Rick Berman - overstayed his time?
- Thread starter PCz911
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I think Enterprise would have benefitted from a completely new creative team, instead of the remnants of the Next Generation crew.
I love what Rick Berman did for the 24th Century. He kept STAR TREK alive and did more than any other Executive Producer would've probably done to keep Gene's Vision alive as well. I'm grateful to him that there's so much STAR TREK out there. He really did it.
Enterprise is not a bad show. It's Third Season is particularly interesting and entertaining. And I'm a huge fan of "These Are The Voyages," which he cowrote. I'm also aware that Rick Berman resisted the inclusion of several horrible ideas his bosses wanted for the show, like a Boy Band being featured, each week, in it.
He did some great things with the franchise, but when ENT came along, it was a new Century. The Winds of Change were blowing and STAR TREK had to get with the times. It needed new sensibilities, a new direction, a different vision than STAR TREK as we knew it. In that sense, yes, Rick Berman held onto the franchise too long. But it was always in good hands.
Enterprise is not a bad show. It's Third Season is particularly interesting and entertaining. And I'm a huge fan of "These Are The Voyages," which he cowrote. I'm also aware that Rick Berman resisted the inclusion of several horrible ideas his bosses wanted for the show, like a Boy Band being featured, each week, in it.
He did some great things with the franchise, but when ENT came along, it was a new Century. The Winds of Change were blowing and STAR TREK had to get with the times. It needed new sensibilities, a new direction, a different vision than STAR TREK as we knew it. In that sense, yes, Rick Berman held onto the franchise too long. But it was always in good hands.
It would have helped the show stay fresh if there were more new writers on the Voyager team and definitely for Enterprise. What finally made it watchable was when Manny Coto took over.
This really was a difficult issue. Berman never really was a creative force in the Trek franchise, in fact prior to Enterprise he only had two script writing credits in all Trek, both of them TNG. Granted, he is credited as developing stories on several episodes, and on all four TNG movies, but somehow I always thought his input was very minimal. Even on Enterprise where he is a credited co-writer for several episodes with Brannon Braga, I was always under the impression Braga was the one that did the "heavy lifting" regarding the script writing process on those episodes. And it wouldn't really have mattered who was running things on Voyager or Enterprise, they'd still have to answer to UPN and do what they wanted done on those shows, the only reason Manny Coto had as much freedom as he did during the fourth season was because by that point the show was basically a "lame duck" fulfilling minimum syndication requirements. Did Berman stay in the job too long? Probably. But someone else would not have instantly guaranteed better product.
Pretty much. It annoys me a little bit when people praise Deep Space Nine for its themes, the serialized format etc. but conveniently ignore that DS9 wasn't a network show and no one told the showrunners "About your premise ... we want TNG 2, so make it happen!".
I would say that Enterprise suffered post 9/11. It affected a lot of fiction at that time...DS9 would never have been made past that specific event. And we see it reflected in things like the Maco on board enterprise, the military alliances. Whatever people's opinions on Starfleet as a military, the 24th century version definitely went to great lengths to avoid that comparison even in Ds9, which was knee deep in a war story. It's a tonal shift in the real world and the fictional one, and Trek at that time was arguably out of step for a bit with real world politics and how we thought about heroes at that time. It was also affected by the existence of things like smallville and stargate, both of which seem to have been a bigger influence on enterprise than its Trek predecessors early on. It makes its curates egg. (In the U.K. It wasn't even shown on BBC in the evenings..Treks traditional slot on terrestrial television...instead it was with adverts on channel 4 as part of its youth programming alongside smallville, stargate, the o.c....it made it tonally different for viewers over here too I suspect. And certainly was on at at time some of its usual audience would just not tune in. There wasn't much fanfare in our media at its launch that I remember either. It was so totally different, in every way, that it alienated viewers.)
The Xindi storyline was definitely influenced by 9/11, and the Iraq War (searching for weapons of mass destruction).
