DS9 had the best and most confident season 1 episodes

[Greg Cox]

Dax was somewhat 'lost' as the PTB had it in mind that she would be a wise old sage in a young woman's body, its only in Season 2 that they realised that someone with 300+ years of life and experience would be up for embracing more of it and up for going out on adventures--though lots of shows have characters like that, whose initial pitch doesn't work and only over time find out just where they fit in the show.

Absolutely. I was co-writing a DS9 novel at the time and Dax was the one character I could not get a handle on; heck, even when they did an episode titled "Dax," she was in a coma for most of the ep. She didn't really get a consistent personality until later on.

 

[Voth commando1]

"REGENERATION" was near the end of season 2.

Ah I remember.

 

[JesterFace]

I'm not sure if this was already mentioned but DS9 season 1 had an advantage, at least when comparing to TNG season 1.

TNG had already created a word where DS9 would take place and created some story lines that could be used in DS9.

Voyager also had this advantage.

TNG laid the foundation on which DS9 and also Voyager created their beginning. They didn't need to start "from scratch", even if before TNG there was the original series, TNG did create a "new world".

 

[Voth commando1]

Voyager's tone and tenor was set up well by the first season. Janeway and by extension the writers speech at the end of the Pilot set the premise and themes of the show up to a tee. The relationships were well established(if handled unevenly) and overall the first three seasons of Voyager were consistent having good average and a few bad episodes with terrible ones like Threshold alongside great ones like Distant Origin or Projections.

DS9's early seasons were more inconsistent with painful stuff like Move Along Home alongside stuff like Duet. With a lot of bad or inconsistent acting and writing in the first season or two.

TNG's first season wasn't very good the pilot was fine and I enjoyed where no man has gone before and the second season wasn't so good either. The third season steadily got better.

DS9's best seasons I'd say we're its fourth and fifth seasons. Same with Voyager and TNG.

 

[Prax]

I love Move along Home, especially the hopscotch!

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I'm not sure if this was already mentioned but DS9 season 1 had an advantage, at least when comparing to TNG season 1.

TNG Season 1 also had the disadvantage of Maurice Hurley, Leonard Maizlich, a revolving door of writers ... and Gene Roddenberry.

If you want to talk about how TNG got good, you must start with Michael Piller

 

[Farscape One]

I definitely agree with that.

 

[Voth commando1]

Am I the only one that likes If Wishes Were Horses? I actually liked rumpilstilskin and Miles, I enjoyed the Julian/Jadzia stuff, and didn't mind the Siskos and their baseball character either.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Alot of footage in season 1 looks like it was shot thru a diffusing filter.

Most likely, as that was something Marvin Rush was fond of. Look back on his work on TNG, most of the time when the crew were in an alien environment, Rush typically went for low lighting with a diffusion effect, especially during the 5th season. I think that was always from a desire to do something different from the typical Enterprise D look where all the sets were lit bright and crisp. Once he got the chance to establish a new look with DS9 he really went out of his way to make it look starkly different from TNG by jumping to his own impulses. Even after leaving to work on VOY his successors pretty much maintained the photography style that Rush established though with a few adjustments. I think Quark's is the only set that changed over the years.

 

[JesterFace]

If you want to talk about how TNG got good, you must start with Michael Piller

In short, could it be put like this?
TNG - Created by Gene Roddenberry, developed by Michael Piller.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

TNG

Created by GENE RODDENBERRY
Recalibrated by MICHAEL PILLER

 

[Bad Thoughts]

In short, could it be put like this?
TNG - Created by Gene Roddenberry, developed by Michael Piller.

TNG

Created by GENE RODDENBERRY
Recalibrated by MICHAEL PILLER

I don't know how to conceptualize it, but the shift from season 2 to 3 is amazing. It's as if this action-adventure suddenly became a drama. Q Who is as different from Best of Both Worlds as Tarzan of the Apes is from Heart of Darkness. The settings are the same, but there is greater psychological depth.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I sort of see three different shows in the first three seasons. Season 1 is by Gene and other TOS vets basically trying to recapture the magic of the original show. It's much more broad in its presentation, acting, and writing. Riker is usually portrayed as the hero of the show, with Picard constantly flummoxed up on the bridge or incapacitated in way way too many episodes. Probably because the producers saw Riker as a more traditional leading man and gravitated towards him, not sure what to do with Picard besides being the wise old philosopher that shows Riker the ropes.

Maurice Hurley had taken over the latter half of the first season, but its with Season 2 that we see a calibrated change in presentation, already starting to feel closer to what we would get in the Piller era. The writing and acting for the most part took a more nuanced and subdued approach (aside from outliers like "The Outrageous Okona". Where Q came off like a hammy villain in season 1 "GAMES?! DID SOMEONE SAY GAMES?!" and having a fixation on impersonating different appearances like a space serpent or a monk "I FORGIVE YOUR BLASPHEMY", in season 2 they drop his impersonations and he became more quietly sinister like in the conference room "this is as real as your so called life gets". "The Measure of a Man" is the real game changer, showing where TNG's real strengths lie. I think that was the moment the producers truly realized how great an actor Stewart was and from then on focused more on giving Picard things to do while Riker took more of a backseat.

