Outspoken Marina Sirtis Interview

[Bad Thoughts]

^Why is it that when it comes to TNG and VOY, it's always "give it a chance, it takes a bit to get it's feet under it but it gets good later", but with DS9 and ENT it's "this didn't grab anyone/bored everyone from the beginning"?

I have dim views on Yoyager and Enterprise, but I suppose that the argument could be made (yes they get 'better', but that's a relative term).

I don't think that DS9 got a good shake from the public, and I don't think that the studio was particularly interested in the show past a certain point. But it's really true that the first season was rather dull, especially when you consider how far the show went. The same could be said for the first season of TNG compared to the kind of shows they were doing with surprising regularity in the 3rd, 5th, and 6th seasons.

To be fair, each series was weak in its first season for a different reason. GR was trying to assert his vision of the future through TNG. DS9 was producing second string TNG episodes until Piller lowered the boom, and we got Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets. Voyager was trying to be broadly appealing for the new network. And Enterprise was launched with too many conflicting ideas coming from too many different sources.

 

[Jedman67]

The first seasons of Voyager, Enterprise and DS9, though far from the best of their respective series, managed to avoid producing dreck on the level of "Code of Honor", "Justice" or "Angel One", so I find it pretty hard to buy any argument that the later shows failed to achieve a TNG-level of success because their freshman seasons failed to match the dizzying heights of "When the Bough Breaks" and "The Last Outpost".

Nevertheless, I was busy being a toddler during most of TNG's heyday, so maybe you just had to be there.

I remember TNG mostly through reruns after school (elementary school) and my mother switching off the tv so we can do homework
I got into it again thanks to internetz and netflix

Just to add my .02 I saw the premier of DS9 and really enjoyed it. I watched the first two or three seasons pretty much straight through, but about then I got bored with it and I haven't seen any of seasons 4 through the end yet.

Voyager, I watched the first season and a half and then gave up on it. I still haven't seen any shows from after that.


I have yet to watch an episode of Enterprise.


So, this it gets better phenomenon you guys mentioned skipped me somehow, at least with DS9 and VOY.

If you haven't already watched it The Way of The Warrior is a great episode and might change your mind about DS9

THIS. DS9 really rebooted itself with Season 4, although the first two seasons were weak, there were some great episodes throughout.

Enterprise had an episode in the second season where one of the crew is in a transporter accident. One of the best early-ENT shows.

 

[Phantom]

Nope, that was all hype to make it seem like it wasn't a rehash. This was literally a show that was meant to be relatively cost-effective an sticking to the formula, while DS9 as the ambitious series.

Source?

Also don't really see any relation to the Galactica remake. For all its faults Voy never had Seven randomly kill an infant to establish how MATURE and EDGY the series is.

I outlined the ways it was like what Ron Moore would later do with nuGalactica already.

I think, Phantom, you are completely ignoring the business side of how TV shows get made, and also perhaps conflating Ron Moore's criticism of Voyager and how it later inspired him to not make the same mistakes with Battlestar Galactica with how and why Voyager was made in the first place.

Let's all keep in mind also that the initial point of Voyager (when it was being created) was to be something new -- exploring the Delta Quadrant, encountering new aliens, and not running into the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians every week. The only way they can do that is if they ground it in the same formula that had worked before - the TNG formula.

We can argue the merit of the relative quality of each series till we're blue in the face, but I think this much is pretty clear.

What is clear from the early production documents was that they wanted initially to do a more complex show that tried to avoid things like the "reset" button by playing up the ship's isolation from ready means of supply and repair. If you made Deck 6 uninhabitable in episode 2, it was supposed to stay uninhabitable for some time to come until some way could be found to fix it. Destroy something too badly, and that was supposed to be it.

The union of the Maquis and Starfleet crews was supposed to be a primary source of story conflict to get around the "Perfect Starfleet People" problem.

All this was openly discussed at the time. They just didn't stick with it (unfortunately). That's one of the reasons Moore refused to sign on.

 

[Karzak]

Moore was busy writing on DS9 when Voyager premiered. He joined Voyager after DS9 ended and Moore has since gone on record as to what issues he had with Voyager and how it was written, but that wasn't the chief reason why he left.

For what it's worth, Moore left due to something Braga did during his tenure there that Moore felt threw him under the bus. (Moore has never specified what this was, just that it was something he never expected to happen from his former frequent writing partner and that he was majorly aggrieved by it.)

They later made amends, and discuss it somewhat on the Generations audio commentary.

 

[Jonesy]

To be fair, each series was weak in its first season for a different reason. GR was trying to assert his vision of the future through TNG. DS9 was producing second string TNG episodes until Piller lowered the boom, and we got Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets. Voyager was trying to be broadly appealing for the new network. And Enterprise was launched with too many conflicting ideas coming from too many different sources.

I would say that the reason why TNG was terrible in its first year had everything to do with GR, but not just because he was trying to assert his vision. I would say it is also because he had his lawyer pissing off folks who were trying to make real contributions to the show. Voyager was, as you said, probably too important to Paramount to make anything other than as accessable as they possibly could.

But I'm not quite sure that I get what you mean with Enterprise. At that stage you had Berman and Braga who were not only long veterans of Trek, but who were essentially writing every episode.

 

[Jonesy]

All this was openly discussed at the time. They just didn't stick with it (unfortunately). That's one of the reasons Moore refused to sign on.

Michael Piller in an interview not too long before his death stated that Paramount basically nixed the rougher parts of the premise (Maquis and Federation conflict, etc) following the premiere of Voyager. Ron Moore is on record as to his experience. He obviously thought enough to actually try out the show, but he quickly saw where that train was headed. He even turned down a great deal of money and the option to contribute as little as he wanted.

 

[eyeresist]

DS9 really rebooted itself with Season 4, although the first two seasons were weak, there were some great episodes throughout.

Enterprise had an episode in the second season where one of the crew is in a transporter accident. One of the best early-ENT shows.

Vanishing Point was actually the second-worst episode of season 2. It was an unconvincing after-school special about feeling overlooked.

 

[topcat]

TNG turned Sirtis into a well appreciated sexy goddess along with McFadden and Crosby. This was at a time when the heroine addict look became the rage.
And Sirtis has every right to be bitter and snarky if she wants to be. She earned that right by going through horrible movies and episodes. She was pulled back into service for star trek voyager simply to do an episode about her trying to make Barclay understand that "voyager had been destroyed and that his holodeck fantasy had to end".
Otherwise its been horrible treatment from Hollywood. Shes been typecast as the victim or a middle aged arab woman.