Where Trek went Wack...

[Broccoli]

I think it went wack due to a collection of things.

Trek popularity was at it's height from 1994-1996, although the seeds of it's destruction began when DS9 started. In general, fans and critics alike did not seem to like the "new" direction that DS9 showed. It start to split the fanbase. That split continued with Voyager when Voyager went back to the tried and true.

The TNG movies were not much help. Generations and First Contact were good sellers. The former featuring Kirk and Picard and the latter being very accessible to fans and general theater goers. Insurrection was a bump in the road with it not being very epic enough. A 4th film could have fixed this, but it took them too long to get Nemesis out that, by that time, no one, in a general sense, cared.

In addition, the TNG films didn't really have an overall feel to them. Rather, it was more like "just another adventure" instead of building on from the pervious one. I think this was a mistake, as it didn't compel non-Trek fans to come. The TOS movies had this in their favor as each film (from II onwards) had that momentum.

Also, I would argue that with two series being on TV at the time didn't help matters very much either.

Speaking of the shows again. Voyager and to some extent seasons 1 and 2 of Enterprise suffered from same-old, same-old. People grew tired and looked away. However, I will won't blame the writers for that. Instead, I lay the blame mostly with the suits. From what I have read, the writers/producers really wanted to shake things up with Voyager. Piller wanted more conflict in the early years between the Starfleet and the Maquis. UPN nixed that. Braga wanted to have a year-long Year-of-Hell arc (years before shows like 24 or Lost came to our screens). UPN nixed that.

Berman and Braga wanted the first season of ENT to be set entirely on Earth with the ship being built. That would have been radically different from previous Star Trek shows. UPN Nixed that. UPN wanted more furturistic (re: 24th Century) elements on ENT.

UPN also demanded a new Trek show be shoved on the air as soon as VRG finished, instead of taking a break which Berman wanted. Studio influence, I think, played a very large part of Trek going "wack".

I will say there was some creative burn out, but it seems anytime they wanted to do something to break away from that burn out, they were roadblocked. DS9 had it lucky where they didn't have a network breathing down their neck. VGR and ENT...not so much. I wonder what those shows would have been like if they were in syndication.

The worst mistake was when they kept the VOY writers instead of the much-superior DS9 crew to do the fifth series, thus dooming ENT to failure.

Statements like this show that people have no idea what they are talking about. For one, most of DS9's writing staff left after DS9 ended and went on to other projects, two years previously.

Also, if someone bothered to check ENT's writing staff the first year and compared it to Voyager's writing staff, they would notice that they had 12 writers. Three of which were Voyager hold-overs. (Note: I did not count Berman and Braga in this numbering). The hold overs also happened to be writers either had episodes are generally well-received, or wrote very few episodes of Voyager before coming over to ENT.

Returners:
Mike Sussman - wrote lots of VGR previously
Phyllis Strong - few VGR, all 7th season episodes
Andre Bormanis - a scattered few throughout VGR's run

New Writers:
Antoniette Stella
Fred Dekker
Maria & Andre Jacquemetton
James Duff
Chris Black
Stephen Beck & Tim Finch
Alan Cross

Granted, the returners had more duties, but to say Ent's writing staff was entirely comprised of Voyager writers is misleadingly wrong.

 

[Thrall]

The franchise's problem started WITH DS9, had nothing to do with anything else. DS9 was a darker show showing war, corruption... don't get me wrong, I love this darker theme but it's just not that great with rating. Everything went down ongoing. They tried to patch storylines over and over... Yes, Enterprise was doomed from the begining.

I actually agree, but not in the way anyone thinks. DS9 was darker, challenging, and more mature in theme then TNG. Rick Berman offered people something new and fresh with it. And they spat in his face for it. They didn't want to be challenged. They wanted the nice, happy, little Utopian fantasy that was Next Gen. Of course they completely ignored the fact that DS9 had more in common with TOS then TNG ever did. They wanted Next Gen, and nothing but Next Gen. And for the next 13 years they got their wish. Berman gave them Next Gen and nothing but Next Gen. He gave them Next Gen to the point where they were throwing it up all over the floor. He gave them so much Next Gen, that they actually didn't want it anymore and were screaming for the very thing they decried almost a decade earlier.

But history vidicated DS9. It was so cutting edge, and so ahead of it's time one could argue that the entirty of genre TV owes everything to it. It's flawed, human heroes. It's serialized storytelling. It's epic scope. It's challenging, mature writing. DS9 paved the way for Buffy and Angel and Heroes and Lost and most certianly Battlestar Galactica.

Rick Berman made alot of mistakes and he deserves alot of blame in some areas. But it's unfair to blame him for everything that went wrong, when the fans were just as guility IMO. His biggest crime was actually giving a shit what the Hardcore Trekkies thought. Something JJ Abrams didn't repeat, thank God.

 

[Anwar]

I'd say that was more Paramount than Berman, they were in full "cash cow" mode off of TNG'd success and were afraid to let the cow do what it wanted. So they strangled every bit of milk from it and didn't let it just live and give naturally.

TNG being utopian wasn't what made them emulate it either, it was just taking something that made money and reproduced it in various forms. That works with anything.

And DS9 wasn't THAT revolutionary, it certainly didn't lead the way for stuff like Buffy and Angel.

 

[Thrall]

And DS9 wasn't THAT revolutionary, it certainly didn't lead the way for stuff like Buffy and Angel.

Yes it was. DS9 and Babylon 5 were the shows that made it acceptable here in The States to do cutting edge, serialized material. Buffy and Angel would have been much, much different if it had not been for shows like that.

 

[Silversmok3]

As someone who didn't follow trek until the last season of DS9,I think the reason trek went wack was because ever since TNG people's expectations have grown.There's nothing wrong with the storyline having a utopian theme-but the story has to be realistic enough for the viewer to relate,and it was a lot easier to relate to DS9's gritty outlook than TNG/Voyagers utopian tint. Worse,Enterprise's episodes blended together in forgettable scenes and duplicate plotlines.Once Enterprise bombed people started writing off Trek.

 

[Anwar]

And DS9 wasn't THAT revolutionary, it certainly didn't lead the way for stuff like Buffy and Angel.

Yes it was. DS9 and Babylon 5 were the shows that made it acceptable here in The States to do cutting edge, serialized material. Buffy and Angel would have been much, much different if it had not been for shows like that.

DS9 and B5 were serialized sci-fi shows, yes. But serialized dramas and such had been around for 15 years by that point. B5 was more a case of the creator being in total control than just a serialized show (THAT is what made it special), whereas DS9 wasn't really noticed all that much. Buffy would have been much the same with or without DS9.