Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek...

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

TremblingBluStar said:

Katatak47 said:
I think B & B have always taken way too much flak by people who most often don't stop to consider or aren't aware of all the forces at work between broadcast Network and creative production staffs. They see Exec Producers et al as the end-all be-all, the buck-stops-here category and it's not really that simple.

No, but it was quite easy for Berman and Braga to be yes-men and do what was required of them. Berman may claim now that he wasn't happy with how the franchise was treated, but it certainly did not stop him from putting is foot down or turning his back on the he made off of Trek.

If he and Braga has showed more integrity, perhaps one of them would have a more successful post-Trek career.

"Integrity" how? Nothing they could've said or done would've changed a damn thing with how UPN was treating Trek at the time, and if they'd quit in frustration they'd be sued for violating their contracts, kept from finding further work due to the legal implications of said contract violations, and things still wouldn't be any different.

Instead of being reviled, they'd just be martyrs who still couldn't find much work post-Trek.

 

[Holytomato]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

RandyS said:
^Yeah, I always supected The decline in Star Trek wasn't Berman's fault. After all, the guy produced TNG, and co-created DS9, the two best things that ever happened to Star Trek.

DS9 was great because Berman concentrated on Voyager.

"The idea didn't last long as they realized that it would be difficult to come up with a look that pre-dated the original."

Mmmm...Star Trek XI 2008.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

cultcross said:

exodus said:
Berman saw Trek the way Gene Roddenberry did because Gene taught him all he knew before he died, he worked side by side with Gene.

i've heard tell from people, couldn't name a source, ill grant, but I've seen on this board that in fact Rick was the last person Gene wanted to take over.

I believe that's something that's been stated by Richard Arnold in various interviews, perhaps Justman as well.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Holytomato said:

RandyS said:
^Yeah, I always supected The decline in Star Trek wasn't Berman's fault. After all, the guy produced TNG, and co-created DS9, the two best things that ever happened to Star Trek.

DS9 was great because Berman concentrated on Voyager.

"The idea didn't last long as they realized that it would be difficult to come up with a look that pre-dated the original."

Mmmm...Star Trek XI 2008.

That's another misconception. Berman was as involved in DS9 as he was with VOY.

 

[AviTrek]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

cultcross said:

exodus said:
Berman saw Trek the way Gene Roddenberry did because Gene taught him all he knew before he died, he worked side by side with Gene.

i've heard tell from people, couldn't name a source, ill grant, but I've seen on this board that in fact Rick was the last person Gene wanted to take over. Also, by the last years of his life, 'what gene wanted' was the last thing the franchise needed. Gene was losing his marbles creatively, and ditching things that were his idea have almost invariably improved the modern trek series.

I also would not blame Berman or Braga exclusively for what went wrong in the franchise, no one (or two!) man is that powerful in a tv producing world, but I read Berman's PR bollocks and his 'frank and revealing' interviews with Star Trek magazine and others where he constantly sounded so smugly overconfident and completely dried up creatively. He'd constantly talk about this or that exciting plan, or how pleased he was with this or that element of ENT or Nemesis. Then when we actually saw the productions he was discussing, they were the same formulaic mediocrity.
Berman & Braga were not solely responsible for killing the franchise. But they oversaw the great slide from Trek's strongest time to its weakest, and that they must take some blame for.

A good indication of a company/franchise going south is when business people take over running the entity instead of creative people. Berman came up as a producer, his experience was in budgeting and making sure all the material was available for filming. His problems started when he became the #1 man and started being involved creatively. What Star Trek needed was Piller, Moore, Behr, Echevarria, Taylor, or Braga to take over.

 

[Warp Coil]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

I admit that Rick Berman gets shoved under the bus as the reason behind Trek's fall from grace. And he doesn't deserve ALL the credit for it. But I think he's at least partially-responsible for Trek's eventual decline.

Yes, Paramount and later UPN played a large role in some of the decisions involved with VOY and ENT. Yes, they did make some requests and mandates about what they wanted to see. But I question how much Berman fought against them and stood his ground. I feel as if Berman was too much of a "yes man" and gave in to the network's pressure. A greater man would have fought to keep the integrity of the show in-tact.

