Moore, Echevarria, and Braga...

[Farscape One]

I don't know if a thread like this has ever been posted before, but something occured to me earlier as I was talking to my wife about where the writers ended up after TNG ended.

Ronald D. Moore, Rene Echevarria, and Brannon Braga all had different strengths that you can see woven in their scripts, and I always felt each was put on the right show that played to their strengths.

Moore was really good with arcs and wanting to have consequences stay around. Echevarria was great with deep character. Braga was great with scifi stories and high concepts.

For a show like DS9, Moore and Echevarria were a perfect choice, as was Braga on VOYAGER because you want someone with big, crazy ideas for a ship exploring a completely unknown part of the galaxy.

But what if it was switched? Braga went to DS9, and Moore/Echevarria went to VOYAGER? How do you think each show would end up? Would either be better or worse, and why?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I don't think Braga would have fit in well at DS9. Weird physics and science were not as big of a deal. Exploring actions and relationships were. For instance, the drama of Children of Time did not revolve around what got the Defiant into the past but around the crew discovering their (potential) descendants and wrestling with the question of the consequences of leaving. Conversely, what input would he have over scripts like The Visitor or In the Pale Moonlight, two stories which Echevarria and Moore significantly shaped via rewrites? Would The Visitor become more science-y and less focused on Jake's mourning and breakdown?

Moore and Echavarria might have done better on Voyager for simpler reasons: they knew Piller and Taylor already, and they could have helped shape the series at the ground level when it premiered. Some facts about the series may not have changed: I believe that the quick defusing of tensions between Federation and Maquis was decided by the executive producers. However, I believe that how they dealt with resupplying the ship was decided upon by the writers collectively. Some stories, like Extreme Risk, might benefit from Echevaria's input. However, I don't think Moore's inputs would have been received as well. I don't know if all the writers would have appreciated how often he offered ideas to other writers' stories.

I guess I am saying that Echeveria would have helped Voyager a lot, but switching the other two around would probably cause chaos. According to Bryan Fuller, Berman was more heavy handed with Voyager and Braga was kind of a dick. Behr allowed more of an intellectual free-for-all. Surely, Braga would get to do his "weird science fiction shit," as he put it, but I could easily see that would be the limit of his input on the show. Some of the big arcs might suffer. Moore could have fit in at Voyager, but he obviously wouldn't have been happy with the lower stakes. The serialization (continualization?) of DS9 was already taking place starting at the end of first season. What Moore might have contributed toVoyager that would have been taken more positively is the representation of organizations and hierarchical structures. It was Moore who tried to introduce more of a sense of military traditions and processes as early as TNG. Perhaps there would have been more disagreements between Janeway and Chakotay?

 

[Daddy Todd]

Didn't Moore go over to Voyager for a brief, miserable time once DS9 wrapped up?

 

[Farscape One]

Very brief. He was in the credits for only the first 4 episodes of season 6. That implies being there about a month.

My thought experiment deals with hoing directly from TNG onto the others. I do find it interesting none of the other DS9 writers went over to VOYAGER afterward. Whether that was a choice on their part or they weren't invited, I have no idea.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

When Jeri Taylor leaves, Moore becomes showrunner instead of Braga, having improved VGR considerably in relation to our “prime universe” and especially in terms of character development (see early S6 for reference). DS9 loses quite a bit with Moore but stays on track in general. VGR gains what DS9 loses with Echevarria. nBSG suffers because Gary Hutzel never gets in touch with Moore, who doesn’t include some of the DS9 writers either. Outlander doesn‘t get Ira Behr…

 

[The Wormhole]

Something that's important to remember, Voyager was severely handicapped by the limitations and demands UPN placed on it, and having Ron Moore and Rene Echevarria over there instead of Braga probably wouldn't have much of an impact aside from Moore probably getting frustrated and leaving a lot earlier, and maybe Echevarria going with him. I imagine they both would have chafed under UPN's restrictions against story arcs.

Braga on DS9, who knows? Behr would still be the one calling the shots, and Braga was itching to turn Voyager serialized around the same time DS9 began the Dominion War anyway, so there's that benefit. If anything, the most obvious impact on things is it wouldn't have led to the career advancement Braga had in the real world.

