They learned their lesson after all the bad singing by the hippies in "Way to Eden" which terribly dated the series.
That's the reason we only have classical and Jazz music in TNG.
Enterprise: Exec wanted "Top Bands" on the show
- Thread starter FrontierTrek
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They learned their lesson after all the bad singing by the hippies in "Way to Eden" which terribly dated the series.
That's the reason we only have classical and Jazz music in TNG.
Especially since none of the characters on BSG, are even from the same species as Bob Dylan...
The more I think about this, the more I think music from popular culture is an inevitability in the next Star Trek series. That's basically how Hollywood works. It doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing. Loads of popular film and TV shows I appreciate do it. But you can count examples done by this franchise on the fingers of one hand... Only the theme tune of this show polarises. No pun intended! That'll largely be because its in your face, and potentially repeated ad nauseum. Where incidental music can be subtle and leaving the audience curious to discover more, while blending in with the drama.
Oh, it definitely dates it - but you can have music that wouldn't have as much of danger of that.
The real problem is the attempt to be cutting edge. Any time that's done, a show ends up being dated, and often really, really quickly. Consider, if you will, The Mod Squad and Laugh-In. Very hip for their time. Cringe-inducingly dated now. Hell, just look at SNL's musical guests from years back, particularly the 70s. Leo Sayer - eek!
Hence put out something unplugged, very low key. Not the next (or current) hit for anyone.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTG3l6K1gvk[/yt]
Not Culp (or Hayes) of course, but something like this. Something that does NOT look pro.
The network execs may be at fault for not letting Voyager and Enterprise be the shows they were supposed to be, but you can't blame them for all the shitty scripts that plagued both shows.
I doubt the network execs told them: "Make 5 time travel episodes a season", or "Make the temporal cold war absurdly convoluted, and not in a mysterious exciting Lost or Twin Peaks sense, but rather in a 'Just fucking stupid and impossible to logically track' sense."
They could have made a much better show with more serialized arcs. They could have made a much better show with an episodic 25th century show. But with such low standards for scripts, they could have never produced anything anyone liked.
Between the end of DS9 and the 3rd season of Enterprise, both the execs and the writers displayed absolutely no idea what the people who still tuned in every week wanted in a television show. The execs thought they wanted the same repetitive predictable drivel you see on a show like Full House, and the writers thought they wanted rehashes of successful TNG tropes. None of them ever thought 'Hey, let's have a character driven show with exciting adventure and smart action', which is what might have kept the franchise going a little longer.
I doubt the network execs told them: "Make 5 time travel episodes a season", or "Make the temporal cold war absurdly convoluted, and not in a mysterious exciting Lost or Twin Peaks sense, but rather in a 'Just fucking stupid and impossible to logically track' sense."
They could have made a much better show with more serialized arcs. They could have made a much better show with an episodic 25th century show. But with such low standards for scripts, they could have never produced anything anyone liked.
Between the end of DS9 and the 3rd season of Enterprise, both the execs and the writers displayed absolutely no idea what the people who still tuned in every week wanted in a television show. The execs thought they wanted the same repetitive predictable drivel you see on a show like Full House, and the writers thought they wanted rehashes of successful TNG tropes. None of them ever thought 'Hey, let's have a character driven show with exciting adventure and smart action', which is what might have kept the franchise going a little longer.
To be fair, Braga wanted some character and political stuff for his version of season 1, which was about building the Enterprise after a Klingon attack. The problem was the execs wanted the TNG formula and no continuity, so the writers just had to follow the orders from on high until the poor ratings caused the execs to loosen up the reigns for S3 and S4.
There were no "holoprograms" in Enterprise or TOS for that matter.
Nobody's saying the "blame" should be concentrated exclusively on any one person or group. On the contrary, my whole point is that it's overly simplistic to pick just one culpable party. Lots of people are involved in making a TV show, and there are lots of different decisions and factors that can contribute to a bad episode -- even when everyone is sincerely trying to do good work. I agree, as I've already said, that Braga was the weakest showrunner -- but he still did good work as a writer on TNG and VGR, and sometimes on ENT too. I agree that Berman wasn't the best at writing, but he was a fantastic logistical/technical producer and Trek would never have come close to the success and quality it had at its peak if not for his commitment and talent in that regard. Dwelling strictly on the negative side is self-indulgent and blinds you to the truth.
