Your honest opinion on the Berman era

[Starflight]

In a lot of threads recently I've seen people ragging on the entire Berman era, typically to suggest that SNW wipes the floor with it. It's a fascinating viewpoint and pretty novel; on the rest of the internet it's taken as given that TNG and DS9 represent some kind of objective high point.

I've rewatched many of them relatively recently and I have some thoughts, which I'll spoiler for length:

Spoiler

TNG - For me it hit a sweet spot in seasons 2 and 3, and started to become much more bland and haughty after that, though fantastic episodes still occur throughout. It's always at its best when it drops the pomposity and just writes the kind of straightforwardly fun plot that could slot into TOS. I think I'd still call myself a fan even though I've got no interest in watching about half of it. All the movies were pretty awful IMO, even the highly-rated First Contact.

DS9 - I really love a lot of the first three seasons, and it could have easily blossomed into my favourite Star Trek series of all from that starting point had it really focused on post-war Bajor, but it completely loses me from mid-season 4 onward with the string of boring war arcs (most of which are conveyed via WW2/Vietnam movie tropes transplanted wholesale). By the last two seasons it's basically on par with Picard for me, in that it just feels like a generic, unimaginative sci-fi series with the Star Trek name slapped on it. Can't call myself a fan since I think well over half the show is a complete washout, but I'd still rewatch those first three seasons any day.

Voyager - This is my favourite of the Berman shows easily, and as time goes on I find it more and more miraculous that it exists. It held firm to upbeat, high concept, mostly-episodic adventure into an era where that was increasingly seen as defunct, and eschewed the self-seriousness that defined latter-era TNG and DS9 (and much of TV in general by that point). It has its ups and downs but every season has a good amount of strong, imaginative science fiction, comedy, and character work. Along with TOS, this is the only Star Trek series I really like as a whole, and it's the only one I can really buy as a spiritual sequel to TOS/TAS.

Enterprise - I have mostly warm feelings about this, though I can't remember shit outside one or two episodes. Rarely great, but consistently enjoyable. T'Pol rules. Temporal Cold War sucked. Xindi arc went surprisingly well. It lost me in the fourth season, just absolutely no interest in that kind of "here's four Memory Alpha articles smashed together into a plot" type of storytelling.

tl;dr - I really like just under half of TNG and DS9, I love pretty much all of Voyager, and the first three seasons of Enterprise are solid.

On the whole, I'm really glad the Berman era happened, and compared with the Kurtzman era, it wins hands down for me. All four of these shows have their moments, and I'm always happy to revisit them (or at least, the first halves of them...) in a way that I just can't imagine doing with Discovery, Picard, or the latest season of SNW.

Go. Discuss. Are you a Berman Fan or a Berman Basher? What do you make of each of the shows on their own?

 

[1001001]

The Berman Era is “my Star Trek.”

TNG and VOY are my favorite shows. I enjoyed DS9 (mostly) and ENT.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Well, to contextualize the entirety of my post properly in advance, I tend to consider even "bad" Star Trek to be better than most of what was being presented on television at that time. Also, I don't consider updating the aesthetics of the sets to modern standards to be a bad thing, and I have no problem with recontextualizing old stories with new information.

However, that said, and this may be one of the comments that you saw here, I recently commented that I would take the entirety of the Kurtzman era over huge swaths of BermaTrek. The formulaic approach that defined that era started to grow stale and repetitive and started to result in my just becoming bored with the product. I have watched all of Voyager, but there are huge swaths of it that are just a blur in my mind. I find Enterprise season 2 to be one of the most forgettable seasons in the entire franchise.

Even TNG wasn't immune, as I found this same sense of staleness starting to creep in around season 7, but TNG had the incredible chemistry between the actors, and therefore the characters, that allowed the show to rise above the storytelling.

At least the Kurtzman era is not afraid to do different things with the concept. I prefer to see a big swing and a miss, such as Section 31, that attempted to bring something new to the franchise rather than the stale sameness that permeated the later days of the Berman era. If the Kurtzman era had come right out of the bat with a show that just followed the standard formula, I wouldn't have been nearly as enthusiastic as I was when I found out they were tweaking the concept a bit.

 

[Noname Given]

Over the years, of the 'Berman Era' the only shows and Seasons I like are those where he Ceeded most of the control to others (DS9 S3-S7 and ENT S4.)

