What is Maurice Hurley's opinion on post-TNG season 2?

[Good Will Riker]

Hurley was responsible for running TNG until his exit from the show at the end of season 2, and he is credited with creating the Borg. Infact, Rick Berman gives a lot of credit to Hurley for laying the groundwork for TNG in seasons 1 and 2, with season 3 pretty much being the style and format they went with for the rest of the show.

Does Hurley have any opinions on the changes to the show made by Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor? What did he think of some of the episodes penned by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga? And was his draft of Star Trek: Generations, which featured Jean-Luc Picard seeking the advice of a holographic James T. Kirk in the holodeck, the last time he made any attempt to write for Star Trek?

 

[Jon1701]

You know the only interviews i've ever seen were those beginning-of-season-2-against-that-grey-wall ones on the DVD.

I've never read or seen anything since. I've often wondered about the Generations script myself.

 

[Good Will Riker]

I just found information on Maurice Hurley at Memory Alpha. It is a very brief, but interesting read.

 

[Jon1701]

Baywatch Nights?

Props for 24 though.

 

[Tomalak]

I've long been interested in Hurely's Trek VII script - all I can find is a vague outline.

 

[Armus]

Hurley has said a few things about what his successors did to the Borg in an old Cinescape magazine. I'm paraphasing but I think he said that the writers should have focused more on the internal, inner society of the Borg. The Borg that the Enterprise encountered were based on the gatherer insects, and continuing the insect anology, there should have been different Borg types that had other functions for the collective.

Besides that, I don't think he's said much. He was good friends with Michael Piller and Rick Berman.

 

[Eddie Roth]

Fact is that Hurley's writing resume on TNG reads impressively, really some of the better Season 1 and 2 shows.

 

[diankra]

Eddie Roth said:
Fact is that Hurley's writing resume on TNG reads impressively, really some of the better Season 1 and 2 shows.

At the time, I remember it being reported that Hurley was the one basically holding TNG together during its first two years (after the departure of Gerrold and Fontana, and when Roddenberry's lawyer was playign script editor), but in the process fell out with a few too many people (ISTR that Tracy Torme, the other outstanding writer for the first two seasons - when his scripts weren't rewritten over his objections - was one), and hence moved on in Season Three.

 

[UnknownSample]

Well, i guess Torme could have stayed if he'd known Hurley was going...?

He wrote my favorite NG, "Q Who". My favorite season is the second. Many problematic episodes, but not even season 3 was without them.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Thank God and Greyhound Hurley's gone.

 

[Commander Cavit]

UWC Defiance said:
Thank God and Greyhound Hurley's gone.

I tend to agree. Maybe it's not his fault, but the show looked cheap and halfassed during his tenure.

I've been highly critical of Berman for a lot of things, but the show picked up dramatically in terms of the sophistication and professionalism of it's presentation after he arrived.

 

[Cyrus]

UnknownSample said:
Well, i guess Torme could have stayed if he'd known Hurley was going...?

Rick Berman asked Torme to come back after Hurley left, but he decided to move on.

 

[Praetorian]

Commander Cavit said:

UWC Defiance said:
Thank God and Greyhound Hurley's gone.

I tend to agree. Maybe it's not his fault, but the show looked cheap and halfassed during his tenure.

I've been highly critical of Berman for a lot of things, but the show picked up dramatically in terms of the sophistication and professionalism of it's presentation after he arrived.

Berman "arrived" right in the first season, he was there since the beginning afaik, not immediatly as executive producer but he was there nonetheless.
If someone "arrived and saved" in the 3rd season it was Piller and and Moore. These two mostly made the 3rd season what it was...and Tng. (I guess Braga and Taylor also had their importance but only latter)

The only thing good Berman has going for himself is that he always strived for the show to be more serious, less hokey and cheesy. Of course, I think this eventually became a bad thing, specially when it came to the music.

 

[Commander Cavit]

Praetorian said:
If someone "arrived and saved" in the 3rd season it was Piller and and Moore. These two mostly made the 3rd season what it was...and Tng. (I guess Braga and Taylor also had their importance but only latter)

Fine, it was a collective effort. No need to be a wiseass and go all quotation mark crazy.

I've always given credit to Piller, Taylor and Moore (I've been accused of giving Ron too much credit before) and I've also been accused of being too harsh on Berman for his megalomania, which only really became problematic after Piller, Taylor and Moore were out of the way.

The bottom line is that the look of the show and the professionalism of it's presentation increased dramatically after S2, after Hurley's departure. Again, I might just be misattributing the improvement to his absence, but I doubt it.

 

[Noname Given]

Commander Cavit said:

Praetorian said:
If someone "arrived and saved" in the 3rd season it was Piller and and Moore. These two mostly made the 3rd season what it was...and Tng. (I guess Braga and Taylor also had their importance but only latter)

Fine, it was a collective effort. No need to be a wiseass and go all quotation mark crazy.

