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Brannon Braga & "The Next Generation"...

TedShatner10

TedShatner10

Commodore
Commodore
Although he gained infamy in the declining era of Voyager and Enterprise for many real and imagined slights against Star Trek fandom, what was the general fan opinion of him in the better times of The Next Generation, when the franchise was at it's height? In my mind he reminds me exactly of Rob Liefeld, who was also initially very popular in the early to mid 1990s, but by the very late 1990s and early 2000s onwards both men were eternally damned down into the nethermost circles of Hell (reserved for child molestors and war criminals) by most self-respecting geeks the world over. But he did win a Hugo Award...
 
I've always liked Brannon Braga and his writing. It was a treat to see him speak in person at the Vegas CreationCon last August.
 
I had no idea how hated he was by internet fans until I surfed the web. I've always enjoyed his stories. Most were usually high concept and very plot-driven but the the ideas were neat and the twists great. And while he might not have preferred character-driven stories he usually managed to incorporate some nice character moments in each of his stories whether the Susanna/Geordi moments in Identity Crisis, the banter in the teaser of Timescape, the interaction in the poker scenes or Bev/Picard in Cause and Effect. He was a mad genius with the Ode to Spot and he did some truly creepy stories. And I can't tell how brave and daring the idea of Cause and Effect was. In fact I don't remember anything attempted like it before. I even think Groundhog Day came out a little after this episode and shows like Supernatural, The X-Files and SG1 have done the repeating day story but never quite as well as C&E.

I pretty much enjoyed all of his TNG efforts.

Identity Crisis-good
The Game-good
Power Play-good
Cause and Effect-excellent
Imaginary Friend-decent
Schisms-good
Fistful of Datas-good
Frame of Mind-good
Timescape-great
Phantasms-good
Parallels-great
Sub Rosa-decent
Genesis-good
All Good Things-excellent
Timescape-great

He along with Moore were my two favorite TNG scribes.

And on VOY Braga didn't do too bad with shows like Cathexis, Deadlock, Flashback, Distant Orign, Prey, Scorpion, Year of Hell, Dark Frontier, Night, Timeless.
 
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Quite correct. "C&E" predated Groundhog Day, the movie that made the "repeat day" story popular with the general public, by a year.
 
I remember a time when I was always excited to see Brannon Braga's name attached to an episode. I was a big fan of his during his run on TNG and the first few years of VOY. He's very creative and he does have a gift for storytelling. He was always at his best, though, when he was paired with Ronald D. Moore, because that's when their strengths really played off of each other -- Braga's excellency at plotting and gimmicks, Moore's excellence at characters. But Braga's always better when it comes to gimmicks and plots then he is with characters.

I think he started to lose some of his zest when he became an executive producer. Some of his stories were still good, but they weren't as good as they were when he was just a writer. I don't think he was the right guy to handle that kind of responsibility, especially when he ended up having to proof and edit other people's work. And it really showed in VOY because during his tenure the relationship between Paris & Torres went no where because he publicly stated that VOY was "not a relationship show", which (if you think about it) goes against the series' own premise because this crew is facing 7 decades cut off from their loved ones. The only chance they have of returning is to procreate! It was only natural that relationships develop and romances bloom, but Braga felt differently, and the series fell into a rut.

The same can be said of ENT, but unfortunately to a much greater extent, because unlike VOY (in which characters were given development under Piller and Taylor), Braga was responsible for the characters and their development from Day One. Unfortunately, he really let us down. While there was some development with The Big Three, that was it, and some of it resulted in T'Pol's drop addiction, and the "romance" between Trip & T'Pol, which (let's face it) was played entirely for the sex factor for most, if not all, of season 3. It wasn't until Season 4 that it actually developed some depth, and that was under Manny Coto.

So while I feel that Brannon Braga was an excellent writer on TNG and early VOY, once he moved up in the ranks his work went downhill. I don't think he intentionally tried to run Trek into the ground like some people claim. He was just burned out and wasn't allowed a way out. They kept asking him for more, and Trek was all he knew. He was offered to develop outside projects way too late.

I feel that we do own Braga (as well as Berman) for a lot of excellent Trek though, as above posters have listed wonderful episodes. He helped give Trek great life and excitement. He just couldn't give it direction.
 
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startrekwatcher said:
I've always enjoyed his stories. Most were usually high concept and very plot-driven but the the ideas were neat and the twists great...