I watched it all (with the exception of VOY back in the day) - And I find now I can't really rewatch much of TNG or any of the shows except for the Seasons noted above.

Watched TOS starting with a part of S3 first run on NBC at a very young age and can still rewatch the majority of that over and over. (Never gets old for me - and Star Trek Strage New Worlds is exactly what I want WRT any continuatrion of Star Trek.

The main problem with the Berman era is Rick Berman did something religiously that even Gene Roddenberry himself RARELY did when writing a STAR TREK script; and thats follow what GR himself laid out as 'hard' rules for writing a Star Trek script.

GR was famous for NOT doing a lot of what he preached to others himself.

 

[Lord Garth]

I did a complete re-watch of TNG before Picard, and I have re-watch threads of DS9 and VOY currently going on. So, clearly, I'm a fan. But I can't get into ENT to save my life. It happens.

Overall, though, I'd say that due to the sheer volume of episodes across all the series, I was ready for something else by the end of the Berman Era. But I don't mind revisiting it now that there's been some distance.

I voted "I'm a fan of two or three of the shows". That would be the most accurate description. Obviously, I'm also a fan of TOS and two of the Kurtzman Era shows (DSC and PIC). But, mathematically speaking, 75% of the Star Trek I like is from the Berman Era. Going by episode count.

 

[HotRod]

I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Berman era of Star Trek.

On one hand, I love it because it’s Star Trek. No matter which series it is, I can usually find something to enjoy. The world building, the optimism, and the sense of discovery are all things I really appreciate.

On the other hand, it also carried what I like to call the Roddenberry era of human personality. The characters often felt bland and watered down because of the rule that there should be no real conflict between crewmembers. That made it hard for them to feel like actual people. I often joke that the most human like character in The Next Generation was the android.

Deep Space Nine started to break out of that mold. It gave us more complicated and morally gray characters, and there was real tension between them. But even then, you could still feel a bit of that stiffness in the human characters, like the writers were still shaking off old habits.

Voyager, for me, is the biggest example of wasted potential. It had one of the best setups in all of Star Trek. A Starfleet and Maquis crew stranded together, forced to work side by side while trying genuinely struggle to get home. That conflict should have been the heart of the show, but it was basically dropped by the second episode. It could have been something truly bold, Galactica-like, but they played it safe instead.

Enterprise, though, I give a lot of credit to. It felt like they were really trying to make the characters feel more human again. The crew of the NX-01 reminded me more of the original series crew. They were emotional, imperfect, and sometimes rough around the edges, but that made them feel real. Because of that, I often rank Enterprise higher than the rest of the Berman era, even if that sounds crazy to some people.

I will say this about the Kurtzman era. For all its ups and downs, I do appreciate that it has brought more personality back into the characters. The crew of Strange New Worlds feels like they could belong to the original series. They are emotional, flawed, and driven, and that energy reminds me of what made classic Star Trek characters so memorable.

So yeah, love it or hate it, the Berman era was a huge part of what made Star Trek what it is today. It gave us incredible stories and world building, but it also sometimes made the humans feel less human than their alien shipmates.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

I would say I mostly like all of it, but some parts are annoying. The "sonic wallpaper" bores me, the whole utopian evolved humanity schtick bores me (aside from DS9, perhaps, which kind of showed that whole thing was a delusion to begin with), the denial that Starfleet is an actual military bores me (sorry), so it's kind of a toss-up. If I had to rank them it would go something like DS9>TNG>ENT>VOY. I don't mind watching any of it, but that's probably a nostalgia thing kicking in.

 

[Starflight]

I wonder how much of a shadow the "utopia of perfect mannequins" stuff casts over the whole era - it's mostly a TNG invention IMO.

Enterprise and latter-era DS9 obviously don't try to model themselves on TNG, and the Voyager crew don't feel much different to the TOS crew to me, especially from season four onward - maybe a bit slower to anger and less prone to panic, but recognisably human in a way that the TNG crew weren't, at their worst. People like Paris, Torres, Seven, EMH, and latter-era Janeway definitely aren't TNG-style utopians. Same for DS9's early days.

Something I found fascinating rewatching TNG was that you can tell a lot of freelance writers, and even a couple of staff writers like Menosky, don't really care for the whole "Gene's Vision" framework. Not necessarily that they're opposed to it or want to tear it down, but they just don't really engage with it. You could probably dodge most of the genuinely alienating "utopia" stuff in TNG - as well as most of Picard's worst moments - by just skipping around twenty episodes.

