How would you have written pan as a character for gt?

Above all else, I'd want to establish an end goal for her character arc. Where do we want Pan to end up at the end of the story? How will she change? And then I'd write the character with that goal in mind.

Let's use her father as an example. When Gohan is first introduced, he's established to have great potential, but he's untrained and easily frightened. He taps into that hidden power when he sees his father in danger, or when his own life is threatened, but that's about it. Piccolo declares his intention to train Gohan to control his hidden power, so that he can become strong enough to defend the earth.

And that mission statement becomes the throughline for the character. It's not the only thing Gohan does in Dragon Ball Z, but with each adventure he goes on, he gets a little more capable and a little more responsible and mature.

Static characters are a thing, and you can have them in your story. Yajirobe is basically the same guy in Dragon Ball Super as he is in his first appearance. He moves into Korin Tower and ages a few decades, but otherwise nothing changes. It works in his case, because he's a supporting role in a very large cast of characters.

But Gohan and Pan are presented as major players in their respective stories, and they need to develop over time, in order to keep the audience invested in them. This wasn't lost on the makes of GT. In episode 2, Pan makes it clear that she wants to be taken more seriously by the adults, and she sneaks aboard the ship and forces the others to let her stay aboard, all so she can prove her worth.

But what progress do we see Pan make towards that goal? I'm sure there's some throwaway lines at the end of the Baby Saga about how proud everyone is of Pan for her courage, but the Pan at the end of GT looks and acts basically the same as the one we see at the beginning. What did she learn from all those adventures? How has she grown?

With Gohan in DBZ, this is always obvious to the viewer. He goes from trembling at the thought of fighting Nappa to standing up to Recoome all by himself. At the Cell Games, he doesn't just show superior strength, he also demonstrates skills that he didn't have before he spent that year in the Time Chamber with Goku. He uses the Kamehameha, but he also deflects a Special Beam Cannon, among other things. And there's a lot of visual changes he goes through as well. Fans can just look at a picture of Gohan and identify what period of the show it's from.

GT Pan doesn't get any of that. She's stuck wearing the same Winnie the Pooh shirt from start to finish, and while I'm sure she increased her power level over the course of the series, there's no clear indication of this.

This was why I was always mad that she didn't turn Super Saiyan in Episode 15. It was a perfect opportunity to have her reach a tangible milestone, something that would force everyone to accept her as a peer. Then she could have racked up some wins later in the show, maybe defeat Tuffle Goten or something, and then later she could take out a major league dead villain in the Super 17 Saga. And then she could have scored a big solo win over one of the Shadow Dragons. She wouldn't have to become the strongest character on the show, or anything like that. The point would be to demonstrate that Pan Has Changed A Lot, and she's much more capable in Episode 60 than she was in Episode 3.

If you want to get into specific ideas, I would probably focus on Pan doing "penance" for stealing Goten's spot on the GT Crew. The idea Vegeta had was for Goten and Trunks to go with Goku as a sort of training journey. Pan took Goten's spot, which means she has to do all the hard work Goten would have had to do. They showed her doing (and assigning) chores on the ship in Episode 3, but she never learned anything about the tech that makes the ship run, and we never see her training with Goku.

A big problem with GT, especially early GT, is how they just waste time doing nothing, when they could use that time to develop the characters. So you have scenes where Trunks says something responsible or anxious, and Pan acts whiny or bossy, and Goku says he's hungry, and it's like, that's it, there's your characterization for the week! It's hollow and performative, and it betrays the formulaic attitudes of the creators. They're just making GT in order to hang on to the time slot for one more year.

What they should have done was to use those quiet moments in the stories to show Pan learning from Goku and Trunks. If they're on their way to the next planet, Trunks should be showing Pan how to fly the ship. If they're waiting for repairs, Goku should be sparring with Pan to pass the time. Goku should be very eager to get Pan up to Super Saiyan level, because it could literally save her life one of these days. And, more importantly, Goku knows she's capable of earning the respect she craves.

She should also be learning lessons to curb her shitty attitude, the same way Goku learned some manners in the original series, and Gohan learned to take care of himself in Z. It's bizarre to me how often Pan treats Goku and Trunks with such contempt, and yet she wants them to respect her. It would be so easy to have someone point out the hypocrisy, and maybe that would get Pan to rethink how she looks at the world, but that conversation just never happens.

I could take this in more radical directions, like giving Pan special powers or a unique skill no one else has, but it boils down to the same thing. If you're going to send Pan into space for a year, then she needs to come back older and wiser than she was before. The change needs to be apparent to the viewer, and we should get to see that change happen over the course of the story.