Most of what works in the Star Trek movies evolve from what we know about the characters. Kirk’s love for his ship and history with the Klingons, Picard’s history with the Borg, Data’s struggle with emotions, that sort of thing.
What character threads from any of the series could have been picked up and expanded on in movies?
It would be interesting to see an exploration as to how Riker transitioned back to going back to progressing his career. TNG pointed out that Riker had stopped progressing his career when he went to the Enterprise. It would be interesting to deal with his shift to becoming a captain.
Yes! My thinking is that Riker stayed on the Enterprise as long as he did because Picard is the first male authority figure in his life that he can respect and learn from. Riker is hyper-competent, but he has no sort of relationship with his father, his first captain barely survived a mutiny while performing illegal experiments, he had no problem pushing back on the captain of the Hood doing dangerous stupid things, and he would rather step down than work for Jellico. Not to mention having to phaser a few admirals to death. Riker’s whole history is a search for a man he can trust, and he found that in Picard.
So what changed, that he finally gave that up and moved on?