You switched your point from being factual to speculative in just one post.
"That book never happened!"
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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You switched your point from being factual to speculative in just one post.
Gene Roddenberry had little more than perceived power when movies II-VI were being made. He was "Creative Consultant" and would tell fan clubs in memos that if he did not like a script, we'd notice the lack of his name in the credits. But he really had very little influence over the movies' back-peddling on most changes to format. The ST Office did get to influence the ST tie-ins, though. Perhaps his frustration about not being listened to about the movies led to the tightening of the tie-ins.
According to a Richard Arnold anecdote told at conventions, IIRC, one thing that stuck in GR's craw was a convention flier that turned up announcing "Diane Duane, creator of the Rihannsu" as a guest. Not Ms Duane's wording, of course, but GR (and RA, on GR's behalf) was angry that the ST authors were seemingly changing aspects of TOS. (Some would argue that Duane's version of the Romulans added much, but that's not the point.)
The tightening of the tie-in reigns reached a pinnacle in 1989, the hiatus between TNG seasons 1 & 2, when all tie-in contracts were ordered to undergo renegotiation, giving RA a laundry list of areas the tie-ins were contractually not permitted to go.
In a perfect world this would have been the core cast of characters for a series called Star Trek: The Next Generation instead of pushing things 80 years up the timeline for the TNG we really got.
Aside from it actually being the next generation, they would have been abe to use the sets and costumes they already had on-hand, and some Phase II scripts thaty could have been reworked for the new cast. And during ratings sweeps they could have the TOS characters show up without convuluted time-travel hoops to jump through.
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But that didn't happen because of the decision to include TOS characters. It happened because of the decision to give the job of making the movie to the same people who'd been making the TV show for 7 years, and have them move into the movie without a break. So not only did they lack sufficient prep time to develop the best possible story, but they were used to treating the TNG cast and setting as something familiar and routine. So it didn't really do a good job of re-establishing the ship and crew for new audiences. (For instance, the film was nearly half over before we got a clear exterior shot of the Enterprise-D. There was an "over-the-shoulder" shot of it approaching the Amargosa observatory, a stock shot used countless times on the series, but it didn't even show the entire ship or give audiences a good introductory look at it.)
And really, is there any TNG movie that made good use of the whole ensemble? They're all focused mainly on Picard and Data. It's hard to serve a 7- or 8-member ensemble in a 100-odd-minute movie.
No, Therin's right. Arnold worked for Roddenberry, who had very little communication with the people who made the movies and didn't agree with a lot of their choices.
And I don't think RA was necessarily opposed to changes; he just wanted them to come from Roddenberry, and didn't want others to usurp Roddenberry's leadership in determining the shape of the Trek universe.
That wasn't a stock shot.
What was the need to push TNG up 80 years? The regs couldn't cameo except through time contortions like making Kirk chef in ENT. Man, when manny coto came in he locked the door behind him. It's arrogant prima donnas like him and Moore that spell doom for trek. Only Braga couldn't get rid of Coto. He was endorsed by Berman and outranked him. Like Batman having to go to work for the Joker.
Will you, please, shut up!
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WTF? Couldn't it just be that they thought that moving ahead 80 years seemed like it would be interesting from a story perspective. I don't see why there needs to be some deep reason for it other than that it was what they felt like doing. As for Manny Coto, he was the best things to happen to ENT in the last couple years, and I would have gladly watched 3 more years with him in charge.
Yeah, I think drawing a clear line between TNG and TOS, one that was difficult to cross, was one of the smartest things Roddenberry did when making TNG.
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As for Manny Coto, he was the best things to happen to ENT in the last couple years, and I would have gladly watched 3 more years with him in charge.
It's funny how the show was cancelled as soon as he started cannabalizing it.
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As for Manny Coto, he was the best things to happen to ENT in the last couple years, and I would have gladly watched 3 more years with him in charge.
It's funny how the show was cancelled as soon as he started cannabalizing it.
Gross distortion of history.
ENT's days were numbered in Season Three, when Braga was still running things day to day. Paramount and UPN renewed it for one season more for only one reason: So that the episode count would be close to 100, which is the range the episode count needs to be in for rerun syndication deals to be profitable for the studio.
ENT was, in essence, doomed long before Coto came aboard; his writing skill had nothing to do with its cancellation.
Many print and online interviews with the ENT writing team.
That was the whole idea. Roddenberry wanted to distance TNG from TOS as much as possible. There was a lot about TOS that he wasn't happy with in retrospect, a lot that had been taken out of his control, and he wanted to make a fresh start. Also there was the concern that the show had to be able to stand on its own and not just ride the coattails of TOS. It was the first sequel/spinoff series, so they had no idea if they could make Star Trek work a second time; thus it was important that TNG prove itself as an independent show rather than constantly depending on callbacks to TOS. They made a couple of nods early on -- having DeForest Kelley cameo as an elderly admiral who was implicitly McCoy (but never actually named), doing a sequel to "The Naked Time" -- but for the most part TNG avoided bringing back elements of TOS, which is why it was so long before we saw much of the Vulcans, Klingons, and Romulans, and why the use of Andorians and Tellarites was almost completely avoided.
Because ratings were not high enough for UPN to justify charging advertisers enough to offset the costs of production. Ratings began to fall in the latter part of Season One, continued through Seasons Two and Three, and were too low for the show to survive by the end of Season Three -- whereupon UPN and Paramount decided to keep ENT alive through the end of Season Four, just long enough for it to reach the 98-episode mark and therefore be profitable in rerun syndication.
In other words, its cancellation was not correlated with Coto's time at the wheel.
I've always felt Nemesis killed ENT. Season 4 of Ent was excellent and the show itself quite refreshing. But Nemesis was so awful to the general public and many fans gave up on the franchise. I think if Nemesis had been better, not only would it encouraged people to watch ENT, it could have generated interest in Romulans leading to an ENT Romulan War season.
Well season three was the key season, wasn't it. I think the war arc was wrong to do and he should have brought Braga to task on that. Wasn't he showrunning by then? where we got such beauties as Similitude and his reign began. The nose dive to me definately was the writing's direction and therefore downward turn of the ratings. Had they refrained from not doing the war arc and the two and three show arcs and painting Archer in such a bad, negative and dark light, the ratings might have improved but to me he was the final nail and a portent of doom. The fat lady of the opera. Dr. Giggles and the Joker wrapped up in one. Rick Berman's revenge on Braga for Nemesis. As I say Brutus and Barrabas.. Though better than JJudas...
You know it reminds me of say a saxiphone player joining the NY philharmonic and being in charge of planning the scheduals and programming only saxaphone concertos and his own music. Well you know the audience is gonna lose interest and not subscribe. More like a harmonica player or a banjo.
You know it reminds me of say a saxiphone player joining the NY philharmonic and being in charge of planning the scheduals and programming only saxaphone concertos and his own music. Well you know the audience is gonna lose interest and not subscribe. More like a harmonica player or a banjo.
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