Well it had quite the lead in but Piller redirected that towards more personal conflicts and growth in a classy way, though his grittier approach makes me wish someone else had taken charge like Joe Menosky from season three. Unfortunately he didn't come in till later and took off soon afterwards, but his conception of the show was interesting. The show needed both approaches but I think the high road is always the best place to start, dipping into the valleys and peaks as the show progressed.
yes but incredibly wobbly and contentious backstage. you can't run a show with that much friction. all the working parts have to work in concert, smoothly, or pfffft!
TNG was a ratings success in its first two seasons simply because at the time, everybody wanted a new Star Trek series, no matter how lousy the writing or the acting was. Trek had never been more popular than it was in the mid-eighties, and it was the exact perfect time for a television sequel to the original series. But Geoff is right; with all the behind-the-scenes nuttiness, the show would have had major problems if someone else hadn't taken the reins. I often wonder how differently things would have been if the idea to create Star Trek: The Next Generation had come just a few years later than it did, basically without Roddenberry's influence whatsoever.
But was it Piller's magic touch or the fact that Roddenberry was slowly moving away from day-to-day operation of the series? Or was it a little of both? Whose to say that the series wouldn't have ran just as smoothly with Gerrold or Fontana or Torme or Hurley in charge without Roddenberry and his attorney hanging over their collective shoulders?
They could have been fine. Or they could have been complete disasters. Who knows? All we know is that Piller was the one who got that job, and that he undisputably helped the show.
But you have to admit that he had an advantage that writers of the first two seasons didn't. That being less Roddenberry involvement.
Piller was the type of writer to see limitations as a challenge, not an impediment. As far as he was concerned, it was still Roddenberry's sandbox, and there were specific rules to play by. Didn't stop him, and others, from creating some pretty impressive sand castles.
The oil in the machine. Letting others shine is an important part of running a series I think and he did that. It was (blockheads) excuse me, like Manny Coto who believed it all rested on his shoulders alone. Moore too.
When a sentence begins "This movie was a big hit," "This musician is popular" or "That TV show was a ratings success," anything following the word "because" is interchangable with "the tooth fairy sprinkled magic dust on it."
The magic touch means a little different than it did back in roddenberry's day. It's who can make the most money disappear into their pockets the best. Also, the guy from Voyager also has his own idea/pitch he's been kicking around. I can't help but think that it's worse than anything we've ever seen so far especially when he insists that it is going to be so much better and that he finally understands what made TOS so great.
That much is certain, but "network-spy-in-residence" seemed particularly unusual, especially since it was aimed at a specific individual. After all, most of Roddenberry's complaints about the network, the studio, etc. over the years were directed at vague and undefined corporate officials. Moreover, elsewhere, I haven't seen anything particularly harsh said about Solow, so I'm a little curious to see him be singled out.
Yeah, and it's so much bullshit. Solow represented the interests of Desilu Studios, the company that Roddenberry worked for, which funded and made Star Trek possible. The notion that because studio executives take a maturely cooperative posture toward the networks that are their customers they are somehow "network spies" is self-centered and childish if not actually delusional.
And Roddenberry worked pro bono, or donated his salary to a home for starving orphans? It's a business. It's always been a business.
Magic? Now Roddenberry's Gandalf? They're making TV shows. It's a job for them. It may be a job that they like, and even love at times, but it's still a job. I don't know where you get this idea that Roddenberry was some mystical, pristine genius who descended from on high with a pure conception of artistic integrity, and that everyone who's not Roddenberry is a venal, incompetent hack looking only to line their pockets and despoil his shining legacy. Isn't this the guy who made up lyrics to the theme song so he could get half the royalties, after all?
You just got through saying people do it for the money but when Roddenberry does it it is all of a sudden not good any more. Let's face it what he and they did was genius on many levels. GR was a lens that magnified all that.
He had a good idea and a great (undersung) staff who implemented and, often, actually created those ideas. Just like very other TV creator/producer. TOS was a failure in its initial run. Had people like us not gone insane for it over the following years, in reruns, it would have died in the 1960s. GR's follow-up works never came near the lightning in a bottle that TOS was and which surprised even him. It was magic, yes, but it was random, undirected, unplanned-for magic.
It did die in the 60's. Capturing God on film was not random, undirected or unplanned but just the opposite. You make it sound like an accident. It wasn't an accident the Beatles wrote what they wrote or how Shirley Temple acted or how or why Brahms and Beethoven put one note in front of the next the way they did.
oh, it was an accident all right. the success of any TV series is always, partially, an accident. No one, not even GR could have predicted (or did predict) or aspire to Star Trek's phenomenal success. It wasn't in the lexicon of possibility before Star Trek. ergo: accident.