Not to bury Brannon Braga, but to praise him!

[Darth_Pazuzu]

Nowadays, it's become something of an internet sport to bash Brannon Braga (alongside Rick Berman). But regardless of how you feel about Braga's handling of the franchise in later years, you've got to admit that as a writer, when he's on, he is on!

The last couple of weekends, I've been watching quite a few TNG episodes on DVD. (My brother just recently got me Seasons 1-7 as a birthday present. I've obviously got my work cut out for me! ) And I have tended to gravitate toward some of the weirder offerings from Braga, including Cause And Effect, Frame Of Mind, Timescape, and Phantasms. I'm telling you, nobody knows how to do these kinds of mindbenders like Braga!

So what do you think of Brannon Braga as a writer? If you like his work, do you think he managed to maintain that same level of quality throughout his tenure with the Star Trek franchise? If not, where did he go wrong and why?

 

[number6]

Indeed.. whenever I tuned into a Trek episode and saw the line "Written by Brannon Braga," I knew that the episode was going to be a wondrous mindfuck. I mean that in a good way.

 

[Good Will Riker]

About 95% of the credit for Brannon Braga's accomplishments we give to Ronald D. Moore! :thumbsup:

Brannon's one of the major reasons why I personally only own TNG Season 1, Q Fan Collective, Borg Fan Collective, the 6 TOS films, and the 4 TNG films only on DVD. I preferred the overall quality of TNG before he became part of the franchise. The less I see of his name in the credits, or having to see his weaselly face and hear his nerdy voice in "so-called" interviews the better...Intellectually, he brought nothing to the table in terms of improving the overall quality of the Star Trek franchise. He's nothing but a hack who mooched off of Berman. Which reminds me...where is he now?

 

[Orac]

I think Braga wrote some pretty good stories for TNG, I particularly liked Parallels. The VOY episode Threshold also comes to mind for being so bad it's good.

 

[Trekker4747]

Brannon could write a decent episode provided someone much more talented like Piller or Moore checked up on his work.

When he goes it alone.... dear GOD do we get some good crap.

 

[Mallory]

Trekker4747 said:
When he goes it alone.... dear GOD do we get some good crap.

I couldn't agree more. Braga did his best work when he teamed up with Moore. But on his own or with Berman, watch out!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Good Will Riker said:
About 95% of the credit for Brannon Braga's accomplishments we give to Ronald D. Moore!

Which would be a demonstration that "we" don't know what "we" are talking about.

 

[Christopher]

Good Will Riker said:
About 95% of the credit for Brannon Braga's accomplishments we give to Ronald D. Moore! :thumbsup:

I assume that by "we" you mean "those of us who don't let the facts get in the way of our prejudices." The only scripts Moore and Braga ever collaborated on on were "Reunion" (along with Thomas and Jo Perry), "Aquiel," "All Good Things...", GEN, and FC. Everything else Braga scripted for TNG was solo except for "Power Play" (with Rene Balcer and Herb Wright), "Imaginary Friend" (with Edithe Swenson), and "A Fistful of Datas" (with Robert Hewitt Wolfe). It wasn't until a couple of years after TNG that he began regularly working with a writing partner (Joe Menosky on VGR, Berman on ENT).


While Braga was unquestionably Trek's weakest showrunner, he was a pretty good writer when he was on somebody else's staff. Just because someone isn't very good at giving orders doesn't mean he can't be a valuable member of the team.

 

[Good Will Riker]

^^^ As far as showrunners go, he has the worst rep, but at the sametime I am not a fan of his teleplays either.

With episodes like "Cause and Effect," "Threshold," etc. all I see is the gimmick. Arguably, his greatest achievement as a writer on VOY was the episode "Someone to Watch Over Me," but that appeared to have been obviously modeled after a previous 2nd season VOY episode "Lifesigns."

Combined with his rep (I heard from people who work at the studio that he was a smug, arrogant, asshole.) and the fact he's had more misses IMHO than hits, he's someone from the production team that I do not look towards all that highly. That is my opinion, and I am standing by it.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

I gained a lot more respect for Braga after hearing him freely admit his mistakes on the Generations commentary. I agree with the other posters that Braga is the kind of writer that needs a Michael Piller or an Ira Steven Behr to keep him in check. Still, when TNG was on the air, and I saw "written by Brannon Braga" in the credits, I knew I was in for a good episode.

 

[Trekker4747]

GeorgeKirk said:
I gained a lot more respect for Braga after hearing him freely admit his mistakes on the Generations commentary. I agree with the other posters that Braga is the kind of writer that needs a Michael Piller or an Ira Steven Behr to keep him in check. Still, when TNG was on the air, and I saw "written by Brannon Braga" in the credits, I knew I was in for a good episode.

And then you saw "Genesis" and you retro-actively reduced every other episode he wrote before by an entire grade-point.

As I said earlier, I think Braga does his best work on someone elses' team when there's someone around to keep him in check, look over his work and if needed fix it.

