyager episode

(though to be fair, the voyager version sounds WAY more awesome)

... huh

A glorified Voyager episode also would make... more sense, I think?

Which....is perhaps the first time I've said 'voyager' and 'awesome' in the same sentence

Admittedly it's a bit hard to imagine anyone on DS9 sitting around watching Enterprise, which is the conceit of the TNG episode right? That it's all a simulation Riker is watching to make a decision or something?

but to do it as a TNG episode feels kind of like disowning Voyager

"The episode originally involved the EMH treating a patient inside a holographic re-creation of the NX-01. The patient, also played by Scott Bakula, is totally convinced that he is, in fact, Jonathan Archer, and he needed the Doctor's help to get back to his own century. It also would have left it unclear as to whether the patient was Archer or not."

ooh

sobs

well, see, the TNG one has the problem that the enterprise episode takes place in the middle of a season 3 tng episode

.... /opens mouth

/closes mouth

Riker's having a very bad day is all

he hasn't slept for weeks I guess

(sorry Johnathan Frakes I mean no disrespect)

So like for no real apparent reason in that mission, troi and riker suddenly age 15+ years

of course someone brought up the screencaps for the compre

*compare

I'm by no means saying that this is in any way a good idea

but they could have set it in the episode with the little alien boy

who put Riker into a simulation where he was much older

that would've made sense

another pitched finale idea involved Nimoy reprising as Spock and having a chat with an older T'Pol

which...honestly, would've made for a neat Passing The Torch moment, but whatever upn

aww

yeah

I'm a sucker for TOS cameos tbh

If we got a season 5 of Enterprise, we would've gotten these things:

Jeffrey Comb's Shran as a main character

Phlox making 'frankenstein monsters'

a borg queen origin story

a time traveling Elderly Archer

(....someone watched quantum leap)

and oh

I almost forgot

Russell T Davies and BRannon Braga were working on a David Tennant/Who crossover

(god no)

...or maybe it was 9? I don't remember

.......I don't really get how the NX-01 simulation helped Riker anyway...

the Voyager one makes a lot more sense

Guinan would've appeared

yeah, it really had nothing to do with The Pegasus ep

and I'm not exactly a Voyager fan either :x

HERE HAVE SOME WHAT MIGHT'VE BEENS FOR TNG:

Wesley Crusher was originally a precocious teenage girl named Lesley and the product of an affair between Picard and Crusher

Sela, tasha's daughter, was originally going to be her daughter with The ONe Dude Whose Name I forget (Richard?) who was raised by Romulans, and she was originally going to face-heel-turn against the romulans and join the enterprise

Data was originally bio-mechanical (explaining how he could be infected by a virus in naked now)

OKSO

remember that ep where riker finds out he has an accidental transporter clone"?

well

ooh

ORIGINALLY

.......I like Lesley but IDK about the affair thing...

Riker was going to die

and Data would be the new first officer

with Transporter Clone taking Data's old job

D:

oh man

dang

that's bold son

Frakes apparently fought super hard for Riker to have a boyfriend, but alas

SUPER BOLD

That could have been awesome!

Which Riker? Is this related to the other thing or independent? And is this separate from when he wanted the nonbinary actor to be male?

Independent, and I don't know.

Possibly?

The episode where they meet a race of agender beings which was kind of an awkward turtle attempt to comment on trans issues with that kind of "what if a matriarchy society where men are oppressed" lens

Riker falls in love with one of them and they have a short doomed romance. Frakes fought to have the actor be male.

Riker with a Y?

I remember! I am not sure if it's the same fight, or a different one. I imagine probably the same.

/nodnod

Tom Paris was originally the same actor's TNG guest character Nicholas Locarno, who...is essentially the same character, background storywise but with more copyright baggage.

/nodnod

Year of Hell was originally going to be all of season four

but upn went "hahaha. hahaha. no."

ds9's bad guys were originally going to be the borg

I've always wondered tbh

why not just

and finally, because it's the last one I know but if others know things they should put them, Kira was originally Ensign Ro

make him Locarno

There was a rights issue

........ huh.

where they'd have to pay the writer who wrote that episode everytime they used him

though for the longest time they just claimed that "Locarno was irredeemable"

...... yeah IDK how I feel about the Kira=Ro thing...

you know

despite Paris and Locarno being THE SAME CHARACTER

ohhhh

ha yeah

but you know clearly one is more redeemable than the other

somehow

I'm a little surprised they couldn't work something out tbh, but

Yeah, they really LIKED the actress who played Ro

she was three different characters in TNG that they all tried to keep around and which were all super popular with the fans

Ro, and a female Vulcan who only showed up for one episode I think where Data got possessed by that guy

ahaha

and also Worf's not-wife

but the actress was really super not interested in being a regular cast member, I think?

So they created Kira

y, she didn't want to commit to scheduling

they also offered her ro on Voyager

In the DS9 pilot, you can kind of tell that she was written to be Ro

(instead of Paris)

I think the pilot was pretty much unchanged

but later Kira branches out and becomes a noticeably different character

and....honestly, you can tell with paris too that it was meant to be ro

/nodnod

I bet

bc he has that nick locarno background, but then also the

they're both a bit contentious but in very different ways

"defected to the maquis" background

(side note: I am now watching Chaos on the Bridge which is def still available on Netflix and really good so far)

(What I particularly like is that Shatner, who is the director/host/interviewer of the documentary, isn't attempting to present a unified truth at all.)

(He unapologetically plays clips of different people saying COMPLETELY contradictory things, and it works wonderfully.)

(It feels way more honest than if he had chosen a side to believe.)

Continuing on the popularity of that actress -- there's a whole novel about her Vulcan character. The one who was a minor character in ONE episode.

XD