this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Riker is ultimately one of the best possible examples of a character who doesn't make sense from a Watsonian point of view because he was used for Doylist purposes. Realistically, Riker should have either left for his own command or taken command of the Enterprise if they'd ended up going with killing Picard in the Borg arc. Instead, he stays on the show in his same job because he's a well-acted, charismatic fan-favorite who's also a military administrator with no technical specialty: in other words, he's the ideal audience-insert character to ask people like Geordi or Beverly to explain a complicated concept so they can have expository dialog for our benefit. For those who know Stargate SG-1, he's strikingly similar to Jack O'Neill, whose most common script function is to say "uh, can you try that again in English?" in conversations about archaeology or theoretical physics.
That said, they did do a decent job working with that in-universe. There's actually something compelling with having Riker's story arc play with the idea that sometimes a person can grow to regret their own ambition, discovering instead that they can actually grow more by putting down roots for a while than they would have by doing the most that they could. But it doesn't really work in the long run, and there's a reason he was always depicted as a Captain in every glimpse of the future.
I have always thought that part of his motivation for staying was that, in his view, Picard was such an amazing captain that not staying to learn from him would be a missed opportunity more than having his own command.
There is also any time Riker suggests a plan of action that may have made a situation worse, and the plot/crew went a different direction for the better. He's in a good spot.