Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda

[Mikey]

Unfortunately, only so many storylines can go into a 1-3/4 hour film. In Nemesis particularly, the focus HAD to be on Picard for obvious reasons. But in general, to do a development piece on each major character would require either a movie of Ghandi-like proportions, or a half-assed screenplay.

[Captain Seafort]

Not necessarilly. While there would be limitations on the degree of involvement by the rest of the cast, it didn't have to be Picard and Data with the others tagging along, which was what the TNG films generally resembled. Consider:

Riker
Generations: Lost the Enterprise.
First Contact: Hitchhiked on the Phoenix
Insurrection: Took the Enterprise out of the Briar Patch, and devised the Riker Manoeuvre - this is more like it.
Nemesis: Got married in a minor subplot, had a punch-up with an orc.

La Forge
Generations: His Visor was important, he did sod-all.
First Contact: Hitchhiked on the Phoenix.
Insurrection: A nice one-minute scene watching the sunrise, sod-all else.
Nemesis: Basically another extra.

Worf
Generations: Got promoted, then ignored for the rest of the film
First Contact: Got rescued, got spacesick, got insulted. Maybe five minutes total.
Insurrection: Minor sub-plot as comic-relief
Nemesis: Another extra.

Crusher
Generations: Got pushed in the water.
First Contact: Turned on the EMH, lost her patient.
Insurrection: Discussed breasts with Troi.
Nemesis: Gave exposition on particle-of-the-week.

Troi
Generations: Crashed the Enterprise.
First Contact: Got drunk.
Insurrection: Discussed breasts with Crusher.
Nemesis: Got mind-raped by a Reman, and was thus able to find General Chang...er, Shinzon's ship - finally, some development. And crashed the Enterprise again.

While you might say that the original films didn't have much for anyone other than Kirk, Spock and McCoy, neither did the original series. Even then, there were often major parts for them in the films - Chekov in TWOK, the whole crew playing a role in stealing the Enterprise in TSFS, all bar Sulu stealing whales/refueling the BoP in TVH, Sulu racing to the rescue in TUC. In TNG, the rest of the crew were always characters in their own right, rather than just supporting cast for Picard and Data, but in the films that's exactly what they became.

[celeritas]

i agree with seafort. i particularly liked how first contact and voyage home had the different crew members in the B story doing different jobs to get whatever they needed to do done. it might become too much of a formula after a while, but i like to see trek movies to see my favorite characters again doing their thing, not sitting around to fill up the bridge. they don't have to be much, just something.

in fact, they did do something in nemesis that i liked: they brought wesley back and had him talk with picard. i thought it was a nice little thing. must as i dislike him, wesley's still part of the crew and didn't deserve to be left out of the movies. too bad they cut him out. nonetheless, i thought nemesis was a good movie that was worth watching despite the heavy picard/data focus. as i said, it wasn't terrible.

in the end, though, its still not an excuse to sidebar so many of the characters on the tv show, where they had 178 episodes worth of time. realistically speaking, i think it was easier for writers to latch on to an interesting character (say like data, EMH, or seven of nine) and just run with them rather than developing other characters who don't immediately have obvious appeal from a storytelling standpoint.

one of the reasons why i liked DS9 so much was because i think the writers for that show deliberately tried to make uninteresting characters interesting. of course they ran with 'popular' characters (odo, worf, even vic fontaine) but they surprised me by developing the secondary characters like jake and nog. when i first started watching that show, i thought for sure that those damn ferengi were going to annoy the crap out of me, but i was pleasantly surprised that they developed a "human" side that made them enjoyable to watch (except when they annoyed the crap out of me by taking off their clothes). its risky, but DS9 pulled it off with episodes that told the right stories.

[Mikey]

I'm not saying that the characters other than Picard and Data needed to have been as limited as they were; rather, I'm asserting that the major thrust of the films had to have been those two. Picard, because the "doppelganger" plotline involved him directly; and Data, because he was going to die.

That said, I would have especially liked to see more of Riker growing a set of cubes and making a personal matte rof the violation of his wife. I know he squared off against the Viceroy, but it seemed more by conincidence than enything else.

[Deepcrush]

I would like to know what everyones take on the fleets and armies of andromeda were? Which side would you have taken before the "Long Night" or civil war?

[Blackstar the Chakat]

sides? who would want to take sides? I'd just want to survive. I'd probably join Andromeda's crew, and hope I wasn't a glorified extra.

[Sionnach Glic]

Side? My own one, of course. 8)

[Mikey]

Yeah, I'd be on the "Save Mikey's a**" side.

[Deepcrush]

You three are a commissar's dream come true! LOL!

*commissar starts loading his bolt pistol and smiles*

[Mikey]

Nobody mentioned that we'd be fighting for the glory of the Golden Throne... you can put away your bravery pistol for now.

[Sionnach Glic]

You three are a commissar's dream come true! LOL!

*commissar starts loading his bolt pistol and smiles*

You misunderstand; the side I am on is the side of the Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind's.
It just happens to be my own. 8)

[Deepcrush]

*Commissar curses*
I never get to kill anyone!