Whether you think of him as Commander Riker, Number One, or Beardo Numero Uno, there’s no denying the omnipresence of William Thomas Riker in the collective consciousness of science fiction fans. We’ve watched him grow a beard, lean on people’s consoles, put his leg up at inappropriate times, and sometimes murder helpless people in cold blood.
And when you start to break it all down, Riker’s kind of a creepy weirdo. Here are 5 reasons why he’s a little scary, and why he probably wouldn’t have friends in real life.
5. Riker is an On-Purpose Loser
It would be easy to say Riker is frightening because he’s some sort of plotting, scheming asshole, but that would give him too much credit. Riker is mostly unaware of his lameness. And it’s in his “normalcy” that Riker makes one uncomfortable. Consider the notion of him passing up numerous promotions. He always says something to the effect that “serving on the Enterprise is great,” or “I really love it here.” Riker not leaving the Enterprise when he clearly has the resume and years of experience under his belt is like those 40-something guys who hang out in college towns and flirt with college kids at the bar. If you only go to that bar once, the funny older guy might seem cool, but if you live there, you know he’s sort of a loser.
4. Riker Acts Highly Unprofessional When People Simply Disagree With Him
When Riker has very reasonable work-related debates with people like Shelby, Ro, or Captain Jellico, he makes a REALLY big deal out of it, and these outbursts are rarely professional. He threatens poor Shelby, outright stops showing up to work with Jellico, and constantly harasses poor Ro, to the point where she should press charges. Whenever Riker is in charge of the ship in Picard’s absence, you rarely see him conferring with anyone. He just sort of does whatever he wants. And when people disagree with him, he flips out big time. What is Riker really saying in these moments? I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DON’T LIKE ME. EVERYONE ELSE DOES.
3. Riker is Really Terrible To Troi
Troi’s relationship with Will Riker is perhaps the unhealthiest friendship/romance ever depicted on TV. He stood her up years prior, and now she hangs around with him all the time. When they hang out and talk about Will’s problems, you get the sense that she is just giving him professional advice. She almost never speaks to him the way real friends to talk to people, (Picard and Beverly do this sometimes, despite also having a fucked up relationship) instead, Troi is distant and cold. And that’s because Riker screwed her over, and she still wants to sleep with him. Riker is truly awful, because he knows this about Troi, and instead of accepting a promotion to captain or transferring off the Enterprise and being a bigger person, he plays the “friend card” and while parading around meaningless affairs in front of Troi to hurt her feelings. She (like Beverly with Picard) rarely gets upset about this, and is in fact supportive. But if Troi suddenly is suddenly dating someone else? Watch out! Riker freaks the fuck out.
2. Riker’s Greatest Love Is Apparently a Porno-Hologram
In “Future Imperfect” when an alien creates a fictional version of a future life for Riker on the Enterprise, they decide to fix him up with the woman who he thinks about the most, Minuet. The episode portrays this as a “gotcha” moment Riker has on the alien, but in reality, the reverse should be true. The little alien was just scanning Riker’s brain for the person he had the strongest feelings for, and came up with the special hologram woman, Minuet. Now, we’re told over and over again that she was a very special program, but she was still a PROGRAM. Geordi and Barclay both pulled the creep card with this kind of thing too, but their hologram fantasy loves were based on REAL PEOPLE. Meaning, the alien scanned their brains, it would be like “oh Geordi is in love with Leah Brahms and Barclay is in love with everyone.” Not so with Riker. He’s basically in love with 24th century porn.
1. Riker Used to Be a Cool Person
Was Riker ever not creepy and messed up? Probably! We definitely get the sense of a sexier, more daring Riker in the form of his transporter duplicate Thomas Riker. Now, that version of Riker has some panache. He still wants to mess around with Troi, and doesn’t really see his “other self” as a problem. A few years later, after stealing the Defiant and getting arrested by the Federation, Thomas still makes out with Kira openly, despite the fact that he’s totally betrayed her. The difference between Thomas and Will here is simple. Will sort of lost his guts. His former self, personified as Thomas, has way more balls.
Meanwhile, Will Riker pretends to wear his sex drive on his sleeve, but is actually a little ashamed of himself, because he doesn’t want to offend the polite company of the Enterprise crew. Thomas Riker could care less about that, and is in fact the man Will should have become. When Q shows Picard the mediocre version of himself who never fought the Nausicaans, it’s depressing. The thing is, we’re seeing that boring version of Will Riker in most every episode of Star Trek.
