Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ro Laren
9. She Was Created To Be At Odds With The Crew - And Gene Roddenberry's Vision
If there were to be a valid criticism of the character of Wesley Crusher, it would be that this wonder-kind was simply too perfect. While the earliest episodes of TNG failed to give Crusher much to do, this did settle as the seasons went on. For Ensign Ro, however, there would be no such stop-starting when it came to her character arc.
She was there to piss people off, plain and simple. Not only would this help audiences find engagement with her from the beginning, but it was also a deliberate move to start working away from Gene Roddenberry's vision of a conflict-free future. Ensign Ro arrived with the ghosts of eight dead officers on her conscience, though in the beginning, it didn't seem to affect her.
Therein lay a massive statement for this new direction that TNG would head in - under Roddenberry, the 'bad' Starfleet officers were generally Admirals - though of course, this episode was no exception. Yet here was a serving officer who seemed to care less about her assignment to the prestigious Enterprise-D than she did about getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible.