Dragonflight said:
I've heard a few things now and then about Star Trek and Rick Berman. Rumor has it that Berman actually *hates* TOS, and personally tries to ignore anything which would require TOS continuity.
It's slightly odd, then, that he was the producer of Generations... also strange that he got a writing credit on that one. For somone who tries to ignore anything that would require TOS continuity he sure appeared to be well involved with the last movie featuring TOS characters from the get-go.
Dragonflight said:
As for the rest, someone up above mentioned it was all about $$$. Sad but true. Consider that Babylon 5 (a far more entertaining and all-encompassing storyline) had to fight for all five years of its life. It was only intended to be a five year program, with a defined start and end. Yet every year, they didn't know if they'd be able to continue it. The fact that you had to actually put a little *thought* into what you were seeing was apparently enough to seriously scare TV producers.
I enjoy both watching B5 and spoiling the plot for Trelane. It is not, however, a series that requires an insane amount of thought. The 'thought' comes straight out of pop culture or a first year philosophy or religious studies course... It's an entertaining story, but it doesn't really bring anything overly thought provoking, or new to the table.
I'll also point out that, except in the most extreme cases, once a show is already on the air, network execs and other people that purchase shows could care less if a show requires 'thought'. If it gets good enough ratings to justify its costs, they'll keep it... If it doesn't, they won't.
Dragonflight said:
Trek suffers from being pap. It can be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and fed to the masses as bland, tasteless pap that looks pretty, but says nothing. The only reason to have this show on the air (from Paramount's perspective) is to draw in the people who watch it, so they can run ads four times an hour.
I will, of course, point out that this is pretty much the reason any large corporate entity has for doing anything...
Dragonflight said:
Finally, I've done a lot of analysis of ST episodes, from TNG through Enterprise, and I've noticed a sickening trend. The entire series Berman has worked on has suffered from a single, overriding delusion. Roddenberry believed in creating a vision of a future we might someday hope to become more like. Maybe we won't be that egalitarian, maybe we will. But it was a message of hope in a dark time that he was trying to show to us. That we could be better than we are today.
Berman shows us a vision of a bland, moral minority tomorrow, where every significant event in our history will be resolved with TIME TRAVEL. Go over the TNG, VOY, DS9, and ENT episodes for a moment. *Every single event* of any real significance, or turning point in the Star Trek historical timeline during the last twenty years has been brought about by TIME TRAVEL!
What the hell? Except, of course, for all those pivotal points in the last 20 years that haven't...
Dragonflight said:
Let's not forget that in the 27th century, it's been established that Starfleet has a TIMESHIP, whose job it is to protect history Presumably more than one, since it didn't look exactly like a prototype to me. In Berman's view, the entire Star Trek history is about mankind's rise from obscurity to total mastery over TIME TRAVEL. A vision which offers us nothing to believe in, no-one to wish we could be like, and nothing substantial between the ears for year after boring year.
I'm not exactly sure how any of that has anything to do with having things to believe in, or people to admire... I'll also point out that almost every episode with 27th century people in it involves them screwing up horribly... They are, apparantly, not very masterful with that whole time travel thing, since they keep screwing things to hell.