Archived Berman Wisdom...

[Broccoli]

In short, Berman made both good decisions and bad decisions during his tenure with Star Trek, and he produced some classics and some crap. But he managed to keep Trek alive and kicking through four series, four movies, and ~15-18 years (depending on when you consider him starting). And he was in charge for some of the most loved and widely praised Trek. To blanketly characterize him as responsible for all that is bad with Trek is unfair and unjustified.

QFT!

Wow... it is nice to see someone who actually makes sense and is level headed about it!

 

[Ssosmcin]

Berman gets the same treatment as Fred Frieberger. Frieberger got all of the blame for everything crappy in the third season of Classic Trek, but none of the glory for anything good. Berman did a fine job for years. Notice Trek took a dive once it stopped being syndicated and started being a network show again.

You guys stated everything else perfectly, anything I add would be repetitive. The hate this guy gets is unreasonable.

Also consider, Berman held fast to Gene's idea of Star Trek. Some people might consider that a narrow vision and, after a fashion, one without growth or interest. But if he didn't hold the reins as tightly as he did and let the guys like Moore, Torme, Hurley and so on go their own way, would it have been Star Trek when all was said and done? Or would these guys have morphed it into their own visions of what they think Star Trek should be?

 

[trevanian]

Berman held fast to Gene's idea of Star Trek. Some people might consider that a narrow vision and, after a fashion, one without growth or interest. But if he didn't hold the reins as tightly as he did and let the guys like Moore, Torme, Hurley and so on go their own way, would it have been Star Trek when all was said and done? Or would these guys have morphed it into their own visions of what they think Star Trek should be?

Hurley admits he completely did the GR-vision thing after seeing GR's rewrite of WHERE NO ONE ... , so it was happening all along.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Can you elaborate on that a bit? I'd be curious to know what that incident was.

 

[trevanian]

^ Can you elaborate on that a bit? I'd be curious to know what that incident was.

Hurley's first assignment was rewriting WHERE NO ONE ... his pass, by his own admission, almost got him fired immediately, and he was rewritten by GR or by GR's attorney (who knows which?) After that, Hurley became Roddernberrier than thou (thought another TNG producer from yr 1 and yr 5, Herb Wright, said that Hurley was playing drinking buddy to GR) with everybody and started making everything hew exactly with GR dictates. I have a hard time seeing Hurley's soul in ANY of his TNG stuff except maybe Q WHO, compared to his action work in the 80s on MIAMI VICE and I think EQUALIZER.

I'm guessing GR was less interested in production details, and Berman probably seized on working that angle, which shows how the music started getting downplayed early on. Berman seems to be the glass tabletop guy, who only wanted ships going left right and on a horizontal rather than vertical aspect, which led to his trashing of Probert's WarBird.

I don't think Berman protected GR's vision, I think he seriously diluted it, but since it was a screwy vision anyway, that isn't the problem. It is Berman's tastes that I found appalling in terms of not wanting any steadicam and not wanting dramatic underscore and his notion of color pallette, all the way down the line, he produced a show that was very blah to see and hear.

 

[CoveTom]

That's very interesting.

Alot of it comes down to taste, of course. I personally dislike the direction Rick Berman chose to take the show's music. OTOH, I really like TNG's lighting and production design. A darker look worked for DS9 because that's the nature of the show, but I don't like it when they took that darker look to Voyager, Enterprise or the TNG movies. I actually think the interior of the Enterprise-D looks better in the series than in Generations. But I know alot of people disagree with me here.

As I said before, I think Berman made some good decisions and some bad ones. I certainly don't think he was Star Trek's savior, but I also don't think he was responsible for all of its faults. I think he tried to retain Roddenberry's vision as he understood it. That may be different from how Roddenberry himself understood it, but then again Roddenberry's own vision changed dramatically over the years.