Joe Menosky and Aron Coleite joins writing staff

[Destructor]

The biggest problem with the Rick Berman-era was the lack of longterm arcs and character development.

But there have only been two eras: TOS and 'The Rick Berman era'. So we don't know what Trek looks like in the era of long-running story arcs and character development (although, hey: Deep Space Nine) because the pre-existing 'Trek formula' was established in the 1960s when there was no recording, no streaming, no DVD boxed sets. That's the most exciting thing about this show- seeing what Trek will look like as a modern television product.

 

[Rahul]

But there have only been two eras: TOS and 'The Rick Berman era'. So we don't know what Trek looks like in the era of long-running story arcs and character development (although, hey: Deep Space Nine) because the pre-existing 'Trek formula' was established in the 1960s when there was no recording, no streaming, no DVD boxed sets. That's the most exciting thing about this show- seeing what Trek will look like as a modern television product.

I would like to disagree here. While Deep Space Nine technically occured during the Rick Berman era, it was basically someone else's show with someone else's rules. And the last two seasons of Enterprise (where Many Coto took over) were also much more akin to modern television with long-running story arcs and character development.

Star Trek has always had a little bit of a "short story collection"-touch, with different stories each week, so I bet we will never got a "13 episodes telling a single story without interludes"-type of television like Game of Thrones or 24. I expect a new Trek show to have quite some similarities to the latter Enterprise (although hopefully a bit better).

 

[Christopher]

But there have only been two eras: TOS and 'The Rick Berman era'.

There's also TAS and the movies in between those two. There was a "Harve Bennett era" for nearly a decade.

 

[Destructor]

I expect a new Trek show to have quite some similarities to the latter Enterprise (although hopefully a bit better).

Enterprise, even in S4, was still very much filmed and scripted in the style that was begun with TOS, slightly evolved by TNG, and more or less faithfully kept to by Voyager. That was one of the problems with it- it didn't feel remotely contemporary and felt downright ancient compared to other shows that were blazing the new trail for television at the time (Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire). Given how incredibly cinematic and experimental Hannibal was, I simply can't believe Fuller would revert to the old style of scripting and shooting. He says himself he writes his scripts in terms of what the camera is doing. This kind of script would barely make sense on TNG/VOY/ENT, where the camera is, most of the time, not doing anything at all.

 

[Destructor]

There's also TAS and the movies in between those two. There was a "Harve Bennett era" for nearly a decade.

For simplicity's sake I am talking purely about television (TAS would be the conclusion of the 'TOS era'). Movies, naturally, don't follow the 'rules' established by and for a television show and I'd consider them a different beast that doesn't have immediate bearing on a discussion about the constraints that television shows have to work within.

My overall point is that people seem to pick and choose what they like from Berman's era, and dismiss his work as a producer, when in reality he presided over almost everything we think of as televised Trek (with the exception of TOS, obviously)- including DS9. Getting out of the way of a creative can be just as powerful an act as a producer as getting your hands dirty with scripts.

 

[Christopher]

My overall point is that people seem to pick and choose what they like from Berman's era, and dismiss his work as a producer, when in reality he presided over almost everything we think of as televised Trek (with the exception of TOS, obviously)- including DS9. Getting out of the way of a creative can be just as powerful an act as a producer as getting your hands dirty with scripts.

The thing people tend to miss about Berman is that there's a whole lot more to making a television show than the writing, and Berman was the guy in charge of all of it. Usually there are two different types of producer who work in partnership. There are creative producers, who develop the concepts and characters and handle the writing, and logistical producers, who handle the work of turning the scripts into finished productions. The logistical producers are in charge of the casting, design, set and prop construction, makeup, cinematography, music, editing, visual effects, the works. That, more than the writing, is what Rick Berman was in charge of getting done for 18 years straight. Yes, he did get somewhat involved on the creative side as well -- he co-created the later shows, he co-wrote the story outlines for many of the big 2-parters and event episodes, and he scripted two TNG episodes and was Brannon Braga's regular writing partner on Enterprise (and only on Enterprise, despite the myths about "Berman and Braga" as some permanently joined beast). But that was secondary to his main responsibility to the logistical side of the production, the mechanics of executing the ideas. And in that respect, he did a pretty incredible job. The Star Trek shows he produced had some of the best production values on television, with fantastic casting and acting, nearly feature-quality sets and effects, full orchestral scores at a time when most TV scoring was electronic (although I never shared Berman's fondness for non-thematic atmospheric scoring), etc. Everyone talks about the writing side of Berman's work as if it were the only thing he did, but it was only a sidebar, and it wasn't the thing he did best. The thing he did best was something most people don't even think about, the process of turning scripts into episodes. Even when the writing on ST wasn't great, the production values were just about the best you'd find on television, and Rick Berman was responsible for that.

 

[RAMA]

But there have only been two eras: TOS and 'The Rick Berman era'. So we don't know what Trek looks like in the era of long-running story arcs and character development (although, hey: Deep Space Nine) because the pre-existing 'Trek formula' was established in the 1960s when there was no recording, no streaming, no DVD boxed sets. That's the most exciting thing about this show- seeing what Trek will look like as a modern television product.

This is the aspect that most interests me..the idea that we don't know what the show will be like in look, atmosphere and tone, because it's the first non-Berman era show in 47 years.

 

[Kegg]

And the last two seasons of Enterprise (where Many Coto took over) were also much more akin to modern television with long-running story arcs and character development.