It would be a good idea to send Riker to a shrink, but we all know how that would work out. (His shrink is his old girlfriend who tells him to watch episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise when he is confused about life. What?) The only real treatment for the Riker problem would be some kind of reintegration of his past self into his present self, kind of like that stuff they did with Captain Braxton in the Voyager episode “Relativity.” A little direct download of his previous, risk-taking; fun-loving persona might be just what Riker needs.
In the meantime, like in that one Pink song, Will Riker’s mantra should be “Don’t let me get me!”
Ryan Britt is the staff writer for Tor.com. He went as Riker once for Halloween. Scary!
Awesome!!!
(Riker’s babyface in season 1 looked like a permanent $#!%-eating grin, as if he always had a little something going on the side that no one else knew about. Imagine the possibilities if they had played that up, instead of covering it…)
I always figured that the reason Riker never took a command of his own was because he was self-aware enough to recognize that his crew would abandon him on some primitive planet. Kinda like soldiers shooting their commanding officer during a firefight.
TNG makes a lot more sense if you assume Riker is a highly functional alcoholic.
Rootboy: +1
Jeez, Ryan, was the f-bomb really necessary–twice? It’s not that I expect this site to be G-rated, but resorting to profanity is just laziness, especially when we’re talking about a word whose power to impress faded long ago.
Um. This is totally deniable, it seems to me. What you say may be true for a segment of ST:TNG fans, but not sf fans in general.
From my sea service, I can say that some people just prefer being an XO to being a CO, and that XO’s are rarely the most beloved personnel on a vessel. As far as I am concerned, Ryan, all your piece shows me is that Riker is one of the most realistic XO’s in the various and sundry incarnations of Star Trek. Which makes sense, because Picard is the one that most resembles a real CO.
If fuck lost its power then why would you care?
i’ve always thought Riker was just the guy who could be Kirk if fans REALLY REALY hated Picard’s style. And they really could have not liked it.
I have to agree with Ryan on this one. I actually only liked a couple of the characters on TNG. Data, Worf, Tasha..
What AlBrown said.
Regarding No. 4, in particular:
Ignoring the issue of military chains of command, even outside the world’s present-day navies and coastguards, no ship is either a democracy or a debating society. And the larger the ship and crew, the less democratic it is. Any crewmember on a large civilian cargo or passenger liner who tried to backtalk the captain or XO would be off the ship at the next port of call so fast they would hardly hit the gangplank.
Personally, I have always found the suggestion that StarFleet is not a military organization to be completely ludicrous. In any event, in STNG, Riker is the XO of a heavily-armed vessel crewed by hundreds of uniformed personnel that often operates on detached duty in dangerous circumstances. On such a vessel, even if ‘civilian’, an XO does not have “reasonable work-related debates” with subordinates. He gives directions, commonly known as orders or commands, and those subordinates obey him . Even if they disagree with him, they obey him, because he is their superior in the chain of command. And if crewmembers disobey orders, violate the chain of command, or are otherwise insubordinate, part of the XO’s job will be to maintain and enforce discipline by slapping them down – hard, if necessary. That has nothing to do with the individual XO’s personality or character — that’s just his job.
And Riker is good at it.
@thelonius: Maybe I should have been more specific. Gratuitous profanity no longer impresses anyone–except maybe 13 year old boys–as edgey or irreverent. I’m assuming Ryan is not a 13 year old boy. Like I said, it’s just lazy.
Yes, so much, to all of this. Especially on how fucked up his relationship with Troi was.
When Jonathan Frakes played an unsub on Criminal Minds, I spent much of the episode yelling “see, I told you Riker was creepy!” :p
@@@@@ junior high mustache
It’s the internet, how would you know?
But seriously, saying that Riker freaks the fuck out when Troi dates other people is not dropping the f-bomb for shock, in this case it’s just the most accurate and succinct description of how he reacts.
(and where’s the second one?)
@Everyone-
Sorry for the f-bombs!
I guess the article is supposed to be a little-tongue-in-cheek and off-the-cuff. It was just a style choice I made.
