For someone who alleges to only care about factual accuracy, you sure have a way with butchering names. Who the hell is "Brian Bragga?"
Outspoken Marina Sirtis Interview
- Thread starter HaplessCrewman
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For someone who alleges to only care about factual accuracy, you sure have a way with butchering names. Who the hell is "Brian Bragga?"
Pedantic much? Fixed the name and you know quite well who I mean.
I think there's zero chance it won't make a metric fuck-ton of money, but whether it will be a critical success remains to be seen.
I shall! Thanks for the tip. I don't see him as the tell-all kind, if nothing else he's relentlessly professional. His recent interviews for the TNG Blu-rays were more frank than anything else I've read or heard from him, so perhaps there's more to come.
This is one thing I will miss about DS9 and VOY not coming to blu ray, the special features talking about what life was like in the 90s behind the scenes of the Star Trek boom. One of the things I appreciated on the TNG special features sets (especailly season 1) was Berman's perspectives. It seems like he's become the whipping boy of the franchise and deserved or not, I would read kind of an autobiographical book written from him expressing his side of things.
I'd love more perspective, but I'm not holding my breath. I am reminded that it was Braga, not Berman or Behr, who spilled the beans abount the contentious meeting conerning Enterprises's season 3.
I'm not sure that ``yeah, this show is boring and tedious, but this other show you liked was boring and tedious six years ago too'' is the most effective bit of rhetoric you might deploy.
So would I. It would make for some interesting reading.
No, but it does cut right to the heart of the issue.
TNG didn't have the most stellar start (which the ratings chart everybody loves does show), but as the show got better and better so did the ratings. People gave it a chance because it was Star Trek.
Funny thing is, DS9's "Emissary" had the highest rating of any Trek episode, according to the chart. That right there shows that it wasn't the concept of DS9 that ran people off, but the execution. There began the massive divebomb Trek took, at least as far as Nielsens were concerned.
After "Emissary", the next ten or so episodes of DS9 drew in about the same number as the TNG episodes that were airing concurrently. Most of the time, people are willing to give something new a chance. Afterward, the viewership decline began for DS9. (TNG, which was already well-established, managed to maintain fairly steady ratings even during Season 7.)
It's kind of hard to believe that at one point in time, a Star Trek debut could draw in 28 million viewers ("Emissary") while a Star Trek finale could draw in 27 million ("All Good Things").
But how long should people keep watching a show they don't like on the grounds that it might get better if they last long enough? Especially when the staff hasn't just been thrown together, but has had five years of practice working on a very similar show? Shouldn't they have hit the ground running?
Pretty much; why the first two seasons of DS9 and VOY were wildly inconsistent, and not in a good way, has always been a mystery.
Creatively? I think both team leads pretty much made it clear in some of the interviews. They were fumbling around with no real idea what to do with what they had. They were throwing ideas at the wall until something came together. Even the Dominion stuff was basically cobbled together between seasons from disparate stuff.
Voyager in particular always saddened me, as I felt it should have been the first Trek show to start out completely serialized. The conflict between Janeway and Chakotay would have been ripe. You could even have members of the starfleet crew consider joining the Maquis. I would have had Janeway be the XO initially, and have the CAPTAIN die. Before leaving Starfleet Chakotay would have been a commander, and that way the two would be butting heads over who should really be running things. They harmonized the situation way too fast in the pitifully small number of episodes dealing with all that.
There are many other layers to consider there too. The acquisition and decline of resources, some members of the crew literally losing their mental stability from being so far from home.
Instead of Neelix, I would have had some of the Maquis fill in his role, being as they were all about fighting for survival and such they would be invaluable and coming up with new ways to feed the crew, and deal with the hostile threats of the delta quadrant in new and interesting ways. There's many other things that they could have done to really use what they had, and make the show about something. In this case, two different methodologies, and ideologies forced to come together, and the resulting conflicts and harmonies that would arise in having to make do with a pants-fillingly dangerous and unknown corner of the galaxy. An ongoing struggle, nothing pat or easy. No reset button.
that would have required a great deal of courage from the studio and the tv network and frankly there would be better odds of a lottery win.