Coto only took over for the final season, with an approach - a season of three-parties and two-parters that are each functionally their own arc - that is fairly unusual by the standards of TV on network today - the structure of the third season, with a season long arc with weekly standalone episodes incorporated into that, is fairly typical of the genre shows on the CW, the channel that is the heir of UPN where Enterprise aired.

I'd actually expect we may get something a little structurally like that (mixing episodic and arced elements can also be seen in all three of the series Bryan Fuller both created and ran as showrunner.)

 

[jaime]

Woah...

Kirsten Beyer?

Everything apart from that news could go either way.
Her Voyager books are the only consistently good books in the relaunches. Hope she still finds tine to write them.

 

[jaime]

Hmm. So a lot of people Fuller has worked with before, but drawn from multiple different parts of his career -- Menosky (and maybe Kirsten) from Voyager, Alexander from Heroes and Hannibal, Coleite from Heroes, Berg & Harberts from Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies. And a couple of authors whose main work has been in other media, Kirsten (novelist) and Kemp Powers (playwright/journalist). That's interesting.

And between Fuller, Berg, Powers, and Kirsten, there's a fair number of people offering something other than a hetero white male perspective.

Thing is...and I am going out on a limb here...hetero white males don't all have the same perspective to start off with, so maybe, just maybe, we could think about their work as writers first? I mean I know it's not easy for such backward people as us star trek fans to not go around judging people by their gender or colour of skin but...Oh. Hang on.

Seriously though. Beyer is the best news.

 

[Christopher]

the structure of the third season, with a season long arc with weekly standalone episodes incorporated into that, is fairly typical of the genre shows on the CW, the channel that is the heir of UPN where Enterprise aired.

It's fairly typical of most series television on any network these days, and it started before The CW. It was basically Babylon 5 that pioneered the idea of breaking a series into seasonal arcs where each season told a complete subsection of the story from beginning to end, although B5 episodes were still pretty episodic within that arc (i.e. each episode would tell a complete story from beginning to end and the various episodes would granularly add up to a larger story arc, rather than having each episode depict just a portion of multiple simultaneous subplots that would each take several episodes to play out). Shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer standardized this practice further, with each season having its own "Big Bad" (a term that actually originated on Buffy) who was defeated in the finale, and with a balance of serialized character arcs alongside case-of-the-week bad-guy plots that got wrapped up in a single episode but tended to be uncannily resonant with whatever was going on in the characters' ongoing soap opera that week.

 

[Kegg]

It's fairly typical of most series television on any network these days, and it started before The CW.

I'm aware, but that wasn't the point, the point was what TV looks like today; I called attention to the CW because of it's the inheritor of the channel the last two Star Treks were on.

It's also true of many dramas on CBS, like the recently concluded Good Wife - which is to have a spinoff series on All Access with the new Star Trek.

 

[Christopher]

^It's true of television in general. Even shows from Canada (e.g. Orphan Black or Dark Matter) or the UK (e.g. Doctor Who) follow the same pattern. It's not only pointless but misleading to single out specific examples as if they were somehow different from the norm.

 

[jaime]

^It's true of television in general. Even shows from Canada (e.g. Orphan Black or Dark Matter) or the UK (e.g. Doctor Who) follow the same pattern. It's not only pointless but misleading to single out specific examples as if they were somehow different from the norm.

To be fair it wasnt always the norm, and I am sure some shows are still made to the more traditional pattern. Though more are so arc heavy it gets boring.
You could even go back to 1988 for the Doctor Who example, with Ace and the arc there....and that's when it really was uncommon.

 

[Kegg]

^It's true of television in general. Even shows from Canada (e.g. Orphan Black or Dark Matter) or the UK (e.g. Doctor Who) follow the same pattern.

i cited them as an example of a norm.

I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say it is typical of television in general, of course; it is common for American network dramas*, but it is not how many cable or streaming shows operate (many of which are purely arced to the total or near total absence of an episodic plot); or indeed many other British shows (it's not true of Black Mirror, which is pure anthology, it's not true of Peaky Blinders, which is mostly arc driven, and so on.)

I can't think of a single TV drama produced in my country in years - or longer - which fits this approach; we're far more liable to see pure arc shows (with a particular emphasis of course on various murder mysteries, which remain one of the most popular kinds of European drama.)

*Common, but not universal. A notable recent exception would be ABC's American Crime, which essentially aims to be seen as kind to a prestige cable drama in its style and plot development.

 

[Praetorian]

I guess we don't agree. "Darmok" was good, "Time's Arrow" was okay at best, almost nothing from Voyager was good (including none of the episodes you listed there).

I'm sorry, but plenty of people agree that episodes such as The Year of Hell, Living Witness and Distant Origin are some of Trek's best, not only Voyager's.

Source: Reviewers such as Jammer, Bernd Schneider from Ex Astris Scientia, our very one TheGodBen and the votes cast on http://www.joereiss.net/sos/.

Also, I would argue that at least 1/3 of Voyager's episodes were great.

In any event, Menosky usually tried to do something out of the box (Distant Origin's beginning being a good example of it) and, even if he didn't always succeed (Masks), I think his input will be a good thing for the new show.

 

[Christopher]

I just realized that the new staff includes two people I've personally interacted with. Kirsten Beyer is a friend and colleague, and Joe Menosky was the person I spoke to on the phone when I made the first of my two Voyager pitches way back when. (I got to tell him how much I loved "Darmok," though I saved it until the end of the pitch so it wouldn't seem like sucking up.)