Also, I feel as if the writing on VOY and ENT could have been consistently better if Berman had let the creative team do what they wanted. Ron Moore's infamous interview from a few years ago talks about why he left VOY's writing team after 2 episodes and brings up Berman's unwillingness to move away from the status quo.

And let's take a look at the TNG movies. Berman was executive producer and was involved with the story - and 3 out of 4 films were mediocre.

The bottom line is that the guy is a producer, not a writer. He came from a background dealing with studios, budgets, schedules and paperwork. He never should have been involved in the creative direction of the franchise.

 

[Katatak47]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Anwar said:

TremblingBluStar said:

No, but it was quite easy for Berman and Braga to be yes-men and do what was required of them. Berman may claim now that he wasn't happy with how the franchise was treated, but it certainly did not stop him from putting is foot down or turning his back on the he made off of Trek.

If he and Braga has showed more integrity, perhaps one of them would have a more successful post-Trek career.

"Integrity" how? Nothing they could've said or done would've changed a damn thing with how UPN was treating Trek at the time, and if they'd quit in frustration they'd be sued for violating their contracts, kept from finding further work due to the legal implications of said contract violations, and things still wouldn't be any different.

Instead of being reviled, they'd just be martyrs who still couldn't find much work post-Trek.

[/QUOTE]

Amen! It's how the industry works. You just don't throw up your hands and turn your back on work that's been a significant part of your career. Besides being constrained by the legalities, you'd just be chopping off your own nose to spite your face as far as any 'future' your career might have elsewhere.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Anwar said:
Berman was as involved in DS9 as he was with VOY.

Shhhh, you're not supposed to say that around here!

The meme on this BBS is that Berman had absolutely nothing to do with DS9, he's the evil guy who ruined Voyager and Enterprise and Nemesis and he did it specifically to spite Trek fans because he hates them! Bwaaahaha!

 

[Katatak47]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

CaptJimboJones said:

Anwar said:
Berman was as involved in DS9 as he was with VOY.

Shhhh, you're not supposed to say that around here!

The meme on this BBS is that Berman had absolutely nothing to do with DS9, he's the evil guy who ruined Voyager and Enterprise and Nemesis and he did it specifically to spite Trek fans because he hates them! Bwaaahaha!

I love it!

 

[Balthier the Great]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

I think the problem was that whoever was in charge started thinking that they had a guarenteed audience. That no matter how bad Trek got, there would still be fans buying multiple copies. That arrogance killed trek, just like it killed lots of other things. There are some who will. Quite frankly listening to some fans talk, they'd buy anything with a Trek logo.

If that's what the suits were seeing, I really don't blame them for thinking they could cut a few corners. I don't think any one person or group is to blame. It's just creative entropy, and belive it or not it woulda happend even with the original team in place.

Hopefully the restart that Abrams has coming will start the thing over again. But unless the next steps are creative and original, I don't expect much.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

The problem is that they ignored Trek's established audience and tried to use it to get a more mainstream audience, ignoring Treks' past. Trek was never a mainstream hit like Star Wars, it worked best with its niche group of fans and once they started ignoring them and the kinds of storytelling that attracted them in the first place it started the true creative decline.

 

[Broccoli]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

StarryEyed said:
Braga had no respect for established Trek history and he admitted this several times.

Bull. In nearly every single interview that I've seen (including a convention appearance), when asked about this, he responses with the exact opposite.

Now, me might (and I stress might) be just saying that to appease fans, but don't go putting words in his mouth just because your perceived notions on how pre-TOS should be doesn't mesh with his.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

That's another misconception. Berman was as involved in DS9 as he was with VOY.

If that's true, then there must be some other explanation for the fact that DS9 and VOY were as different as two shows could be and still be called Star Trek. So what was the determining factor? The other people involved? The fact that VOY was UPN's flagship and got more suit interference while DS9 was allowed more freedom?

 

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Exactly, it was UPN.

That and DS9 had the same people as Exec Producers for the entire run, Piller got Ira Behr back in the beginning and they worked together closely enough that when Piller left Behr was a worthy successor.

Compared to VOY, where Piller and Taylor were at odds from the very beginning, Taylor was replaced a years after Piller left with Braga who was denied all the changes he wanted to do and had to take a back seat starting in S5 to work on ENT and left Biller in charge.