I know the arguements are hyperbolic, I just happen to agree with myself on this one.
However, I do think about these things, and made the choices in the prose on purpose. :-)
BUT, all the comments about how he might just want to stay being an XO are toally legit and probably accurate and I welcome the dicussion about how me might have been a fine officer from a service standpoint. Good call.
@6
Yeah, again, I was kind of kidding around on that one. Maybe it didn’t come off.
@jennygadget: True enough, I’m just assuming they don’t hand these blogs over to kids. Anyway, I found the post generally funny and just thought he could have been a bit more clever than to rely on the f-word. And they’re both in the same paragraph, one about half way down, the other at the bottom.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this post! Too awesome. My mom was in love with that guy when I TNG was first on in my childhood. I always thought he was a major creeper.
@@@@@ junior hugh moustache
ah, I see it now, thanks.
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Aside from (maybe) the redundancy of using it twice, it doesn’t come across as lazy to me, just accurate. My opinion on this is admittedly colored by the fact that I wish I had been able to put to any kind of words why his behavior struck me as WRONG and just a little bit scary when I was watching this show at age ten or so.
@jennygadget
That’s cool. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind here, nor do I want to give the impression that I’m automatically offended by the simple use of that particular word (to everything there’s a season, I suppose). It’s just that it’s become so ubiquitous, that when I hear or read it from someone whom I generally think is pretty bright (Like Ryan, for example, whose posts I always enjoy), I just think, “Come on, not you too. You can do better than that.”
Now I’m starting to sound like Ward Cleaver (“Ryan, your mother and I aren’t angry, just terribly, terribly disappointed”). Anyway, that’s just one old man’s impression. I hope I’m not coming off as too preachy.
the best gif ever
@19
I think you’ve got some valid points on this one. And it certainly is something to watch out for. A stand-up comic friend of mine and I talk about this all the time in relation to how much one can lean on
profanity. Also, in one of the writing classes I teach, I warn my students against it. So, it seems sometimes I might not take my own advice.
Thanks for calling me bright. That made my Monday morning. Really!
Too funny. I actually liked Riker, however, especially once he grew the beard. Always looked at his character as a not so subtle dig at the Kirk fans who didn’t like Picard’s style; can’t say I did either the first few seasons.
As to the idea that swearing losing its ‘power’ I am reminded of a story my mum told me about growing up & reading all those books where the narrative never ‘said’ curse words. Instead there would be a passage such as “the sailor swore a blue streak,” etc…
When she was finally old enough to know what the words meant she was terribly disappointed; feeling somehow let down.
Kato
Kato
I think the creepest thing about the whole Minuet interaction isn;t that he wants to nail her, it’s that Picard is there and he wouldn’t have any problem engaging in a Galaxy Class three-way (y’know one with 2 nacelles).
Every time some critter headed for a crew member of the ST:TNG series, I’d yell ‘Get Riker! Keep your paws ( or tentacles, or whatever) off of Picard and Geordi. Riker! Get Riker!’ And here I thought I was the only one. Happiness loves company too.
Vast lulz, echoing out of the deep.
The profanity was absolutely appropriate for the chosen style. This piece is highly entertaining, and I thank you. Many of these other comments were made by obvious choads.
This was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Just how much of a useless term is “creepy” when it can be vomited out for seemingly any arbititary reason. Maybe you can accuse Picard of being a closet pedophile and laforge of having aspergers and complete the trifecta of dumb things people say on the Internet.
Yeah, I don’t agree with this. Riker always struck me as the only “real” person amongst the perfect set of characters on TNG. He was flawed, struggled with his career and his relationships at times, etc…but was generally a good guy, and it was those flaws that made him interesting. To me, he’s much more interesting than a cardboard cut-out of human perfection like Picard.
i just find him really needy and un-attractive….and too tall
Vger23@49, I assumed that the ‘creepy’ references were a reference to another tor.com review, where it is repeatedly used to refer to a character also mentioned in *this* review who has… problems… with holographic women. (Indeed, if I google for “not that that’s at all creepy”, the only hits I get are in said review. An excellent use of repetition for emphasis.)
jennygadget, the only nutter who took Jonathan’s name in this blogslice ! We are talking about William T. Riker, not Jonathan Frakes!
