Was a Rick Berman a bad choice to run the Star Trek Franchise after Gene Roddenberry died?

[Paul Weaver]

Berman trek lasted 18 years

Stargate is the only other franchise I can think of running in the 90s with that sort of longevity - and that only lasted 14 years

Can someone point to a scifi franchise that lasted longer than Berman Trek? Doctor Who's original run (24 years) is the only thing that comes to mind

I've heard many nasty rumours and accusations against Berman from fans and former Trek stars (some openly on Twitter), including sexism, bullying and homophobia.

And before Berman there was Roddenbury's casting couch. So that makes Berman the second worst of two showrunners.

 

[Jayson1]

X-Files had a good run. 9 years plus one spin-off and one show that was retconned into being a spin-off. 2 movies.


Jason

 

[Forbin]

Berman trek lasted 18 years

Stargate is the only other franchise I can think of running in the 90s with that sort of longevity - and that only lasted 14 years

Can someone point to a scifi franchise that lasted longer than Berman Trek? Doctor Who's original run (24 years) is the only thing that comes to mind

Quantity has nothing to do with quality.

 

[Armus]

The truth already expressed in this discussion is that Berman stayed too long. TNG and DS9 were the hallmarks and creative peaks of his career. After Insurrection tanked and DS9 ended in 1998/1999, it would have been the best time for him to have moved on.

 

[PhotoBoy]

We’re all very pleased.

Berman reminds me a lot of John Nathan-Turner on ‘80s Doctor Who. When JNT first came in he revived a show that felt like it had been flagging due to years of low budgets, crew strikes and being in a bit of a rut visually.

By the end of the ‘80s JNT was seen by many as the problem and if you watch the extras to any of the DVDs any bad decision is usually blamed on him, much like it was on Berman back in the day.

Time has allowed me to see all the things Berman did well with Star Trek (or at least like Roddenberry he hired creatives who made good decisions) rather than just focusing on disappointments like Nemesis or early Enterprise seasons.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

In all of this - I really wonder how much of what went wrong was really Berman's fault at all. Remember "the suits" always like to meddle. That a particular issue with Hollyweird in general (and no, I didn't misspell that).

"Suits" meddling is not always a bad thing. Many times they have reason and facts to back them up. Solow and Justman in their book "Inside Star Trek" exampled many instances where their input was beneficial to TOS and where Gene Roddenberry's sensibilities were not. It also illustrated where The Great Bird outright lied about the network "meddling."

 

[STEPhon IT]

Was a Rick Berman a bad choice to run the Star Trek Franchise after Gene Roddenberry died? This video does not paint him in the best light:

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No, he was the appropriate choice based on the results, I thought Berman had too much on his plate when TNG went to movie screens. Another person should've produced the movies while he remained on TV.

Berman and Braga both had hits and misses. Both tried to deliver interesting Trek (and usually succeeded, at first) but, yes - they started running out of ideas.

When you try to run something so hard and for so long, you will run out of ideas. That's human...

Company people has to please the shareholders and top execs in the studio; the investors do have demands which has to be delivered, so creatives can have all of the ideas in the galaxy to explore as long as it fits within the box of who's on top.

 

[DarthPipes]

I think Berman was the right choice at the time. As pointed out, the show got better when he got more control and there was a great period of success in the 90s. He just stayed around for too long though and we got diminishing results. Enterprise debuted in 2001 when shows like 24 and Alias debuted. Those shows were doing creative things, particularly in the way they told stories while Enterprise was stuck in a late-80s way of doing television, episode of the week over 26 episodes, playing it safe, etc. Moviewise, they had no idea how to follow up on the success of First Contact (like the original Star Trek didn't know how to follow up on the success of The Voyage Home) and definitely needed someone in the room with him other than Braga.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I still think the first 2 seasons of TNG had more to say than the last 2 seasons, the show got better when he Rick Berman got more control is a matter of opinion. I hear this more from fans that it got better because Berman implemented the tropes, bring in more Klingons, more Romulans, more of the things which cemented TOS but scoff at when challenged to bring something new to the table. Rick Berman's biggest offense was orchestrating a very large canvas into a small one; DS9 was supposed to be many many parsecs away from Federation territory where the characters needed to challenge themselves and their actions but it didn't take no more than 3 seasons before their world became much closer where there's a stronger presence of Klingons and Federation aliens. Fans just can't seem to get out of that box, and when Berman tired to do new things he was slammed for it. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

"Suits" meddling is not always a bad thing. Many times they have reason and facts to back them up. Solow and Justman in their book "Inside Star Trek" exampled many instances where their input was beneficial to TOS and where Gene Roddenberry's sensibilities were not. It also illustrated where The Great Bird outright lied about the network "meddling."