 

[Navaros]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Anwar said:

That's another misconception. Berman was as involved in DS9 as he was with VOY.

I believe this statement is incorrect. And the concept that Berman had much less involvment in the day to day operations of DS9 after Season 2 of DS9 is correct. Yes Berman was still technically the man in charge, but the reason why DS9 evolved into by far the best Trek show is precisely because Berman was busy mucking up the Voyager show which gave Ira Behr etc. some freedom to take over the main responsibilites of DS9 and evolve it beyond Berman's dull formula.

I can accept that UPN had a hand in making Voyager a bad show, however, there is lots of evidence from the showrunners of DS9 that the reason DS9 was great was because Ira stood up to Berman's bad ideas and was able to overcome them in many cases by fighting against Berman's wishes for DS9.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

DS9's freedom came from being syndicated and not at one network's whim like VOY and ENT were, Behr is just an ungrateful prat who doesn't appreciate that Berman actually did help to keep the studio off the DS9's crew for things and blames him for utterly ridiculous stuff.

And anyways, you're just biased against anything Berman had a hand in, meaning you'd naturally come in and try to minimize whatever role he had in anything.

 

[cultcross]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Anwar said:
DS9's freedom came from being syndicated and not at one network's whim like VOY and ENT were, Behr is just an ungrateful prat who doesn't appreciate that Berman actually did help to keep the studio off the DS9's crew for things and blames him for utterly ridiculous stuff.

And anyways, you're just biased against anything Berman had a hand in, meaning you'd naturally come in and try to minimize whatever role he had in anything.

A number of people, including Berman himself in an interview with the UK star Trek Magazine when Nicole de Boer joined DS9, have stated that Berman was not significantly involved in day-to-day creative operations on DS9 (which is what's being discussed here). True, he had a lot to do with the paperwork, network negotiations, scheduling, etc. - the nitty gritty of running a production, which is what he was good at. On DS9 however, he stayed out of the creative process, where he is not strong.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

He wasn't all that involved with VOY's creative processes either, he wasn't all that involved with VOY at all until S3.

I'm saying that blaming him for their creative problems (which he didn't have much involvement in) ignores the real problems: Constant UPN interference and restrictions, Jeri Taylor, Ken Biller, and Braga's ideas being denied.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Warp Coil said:
The bottom line is that the guy is a producer, not a writer.

Could have fooled me, considering he wrote one of my favourite episodes, TNG's "Brothers".

 

[Noname Given]

Re: Brannon Braga found that taking the heat for Star Trek..

Warp Coil said:
I admit that Rick Berman gets shoved under the bus as the reason behind Trek's fall from grace. And he doesn't deserve ALL the credit for it. But I think he's at least partially-responsible for Trek's eventual decline.

Yes, Paramount and later UPN played a large role in some of the decisions involved with VOY and ENT. Yes, they did make some requests and mandates about what they wanted to see. But I question how much Berman fought against them and stood his ground. I feel as if Berman was too much of a "yes man" and gave in to the network's pressure. A greater man would have fought to keep the integrity of the show in-tact.

Also, I feel as if the writing on VOY and ENT could have been consistently better if Berman had let the creative team do what they wanted. Ron Moore's infamous interview from a few years ago talks about why he left VOY's writing team after 2 episodes and brings up Berman's unwillingness to move away from the status quo.

And let's take a look at the TNG movies. Berman was executive producer and was involved with the story - and 3 out of 4 films were mediocre.

The bottom line is that the guy is a producer, not a writer. He came from a background dealing with studios, budgets, schedules and paperwork. He never should have been involved in the creative direction of the franchise.

Peopel in the know have said that fans didn't realize just how much Berman DID fight against UPN network suit ideas (the person mentioning this said the network wanted him to work in pop culture apperances for 'pop-culture' stuff like "The Backstreet Boys" , "Spice Girls", etc. And personally, I can SEE the network suits thinking - "Yeah, this'll bring up the 18-24 demos..." and they could give a damn about the 'futuristic/serious sci-fi theme" of the Star Trek franchise - so again, who knows just how hard he had to fight to keep stuff like this from appearing - which he obviously DID keep off.