The three showrunners

[Sci]

I'm not reasonable.

I noticed.

It could have earned alot more.

On what basis do you make this claim?

Heck I would have went to see it if anybody else wrote it.

J.J. Abrams did not write ST09. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote it.

J.J. said he never expected it to land in his lap and didn't seem very interested in it.

Evidence?

Power, politics, greed. You know the usual suspects will keep anyone from being in total control of it.

A meaninglessly vague statement; it's entirely possible that a new Star Trek series could have a showrunner in the same modern sense that we see on programs like Mad Men, The Sopranos, Community, Six Feet Under, etc.

 

[Paradon]

i wonder who has the best sense of humor. When I tell a story, I like to mix in a little down to earth dry humor. It makes it seem personal that way...

 

[xortex]

I don't think Trek could ever have a showrunner other than JJ. without it going through a radical change of format. There's too many Berman's and Coto's out there.

Someone has to totally reimagine and invent it again maybe almost to the point of it being unrecognizable except for it's core values through another stand alone concept that is converting to act as a life saver floatation device.

 

[nickyboy]

Ira Behr

 

[plynch]

^ Sure none of the characters in NuBSG were Paragons of humanity, they were instead normal, flawed humans who tried their best to do the right thing. They might not be the best role models for small children to look up to, but they were at least real.

With the exception of DS9, none of the main characters in Star Trek were real characters, they were instead Archetypes. That was fine for TOS because it was the 60's, it was a simpler time back then. TNG got away with it because it was a Star Trek TV series, back when Star Trek was still popular. As TNG progressed, the perfect unrealistic TNG characters did get sort of fleshed out a bit more, but it as very subtle. By V'ger and ENT the whole two dimensional character archetypes were getting quite tiresome. DS9 of course had much better, realistic and relatable characters compared to the other Star Trek archetypes.

I think you may be confusing bland characters or stereotypes with archetypes, which are timeless, perhaps living, ideal characters or tropes. The hero, the wise mentor, the sidekick, etc. NuBSG has them. A classic hero or any other specific instance of an archetype need not be one dimensional. Kirk wasn't. Nor Janeway, to give some credit to laterTrek. But I agree a lot of the later characters were one-dimensional and, frankly, the writing - the actual words - was just not very good. Bland, pedestrian. My perception, of course.

 

[number6]

I seriously doubt that GR was a show runner for any season of TNG.. Sure he was hands on, but he wasn't even showrunner on TOS. That duty fell to people like John DF Black, Arthur Singer, John Meredith Lucas, Gene Coon, and DC Fontana. You all may want to stretch the meaning of what a showrunner does, but it isn't always who you assume it is.

 

[CoveTom]

I think xortex is correct. Trek never really had a showrunner in the modern sense of the term.

 

[number6]

I don't think Xortex is generally correct about much of anything. Every show on television has a show runner or a head writer who functions as such.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Michael Piller

 

[CoveTom]

I don't think Xortex is generally correct about much of anything. Every show on television has a show runner or a head writer who functions as such.

When the term "showrunner" is used today, it generally denotes someone who is both the head writer/in charge of the writing room and overseeing the production aspects of the show as well. Trek has rarely, if ever, had that. They had separate positions. Piller, for example, ran the writing room, but Berman oversaw the production side.

 

[number6]

I don't think Xortex is generally correct about much of anything. Every show on television has a show runner or a head writer who functions as such.

When the term "showrunner" is used today, it generally denotes someone who is both the head writer/in charge of the writing room and overseeing the production aspects of the show as well. Trek has rarely, if ever, had that. They had separate positions. Piller, for example, ran the writing room, but Berman oversaw the production side.

Um.. no. That's not quite how it works. Berman was the executive producer of the show. Of course he has his hands in everything, but the day to day details of the show are handled by other people. He was not a show runner. Piller, otoh, was. As head writer that was part of his function. There were other producers that handled the mundane running of things..

 

[xortex]

I'm not talking about the guy who ran away with the show in his hip pocket.

 

[Sci]

I don't think Xortex is generally correct about much of anything. Every show on television has a show runner or a head writer who functions as such.

When the term "showrunner" is used today, it generally denotes someone who is both the head writer/in charge of the writing room and overseeing the production aspects of the show as well. Trek has rarely, if ever, had that. They had separate positions. Piller, for example, ran the writing room, but Berman oversaw the production side.

Um.. no. That's not quite how it works. Berman was the executive producer of the show. Of course he has his hands in everything, but the day to day details of the show are handled by other people. He was not a show runner.

That's what he's saying -- there WAS no showrunner. There was a head writer, and there was a guy running the production side of things, but the two roles were not fused into a single person, which is what a "showrunner" is.

There were other producers that handled the mundane running of things..

Which means that he wasn't a "showrunner." Showrunners handle the mundane and the writers' room.

"Showrunner" is not just a fancy word for "head writer."

As this article from Slate explains, "showrunners" in the modern sense didn't really exist until the early-to-mid-1990s.

 

[number6]

I'm not talking about the guy who ran away with the show in his hip pocket.

Gene Roddenberry??

 

[plynch]

I'm not talking about the guy who ran away with the show in his hip pocket.

Gene Roddenberry??

Was THAT his casting couch line, after all?: "Wanna see the show in my pocket?"

Sly devil!

 

[CoveTom]

What Sci said.

 

[A Little Otter]

As others have pointed out, "showrunner" is a term that applies to television. J.J. Abrams is working on the Trek films, so he is not a showrunner. If you are to include the movies, don't forget that Harve Bennett was in charge of four of the movies. The "trilogy" of II-IV was the best movies made (though the recent film was quite good). He made the misstep of Final Frontier, but I blame Shatner for that, even though Paramount took it out on Bennett.