The Writers Strike During Second Season.
- Thread starter Thanos007
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The strike was actually at the end of the first season of TNG. The episodes most affected were "We'll Always Have Paris," whose climax had to be semi-improvised on set because they couldn't get it properly rewritten, and "The Neutral Zone," which was written in haste and with little opportunity for revision, which is why it was such a weak, unfocused episode.
The main impact the strike had on season 2 was that its start was delayed by a month, and the season was reduced from 26 to 22 episodes as a result. Also, the second-season premiere, "The Child," was a rewrite of a script from Star Trek Phase II, the abortive TOS revival that was replaced by Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The plan was to shoot Phase II scripts with the character names changed in case the strike dragged on, but it resolved soon enough that they were able to rewrite it somewhat. Another Phase II script, "Devil's Due," was also put into development, but they didn't get a viable episode out of it until season 4.
Contrary to popular belief, the season-ending clip show "Shades of Gray" had nothing to do with the strike, which had been over for months by that point. Clip shows have long been a routine practice in television, done in order to save money and time -- and they still need someone to write the framing scenes, so they couldn't be written during a strike anyway. The producers agreed to do a clip show that could be shot in 3 days as a way to compensate for their time and budget overruns on "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Q Who" earlier in the season.
I'm curious, who was allowed to rewrite and improvise the writing during writers strike? Who were not allowed to write?
A strike is a walkout by the members of a union, in this case the Writers' Guild of America, in order to demand better contract terms or working conditions. So WGA members had to sit things out until the labor dispute was resolved. Non-WGA producers or directors could do what they could in place of the writers. In theory, non-union writers could be hired, but any writer crossing the picket line would be frowned upon.
Another show affected by the '88 writers' strike was War of the Worlds: The Series, TNG's partner in its syndication package for seasons 2-3. Because the strike was on while the show was being developed and written, a lot of its first season was written by non-union (or Canadian) writers, and many of its scripts were pseudonymously written. And the writing was pretty dire as a result -- although the post-strike season 2 was even worse in some ways.
On the other hand, the strike led to the revival of Mission: Impossible in 1988. Since networks were facing the prospect of a season with no new scripts being written, they developed plans to remake old shows with new actors (and a returning Peter Graves) doing the same scripts. That's what the M:I revival was originally going to be, but the strike resolved soon enough that they were able to rework it into a sequel rather than a remake, with new characters aside from Graves's Jim Phelps. Four or five episodes were remakes from the original series, but rewritten to one degree or another, and the rest were all-new, or at most only very loosely based on original-series story premises.
Another show that benefitted from a writers' strike was Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973. As it happens, there was a strike underway when it was being developed, but the strike only affected live-action TV. Thus, there were a lot of prime-time TV writers who normally wouldn't have been available for an animated show to use, but who happened to be in need of work when TAS was in need of writers. That's why TAS was able to hire so many writers who'd previously worked on TOS.
EDIT: Oh, and one other production affected by a writers' strike was the 2009 Star Trek movie. A strike was on during the time it was filmed, so the script couldn't be rewritten during production -- not even by J.J. Abrams, I think, since he's a writer as well as a director and thus a WGA member. Thus, once the strike ended, Abrams had to make what story adjustments he could during post-production, through creative editing and redubbing of dialogue. I'm not sure if there were any reshoots, though such things are pretty common on big-budget movies these days, so there were probably some.
Regarding WAR OF THE WORLDS season 1, I actually really enjoyed it. Agreed, though, that season 2 was a major letdown.
There's a moment in the 2009 film when after the mind meld Kirk says to Old Spock "going back in time, you changed all our lives", as if suggesting that it was Spock's time traveling that actually changed the timeline, as opposed to Nero's. Is that a residue of the original shooting script? I understand Nero would have originally been in a Klingon prison according to deleted scenes, but that's the only big change I recall aside from Kirk's brother being omitted.
I liked it at the time because of the great chemistry among the cast. But when I revisited it a few years back, I realized that the cast's charm was not sufficient to compensate for the frequently dire, incoherent writing and the cheap production values. Even many of the episodes I liked the first time around were just horrible on a revisit.