This blog made me laugh. Ok I’ll admit I find Riker to be sexy, as he looks like a total pervert who would violate you in enjoyable ways. But- I also agree is is a chauvinistic beast who is probably a sociopath. What can I say? I have issues.
I really enjoyed this blog. HA, just great! This made me actually laugh out loud
I always loved Will Riker, and his relationship with Troi, but that didn’t stop me from laughing uncontrollably at this. There was so much truth in all this and that made it that much better! It doesn’t stop me from loving him, but gosh it made me laugh! Thanks for writing this!
P.S. You really had a point about him being the old guy in a college town… :P
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Before TNG, Riker and Troy both refused to give up their careers to save the relationship. They’re friends & lovers, but work comes first and they’re not the kind of madly-in-love that leads to a monogomous commitment. Speaking of which, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traditional monogomy in the Star Trek world, so it might not be appropriate to read our own jealousy in to a world with perfect birth control and STD treatments.
And speaking of Riker’s career, how is he so lazy and shiftless if he’s being offered his own ship at such a young age? The real reason he stays on the Enterprise is because he feels like he still has a lot to learn, and he knows he won’t get a better teacher than Picard.
So where does Riker end up? In the future timeline of the final episode, he’s become an admiral and achieved the highest rank in Star Fleet!
Hell, if it weren’t for his hubris, short temper, and ability to screw up relationships, he’d be a damn Gary-Stu.
I think he goes apeshit when people disagree with him because he secretly hates himself for not accepting all the offers to actually be captain on some other ship, so he’s like overcompensating to feel powerful if somebody that isn’t Picard opposes him.
I think you’re bringing your own world and ideas and putting them into the star trek universe where they don’t belong. Ryker and Troi’s never worked out as a couple. There relationship is somewhere between a romance and friendship but it’s hard to define what it is. Ryker never left the enterprise because all of his friends were on the enterprise, what’s wrong with that? If you think he shouldn’t have any friends then that’s bringing your own ideas into the world. Ro Laren is known to break the rules a lot on the ship which is why you often see Riker giving her a hard time. But I think that the actor who plays Riker is one of the weakest actors in the main cast and that’s probably why the character may be seen as strange to some.
I don’t care what anybody says. I like Riker. Hmmm….. That might look good on a button.
Awesome summation. The character Riker is not ready for working without a net. Whether for plot reasons so he can remain on the show, or not, he is written this way, even though Starfleet and Picard have recommended him for a command. He takes way too many risks, and has suggested way too many courses of action, that could have resulted in many crew deaths, or even the destruction of the Enterprise, to be an ideal candidate for command. He is very lucky, so far, but I have never heard that stated as a desirable command quality. He knows his limitations, thus not taking promotion, but, unfortunately, crows a bit too arrogantly that his remaining 2nd in command is only a lifestyle choice. He is a great first officer, but character-wise, outside of his small circle of friends, a real arsehole. I must consider his 7 season body of work, and not just his outstanding performance in the Best of Both Worlds. He could have easily been written as making consistent good command decisions, but I am sorry, Riker lovers, he was not.
Love this. Couldn’t agree more. Riker shouldn’t have been allowed to continue turning down commands. Two ships I can think of off the top of my head, the Drake and the Melbourne were destroyed after Riker turned down those commands. Maybe if they would have had more experienced captains, they would have survived. Riker’s selfish scheme to wait out Picard, to get the Enterprise for himself has cost lives.
As for the perv stuff, you should have shown the straw in his head being sucked by Crusher. Kinky!!
Are you kidding me?! Will Riker is awesome. He questions him self and wins the war in Best of Both Worlds, marries Troi in Nemesis, and made an awesome Captain in the Titan series of books. He was not the smartest or strongest but you get the feeling he was the most real. Tom was just a inexperienced kid and had 8 years on Nervala to never grow up. Riker is number 1 in my book.
That last item is really funny when you consider that TNG producers actually considered killing off Will Riker and adding Tom Riker to the cast.
I agree with perhaps #3, maybe slightly with #4-5, but imo Riker was always a good second in command. But it’s irrelevant that Geordi and Barclay’s holograms were based on real people – they were still holograms. Also, #5 is kinda forgiveable – he probably was attached to Picard and didn’t really feel ready, who knows.
#1 would have made the show completely stupid.