 

[jaime]

In a lot of threads recently I've seen people ragging on the entire Berman era, typically to suggest that SNW wipes the floor with it. It's a fascinating viewpoint and pretty novel; on the rest of the internet it's taken as given that TNG and DS9 represent some kind of objective high point.

I've rewatched many of them relatively recently and I have some thoughts, which I'll spoiler for length:

Spoiler

TNG - For me it hit a sweet spot in seasons 2 and 3, and started to become much more bland and haughty after that, though fantastic episodes still occur throughout. It's always at its best when it drops the pomposity and just writes the kind of straightforwardly fun plot that could slot into TOS. I think I'd still call myself a fan even though I've got no interest in watching about half of it. All the movies were pretty awful IMO, even the highly-rated First Contact.

DS9 - I really love a lot of the first three seasons, and it could have easily blossomed into my favourite Star Trek series of all from that starting point had it really focused on post-war Bajor, but it completely loses me from mid-season 4 onward with the string of boring war arcs (most of which are conveyed via WW2/Vietnam movie tropes transplanted wholesale). By the last two seasons it's basically on par with Picard for me, in that it just feels like a generic, unimaginative sci-fi series with the Star Trek name slapped on it. Can't call myself a fan since I think well over half the show is a complete washout, but I'd still rewatch those first three seasons any day.

Voyager - This is my favourite of the Berman shows easily, and as time goes on I find it more and more miraculous that it exists. It held firm to upbeat, high concept, mostly-episodic adventure into an era where that was increasingly seen as defunct, and eschewed the self-seriousness that defined latter-era TNG and DS9 (and much of TV in general by that point). It has its ups and downs but every season has a good amount of strong, imaginative science fiction, comedy, and character work. Along with TOS, this is the only Star Trek series I really like as a whole, and it's the only one I can really buy as a spiritual sequel to TOS/TAS.

Enterprise - I have mostly warm feelings about this, though I can't remember shit outside one or two episodes. Rarely great, but consistently enjoyable. T'Pol rules. Temporal Cold War sucked. Xindi arc went surprisingly well. It lost me in the fourth season, just absolutely no interest in that kind of "here's four Memory Alpha articles smashed together into a plot" type of storytelling.

tl;dr - I really like just under half of TNG and DS9, I love pretty much all of Voyager, and the first three seasons of Enterprise are solid.

On the whole, I'm really glad the Berman era happened, and compared with the Kurtzman era, it wins hands down for me. All four of these shows have their moments, and I'm always happy to revisit them (or at least, the first halves of them...) in a way that I just can't imagine doing with Discovery, Picard, or the latest season of SNW.

Go. Discuss. Are you a Berman Fan or a Berman Basher? What do you make of each of the shows on their own?

Y’know, I’m probably more forgiving than you of DS9/Dominion War and maybe late era TNG (ENT never landed for me for reasons not always about the show itself) but this is the first time I’ve seen an overall opinion I find myself very much agreeing with. Especially that thought about missing the reconstruction of Bajor once we hit season 4. It’s a feeling I had at the time, and sort of forgot, so seeing it written down brought it back.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

it's mostly a TNG invention IMO.

Also a Gene Roddenberry invention as well.

 

[Uhura's Song]

Betman era is prime era Trek.

You have TOS & TNG movies. 600 TV episodes. Two of the top 3 shows (TNG, DS9). Shows overlapping each other.

A fantastic time to beca fan of Trek.

Now, were there some stinkers in there? Sure. Some slow starts? Yep. But TNG/DS9 Seasons 3-6 are golden. As are ENT 3&4. VOY was hit and miss, but the hits were wonderful. AGT is the best finale by a mile..

 

[Set Harth]

Betman era

^Russian talking about Batman

 

[Paul755]

I think a lot of the opinions about Berman-era Trek have been colored by the flaws of the man. The sexism, the always playing it safe (except when ISB forced his hand on DS9), etc…

Personally, even though TOS is far and away my favorite show with my favorite characters, I think the Berman era is the golden age of Trek. Warts and all. And yeah, some of those warts are pretty damn big.

 

[fireproof78]

I'm hugely mixed on the era. Individual episodes taken by themselves are very good. But, well, first impressions have a lingering effect, for good or ill, and the TNG's crew elitism and preachiness, or the odd characters in DS9 or Voyager not really following through on the premise, left me disinterested. Enterprise didn't even try to feel cogent to TOS, but worked well for the TNG prequel.