I've always given credit to Piller, Taylor and Moore (I've been accused of giving Ron too much credit before) and I've also been accused of being too harsh on Berman for his megalomania, which only really became problematic after Piller, Taylor and Moore were out of the way.

The bottom line is that the look of the show and the professionalism of it's presentation increased dramatically after S2, after Hurley's departure. Again, I might just be misattributing the improvement to his absence, but I doubt it.

With regard to the 'look' of season 2 - remember that there was a Writer's Guild strike in 1987; and it wasn't resolved until WAY after the 'normal' start time (production wise) for the 1988 TV season; thus, once it was settled, production crews were ramping up and chrning new episodes out as fast as possible - so it's more than likely the set designers/dressers had les time than usual to plan out and build stuff as the actual season production started and first run episodes were being broadcast.

FYI - I recall that by the time [b ]The Child[/b] aired; they had done a near full second repeat run of TNG's first season, and I'm sure ratings were suffering for it.

But, bottom line, I think the 1987 Writers Guild strike probably affected the look of the early season 2 episodes quite a bit.

 

[Praetorian]

Commander Cavit said:

Praetorian said:
If someone "arrived and saved" in the 3rd season it was Piller and and Moore. These two mostly made the 3rd season what it was...and Tng. (I guess Braga and Taylor also had their importance but only latter)

Fine, it was a collective effort. No need to be a wiseass and go all quotation mark crazy.

I've always given credit to Piller, Taylor and Moore (I've been accused of giving Ron too much credit before) and I've also been accused of being too harsh on Berman for his megalomania, which only really became problematic after Piller, Taylor and Moore were out of the way.

The bottom line is that the look of the show and the professionalism of it's presentation increased dramatically after S2, after Hurley's departure. Again, I might just be misattributing the improvement to his absence, but I doubt it.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound like a wiseass. I was merely showing my great admitarion for those two men, specially since I don't really like Berman, from the little I know.

 

[Commander Cavit]

Neither do I, for the most part. I just think the show looked better, and was presented better, after the changeover. Berman gets some credit for that, but I agree that Piller, Moore and Taylor are unsung heroes, as well.

And just to be clear, I know about the WGA strike, too, and I took that into account. It's not simply the costumes and effects. There is a greater sense of professionalism, that they were making something worthy of the franchise's good name rather than something that was in competiton with, and looked and played a bit too much like, Superboy. S2 played out better than S1, but it still took a much bigger leap from S2 to S3 than at any other time in the run.

 

[UnknownSample]

First... how can it be that such importance is being placed on the look of the show? When did "polish" and "professionalism" get near to the top of the list of priorities for drama? If such considerations are coloring people's judgment of ST or Next Gen... well, that's exactly what I was afraid of. Alright, "professionalism" may not have just referred to the look of NG, but one person's "professionalism" is another person's staleness. They just may have made NG so polished and professional that they polished the soul, vitality, and imagination right out of it. I think that's what happened, halfway through NG.

Second: From the start, Next Gen had an original, expensive, interesting look that came from having a much larger budget than original Trek. GR commented on the striking design for the Bridge: "For what this Bridge cost, what a season (of the original ST) I could have given you!" (Not exact quote but close.)

The look was improved, I think, with season two, and again with season three. The changes were subtle, though. The uniforms weren't a visual improvement... but they made the actors more comfortable. The Bridge set had a nicer color scheme. Data got some better quarters.

I'd encourage people to try, even as just an experiment, trying to watch season 2, imagining the look of season 3, and just maybe the episodes will seem better. Or... just watch season two and notice how good it already looks. I've found that some changes people associate with season 3 actually started with season 2 (Geordi as Chief Engineer, one example).

 

[Jon1701]

The lighting was a lot better in Season 3. Especially on the bridge. Too many Season 2 episodes have those horrible non-reflective black squares stuck all over the rear consoles. On DVD they really show up. Makes the set look cheap.

They also seemed to fix the console backlighting in S3. The displays are much, more visable compared to the early shows.

I do quite like Season 2 actually. It hasnt had a good rep over the years, but it holds up pretty well in retrospect (apart from a few seriously shit episodes). Dr Pulaski doesnt seem half as bad nearly 20 years down the line. Diana Muldaur is actually quite good.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

jon1701 said:
The lighting was a lot better in Season 3.

The first episode of season 2, "The Child," had dynamic and more interesting lighting thanks to Rob Bowman's attempt to bring a film-like lighting scheme to the show. However, TPTB didn't care too much for it and thought that the bridge was underlit.

I, however, thought that the bridge was overlit for most of the series, as well as the rest of the sets.