BERMAN;THE FINAL GRADE

[RobertScorpio]

Many fans, and actors of TREK, love to blame Rick Berman for all things that went wrong with Trek. I think that is a bit too much.

Being the over-seer of all things TREK means you can't get down and dirty, that is why you hire producers and exectutive producers. Does Berman get some credit for what they did, you bet he does. In the same way Roddenberry gets an umbrella clause for all things COON and FONTANA did...here is how I grade Berman's contribution

TNG..saved the show from Roddenberry's outdated view on how to make a show in the 90s. For this I give Berman and A+. That show only got better and Berman, and those he brought in, got more control (meaning less of GR). 170 episodes

DS9. I dont care what Behr claims; they didn't 'sneak' the show past Berman. Berman was just wise to stay out of it. Does Berman get credit? Sure he does. He created the show and MUST get credit for that, and for knowing when to let 'things sneak' by. 170 episodes GRADE A

Generations. My favorite of the movies, but the movie did not do as well as it should have. C+

First Contact. Second best, IMO, of the TNG movies...but a big hit..B+

Voyager...the show has its fans, and no one can deny that. So I will give it a C+

Insurrection. Coming on the heels of First Contact, much more was expected. Kind of like Alien 3 after Aliens. I give it a D

Nemesis. Sorry, I know it has fans, but this movie was just awful. Shatner's V is off the hook IMO, thanks to this movie. F

Enterprise. Berman has to take the blame on this one. He had a chance to do something different, but he and Braga took way to many short cuts. Coto came along way to late. D-, IMO.

Even I look at this, here is how I see this. His final grade is eithera B- or C+. I think, over all, the BERMAN ERA was a good era. Certainly, it faded at the end (Nemesis and Enterprise)..but when it soared it soared (TNG-DS9-FC)

Yes, Piller, Behr and Moore and Taylor and, yes, even Braga in his prime, all helped in great measure. But Berman was the guy on the top. It was his show and ulimately everthing good, and everything bad, rests at his feet.

Berman...B- Should have gone out on top (end of DS9)

THE GOOD
TNG-DS9-FC

THE JUST OKAY
VOYAGER-GENERATIONS

THE NOT SO GOOD
NEMESIS-INSURRECTION-ENTERPRISE

What do you think..

come read STAR TREK:PROJECT NAISANNCE
in the fan fiction section. (what does Naissance mean? Look it up)

 

[startrekwatcher]

I think Piller deserves the real credit for making TNG the show it became. He brought Moore and Braga in as well as Jeri Taylor. He started IIRC the open submission policy. He penned The Best of Both Worlds. He came up with the idea for All Good Things...

You could tell when it started faltering when he left to focus on DS9/VOY. Berman did write Brothers which was good and A Matter of Time which is okay.

Generations was a group project essentially with Paramount, Brannon, Moore and to some degree Berman. It was middling--not bad, not good.

From all the articles I've read, DS9 was what it was because of Piller in the early seasons followed by Behr and Wolfe then Behr and Beimler along with writers like Moore, Ecchevarria(sp).

Voyager was okay. I've come to appreciate it more in recent years. I think its problems came from studio interference, some degree of writer burnout, and conflicting visions by Taylor and Piller. However flawed in seasons 1-2 I have to say Piller had the series closer to what I was hoping out of a Trek series, Taylor's third season was awful, Brannon brought life to the series in season four and Biller was okay in season seven.

ENT had potential some of which we saw in seasons three and four. I read an article that the reason for so many scripts penned by the duo in the first 2 seasons was because they were having to rewrite every script. I did enjoy the Xindi arc and I'm not sure how much of it was Berman or Braga. I tend to think it was Braga because the arc played to his storytelling strengths. I do think they both had a good premise but didn't do that much with it.

 

[Kegek]

RobertScorpio said:
DS9. I dont care what Behr claims; they didn't 'sneak' the show past Berman.

More than that, he helped develop the show. He did get a co-creator credit with Michael Piller.

startrekwatcher said:
I think Piller deserves the real credit for making TNG the show it became. He brought Moore and Braga in as well as Jeri Taylor. He started IIRC the open submission policy. He penned The Best of Both Worlds. He came up with the idea for All Good Things...

