Second Chances

More than any other episode, this one makes me think about the title of this series. Second Chances is bold in that they keep Riker around and don't write him off as some kind of alien of the week. It's pretty beige in that they thought about shaking up the status quo without really changing their cast but didn't for what are essentially commercial reasons. So Will Riker goes on a shelf simply because people want him around, but don't particularly care if anything--y'know--GOOD is done with him. The man lives in a glass case watching any additional character development passing him by. In the beginning of Season 4, I pitched the idea of "Captain Riker, Ambassador Picard," imagining how season four would look if after Picard's assimilation by the Borg, Riker became the captain and Picard became an ambassador at large on the Enterprise. In that same spirit, I'm going to pitch "Chief of Operations Thomas Riker" for some of the episodes we have coming up. How will future episodes change if Thomas Riker takes over as Chief of Operations and Data becomes First Officer of the Enterprise? Will anything change? Will we have additional storylines to think of? We'll see. The Beige and The Bold is hosted on Anchor and is available on most podcasting platforms. New episodes are usually posted on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM CST.