Voyager was conceived from the very beginning to be a TNG-rehash with cheaper actors, nothing more.
VOY is fun though, to me, moreso than any other BermanTrek.
As for Marina's comment about ENT: MAYbe impolitic (maybe) but she's right about not just being able to stick the name Trek on something and the nerds'll automatically fall for it. I was one who watched at first and fell away.
And it's happening again. Got a Roku mainly so I and the kid (17-year-old female crazed Trekkie -- a Niner btw) could watch through ENT. It's been months and we're not through S1. Not. That. Compelling.
I hear everybody say it gets better (after three years!). We'll see.
Might I take a moment to point out my first love hit the ground running, and to many of us, the first half of S1 is the best of TOS? Part of it was freelance scripts, some written by great authors, as opposed to a writer's room where they HAVE to come up with a new story to fill this week's 42 minutes.
But you like what you like, to paraphrase Yukon Cornelius.
As for Marina's comment about ENT: MAYbe impolitic (maybe) but she's right about not just being able to stick the name Trek on something and the nerds'll automatically fall for it. I was one who watched at first and fell away.
And it's happening again. Got a Roku mainly so I and the kid (17-year-old female crazed Trekkie -- a Niner btw) could watch through ENT. It's been months and we're not through S1. Not. That. Compelling.
I hear everybody say it gets better (after three years!). We'll see.
Might I take a moment to point out my first love hit the ground running, and to many of us, the first half of S1 is the best of TOS? Part of it was freelance scripts, some written by great authors, as opposed to a writer's room where they HAVE to come up with a new story to fill this week's 42 minutes.
But you like what you like, to paraphrase Yukon Cornelius.
Why are you slogging through a season you don't like? I mean, yes, you want to give it a fair chance since maybe the general consensus doesn't match your opinion. But if everybody says it gets better in the later half of season three and in season four, and you're not grooving on season one, why not just go to the later episodes? It's a fandom, not a homework assignment.
Good -- there is that whole character-building angle to it.
I understand t'Pol grows a lot, so that'll be good to hear. Right now everytime she says ANYthing to anybody she's nasty. Of course Vulcans always are written so, except for Spock, right?
Not handling her emotions very well for a full-blooded Vulcan anyway.
Can't stand Archer though -- he's so, goofy/affable/not-real-commanderly in his mannerisms. Kind of a putz, it seems to me.
But as much as people talk about s4, that sounds like a good payoff in the
long run. Where did Manny Coto come from? I know the Reese-Stevens name from novels, yes?
I understand t'Pol grows a lot, so that'll be good to hear. Right now everytime she says ANYthing to anybody she's nasty. Of course Vulcans always are written so, except for Spock, right?
Not handling her emotions very well for a full-blooded Vulcan anyway.
Can't stand Archer though -- he's so, goofy/affable/not-real-commanderly in his mannerisms. Kind of a putz, it seems to me.
But as much as people talk about s4, that sounds like a good payoff in the
long run. Where did Manny Coto come from? I know the Reese-Stevens name from novels, yes?
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Well said. The notion that actors from a job (and let's not con ourselves that in the end, it is just that--a job) must have some sort of pack mentality to rub each other's back is nonsense. That is the complaint largely stemming from fans who want to see the ST actors--as Khan would put it--"one big, happy fleet."
That does not mix with reality.
Unlike the low-down personal attacks from Doohan, Koenig and Takei against Shatner (disproving that early convention myth of the "Star Trek family"), Sirtis is not coming off like a bitter day player who did not end up with a career matching the popularity of that one, good job.
Good post, and it is true: DS9 was never going to be TNG 2.0. The concept, probably some of the casting choices, and in many ways, it did not have that "Star Trek" feel for some reason. Whatever that was, it was enough for the fans to not fall in with TNG's numbers.
Yes--it is not their job to keep polishing a myth.