It's true DS9 definitely wouldn't have been able to do its stories exploring the gray or even positive aspects of terrorism had the show been made post-9/11. I think Ira Behr has said that's one of the reasons he's glad about the show being made in the 90s.
I think he did overstay his welcome, but we can never truly know what restrictions UPN/CW had placed creatively on Star Trek by that point. These days we hear a lot about how VOY was never allowed to flourish as they wanted it to be more like TNG. It's a shame as the show had promise.
The franchise was already struggling at that point, and ideally ENT should have aired a year or two later, but we know UPN didn't want that. I also think ENT should have some sort of creative shake-up, perhaps even akin to what's happening with DIS at the moment. That would have meant Berman hiring outside his comfort net, or even standing aside to let someone else in, but that wasn't going to happen.
The franchise was already struggling at that point, and ideally ENT should have aired a year or two later, but we know UPN didn't want that. I also think ENT should have some sort of creative shake-up, perhaps even akin to what's happening with DIS at the moment. That would have meant Berman hiring outside his comfort net, or even standing aside to let someone else in, but that wasn't going to happen.
One of my favorite tidbits in all of Transformers was that, when Megatron and his forces chased the Ark carrying Optimus Prime and his Autobots millions of years ago, he left Shockwave in charge of the Decepticon war effort on Cybertron. Megatron commanded Shockwave to keep everything in order until his return.
The problem there was that Shockwave was so obedient that the war was at a virtual standstill, in that Shockwave kept the same type of balance -- though Shockwave didn't lose that many battles, he didn't really press Decepticons forward, either. By the time Megatron and Optimus woke up on Earth in the present, Cybertron was pretty much in the exact same state they left it, with no progress whatsoever.
To me, Berman is Shockwave. Yes, he kept Trek alive, but he was almost too adherent to Roddenberry; moreso, it was clear that Roddenberry's style in the 60s wouldn't work for the audiences of the 80s/90s without major adaptation, which is eventually why lost/handed over so much creative control to successors. Just as that was true for Roddenberry, it would eventually become true for Berman in the late 90s/00s -- yes, we all love TNG, but TNG works for its time; no need to try to duplicate it with Voyager or mix-and-match TOS and TNG in Enterprise. With that, keeping Berman as head administrator would've been perfectly fine (balancing multiple shows and movies simultaneously is not easy, but he did it), but he kept insisting on the creative output, which should've been left in the purview of his showrunners and writers like Braga, Behr, Ryan, Piller, RDM, and others.
The problem there was that Shockwave was so obedient that the war was at a virtual standstill, in that Shockwave kept the same type of balance -- though Shockwave didn't lose that many battles, he didn't really press Decepticons forward, either. By the time Megatron and Optimus woke up on Earth in the present, Cybertron was pretty much in the exact same state they left it, with no progress whatsoever.
To me, Berman is Shockwave. Yes, he kept Trek alive, but he was almost too adherent to Roddenberry; moreso, it was clear that Roddenberry's style in the 60s wouldn't work for the audiences of the 80s/90s without major adaptation, which is eventually why lost/handed over so much creative control to successors. Just as that was true for Roddenberry, it would eventually become true for Berman in the late 90s/00s -- yes, we all love TNG, but TNG works for its time; no need to try to duplicate it with Voyager or mix-and-match TOS and TNG in Enterprise. With that, keeping Berman as head administrator would've been perfectly fine (balancing multiple shows and movies simultaneously is not easy, but he did it), but he kept insisting on the creative output, which should've been left in the purview of his showrunners and writers like Braga, Behr, Ryan, Piller, RDM, and others.
Berman definitely outstayed his welcome. I'd say it happened pretty much around the time DS9 finished. Trek became increasingly pedestrian after that. You could see that the production team under him had become very set in it's ways and creatively safe. It needed to be mixed up if it was going to survive.