I agree with every thing said .
Couldn’t agree more , riker is just THE creepiest person to exist in star fleet and I wonder what type of sicko has a porno hologram as their greatest love? And FYI person who commented on laforge and Barclay still loving holograms- at least they were actually real people , albeit holographic representations of those people.
Comment #75 unpublished by moderator, in accordance with Tor.com’s moderation policy.
I am a PO1 stationed on the H.S.T. out of Norfolk (if you don’t know what that is, then don’t bother reading this reply) Having served under senior ranking officers and having subordinates serve under me gives a whole new perspective on chain and burdens of command. I joined up mostly because it was my honor to serve, but also largely due to watching Star Trek in my youth. This doesn’t mean that I don’t watch it now, only that it helped shape my life choices. As far as Commander William T. Riker is concerned; one could argue from a psychiatric perspective that there may be some character issues, but in the real world – who cares about what some head shrink thinks! I find him to be an excellent officer. Capable, sociable (within acceptable limitations), knowledgeable and inventive. When Gene Roddenberry created the Riker character, he loosely based it upon James Tiberius Kirk, so the similarities and evident. I myself have known officers who have turned down promotions because of an overwhelming sense of loyalty and family to their posting. So this is nothing to be concerned about. So I challenge any Star Trek fan to name a better first officer from any ship from Enterprise, The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager or any of the movies. Serious character flaws can be said about other XO’s such as; Commander T’Pol, Lt.Cmdr. Spock, Commander Decker, Colonel Kira Nerys, and Lt.Cmdr. Chakotay. Some far worse than Commander Riker. Speaking strictly from a chain-of-command perspective, I find that Commander Riker could have easily taken command of his own ship, and as far as snapping? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq693K6GEaw #1 Commander is 110% correct. Never violate the chain of command #2 I have been blasted much worse for much less. Commander Riker is an excellent XO and a “IS” made from the right stuff!
Sorry, but Riker is my favorite character on the show and it is hard to put the rest in order but Riker has been my favorite since I was 10 years old.
Dude you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. You should read more about who the character is, according to Gene Roddenberry, and really take a closer look at the character as a whole. If you still don’t like him, then I’m sorry but your opinion couldn’t be further from the truth.
I am the real Riker I’m serious I’m only 14 but you can tell I’m a look alike every Trekkie and family member well everyone thinks I look like his son. How ever I never knew my father so maybe my name should be Harley Frakes
/disagree.
LOL I have always wondered how Troi was able to put up with his player ways. Seemed like every other episode there was someone else, and she seemed totally cool with it. I was so confused when the actually got married in Nemesis. BTW, can someone please explain to me why (If Deanna was actually
1.She was sometimes confused about people felt and had to ask them
2.Could play poker without cheating.
3. Sometimes could only sense feelings, other times could understand every word they were thinking.
The producerswere incredibly inconsistent with her “powers”..(Still, she was my favorite character, despite these flaws.)
I do NOT agree with this. It´s written appereantely by a male human being straight from the mid 20th century who thinks, the better man, is the man “WHO TAKES WHAT HE CAN GET WITHOUT REGRETS”!! lmao! That´s Starship Trooper mentality, but this is STAR TREK!! PEACE OUT!
Let’s not forget that Ro started off as an irresponsible, disrespectful junior officer, Commander Shelby cared more about her career than the men and women she would be commanding, Jellico was a useless micro(managing) dick who’s attitude would have hindered the crews ability. As the XO of the enterprise his primary jobs were the discipline and well being of the vessel and her crew. Also, if Troi was so uneasy around him…why did they get married?
I will not deny Riker had flaws, but he was a brilliant officer…kinda wish there were more like him
Nah, Riker was a badass and the bridge wouldn’t have been the same without him. He brought a sense of pragmatism to a bridge that otherwise would have had little to none, save Data’s objectivity. He may have not been the strongest actor on the cast, but the character was solid for the most part. Picard, without Numbah One as a personality counter-balance, wouldn’t have worked as a character nor as an effective cap-ee-tone.
Here’s the thing: about a third of these complaints all come from one episode.