No; it basically makes sense. Spock and Nero both fell into the red-matter black hole at the same time, even though they came out of it at different times in the past. And it was Spock who created the black hole in the first place. Nero arrived first and therefore branched off the timeline, but it was because of Spock's actions that it happened. So Kirk's line was essentially correct, just simplified.
Script changes aren't necessarily major plot points, just finessing the way the story is told, the way lines are phrased, and so forth. Normally in filmmaking, all sorts of adjustments both large and small are made continuously during production, as the director notes things that don't work or thinks of improvements. Creativity is always a process of trial and error and discovery along the way; that's normal. But because of the strike, Abrams was limited in the adjustments he could make during production and thus had to tweak what he could in post-production.
One minor change I know of illustrates how a scene can be changed in editing. One of the first teaser scenes released to the public is the scene with Pike and Kirk after the bar fight. When the film finally came out, it included a line that wasn't in the originally released clip, Pike's bizarre line about the Federation being "a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada." But that line was spoken while Pike was offscreen, with the camera on Kirk the whole time. You can often tell when a line is added in post-production by the fact that the scene cuts away from the speaker to conceal the fact that it was dubbed in later. I often notice this being done with lines of exposition, presumably added to clarify things that were confusing to test audiences or executives. In this case, I imagine Abrams belatedly realized that the film never bothered to explain for novice viewers what the Federation and Starfleet were all about or why it mattered that Kirk signed up for the Academy. So the "armada" line was probably tacked on late in the game, hence its clumsiness and the way it equates the Federation with Starfleet. Whereas if it had been possible to rewrite the scene during filming, perhaps a smoother way to incorporate that information could've been devised.
The biggest change I can think of done in post was how the original ending of STAR WARS did not have the Death Star preparing to blow up Yavin IV. Anything regarding Yavin IV being the target of destruction was cleverly edited with redubbed dialogue and reuse of footage from the earlier scene of Alderaan's destruction.
If nothing else, season 2's premiere set up the dystopian nature not unreasonably well. But the season couldn't hold a candle to season 1 - which, despite using everyday objects reworked as alien technology - like a blender as part of a communications device (which I thought was an idea taken to the most stupidest lengths even back then), was nearly sublime. The bodysnatching idea - while not new - was, I thought, very nicely done. It's got that nice late-80s kitschy horror thing going on, which TNG didn't try to do - "Conspiracy" aside and that's when they realized it couldn't work for TNG in the same way. And the cast chemistry was impeccable. Nice pre-episode quotes, which got cut out of the DVD release too. Dare I revisit that show as it's been a number of years and decades since I saw it last...
Yeah, but the season that followed was deeply unpleasant and grim, as well as badly written. And while season 2's portrayal of a world ruined by the long-term aftereffects of the devastating 1953 invasion made more sense than season 1's portrayal of an intact world that had completely forgotten about it, there was no attempt made to explain the transition from one to the other.
Worst of all is the fact that the new producer, Frank Mancuso Jr., killed off the two nonwhite members of the cast and brought in several new white regulars. And his excuses for killing off Ironhorse and Norton were unconvincing. He claimed he was somehow unaware that Ironhorse was the fan-favorite character, and he claimed that Norton couldn't work in season 2 because he was in a wheelchair and the team would lose their home base and be on the run -- except he then gave them a new home base at the start of the very next episode, so it was just a blatantly false excuse for not wanting a black guy in a wheelchair in the show. In fact, the new regime didn't seem to want any kind of diversity at all, since Harrison Blackwood lost all his charming eccentricities and became a generic lead whose only distinctive personality trait was a beard.
Another star trek example is of course Star Trek 5. This was affected by the exact same WGA strike as TNG seasons one and two. Shatner recounted in his book Star Trek Movie Memories how they'd phone the writer while the strike was on and, carefully so as not to cross any boundaries, ask him questions like, "If such-and-such a scene were rewitten, such-and-such a character might say such-and-such a line?", to which the writer wouldn't say yes or no, but something like, "They might say something like that". So, a set of notes were gathered for what rewrites they needed to do, that would then be able to take place after the strike was over. Which always struck me as a clever work around to the problem.