I pretty much enjoyed all of his TNG efforts.
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CaptainJon said:
I was a big fan of his during his run on TNG and the first few years of VOY... I think he started to lose some of his zest when he became an executive producer...

I feel that we do own Braga (as well as Berman) for a lot of excellent Trek though, as above posters have listed wonderful episodes. He helped give Trek great life and excitement. He just couldn't give it direction.
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Agree with both these excerpts. Great on TNG & great writer in his prime but as executive producer the pressure showed.
 
Corran Horn said:
"Fistful of Datas" was good?
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Well I enjoyed it. It wasn't great. It was a bit fluffy for TNG and I wouldn't rewatch it over and over but for the hour I was entertained. Obviously you feel differently. There are plenty of episodes from all the Trek series I find myself seemingly the holdout in either praising or criticizing and this wouldn't surprise me to be the case here.
Anwar said:
Robert Hewitt Wolfe wrote that one.
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The story idea was by Wolfe but the teleplay was credited to both Wolfe and Braga. Braga might have simply done a re-write or made some substantial changes I don't know but I still credit the episode to both so I counted it as a Braga episode.
 
I can't recall what the general opinion of Braga was at TNG's height, but I don't recall it being particularly negative. I've always enjoyed Braga's TNG stuff. As I've said before here, he seemed to be pretty much the only one writing for Riker at the end of TNG's run, and I for one, will always think of him fondly for that.
 
CaptainJon said pretty much what I wanted to say. Excellent TNG writer and he did some great stuff on VOY and ENT. But the quality dropped once he was made producer/exec-producer.
 
The guy sure knows High Concept Sci-Fi, but he was wrong to think that the "human" factor needed to be filtered out, which is why Enterprise was so bland.
 
His hi-concept episodes were always fun and, in conjunction with other writers, produced some Trek classics.

But he wasn't the man to take charge of the franchise.
 
TedShatner10 said:
Although he gained infamy in the declining era of Voyager and Enterprise for many real and imagined slights against Star Trek fandom, what was the general fan opinion of him in the better times of The Next Generation, when the franchise was at it's height? In my mind he reminds me exactly of Rob Liefeld, who was also initially very popular in the early to mid 1990s, but by the very late 1990s and early 2000s onwards both men were eternally damned down into the nethermost circles of Hell (reserved for child molestors and war criminals) by most self-respecting geeks the world over. But he did win a Hugo Award...
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Yeah he pretty much sucked
 
startrekwatcher said:
I had no idea how hated he was by internet fans until I surfed the web. I've always enjoyed his stories. Most were usually high concept and very plot-driven but the the ideas were neat and the twists great. And while he might not have preferred character-driven stories he usually managed to incorporate some nice character moments in each of his stories whether the Susanna/Geordi moments in Identity Crisis, the banter in the teaser of Timescape, the interaction in the poker scenes or Bev/Picard in Cause and Effect. He was a mad genius with the Ode to Spot and he did some truly creepy stories. And I can't tell how brave and daring the idea of Cause and Effect was. In fact I don't remember anything attempted like it before. I even think Groundhog Day came out a little after this episode and shows like Supernatural, The X-Files and SG1 have done the repeating day story but never quite as well as C&E.

I pretty much enjoyed all of his TNG efforts.

Identity Crisis-good
The Game-good
Power Play-good
Cause and Effect-excellent
Imaginary Friend-decent
Schisms-good
Fistful of Datas-good
Frame of Mind-good
Timescape-great
Phantasms-good
Parallels-great
Sub Rosa-decent
Genesis-good
All Good Things-excellent
Timescape-great

He along with Moore were my two favorite TNG scribes.

And on VOY Braga didn't do too bad with shows like Cathexis, Deadlock, Flashback, Distant Orign, Prey, Scorpion, Year of Hell, Dark Frontier, Night, Timeless.
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Are you kidding
 
cultcross said:
startrekwatcher said:
Sub Rosa-decent
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This part fo your post fills me with some incredulity.

Beverly gets off with a candle while reading her grandmother's sex diaries? I think the best word to describe Sub Rosa would be indecent.
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Sub Rosa is far from TNG or Trek's best but I enjoyed the atomsphere, the idea of an alien race recreating Scotland and some of the Picard/Bev and Troi/Beverly interactions. But in a season that gave us Force of Nature, Masks, Homeward, Eye of the Beholder, Emergence I find it diverting.
 
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