More to the point, this is a simple matter of getting the facts straight. Yes, there are things Berman and Braga can be held accountable for, but that doesn't change the fact that it's wrong to blame them for the specific decisions that were made by someone else. Credit and blame should be given where they're due. You don't just pick one scapegoat and blame them for everything even when it's a lie. Lies are unacceptable. That should be the first, overriding principle that goes without saying. If someone isn't to blame for a particular decision, you don't blame them for it. It doesn't matter one damn bit if there are other bad decisions they made -- they still didn't make that one. It's about setting the record straight.
Well, you're wrong, at least where ENT is concerned. Berman & Braga didn't want to deal with time travel at all on that show; it was entirely in response to the network's demand for something that moved forward from the TNG era.
Again, that's the worst example you could've chosen. The lack of serialization was one of the things that was definitely due to the network's will rather than the producers'. VGR and ENT were episodic because that's what UPN wanted.
I would also point out that ENT did have serialized arcs. There's actually a pretty good sense of continuity running through the first season, a number of subtle arcs -- Archer and T'Pol overcoming their initial mistrust and becoming friends, NX-01 establishing itself as an interstellar presence, the evolving storyline with the TCW, Suliban, and Tandarans, etc. And of course seasons 3 and 4 had plenty of serialization. Season 2 is the only one that feels purely episodic, although it did advance the arc of the Klingons' bad blood toward Archer in "Judgment" and "The Expanse."
Speak for yourself. There's a lot about VGR and ENT that I liked. Sure, there's a lot I disliked too, but both shows managed to do some pretty worthwhile stuff from time to time despite the network restrictions.
Oh, great, another person who says "what people want" when what you really mean is "what I want." Why do so many people do that? Is it too frightening to stand up and admit your opinions are your own and not necessarily shared by everyone?
The producers of ENT actually did make it a character-driven show at first; a lot of the first season's episodes are smallish character pieces that are more about exploring the crew and their relationships than about big action and high concepts. There's a pretty clear M*A*S*H influence on it at times (particularly with things like movie night and Phlox's letters to Dr. Lucas). "Dear Doctor" is even that almost unprecedented thing in Star Trek, a pure drama without any physical danger or action. But from the second season on, it shifted focus more toward action and high-concept sci-fi gimmicks -- most likely under network pressure. (Although the second season's "A Night in Sickbay" is another pure drama, with no danger to anyone except Porthos. It wasn't a story that worked particularly well, but nobody can say it wasn't character-driven.)
I had just been in the Voyager Forum and brought the Holoprograms with me
But there were in the animated series. It wouldn't have been much of a stretch to say the technology was around in TOS and before, but simply went unseen to due budget/fx limitations of the 1960's. Especially since we're likely to have the beginnings of holographic technology in our lifetimes!
Except that early TNG portrayed holodecks as a new technology that characters like Riker were amazed to see.
But then again, VGR later suggested that holoprograms had been around in Janeway's childhood (and she's about the same age as Riker). And ENT had its characters firing at holographic practice targets way back in the 22nd century. It's all kind of a mess.
But then again, VGR later suggested that holoprograms had been around in Janeway's childhood (and she's about the same age as Riker). And ENT had its characters firing at holographic practice targets way back in the 22nd century. It's all kind of a mess.
Having some band appear on a holodeck or in a holosuite made some sense on DS9 (even though I disliked "Vic Fountain").
But since holo technology apparently did not exist in the 22nd century, the prospect of the appearance of different bands or singing groups on the NX-01 makes no sense whatsoever.
This UPN exec "suggestion" was reported in this forum some years ago and I recall thinking at the time that this was too silly to be true -- perhaps I was wrong.
After reading that I'm suddenly grateful that Trek folk seemingly only listen to jazz and classical music.
The execs wanted the future to be involved, which could have been accomplished by one group from the 25th century with consistent presence and goals. Instead we get 30th century people trying to stop 27th century people who seem to hold the Stargate Asgard principle of 'Whenever something bad is going to happen, don't do anything, but instead warn people about it who have way less power than you do, citing obscure nonsensical reasons why you can't do it yourself'.
Read my post more carefully without a lens of assumed hostility. The purpose of that part of my post was to say that, they could have made either the kind of show the writers wanted OR the kind of show the execs wanted, and made it a really good show if the writing wasn't shit.
Oh, that's not what I want. What I wanted was a completely serialized chronicle of the events leading to the foundation of the Federation that showed the growing pains of discovering the reasons for the Federation's ideals. That is the formula that seems to cause television shows to have high ratings: Characters that people like, whose development drives the show, exciting adventure and smart action. The kind of show I wanted would have gotten even lower ratings.
The early episodes were about as character driven as an episode of Full House. Some character's personal quirk caused a problem, and they 'learned a lesson' which was summarily forgotten by the next episode. Each character overcame the same personal failing in every episode about them, just like on Voyager.
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