 

[Farscape One]

Quite true about Braga's career. Could he have gone to VOYAGER after DS9 ended? And if so, would Berman, Braga, AND Moore create ENTERPRISE? I'm actually really curious to see opinions on that take, as well.

We do have one example of a Moore script for VOYAGER... "SURVIVAL INSTINCT". A great episode. This was a good preview of what we could have gotten, but alas did not. (He also did the story for "BARGE OF THE DEAD", but I don't how much of that episode was really his.)

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Survival Instinct is such a well written episode that I feel guilty calling it my favorite of the series.

Something I find interesting is that before it began filming, Berman offered Braga the opportunity to transfer over to DS9, and he refused. I don't think that his reasons were anything more than wanting to see TNG through to the end. He also wrote an episode in the DS9 setting, which was adequate.

Braga's relationship with continuity was not particularly focused and probably was not as developed as was Moore's. Braga didn't come in during that tumultuous third season, when the writers were trying to address long term consequences of what happened in episodes. The first time we see him promoting a vision was in Voyager's season 3 with Before and After.

Had he gone to DS9, he would not already have an articulated sense of what he wanted from continuity or serialization at a time when DS9 had already layed a lot of groundwork. By the time the DS9's season three started, there were already numerous episodes about Cardassian and Bajoran politics and had brought in several elements of the Dominion. (I would point out that much of this happened before B5 had its second episode, including five consecutive episodes throughly dedicated to Bajoran-Cardassian relations.) Behind the scenes, key decisions about the Dominion, though not introduced, were already established: that Odo's people were the leaders of the Dominion. Moore and Echevaria had zero input in the conceptualization of the Dominion, but at least they could have worked with the political dimensions it implied.

The point I am trying to make is that Braga could have been stepping into a situation in DS9's season 3 in which the architecture that would come to inform the rest of the series was already put into place. At the time when he was getting shot down for his season of Year of Hell, Behr and company were getting five (including the season finale) for their occupation story (obviously,they would get more, but they initially hoped for eleven episodes). The seasonlong Year of Hell would have been high adventure in a style that would have made a lot of sense for Voyager, but not DS9. I don't see how Braga could have fit in when already so much work had been done.

(As a footnote,I'll mention that Behr verbally dumped all over Braga's work on Enterprise.)

 

[Kirby]

Didn't Moore go over to Voyager for a brief, miserable time once DS9 wrapped up?

Somewhere out these is an interview with Moore about his time at Voyager; he did his homework, and watched a bunch of episodes and didn't understand all of the inconsistencies in characters and relationships. He questioned Berman about it, and Berman basically just said "none of that really matters, just do whatever". Moore left pretty quickly after that.
That answered a lot of questions that I had about both Berman and Voyager.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

And that's why DS9 is indispensable Trek and Voyager is disposable above averageness.

 

[somebuddyX]

I think there's strengths in both series, like in terms of drama and adventure and continuity/serialisation vs episodic. I always liked those middle season episodes of DS9 where episodes were standalone but built upon stuff that came before, ie "Ties of Blood and Water" is this story about Kira and Ghemor but it's elements come from "Second Skin", "Skakaar", "To The Death" and "By Inferno's Light" and then you move on next week with "Ferengi Love Songs" which goes back to Ferengi episodes that came before. If you didn't like something, wait a week and it'll be something different.
I think the three writers ended up where they should have. Like I said in the similar Enterprise thread, if Ron had gone to Voyager and it had been allowed continuity and consequences like DS9 he would have been ecstatic. And I think they still could have done Brannon's high concept sci-fi stuff without it being schizophrenic. Brannon on DS9 might have been an odd fit. I keep thinking of what Ira said about "Visionary", to me one of the most straight high concept stories they did, in that it wasn't really a DS9 show, in that it could have been done anywhere like on TNG, which I find interesting to this in that Rene thought it up and Ron rewrote the teleplay. I'm not saying he couldn't have adapted but I just think it would be more square peg, round hole. I would love to see them writing again on some Star Trek series in the future.