10. The Origin And Return Of Thomas Riker (Star Trek: The Next Generation & Deep Space Nine)
Poor Thomas Riker. Such big plans, and yet only appeared in two episodes. Two pretty good episodes mind you. For those of you that aren't in the know, Thomas Riker was essentially a transporter duplicate of Commander William Riker. Yes, they wheeled out that old Original Series plot. Except this version was permanent, and a Lieutenant, and had spent several years trapped on a planet as no one knew he was there. In his mind, he never broke up with Deanna Troi. I always thought he was a very interesting version, and the season long duplicate version of John Crichton in Farscape always reminded me of Tom Riker. The reason why I include the origin here is because interestingly enough at one stage the plan was to kill off William Riker in the first episode to feature Thomas and have the new version of Riker become the main character ongoing. A very soap-opera-esque idea, I know. It would have made Data the second in command of the Enterprise, although I can't remember if the plan was to have Riker as the Operations Officer to replace Data or the Security/Tactical Officer to replace Worf (who would have become Ops Officer). Anyway, they never went through with it. So Thomas Riker missed out on a bunch of episodes there. In my mind, they made the better choice. Thomas Riker returned in Deep Space Nine, having joined the Maquis and stole the Defiant. He ended up being captured by the Cardassians and that was the last we saw of him. But at a few points that wasn't the plan either it seemed that the producers of Deep Space Nine aimed to bring him back but for whatever reason it just never happened. At one point the writer's pack for one of the seasons actually stated that they weren't looking at Thomas Riker return stories presumably because they already had something in mind. Jonathan Frakes, who played both William and Thomas, wanted Riker to suddenly pop up in Damar's rebellion towards the end of the series. I personally think that by then it would have been too late. I know exactly the right time to re-introduce Riker and I think that the producers had the same idea. I'm convinced he was originally intended to appear in the episode In Purgatory's Shadow the one where Garek and Worf travel to the Dominion prison where they meet Enabran Tain, General Martok and the real Julian Bashir (who we didn't know had been replaced by a shapeshifter). I'm sure that Bashir was probably Thomas Riker in one of the early drafts and then someone came up with the shapeshifter replace which wouldn't work with the character and they subsequently chose Bashir instead. After that, Thomas Riker just didn't fit anywhere and so was never used again.