There’s plenty of Troi, Beverley and Geordie episodes in the mix, and worf episodes are typically excellent if few.
But I think the big three you mention dominate the story lines as they’re running things whenever a story isn’t about a particular crew member
Are Worf episodes even few? Seems like he’s just under Picard and Data in terms of focus. He gets to be the focus of a whole season ending two-parter and gets multiple arcs throughout the series. More then Troi, Geordie, and Crusher for sure.
There’s heart of Glory, sins of the father, redemption & birthright for worf and his heritage I think. And parallels which is just about worf.
It’s not many unless I’m missing some.
My friend you’re missing many. After quick look-through I’m coming up with: The Bonding, Reunion, Ethics, A Fistfull of Data’s, Rightful Heir, Homeward, and Firstborn. Worf also gets a bunch of B-plot focus like In Family. He’s the opposite of Riker where he gets hardly any focus at the beginning of the series, but more and more as the series progresses.
I feel like every Worf episode was them trying to remind you that he’s supposed to be a bad ass, even though he gets his ass handed to him every other episode to show how much more bad ass the enemy of the week is.
Worf may be a badass, but there are many that are just badder than he is. But as the Jem Hadar guy said “I cannot defeat this man, I can only kill him”.
The funny thing about the Troi episodes are that the best ones with her in them are when she isn’t being a counselor.
No TNG was definitely a full ensemble cast. I think people say that because Data is an obvious analog of Spock. But if this analogy is to hold, who is McCoy? Riker? Crusher? It doesn’t make sense.
I think they just held onto the TOS traditions of strong captain as the lead with a Spock-like character and diverse remaining cast. But TNG had more space to work with the non-lead actors than TOS did partially because it had TOS’s world building as a foundation.
Keep in mind TNG ran for a more then twice as long as the original series. Gives it a lot more time to flesh out its cast of characters. Originally Picard, Riker, and Crusher were envisioned as the main trio, but all of early tng’s production issues and Gates Mcfadden leaving for the 2nd season threw a wrench in that vision. Starting with season 3 the show becomes more of an ensemble. You start to get the formula of specific character-centric episodes that will stick with the show for the remainder of its run. Honestly it feels like near the end of its run TNG was more the Picard, Data, and Worf show. Riker gets hardly any episodes that focus on him in the last few seasons.
I think Gates McFadden left because she thought she wasn’t getting enough lines or something. Funny because I think she got even less later.
I agree it started out with more Riker and he didn’t get much toward the end. Just the “what the hell are we going to do now?” line