As head writer on Voyager and Enterprise he was a lot more miss than hit.

I do admit the guy has an ounce of humility, which is admirable, be he lacked true vision for the franchise and series he worked on. Given everything Enterprise could've been about, everything it had going for it in that time period Braga couldn't resist going with his old-friend time-travel and he ruined the whole concept, prospects, and fun he could've had in a prequel series.

I'll give Braga credit where and when credit is due. He's made some good episodes. But he's also given us a whole lot of crap and he drove the franchise into the ground with it.

I still don't think I would mind meeting the man and shaking his hand.

 

[WillsBabe]

I really enjoy Braga's TNG stuff, which, really, is pretty much how I know him since I didn't watch the other shows he worked on. It seemed at times that he was the only one writing for Riker in later seasons and I'll always appreciate that. That and the delicious mind!fucks.

 

[Anwar]

Trekker4747 said:

GeorgeKirk said:
I gained a lot more respect for Braga after hearing him freely admit his mistakes on the Generations commentary. I agree with the other posters that Braga is the kind of writer that needs a Michael Piller or an Ira Steven Behr to keep him in check. Still, when TNG was on the air, and I saw "written by Brannon Braga" in the credits, I knew I was in for a good episode.

And then you saw "Genesis" and you retro-actively reduced every other episode he wrote before by an entire grade-point.

As I said earlier, I think Braga does his best work on someone elses' team when there's someone around to keep him in check, look over his work and if needed fix it.

As head writer on Voyager and Enterprise he was a lot more miss than hit.

I do admit the guy has an ounce of humility, which is admirable, be he lacked true vision for the franchise and series he worked on. Given everything Enterprise could've been about, everything it had going for it in that time period Braga couldn't resist going with his old-friend time-travel and he ruined the whole concept, prospects, and fun he could've had in a prequel series.

I'll give Braga credit where and when credit is due. He's made some good episodes. But he's also given us a whole lot of crap and he drove the franchise into the ground with it.

I still don't think I would mind meeting the man and shaking his hand.

The whole Time War in ENT wasn't Braga's idea, it was thought up and hoisted on the show by UPN.

 

[The Habs Fan]

I like Braga as a writer a lot. He wrote my favourite episode in all of Star Trek: Frame Of Mind.

While he was showrunner on Voyager, UPN and Berman had too much influence on the show, so he wasn't able, even if he wanted to, to turn it around for the better. The same thing happened with Enterprise.

I don't like Berman, but Braga I like.

 

[Cyke101]

I still don't like Braga, but the main difference between him and Berman is that one is willing to fess up and own to his faults, while one gets bewildered and confused when his expectations aren't met.

That doesn't mean Braga is an all around good or bad writer. Yeah, he did have his strengths, but I'm guessing other priorities got in the way of his vision.

 

[Cyke101]

Oh, just to continue: Berman seemed to be tied down more by politics and status quo, whereas Braga seemed to try and find a compromise between those two and actual storytelling. As a writer myself, I sympathize more with Braga than Berman.

 

[Spider]

Darth_Pazuzu said:So what do you think of Brannon Braga as a writer? If you like his work, do you think he managed to maintain that same level of quality throughout his tenure with the Star Trek franchise? If not, where did he go wrong and why?

Like the much beloved Rodenberry and the much hated Berman, Braga produced some really wonderful stuff, and some really horrid stuff. That’s the nature of TV production where stuff gets written and produced for a targeted deadline. TOS and TNG are my favorite flavors of Star Trek TV, but even still, both series produced some really REALLY horrible episodes right along side those wonderful gems.

In the long run, I think Braga gets more grief than he deserves.

 

[CaptainJon]

I think Braga did some great SciFi work. And as many people have said, when someone's keeping him in check, he does wonderful work. Although, some of his work on VOY was excellent. I think of S2's "Projections" and the S3 finale "Scorpion" (yes, that was Menosky, but they both worked very well together, IMHO).

Braga can do great stuff in terms of plot and gimmicks and mind-twists, but his character work has a lot lacking. And his skills as a showrunner are lacking, mostly because I think he relies too heavily on the plot and gimmicks, which is why ENT struggled. For me, it would have been much richer if the characters had been more developed, but his focus was so much on the plot (or plot points since they didn't know where they were going) that there wasn't enough time for the characters.

 

[Robert Treat]

Parallels was my absolute favorite TNG episode. It lets me decide all the things I'd have done differently happened in one of those other universes Worf encountered :thumbsup:

 

[DostoyevskyClone]

I haven't seen enough of Voyager or Enterprise to comment about Braga in that regard, but like others I felt that his work on TNG was great - as Number6 said, whenever I saw his name in the opening credits, I was expecting a good episode.

I try not to be negative, but I do get tired of people bashing Braga - I'm not going to take the time to list all of the episodes he wrote for TNG (besides, people have already listed most of the great ones on this thread), but the guy wrote some of the very best episodes in TNG's run and I think he deserves more praise from fans of this particular series.