To the extent of filtering out one person’s worst ideas, it’s fine. But they basically forced Voyager and Enterprise to be completely risk averse and until Ent season 3 vetoed everything that asked for viewer investment or deviated from the episodic TNG template.

Berman was a huge part in making TNG a great show. But then the audience evolved and instead of letting the show evolve with it, photocopied the TNG formula over to less and less compelling characters and tried to use cheaper and cheaper sexuality to boost ratings.

 

[Damian]

I think Berman was better at the oversight end of things. When he was delegating. DS9 was a great show and he had less day to day involvement with that show. He found the right people to run it and let them at it and was just the guy in charge that made the big decisions and dealt with the suits.

He seemed to get more into trouble when he got more into the details and the writing. Maybe he had some ok story ideas here and there but that just wasn't his strength.

And sometimes he showed some flexibility. He was one that didn't want the Dominion War to last more than a few episodes. He could have told them to end the war after a few episodes which was his preference. But he didn't. He let his DS9 people run with it. When Enterprise was starting to flounder he brought in some new blood and tried something never done before in Star Trek and that was a season long arc with the Xindi crisis. DS9 flirted with serialized storytelling but it was still pretty episodic.

He probably should have stepped aside earlier than he did. But I don't think he's as stubborn as some people made him out to be. If someone presented an idea even if he didn't care for it, sometimes he'd let them go ahead with it.

I know I've read or seen interviews with him where he would say he didn't care for something personally, but whatever it was sometimes it was still done.

 

[Dukhat]

To the extent of filtering out one person’s worst ideas, it’s fine. But they basically forced Voyager and Enterprise to be completely risk averse and until Ent season 3 vetoed everything that asked for viewer investment or deviated from the episodic TNG template.

Berman was a huge part in making TNG a great show. But then the audience evolved and instead of letting the show evolve with it, photocopied the TNG formula over to less and less compelling characters and tried to use cheaper and cheaper sexuality to boost ratings.

Not only that, but Dawn Ostroff repeatedly stated that she wanted ENT to be ‘sexier’ (as if sex was the reason why Star Trek fans watched the show) and even had an idea to have different boy bands play on the ship (even though it would be out in deep space with no way to rotate the crew, but that really wasn’t the inherent problem with the idea...)

Someone please explain to me how boy bands on the NX-01 is an example of suits doing ‘good’ meddling.

And as for the shows being so episodic, the logic behind that was that they wanted people to be able to just start watching the show at any point so they wouldn’t be confused as to what’s going on. Their fear was that if the show was confusing, the audience would stop watching it, or to put it another way, they felt the audience were a bunch of morons who couldn’t figure out things for themselves.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Before streaming there’s an argument for each episode being relatively self contained. But shows like DS9, Buffy, etc found that balance where there were arcs going on but you could explain where everything you needed to know for an episode in 30 seconds.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I still think the first 2 seasons of TNG had more to say than the last 2 seasons, the show got better when he Rick Berman got more control is a matter of opinion. I hear this more from fans that it got better because Berman implemented the tropes, bring in more Klingons, more Romulans, more of the things which cemented TOS but scoff at when challenged to bring something new to the table. Rick Berman's biggest offense was orchestrating a very large canvas into a small one; DS9 was supposed to be many many parsecs away from Federation territory where the characters needed to challenge themselves and their actions but it didn't take no more than 3 seasons before their world became much closer where there's a stronger presence of Klingons and Federation aliens. Fans just can't seem to get out of that box, and when Berman tired to do new things he was slammed for it. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I’ve never heard about anyone saying the improvement came because the Klingons and Romulans came in. The quality of writing improved across the board and became character driven and relatable. The situations became less campy and the tone got less sanctimonious but without discarding the idealism at the show’s philosophical core.