1. Riker is mean to Commander Shelby,
2. Riker wonders what kind of man he has become,
3. We find out Riker turned down a bunch of commands,
4. Riker decides to stay on the Enterprise and discusses what might have been with Troi.
5. Riker took over command and yelled over everyone and didn’t listen to them.
All this happens in an Episode where Riker’s decisions proved crucial. Picard got captured by the Borg and turned into Locutus. Riker took command of Enterprise. All of the ships he would have commanded ended up destroyed along with the entire rest of the fleet at Wolf 359. Guinan actually pushes Riker to come into his own and trust himself, as he has done. He does, recaptures Picard, and shuts the Borg down just before they can destroy Earth.
The whole point of that episode was that every single creepy, weird, or loser decision Riker made made him at exactly the right man at exactly the right place in exactly the right time to save Earth and the Federation. If he had made any other choice, the Borg would have ended it.
I mean, that was the entire main point/plot of the episode. That’s why they focused so much on Riker’s character…that’s why they brought Guinan and Troy in–made him doubt himself–then made him trust himself again. How did everyone miss that?
Picard and Riker always had this sort of good cop, bad cop dynamic. I can certainly understand this kind of leadership on a military vessel. I can also understand Riker turning down promotions. On one hand it’s easier when you can always lean on your captain when hard decisions have to be made. Maybe he doesn’t want to be ultimately responsible for those hundreds of lives of their crew.
I did find Riker disobeying Jellico juvenile. Jellico was clearly a war time captain where as Picard was a peace time captain. Starfleet command recognized this and this was the reason for the change. It was also then when Riker displayed why he is not ready for his own command.
Number two always stunk
He walked with a stick up his butt
And to the guy who said he was a better
First officer than Mr. Spock you are a snapperhead
Actually Jellico is more likely to be an example of a “real CO” than Picard. He’s your CO, not your friend. He demands the best of his people and a proper amount of discipline from his men, and proper dress for female officers. And Riker is pretty much a total jerk during Jellico’s short term as Captain.
I remember a friend justifying Riker’s constant passing up promotions as that being the first officer of the flag ship was more prestigious than being the captain of another vessel. I won’t deny that it looks good on a resume but after awhile it would just make the person look like a joke.
How is Riker’s lack of ambition any different from Picard’s refusal to become an admiral, or Spock giving the Enterprise back to Kirk at the first opportunity? Is it because Riker is a man of action, and thus supposed to be ambitious? In that case, making him unambitious is a good thing, because it gives some nuance to his character (in addition to keeping him in the show).
Spock is not a line officer, he is a scientist who doubled as exec. It makes a certain amount of sense for him to reject command since it would eat up time he’d prefer to spend on research. Riker on the other hand…. Well to be fair being exec on the Enterprise is a big deal and is preferring second banana to first really so terrible?
@92/Roxana: Yes, that’s what I was thinking too.
As for Spock, he’s a scientist in the TV show, but later he becomes a teacher (and a captain) and then an ambassador. I can’t make up my mind whether I like that or not. I think it’s a flaw of the TOS films that there are no more scientists in our Starfleet cast.
Spock comes from a long lived species. Possibly multiple careers are the norm.
I found this post opinionating to William Riker, the character. First off, how is William Riker remotely a loser when he has made many decisions that helped his fellow crew members of Enterprise and is multitalented? Also, please remember he is an imperfect human like Captain Picard. Even Captain Picard has made mistakes and was saved by then-officer Riker, which Riker’s rescue mission helped stop the Borg from destroying Earth. Being an officer/commander requires a lot of time of thinking, planning, enough adaptability, and a sense of duty. William did all of that and learned from his mistakes successfully. By the way, William eventually did become a captain of his own ship with his Deanna Troi by his side. Even though he might have not been the best husband, please bear in mind he did not have the best childhood with parents to guide him to help him understand how a couple who are parents ought to treat each other. His mother died and his father was barely in his life, rendering him as a borderline orphan that had to fend for himself. A childhood can dramatically change a person. Not getting a parent’s love and attention may lead a person to not functioning normally, especially in relationships. Captain William Riker chose to be a “loser” at the time not because he was not able to be a captain, but because he was still in training and being smart while being increasingly bold slowly.
I find Riker somewhat elusive, because he’s portrayed so differently in different episodes.
For example, the Riker in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1” is an asshole, made worse by the fact that we’re apparently supposed to be on his side. The Riker in “Future Imperfect”, on the other hand, is an immensely likeable person.