Season 3 just solidified the direction Season 2 implied, with Michael Piller putting more focus onto character based stories, every character getting their own episode. This where the show finally clicks and becomes its own thing rather than just a riff on TOS.

 

[JesterFace]

Season 3 just solidified the direction Season 2 implied, with Michael Piller putting more focus onto character based stories, every character getting their own episode. This where the show finally clicks and becomes its own thing rather than just a riff on TOS.

It could almost be said that TNG with seasons 3-7 became the 5 years mission mentioned in the opening of original Star Trek.

 

[Prax]

Q became more sinister in season 2, but returned to comic relief after that, in such episodes as Season 3's "Déjà Q," and Season 4's "QPid."

I think there's a lot more to it then a single showrunner, which Gene never was anyways, right? It's Berman that really became the authority, as Gene became less engaged(Even though he was still involved during season 4).

I really like TNG season 2. Everyone's character is more relatable than the first season. And I particularly enjoyed Dr. Pulaski.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I think there's a lot more to it then a single showrunner, which Gene never was anyways, right? It's Berman that really became the authority, as Gene became less engaged(Even though he was still involved during season 4).

I really like TNG season 2. Everyone's character is more relatable than the first season. And I particularly enjoyed Dr. Pulaski.

Gene was showrunner for the first half of the season, eventually stepping down because of his health, so Maurice Hurley took over up to the second season. I suspect that's why the second half of the first season felt a little more solid.

My understanding is that Berman became a bigger authority but that was largely on a production level during the TNG years, while Piller as head writer was responsible for overseeing the stories and characterization which set the direction. I don't think Berman really became much of a creative force until later during the TNG movies and VOY. Especially by ENT as that was after a ton of vet writers had left like Piller, Taylor, Behr, Moore, Menosky, etc, thus Berman had to step up along with Braga in cranking out scripts for ENT. It's no coincidence that he has the least amount of writing credits on TNG and DS9 as Piller and Behr were the real creative forces on those two shows.

 

[Prax]

Berman held the same role on all 4 shows. He, and Maurice Hurley helped Roddenberry create TNG, and he had taken over most of Roddenberry's responsibilities by season 3. He's like the senior executive producer. The showrunners answer to him, as do the other departments, like directing producers, musical score, editing, etc.

He's not a screenwriter, but did write two scripts during TNG(Brothers and A Matter of time), otherwise he just has story credit, like the pilot episodes of DS9, VOY, and Enterprise, or notable two-parters, and finales- basically the heavily promoted episodes. He was very much involved in the creative direction of all 4 series, including story direction, and his responsibilities included approving all scripts. That would mean he had the final say on hundreds of episode's stories. He was Co-creator of all 4 series as well.
He was very involved in the story direction for Enterprise because it was more serialized, because there was only one showrunner(Braga) and much of the writing staff was fired during the first season. There was also no longer a DS9, or Voyager, or TNG to worry about. He probably had a lot more time to invest in the series, which ran alone.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Berman had the final say in approving scripts, but that's different from actually implementing them. This is why many including Berman himself credit a lot Piller for the direction TNG took because it was all his idea to make it character centric and it changed the dynamic of the show. Berman approved it as a manager, and he served well in that role. I do think once he had a hand in on the actual writing it wasn't particularly good, particularly with writing characters.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Berman's specific roles varied greatly from series to series. For TNG, he was primarily responsible for righting the ship and appeasing Rodenberry. For DS9, he helped Piller develop the script. More often than not, he acted as a gatekeeper, which may explain the antagonism between him and the writers. He may have been extensively involved in Voyager's early years, but it seemed he became more of a gatekeeper in the last two seasons. His greater involvement in Enterprise was based on the relationship with Braga, helped by that series' very inexperienced writers. Then there were the movies.

Berman was ultimately like a university president for the franchise. He didn't make individual contribution to stories, but he tried to balance out the various aspects of television and film production in order to push the franchise forward. I think his biggest contributions were: bringing Tartikoff's Rifleman in space idea into Star Trek; pushing Mulgrew's casting; pushing Trineer's casting; making 7 of 9 a more sexual character; and brainstorming ENT's third season. He supported Michael Piller,Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga, probably helping them to perform better. His positive influence on DS9 is much less obvious than it is on the other series. Piller wanted DS9 to be a means of breaking out of TNG's limitations, and Berman helped Piller to set up a series that did just that. However, DS9 became the refuge for those who despised the limitations, which put them at odds with Berman.