Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get by?

[Navaros]

Berman has admitted that he made sure TNG had 'no conflict among humans' because that was a rule that GR wanted in the show.

However, the Maquis is a violation of this rule.

So, how did the Maquis end up in the show?

Did Berman forget to stifle the writers regarding the Maquis concept?

Did Berman abandon this rule on purpose regarding the Maquis concept? If so, why?

And if he was going to allow the rule to be violated once, why didn't he just discard it completely, and thus free the writers to write more conflicts with other characters?

Has Berman ever commented on how the inclusion of the Maquis blatantly violates the very rule to which he admits to holding TNG?

 

[Marten]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

 

[DevilEyes]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

Fortunately, that one was discarded quite a few times as well ("The Best of Both Worlds" with the Riker/Shelby tension, "Chain of Command", and of course "The Pegasus" are some that some to mind).

 

[Navaros]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Wasn't it more "No conflict among Star Fleet members"?

I'm pretty sure I remember hearing Berman say 'humans' as well as 'Starfleet', and he definitely referred to the rule as 'not having conflict between our characters' (I just skimmed an interview before writing that to be sure of it) when discussing this issue; although the 'humans' phrasing is from memory so it may not be 100% accurate.

But Maquis were SF anyway so it's still a violation of the rule in either case.

 

[Takeru]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

They probably realised that this rule is beyond stupid.

 

[RyuRoots]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

GR, while a genius and a visionary in some ways, is a loon that shouldn't be allowed to make important decisions in others.

And he was dead by S5 of TNG, which was (as far as I remember) a fair bit before we see/hear of the Maquis or the treaty that caused the whole mess.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

IIRC, it was more an idea that "most conflicts came from outside." This doesn't mean that there were no conflicts among Humans--because there were indeed disagreements among the Enterprise-D crew--but it was just that they weren't generally resolved with a right hook or someone being tossed over a table. I think it was supposed to be a thing in which our heroes were too busy dealing with an outside threat to waste time and energy fighting among themselves.

But I do believe that Roddenberry was really only heavily involved with TNG during its first two seasons before his failing health forced him to step back and assume a more supervisory role. If anything, one could blame Berman for taking Roddenberry's ideals to extremes from that point forward...

 

[AdmiralGarak]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Berman had a hand in the Maquis' creation. They (and the DMZ conflict) were invented for Voyager, and seeded into TNG and DS9.

Another way of looking at things is that the creation of the Maquis and the allowance for more internal conflicts on Trek emerged shortly after Roddenberry's death. Perhaps Berman felt he had a bit more freedom at that point.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

There was to be no conflict between the characters themselves (and even that was loosened as time went on). They had guest characters creating conflict on the ENT-D as early as the first season. It's hardly that different from TOS where most of the conflict came from external sources as well.

 

[Finn]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

There was conflict between humans on TOS...complete with a bar brawl. That consititues conflict between human...

 

[Anwar]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

And was said brawl one entirely between the TOS characters themselves, or was it between them and guest characters?

 

[Navaros]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

It's hardly that different from TOS where most of the conflict came from external sources as well.

Actually, it's drastically different than TOS. Every single episode of TOS, or just about, is built around conflict and tension between Spock vs. McCoy, or Spock vs. Kirk, or Spock vs. both McCoy and Kirk.

Granted, Spock was an alien. I'm not sure if GR had that rule back then and got around it in TOS with the excuse that Spock was an alien.

Nonetheless, TOS remains a drastically different show than TNG because TOS is constantly heavily laden with internal conflict among the main characters, which btw, is great!

There can be no question that TNG is a radical departure from TOS, and nothing like TOS when it comes to conflict dynamics.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

And was said brawl one entirely between the TOS characters themselves, or was it between them and guest characters?

Guest characters. In this case, Klingons (the bar brawl in question was from "The Trouble With Tribbles").

 

[Anwar]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Again, the majority of TOS' conflict came from those external guest characters. Same with TNG.

The internal conflict came from McCoy being a racist, Spock being a racist/hypocrite and Kirk having to mediate between the two. Or some weird alien thing affecting their minds. That would've just been annoying in TNG+ and left you wondering why the hell Picard would pic a crew who couldn't agree on anything without some big argument in every situation. Seriously, a lot of this "TOS was loaded with conflict" stuff is revisionist BS cooked up by TNG Haters.

 

[I am not Spock]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Because the 'no conflict' rule was just stupid, and it prevents good drama from being made. Lots of TNG writers complained about how hard it was to write for characters that weren't allowed to butt heads with each other.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

And yet they pulled it off for 7 years and managed to tell good stories regardless. And they also fell back on the TOS approach of having the guest characters provide conflict with the main cast as early as the first season.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

Again, the majority of TOS' conflict came from those external guest characters. Same with TNG.

The internal conflict came from McCoy being a racist, Spock being a racist/hypocrite and Kirk having to mediate between the two. Or some weird alien thing affecting their minds. That would've just been annoying in TNG+ and left you wondering why the hell Picard would pic a crew who couldn't agree on anything without some big argument in every situation. Seriously, a lot of this "TOS was loaded with conflict" stuff is revisionist BS cooked up by TNG Haters.

And yet they pulled it off for 7 years and managed to tell good stories regardless. And they also fell back on the TOS approach of having the guest characters provide conflict with the main cast as early as the first season.

Very interesting points.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that the only ongoing personal conflicts in TOS were limited to the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triumvirate...and they actually liked one another.

 

[Navaros]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

And yet they pulled it off for 7 years and managed to tell good stories regardless.

No, they didn't. There is a quotation from one of TNG's makers (from Behr IIRC) where he says something like that shows with no drama just can't work, yet somehow TNG does and he doesn't know why. He is wrong about that. Really, it doesn't work, at all. That is why no other storytellers since the dawn of time have attempted it; because it cannot work.

a lot of this "TOS was loaded with conflict" stuff is revisionist BS cooked up by TNG Haters.

I would say the revisionist BS is claims that TOS isn't based on internal conflict, and that TNG is like TOS. Those statements are not an accurate reflection of what the shows are.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

TOS WASN'T based on internal conflict. Throughout the series most of the conflict came from the external guest stars, external influences on characters minds, stuff like that. Rarely did the conflict come from them merely being who they were, there was always some external stimulus that provoked it. Yes, there was McCoy's racism and Spock's own racism/hypocrisy but most of those situations still arose from the external situations they found themselves in.

Behr doesn't know what he's talking about. Yes, a show can work where the characters managed to work together.

 

[JustKate]

Re: Maquis violates GR's 'no conflict among humans'- how did that get

I agree with Anwar. I watched TOS starting when it was on its original run, and the conflict is almost nonexistant. Every now and then McCoy and Spock genuinely disagreed, but most of the time...it was just silly banter, or so it always seemed to me, and the rest of the time, it was just McCoy blowing off steam. The TOS crew was even less flawed than the TNG crew, or so it seems (and has always seemed) to me. And personally I think that "ooh, the TNG crew was just too perfect" thing isn't really accurate anyway. They all had flaws, they just did their jobs in spite of those flaws.