The finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation could have been even better

There's no arguing that the finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of the greatest episodes of the series. It ended with Captain Picard finally acknowledging how he felt about the crew. They weren't just his friends; they were his family, and with that, he finally sat down to play poker with them as he'd never done before.

But according to Brannon Braga and Brent Spiner In theStar Trek oral history "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years" by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross [via Screenrant], there were character scenes in the original script that Spiner was really excited about that weren't included.

"The first draft that Ron and Brannon wrote was extraordinary. It would have easily have been thought of as the greatest Star Trek episode of all time. Michael came in and added a few thousand words of technobabble to it and took out some of the character scenes, which he is not keen on. There were moments when I read the first draft that my heart jumped into my throat, because I was so excited. There were some wonderful moments between Picard, Geordi, and Data. Nonetheless, it’s still a very good episode."

- Brent Spiner

It's a shame that those moments were removed, especially since we didn't get any of those between Geordi and Data before he was killed in Star Trek: Nemesis. Then he died in the first season of Star Trek: Picard without a chance to say goodbye to his best friend. Sure, we got some moments between Geordi and Data in the final season of Picard, but we'll never know just how good those conversations on the Enterprise would have been back in 1994.

"There was a lot of good character work that was lost. Did we need Geordi’s VISOR to hold the key to the mystery? We’ve seen that about twenty-five times in the show. Do we really need his eyes to be getting younger? Would it have been better to have more character at the risk of meandering a little bit? Yes, I think so."

- Brannon Braga

While "All Good Things..." Is a great finale, now the only way we'll know that it could have been even better is by reading the script itself which isn't readily available. If some lucky fan happens to nab a copy, will you let us know what was left out? We'd sure like to know what we missed out on!