RDM - not the answer

[DanCPA]

...and his recent tendency to bitch about Trek - thus biting the hand that fed him for quite a few years - would suggest he doesn't want a lot to do with it any more, anyway.

Maybe he is bitter that in "Treks hour of need" (Enterprise after S2/3), they didn't go to him

In all honesty, if RDM had been allowed to "develop" Voyager to it's potential, we would have eventually seen a religion based on Chakotay (or his spirit guide who were now trying to destroy Voyager) and 7of9 would not have been in a cat suit, she would have been in a slinky dress (or nude) with a glowing spine

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I admit it would have been intriguing to see "Year of Hell" last an entire season.

 

[Anwar]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

 

[DanCPA]

I admit it would have been intriguing to see "Year of Hell" last an entire season.

Also true.

YoH would have been a great story, and a chance to mix up the characters... Maybe kill some off... abandon 6 or 7 crew members behind. Have some real drama. But Anorax doesn't seem like the kind of villain that could carry an entire season.

As for UPN not allowing BnB to do any of these things, how hard did he fight for them?

And as much as I hate to say this, DS9's ratings were not that great and perhaps UPN was doing the right thing for their bottom line (which is what they are responsible for) by keeping the show as it was. The sad truth is that one of the reasons RDM chose to end nuBSG was that SciFi was unwilling to guarantee more than 1 season (and the SOB's split it into two either way, but still!)

 

[Navaros]

And as much as I hate to say this, DS9's ratings were not that great and perhaps UPN was doing the right thing for their bottom line (which is what they are responsible for) by keeping the show as it was.

IIRC I believe Voyager's ratings were worse than DS9's (according to some ratings graphs posted by other members of this site from time to time), so keeping Voyager as is didn't really help it's bottomline.

 

[Anwar]

They were about the same, though VOY did make more money in the end because it was easier to sell to syndication. DS9 hardly gets aired anymore compared to VOY.

 

[jimbtnp2]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

I don't see how draggin out a 2 hour story over 24 hours would be a good idea

 

[Michael]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

I don't see how draggin out a 2 hour story over 24 hours would be a good idea

Then maybe you lack imagination.

 

[jimbtnp2]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

I don't see how draggin out a 2 hour story over 24 hours would be a good idea

Then maybe you lack imagination.

not at all

that's what dragging out a 2 hour story over 24 hours is - nuBSG is a good example - filled with melodramatic babble instead of relating an interesting NEW story

 

[Anwar]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

I don't see how draggin out a 2 hour story over 24 hours would be a good idea

They do it all the time with every single other arc-themed show in existence.

 

[Orac Zen]

As for UPN not allowing BnB to do any of these things, how hard did he fight for them?

That would probably fit into the category of "biting the hand that feeds you", too. "Hey, UPN, we really want to make this show the way we want to make it. We want to do this, this and this." "Fine. We don't, so forget about the $$$$$ you'll need to make it happen." It's quite an effective barrel over which to hold showrunners. I daresay I'm oversimplifying but neither do I imagine it's quite as simple as saying "If he / they had fought harder they'd have been able to do whatever they liked". And given Michael Piller obviously encountered the same issue it's not entirely fair to trash B&B - trendy and oft unjustified though it is - for yet another "crime" so long after the event. Meanwhile Moore got to make the show(s) he wanted to make without having to labour under the sort of weight UPN inflicted on Braga, Piller and others. Yet he apparently doesn't see the problems such influence would cause.

As for the year-long "year of hell" Braga wanted to make happen? Like any other show out there, it would depend on the execution. Perhaps it would have been fantastic (like "Year of Hell" itself), or mediocre, or somewhere in between. Thanks to UPN we'll never know, but it would have been interesting to find out.

 

[AlanC9]

that's what dragging out a 2 hour story over 24 hours is - nuBSG is a good example - filled with melodramatic babble instead of relating an interesting NEW story

Exactly so. All stories can and should be reduced to one or two hours, at the end of which the puzzles should all have been solved and all the characters can receive their pellets of rat chow.

More seriously, there's no real definition of what makes a story a two-hour or a four-year story. It's all in the execution.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

...nuBSG is nothing but a who-is-screwing-who soap opera.

This is untrue, and mistaken.

Though I imagine any actual sexuality in a TV series or movie is pretty close to overload for skiffy fans used to the likes of "Star Trek" or B5 or "Star Wars."

Have to agree here. While sexuality is a part of NuBSG, it is only a part. Explorations of faith, guilt, honor and--most existentially and thus most interestingly--identity are the core of the show. As grown-up literature has known for years (cf. Nabokov, Roth, Cheever, Updike, Oates, Dick, Amis, DeLillo, Shakespeare et. al.), sexuality is a key part of life and thus a key part to eploring those issues. To call it soap opera is about as useful and accurate as calling I, Claudius, Hill Street Blues, The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men et al. soap operas.

While I don't agree (not with the aforemetioned Sopranos and Wire over-lapping its run), there's a reason many critics--including those of Time and Rolling Stone--have called BSG the best show on tv. When a soap opera serioulsy considers religion, genocide and the (il)legitimacy of using terroristic tactics against an occupying force, perhaps the comparison will hold more water.

 

[Eric Cheung]

That was Braga's plan, but UPN shot him down and told him to make it a two-parter that would be reset in the end.

I don't see how draggin out a 2 hour story over 24 hours would be a good idea

That's what television is though, it's a different medium than movies and should be treated as such. It's more like the serialized stories Dickens and Salinger wrote which would later become Great Expectations and Catcher in the Rye respectively.

Television is more like a book with each episode containing about as much information as a few pages of a typical novel. But books are a different medium too. In some ways they're more visceral than TV or movies because you can hear the characters thoughts and almost even feel their pain. Anytime a character gets hurt in a book you know exactly what it does to that character and you can have far more empathy for that character--but I digress.

Only in the past ten years or so has there been a great shift in television storytelling where it's learning how to take full advantage of the difference between it and films. Now television can take an episode or two for some character moments to increase the depth of the later action in story.

 

[DanCPA]

That would probably fit into the category of "biting the hand that feeds you", too.

Maybe... but he could have insisted on some stories that go from episode to episode while maintaining some individual episode stories...

Maybe he did fight for some of the great stories, and was flat out told no... but maybe if he would have pushed back a little, gotten a bump in the ratings, UPN would have given him more creative control.

 

[Anwar]

Micheal Piller tried that, and it got him off the show.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Keep in mind that VOY was UPN's flagship series, and subject to a lot more suit interference than DS9.

 

[DanCPA]

Micheal Piller tried that, and it got him off the show.

Oh...

Well, given the further declining ratings, they might have been more "bendable," but I guess that answers my question

 

[smeos]

Action that grows out of the needs and desires of a story's characters is much more interesting, IMO, than action that exists solely to suit the plot.

 

[Luke Lightsaber]

And continuing stories are only good for a few episodes. Not an entire season.