I was distracted by the bad western theme, and I didn't think Shatner did the best job. I used to say season 2 was my favorite. Now though, I when I watch TNG I see how there was a major improvement starting with season 3. I was never a Rick Berman fan, but it sounds like him taking over the show was one of the best things for the tv series.
I say that with a bit of a bad taste because I always was under the impression that Berman was a negative?
Thoughts on this documentary are being discussed in another thread... Berman was definitely not a negative for TNG. Many haters refuse to see it, but if it wasn't for Berman, TNG would not have been a success.
I agree. It was later on with Voyager and Enterprise as well as the TNG movies that Berman became a negative. As far TNG goes he practically saved it from cancellation.
Very few people are ever purely positive or negative. Rick Berman's strengths were as an executive producer on the logistical side -- he oversaw all the details of getting the productions made, from writing to casting to design to cinematography to editing to scoring to visual effects, and was remarkably effective at enabling TNG and its successors to achieve their high production values. He wasn't quite as strong on the creative side, but on TNG and DS9 he had exceptional showrunners like Michael Piller and Ira Steven Behr to handle that. The later shows had showrunners of more average talent like Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga (and were subject to network pressures from UPN which hamstrung them creatively), and eventually on Enterprise Berman took on a co-showrunner role himself as Braga's full-time writing partner, something he'd never really done before and which wasn't his primary strength (his only actual script credits before ENT were TNG's "Brothers" and "A Matter of Time"). But his skills at managing the logistical side of the production remained top-notch, and every Trek show he oversaw was superbly well-made, whatever one might think of its writing.
Yeah, I actually think Berman has a lot in common with last original Who producer John Nathan-Turner, both excellent at the mechanics of getting the show made but very much in need of a good solid person in charge of the creative side of things and they didn't always make the right choice of who should run that should be. That's not to dis Braga hugely, as a writer of episodes he was someone you'd want on staff to do a couple of weird mental high concept shows a year (and it's easy to forget how popular a lot of his TNG stuff). But that's not a good fit for showrunner on a series like Voyager or Enterprise which aren't really set up to be gonzo insane every single week. EDIT: I do think Berman (like JNT) stayed in the job too long though, focusing so much on the daily grind of getting Star Trek made meant he was increasingly out of touch with the changes in the style and structure of TV going on around him, making for some quaintly early 90's feeling TV towards the end. Though who'd have wanted the poisoned chalice is another thing entirely.
^A fair assessment. I think anyone who stays in charge of a franchise long enough is going to end up with an increasingly negative perception, because there are always going to be mistakes made and episodes that don't work, and over time the negative reactions will accumulate. And eventually maybe you do get tired or into a rut and it's hard to bring something fresh to the table. I think the same thing is happening now with Steven Moffat on Doctor Who, though I think he is still trying to experiment and bring novelty to the show (tomorrow's episode being a prime example). But then, JN-T was getting pretty experimental toward the end of his run, bringing more complex characterization and continuity to Who in a way that foreshadowed the modern approach, and yet he was still viewed negatively by a lot of the fanbase.