However, Berman does not get the credit he deserves. He oversaw the golden age of Trek in the 90s. The franchise is s shadow of what it was back then. Plus he stood by Gene's core vision and understood what Trek was about more than anyone who has followed. I think that as the franchise (and indeed Hollywood generally) moves increasingly towards dumbed down fare, history will be much kinder to his legacy as people learn that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
However, Berman does not get the credit he deserves. He oversaw the golden age of Trek in the 90s. The franchise is s shadow of what it was back then. Plus he stood by Gene's core vision and understood what Trek was about more than anyone who has followed. I think that as the franchise (and indeed Hollywood generally) moves increasingly towards dumbed down fare, history will be much kinder to his legacy as people learn that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.
The network had no input on the movies, yet they had a lot of the same problems as the shows.
I think Berman's general motto of "it's Star Trek, you don't have to take risks" led to the downfall of Trek more than any network executive meddling. UPN surely had a part in it, but having a producer who continually played it safe and abolished gay characters on a show known for being bold, inventive and progressive is a recipe for disaster.
He did a good job picking up the slack after Roddenberry left, but he also ended up staying with the franchise way too long.
I think Berman's general motto of "it's Star Trek, you don't have to take risks" led to the downfall of Trek more than any network executive meddling. UPN surely had a part in it, but having a producer who continually played it safe and abolished gay characters on a show known for being bold, inventive and progressive is a recipe for disaster.
He did a good job picking up the slack after Roddenberry left, but he also ended up staying with the franchise way too long.
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That's the thing that gets to me. There's nothing inherently wrong with sticking to Roddenberry's vision, but analyzing, critiquing, and challenging that vision with the intent of improving storytelling through it, and thus fortifying it, was never a real possibility in Berman's mind. That's why he would need people like Behr and Coto; indeed, we saw more consistent/thorough Earth/Federation/Starfleet diplomatic growth with major powers under those two than almost anyone else, and forging alliances during exploration is a key part of Roddenberry's idea of Starfleet.
Oh, there's no question about it. Note how Section 31 features so prominently in the storylines, for Season Four of Enterprise. The inspiration of the USA's NSA is palpable and is what makes those scenes so deeply disturbing. It's the J. Edgar Hoover days all over again, thanks to 9/11 and when another incident like it happens? I fear our reaction to it infinitely more than I fear the incident, itself. Uncle Sam will be completely untied and unbound. Quite possibly forever. If that's not TV fodder then I don't know what is.
And yet, Malcolm's Section 31 situation is loosely resolved in such a way that there's at least the suggestion of hope. It's hold over him seems to be loosed, at least superficially. And it's a comfort, as a fan of the show, seeing that. At least, in our entertainment, especially in STAR TREK, that even the greatest and most legitimate abuse of power can be sort of marginalised, to where we're afforded the pretense that it really is as necessary as it claims to be.
From memory Broken Bow was broadcast 2 weeks after 9/11, so most of season 1, and all of season 2-4 would have been in a "post 9/11 world"
They're in two storylines in season 4 and only really have anything meaningful to do in Affliction/Divergence. In Demons/Terra Prime Reed's Section 31 friend Harris is mostly used as a consultant and intel provider.
Well said.
Yeah some of these suits seem to think that what is good for Dawson's Creek is good for Star Trek. Good on Berman for resisting.
Berman gets a lot of over-the-top ridiculous criticism. The man was an excellent producer and showrunner.
Did he "get stale" as the OP suggests? Possibly. He begged UPN not to launch Voyager so quickly, worried about "going to the well so often". But they told him that if he wasn't prepared to do it, they'd find somebody else. He stayed out of respect for Roddenberry and 'protecting the vision'. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake and perhaps the time he should have stepped away...but I certainly understand and respect his reasons for staying.
Did he "get stale" as the OP suggests? Possibly. He begged UPN not to launch Voyager so quickly, worried about "going to the well so often". But they told him that if he wasn't prepared to do it, they'd find somebody else. He stayed out of respect for Roddenberry and 'protecting the vision'. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake and perhaps the time he should have stepped away...but I certainly understand and respect his reasons for staying.
I think it's worth pointing out that if any of us were paid to make Star Trek, we'd do so in a state of orgasmic ecstacy until Paramount (CBS now) dragged us kicking and screaming off their property.
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