My problem with Riker is that he’s indeed totally unprofessional and has severe anger issues. He’s always getting offended and raising his voice at people, to the point of threatening them totally unfairly and jeopardizing missions. You wouldn’t have Worf as First Officer, and you shouldn’t have Riker there either. And of course, early ST seasons are all terrible, but Riker was particularly lame and unlikable then (actually, like angry Sisko in Ep. 1 and every season thereafter. Now that I think about it, they’re VERY similar characters, only superficially different.). Kinda like Pulaski in season 2. I think he’s a pathological narcissist. But it would make sense if you simply view him as a highly functional alcoholic, as another comment I glanced at said :)
@97/Sporky: That’s true about Riker’s anger issues. Is he a narcissist, though? Sometimes he seems to think that he’s the most important thing in the world, but then he does things like volunteering to become Odan’s host in “The Host”, and when Crusher and Picard point out the risks, he answers: “Weigh it against the prospect of war.” That’s why I wrote in comment #96 that I don’t know who Riker is. He doesn’t behave in a consistent manner.
I’ve always liked Pulaski. She was my favourite TNG character throughout season 2.
Personally I always found Riker vanilla.
@99/Roxana: Perhaps that’s why they gave him the beard and the anger issues.
Didn’t help IMO.
Everybody in TNG was pretty vanilla except for Picard, Data and Worf. Picard had a classically trained Shakespearean actor playing him. Worf and Data had easy handles, the Klingon and th Android. And then there was Pulaski who seems to be disliked for not being vanilla.
Oh yes, Pulaski was a bright spot.
I also liked Lwaxana Troi and Ro Laren. And Guinan when she wasn’t too wise and mystical.
Best Guinan line ever: ‘That was setting one. Anybody want to see setting two?’
Will Riker thinks he is all that…but he is a dedicated and loyal first officer. Pulaski is an arrogant tho brilliant ass. Poor Troi’s powers were never really exploited, and she seemed over and over again to be portrayed as weak and confused.
@104: I find Pulaski less arrogant than Riker.
Troi could have been a really interesting character, coming from a matriarchy but following in her father’s footsteps. But instead she was disappointingly conventional most of the time. I liked her in some episodes, e.g. in “A Fistful of Datas”, where she played an unconventional role for a change.
@105;
I agree that Troi was disappointingly conventionally portrayed most of the time. She was the character I was most excited about at the beginning, but was mostly just the pretty wide-eyed girly girl.
I have to admit I really got my daughter’s goat when, as a teen, she asked what TV or movie star I thot was sexy, and I said Jean-Luc Picard. She was gratifyingly horrified.
As @97/Sporky pointed out, functional alcoholic would make sense in describing Riker’s consistent anger but inconsistent behavior. Also, I can relate to being comfortable in a job position and being reluctant to move to another. Where he is, he’s a big frog in a little pond, so to speak.
@106: “She was the character I was most excited about at the beginning”
Same here. At the beginning I was interested in two of the characters, Picard and Troi.
@107: “I can relate to being comfortable in a job position and being reluctant to move to another.”
Again, I agree (see comment #91). There’s nothing wrong with a lack of ambition. And it’s nice that the person who lacks ambition isn’t one of the women, but the closest thing the show has to a conventional action hero. (This may also be the reason why he’s criticised for it by some.)
The one time I really identified with Troi was the scene where she walked reluctantly into a shipboard reception and immediately asked if there was any chocolate.
It was pretty annoying how those ST: TNG writers seemed to somehow think that the geeky-looking Will Riker was the only male character worthy of being matched up with every single hot female character that came on the show. It got to a nauseating point when they made pretty Kamala (young Famke Janssen) kiss the freaking dude in The Perfect Mate episode. I was like… nah, not this guy again! Why they keep torturing us like this?! Perhaps someone in the production of that show really thought Riker ensembles the ideal man for every woman in the universe because very seldom you would see any other actor on that show getting romantically involved with a woman, human or alien. It was almost always Will Riker. IMO he was pretty dull and boring, and not just romantically.
@110: Yeh, Will Riker (& apparently the writers of TNG) thot he was all that, when clearly he was NOT. Eeew. Arrogant men (& especially that one) just rub my fur the wrong way!