But who brought in Piller?

That's right, Rick.

As for the failings attributed to Berman, part of the blame must also be shouldered. VOY was demanded by UPN to be put into production, Berman was told that the channel must have a new Star Trek show and this program would be made with or without his involvement. UPN also consistently sterilised, dumbed down, and actiond up the product. The blame that lies with Berman and the writing staff is the obvious staleness of the material, but as stated they were hardly given much leeway. UPN had ENT raced into production after VOY, while Berman and Braga had both wanted a breather (and had a more interesting series premise). UPN similarly demanded a season arc for the third season... and pretty much didn't back off until season four. The absence of UPN interference is just as important as the presence of Manny Coto in that season.

Now, Berman wasn't an imaginative man. And quite beside UPN, he was certainly very conservative when it came to risk-taking, as TNG's rather subdued presentation often illustrates. Berman was ultimately as good as the people he worked with and the conditions he worked under, and not the spawn of Satan he was often portrayed as in this forum's yesteryear.

 

[Cyclopean]

I give the guy an A+.

He helped keep Star Trek on the air for 18 or so years.

The original series barely lasted three, and St. Roddenberry would have gladly traded it in for a piece-of-shit show like "Assignment: Earth."

Does the A+ mean I think VOY or ENT or DS9 or later TNG are consistently great TV? Nope. But it's far better to be on TV than not to be, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

 

[OmahaStar]

He gets a solid F. End of story. His time has come and gone. Let it go.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Firstly, helping to develop the CONCEPT for DS9 is NOT writing the day to day show. Why some people just refuse accept the fact that after season 2 or so (not at all incidentally, BY FAR the worst two seasons of DS9 - mostly because Berman tried to force the show to be TNG-on-a-space-station as opposed to allowing the show to develop it's own identity), Berman was not particularly involved in the story development or the writing of DS9 is beyond me.

In short, Berman gets about 5 - 10% of the credit for DS9. And even less than that for the seasons of DS9 that really matter (season 4 onward). He fought Ira Behr on almost every point that made DS9 great - the war lasting for more than about 10 minutes, the huge story arcs...the idea of a story stretching out past a two-parter, etc. By all accounts, Berman was busy with the movies and with Voyager....and whether you people like it or not, there are only 24 hours in the day and the guy has got to sleep.

So the idea of heaping praise on Berman for DS9, as if he had this huge role in it, is a non-starter.

You want to give him credit for TNG, VOY and ENT, by all means have at it. He had alot of influence on the feature films as well - give him credit for that.

But the guy cannot claim ANY credit for the writing and story development of the Dominion War (which is, after all the heart of the show) and he wasn't involved in the day-to-day, down in the trenches, running of the show.

It's like giving the CEO of a company all the credit for the incredible sales and production performance of a single division under the lead of an outstanding vice president who hustles up the business and brokers some huge deals.

Yeah...the CEO was hanging around there in the background...but he did NOT make it happen.

And any CEO worth his salt would give credit where credit was due, instead of pretending it was HIS work all the time.


As for Berman's 'grade'...well, I think he'd get a B+ for TNG, a C- for VOY, and an F for ENT.

But his grade for DS9? I'm thinking he was only auditing that particular class.

 

[Navaros]

I disagree with OP. DS9 in Season 1 was nothing whatsoever like what it became after Berman mostly left it in the hands of others to go make & run VOY. DS9, as created by Berman, was not a good show; it was just a lame imitation of TNG with ridiculous, boring, completely pointless episodes of the week (just like in TNG). DS9 only became a good show after other men evolved it into a good show. And Berman did fight them about the good ideas of DS9, but DS9 became a good show despite Berman's position because they had those fights with Berman and won most of them. Berman didn't say out of it due to wisdom.