And when did Berman get slammed for trying new ideas? He gets slammed for not having new enough ideas.

 

[Nyotarules]

"Suits" meddling is not always a bad thing. Many times they have reason and facts to back them up. Solow and Justman in their book "Inside Star Trek" exampled many instances where their input was beneficial to TOS and where Gene Roddenberry's sensibilities were not. It also illustrated where The Great Bird outright lied about the network "meddling."

At least the 60's suits made Star Trek multicultural, the pilot was another 'white folks in space' tv show

 

[Doc Mugatu]

At least the 60's suits made Star Trek multicultural, the pilot was another 'white folks in space' tv show

True. The suits in the 60's had a different mindset and many had come up through the creative side. Prestige and quality were important. Today not so much. In the 60's giving a series 13 weeks was considered short. Today two weeks is considered too long by the suits. Everything has to be an instant hit.

 

[Armus]

In regards to TNG both Rodenberry and Berman deserve credit where credit is due. Rodenberry set the parameters, hired the team, and got TNG rolling. He brought on people like Andy Probert and William Theiss and David Gerrold. Without those contributions TNG would not have become what it became. It's true that Rodenberry brought chaos to the writing staff while Berman was a force for order. When Berman took over in season 2 or 3 he kept TNG running smoothly and he tried not to screw it up. He was an excellent showrunner aside from his decision to fire Ron Jones.

 

[Takeru]

Someone please explain to me how boy bands on the NX-01 is an example of suits doing ‘good’ meddling.

No one claims that this specific idea was good but the idea that all network and studio executives do is having stupid ideas and making the writers lives harder is silly.
Writers have just as many stupid and/or unworkable ideas as executives but because writers are the ones who get interviewed we rarely hear those stories because they are less likely to talk about their own stupid ideas than they are about stupid things they prevented.
But do we even know how the boyband idea came up? It could have been during a brainstorming session about how to attract new audience members, in that case everyone would have been encouraged to blurt out ideas no matter how stupid they sound.

I bet if executives talked to the public as much as writers do we'd have just as many stories about some horrible ideas writers had that they prevented from becoming reality.

It also bothers me a bit when I read about meddling, executives are part of the process, them giving notes and getting involved isn't meddling, it's doing their job.

 

[Dukhat]

No one claims that this specific idea was good but the idea that all network and studio executives do is having stupid ideas and making the writers lives harder is silly.
Writers have just as many stupid and/or unworkable ideas as executives but because writers are the ones who get interviewed we rarely hear those stories because they are less likely to talk about their own stupid ideas than they are about stupid things they prevented.
But do we even know how the boyband idea came up? It could have been during a brainstorming session about how to attract new audience members, in that case everyone would have been encouraged to blurt out ideas no matter how stupid they sound.

I bet if executives talked to the public as much as writers do we'd have just as many stories about some horrible ideas writers had that they prevented from becoming reality.

It also bothers me a bit when I read about meddling, executives are part of the process, them giving notes and getting involved isn't meddling, it's doing their job.

Yes, writers can be just as stupid as suits. I'm not disputing that. I'm saying that in the specific instance of UPN-produced shows Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise, there were really lousy people at the helm.

Perhaps the video is more in-depth than that? It has quotes from actors and producers who took issue with some of Berman's decisions.

If the video was more in-depth, then why didn't you just post the relevant info you found enlightening, instead of just posting the video and essentially forcing us to watch it in order to have a conversation? I'm far more inclined to discuss things with people here who actually have opinions, rather than wasting time watching Youtube videos from people who are not members here (and that's assuming the video isn't yours.)

 

[Lord Garth]

We only had ENT -- or a fifth series in general, I'm not trying to single out ENT -- because Star Trek was one of the only things UPN had going for it because they had a hard time developing other successful properties. They'd have sooner chopped off their arm back in 2000 rather than cancel Star Trek. That's why they wanted a fifth series.

For ENT itself, they won't say it but I think The Phantom Menace proving to them that prequels could be a thing made Rick Berman decide to do a prequel to Star Trek. Now we're on the other end of it. I think Star Wars Sequel Trilogy was a factor in helping Alex Kurtzman decide to make Picard.