I have no animus against Berman, but his era is mixed for me, and that is also colored by an enjoyment of a lot of non Trek, like seaQuest, Stargate, FARSCAPE, the Invisible Man, and even Babylon 5 to a degree. The Berman era gave the best fact pages and diagrams though

 

[Firebird]

As with any era of the Star Trek franchise, the Berman era has its ups and downs. However, it is "my Trek" era because I grew up during the 90s, so TNG and DS9 are both foundational works.

DS9 is the tops on just about all grades, minus the first couple years where they were trying to find the voice of the series. Rewatching the show is always fun and interesting. The characters and writing is so fucking good. They proved you could adapt nearly every genre into Star Trek and it could work beautifully. They took bizarre chances and they worked - how many shows could say a big recurring character was a holographic Vegas lounge singer? DS9 is a show that makes me want to write more Star Trek, which is the highest compliment I could give it.

TNG... has actually gotten a little worse for me as time goes by. I kinda prefer the first couple seasons now because they're weird and interesting. The character work is stale and almost non-existent in seasons 1 and 2, but they're less beige in tone and execution than the later seasons would become. TNG is a show that's fun to revisit specific episodes from season 3-7, but it's definitely a slog to do a full series rewatch.

I did watch the entirety of Voyager on first run, but it never struck deep in my soul like the prior two shows had. Enterprise fared even worse, and I ended up tuning out before the end of season 2. In recent times, revisits of both shows have improved Enterprise, but Voyager is the song that remains the same... and that song is called "wasted potential."

To not belabor the point, the Berman era set up the franchise for long-term success by keeping the franchise alive with characters we all dearly love so many decades later.

Buuuuuuuuut, it's also become a curse for the franchise due to insipid nostalgia that writers and showrunners keep leaning on as crutches instead of doing the work to make something wholly new.

 

[fireproof78]

Does being from a certain era impact attitude? I'm born in 84 and feel being a 90s kid but good grief is that Trek era not mine to me.

I guess, like Batman and Harry Stone I just have a very old soul.

 

[Starflight]

Probably depends on how attuned you were to the cultural mood at the time, but as someone who grew up in the 90s my tastes have remained aligned with the whole vaguely upbeat end-of-history mindset. I found a lot of 2000s and 2010s "prestige" media baffling, though the pendulum seems to thankfully be swinging back nowadays.

 

[fireproof78]

Probably depends on how attuned you were to the cultural mood at the time, but as someone who grew up in the 90s my tastes have remained aligned with the whole vaguely upbeat end-of-history mindset. I found a lot of 2000s and 2010s "prestige" media baffling, though the pendulum seems to thankfully be swinging back nowadays.

I would like to say I understood this but I'm afraid I don't.

I enjoyed TOS and Adam West Batman, and Seaquest, and such but 90s was dramatically hit and miss for me. I feel like I missed the cultural mood or just didn't care. Is cultural apathy a thing?

 

[tomalak301]

I grew up in that era. TNG, DS9, and Enterprise are my top three trek shows and I don't think I would be the person I am today if I had not watched Trek in that era. Berman is not the only person who carried the Trek mantle in that era. He was the show runner and the handpicked Successor, but there were so many people who worked behind the scenes of those shows, and to this day I think the most underrated person behind the scenes of Star Trek is Michael Piller. But it wasn't just Pillar, it was Jeri Taylor, Ronald D Moore, Ira Stephen Behr, Brannon Braga, Joe Menosky, and hundreds of other people.

I will always hold that era in my heart, both for entertainment and nostalgic reasons.

 

[Dar70]

Love the Berman Era. I grew up on TOS. When TNG aired in 1987 I was ecstatic. I had been watching reruns of TOS for around 12 year's at that point and could not wait for new tv Trek. I was not disappointed. It had it's growing pains. But it was a good extension from the TOS films.

Sadly I do not feel this way about the Kurtzman Era. Picard season 3 gave me that feeling back somewhat. But the rest of the shows not much at all unfortunately.

I have gotten used to the fact that not too much good Trek will be produced from this point on to my death. I'm ok with it now. I have been thinking lately that I have a Lot of previous Trek and shows that I absolutely love and it's more than enough for me to rewatch for my last 20-30 years... ....I'm content....