TNG was not much better than VOY or ENT. TNG, VOY and ENT pretty much have all the same (lack of) qualities to an identical extent. so Berman's "credit" for TNG is muchly undeserved IMO. IMO TNG is mostly seen as a good show due to nostalgia-based feelings, not because it is better than VOY or ENT or is actually a good show. TNG pales very badly in comparison to both TOS and DS9 in terms of good, interesting stories, good, deep, interesting characters, and having more than generic, talking-head dialogue and endless technobabble.

First Contact was a marginally entertaining movie but I wouldn't go so far as to call it "good". Nothing really compelling about it and no interesting or thought-provoking ideas in it (unlike say, The Undiscovered Country which has all those things hence is truly a good movie).

All the other TNG movies: same exact (lack of) quality as TNG, VOY, and ENT.

Berman: The Final Grade = F-

 

[Anwar]

Why am I not surprised by the last post after I saw the username?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Anwar said:
Why am I not surprised by the last post after I saw the username?

I'm not sure why you're saying this, but I don't care. It's not necessary. Stop it.

 

[Kegek]

PKTrekGirl said:
Why some people just refuse accept the fact that after season 2 or so (not at all incidentally, BY FAR the worst two seasons of DS9 -

I consider S2 to be one of the strongest of the show. It was certainly a good deal better than the decidedly uneven S3. It also has an amazing run of episodes - I think everything from "Blood Oath" to "The Jem'Hadar" works, and that's a consistent eight episode stretch none of the other seasons can rival.

But I certainly consider the fact Berman co-created the show was very important, though I'd susbstanially agree with how he handled it afterwards, with a non-involvement and the occasional veto.

Thus he doesn't deserve most of the praise for the show, but he does deserve some. He helped develop the premise and the characters and then largely went on to other projects. To say he has no involvement at all is an exaggeration; hell, on a creative level he had more involvement in DS9 then he did in TNG (where his contributions were strictly administrative).

 

[Balrog]

Berman's mistake was when he stepped out of his role in TNG as a bean-counter and hiring creative people like Piller, Moore, Behr, et al, and assumed himself "the creative force" of Star Trek. That's when Trek took a turn for the worse.

A+ as Trek's leader through DS9.

F as a creative storywriter for the movies and ENT.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Obviously there will never be agreement in the Trek community on Berman. Some love him, some hate him (and some constantly confuse him with Braga).

Personally I give him a C+. He kept the show on the air, he kept Trek alive for years. And let's not forget the extent to which he was simply following orders from Paramount. For example, he wanted a 2-3 year creative break after Voyager ended, but the studio demanded a new Trek show begin as soon as VOY ended. That helps explains both VOY's weak ending and ENT's weak start.

But he also claimed to know the "inner Trekkie" and "Gene's Vision" better than anyone, and he appointed himself as the guardian of both. And IMO he was basically wrong about both. He thought that Trek fans didn't want anything that strayed from the TNG formula, when in fact many Trek fans were hungry for something more daring and different. And "Gene's Vision" was wildly outdated by modern standards and tied down the writing staff with the orders of "no conflict among the Starfleet characters."

So some good stuff from Berman, but some major miscalculations as well.

 

[Photon]

F-

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

B or B-

 

[Dale]

Yeah, I'd give him a B average overall. His grade for effort dropped in the last couple of semesters, though.

 

[number6]

I give Berman a B.
I give the fans an F.

 

[Plum]

Berman needs to write a book. I see no reason he can't spill the studio beans... he's got residuals until the universe implodes. Then... a thread like this will be interesting. So far... we know almost nothing about what went on. Braga needs to do a book too. But later than Berman's, Braga still has a career to think of.

 

[Anwar]

Berman is currently writing a book on his time with Trek.

 

[James Bond]

B.

Mr. Berman should be hailed as a hero for saving TNG from the crapfest that was "Gene's Vision", and thus bringing Star Trek into the mainstream, and ensuring we got nearly 2 decades of continuous Trek on TV. Thank you, Mr. Berman.

 

[OmahaStar]

James Bond said:
B.

Mr. Berman should be hailed as a hero

When I read comments like that, I wonder ... How does one breathe, with a complete lack of oxygen? Don't mind the smell, it's just gas.