Happy Star Wars Day, and Welcome back to Character Insight! This week, we review Lieutenant Commander Argyle, who was one of the first chief engineers we see in TNG.
Argyle appears in a couple of first season episodes, including the episode Where No One Has Gone Before. In this episode, we see the engineer oversee a warp drive experiment in main engineering. In another appearance in the episode Datalore, he supervises the reassembly of Lore in sickbay. Although he has little dialogue, we do see him speak with a slight Scottish accent, a nod to the original chief of Star Trek, Montgomery Scott.
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He is referred to by Commander Riker as one of our chief engineers, which explains why we often see him in a supervisory role. That line also alludes to the fact that the chief engineer role was not really set during the first season of this show. To this end, Argyle starts to appear when the character of Sarah MacDougal begins to disappear after being the first chief engineer we see on the show in season 1. After Argyle's couple of appearances, he is also generally replaced by a Lieutenant Logan showing up as chief engineer. Of course, the unsettled chief role eventually led the writers to insert Geordi La Forge into that role, so these misfires on filling that role in the beginning had a good ending for Lavar Burton and all viewers.
Speaking of filling that chief engineer role full time, there's a fun backstory about Argyle and the actor in the background of TNG season 1. Some of the documentaries about this show have revealed from other actors like Wil Wheaton that the character of Argyle was to be officially considered as a full time chief engineer. The show runners decided to see if viewers really liked this character and his callback to the original Scotty, basically letting viewer mail determine if this should be their long term fit for the role.
But this intent was apparently leaked and then, viewer mail encouraging Argyle as the full time chief engineer started rolling in before his episodes even aired! Some viewers complained that they were solicited by direct mailings to write in on the subject. This caused the show runners to move on from Argyle, foiling the plot entirely. It's fun background like this that adds depth to the already-interesting story of how Star Trek was revived for TV by TNG.
The character of Argyle is referenced again in a remastered edition of the fourth season episode Galaxy's Child on an engineering log we see on screen. He is mentioned as an engineer, but not placed in a ranking of engineers or listed as chief. Thus, until told otherwise, Argyle goes on.
Engineer Argyle was played by Biff Yeager, who is perhaps best known for recurring appearances on the series Gilmore Girls. He also was hooked in with director Tim Burton and so appears in the 90s movies Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. Yeager still acts in some small recurring roles through today.
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