My teenage self liked War of the Worlds. I remember being disappointed with the second season so much I gave up on it. The team was the best thing about it and I missed Ironhorse and Drake. Interesting comments on the racial implications of getting rid of those two characters.
I haven't seen it since it aired. It probably doesn't hold up but I would love to see it again.
I haven't seen it since it aired. It probably doesn't hold up but I would love to see it again.
There was one episode of War of the Worlds season 2 I almost sort of liked, about the team struggling to give the female lead's teenage daughter some semblance of a happy birthday in the midst of the hellish dystopia. It was actually kind of sweet, unusually upbeat for the season, and a nice change of pace. But it depended too much on the rest of the season being horribly unpleasant and depressing to establish the contrast.
Overall, I'd say the writing on season 2 got relatively less dire about midway through the season when Jim Trombetta came on board as story editor (around the time they did that time-travel episode back to just after the events of the 1953 movie, with the past portions inexplicably in black-and-white even though the movie was Technicolor). The back half of the season was relatively more watchable. But then the finale totally blew it. For some reason, after this season drenched in darkness and despair, they decided to tack on a happy ending through a nonsensical retcon that the ruthless global invasion in '53 had all been a misunderstanding when a peaceful scouting expedition went wrong, and that all the evil, human-hating aliens we'd been watching all season were actually nice people who'd been deceived by their evil leader, so that getting rid of him solved everything forever and they all lived happily ever after. That was one of the biggest "What were they thinking?" moments in a season full of them.
Overall, I'd say the writing on season 2 got relatively less dire about midway through the season when Jim Trombetta came on board as story editor (around the time they did that time-travel episode back to just after the events of the 1953 movie, with the past portions inexplicably in black-and-white even though the movie was Technicolor). The back half of the season was relatively more watchable. But then the finale totally blew it. For some reason, after this season drenched in darkness and despair, they decided to tack on a happy ending through a nonsensical retcon that the ruthless global invasion in '53 had all been a misunderstanding when a peaceful scouting expedition went wrong, and that all the evil, human-hating aliens we'd been watching all season were actually nice people who'd been deceived by their evil leader, so that getting rid of him solved everything forever and they all lived happily ever after. That was one of the biggest "What were they thinking?" moments in a season full of them.
I was always kind of pissed when they made the changes in season 2 but after reading that it pisses me off even more.
Jason
That's right. The show explained it partly as a coverup and partly collective denial, but also tied it into UFO lore by asserting that aliens had some sort of natural amnesia-inducing effect on humans who encountered them. It never really made sense, though, because what about the global devastation of cities and the death toll dwarfing WWII?
I think "The Neutral Zone" still worked quite well.
Bad as "Shades of Gray" was, still well worth having it to also have the other two.
I bet someone thought it was more cost efficient to use that approach.
I enjoy Peter Mark Richman and Anthony James in anything. I also like Data and Sonny's interactions. Darren at the Movie Blog notes the 24th century humanity is superior bias of the first couple of years of TNG rears its ugly head here. The crew (except Data) seem too smug toward their guests instead of interested in meeting their ancestors. I know I would enjoy partying with Data and Sonny more than the in full scold mode of the other characters.
There's enough I like here to get me through every rewatch of "The Neutral Zone".
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Yeah, that's part of why I wish they'd had more time to refine the writing. How is it that this crew of intellectually curious explorers is so utterly uninterested in the opportunity to get to know 20th-century humans? I know they didn't establish Picard's interest in archaeology until season 2, but even so, it seems out of character, even granting that the crew is distracted by the Romulan crisis (such as it was).
I Ioved their take on late 20th century people in Neutral Zone. It's basically how I've always felt about the society around me. Remember, part of the premise is that humanity has progressed far in the 24th century, and for that to be the case, people of the 20th/21st centuries must need a lot of improvement. And they do.
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