Berman and Braga are convenient scapegoats, nothing more.
Hating them is just another "thought-terminating cliché".
Hating them is just another "thought-terminating cliché".
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Why do people hate Berman & Braga?
- Thread starter Hadrian
- Start date
Well, part of that is that DS9 (like TNG) was syndicated, and thus had only the studio to answer to, while VGR (like ENT) was on UPN, and thus had both the studio and the network to answer to. So the network shows were under a tighter rein. Particularly since UPN's entire existence was built around Star Trek. VGR was their anchor show, and they never had anything else that compared with it for popularity or endurance. And the network ceased to exist not long after ENT did. Since they relied so heavily on ST, that meant they were less willing to take risks with its content.
Network shows being more limited than syndicated shows is a pattern that isn't unique to Star Trek, either. You can see it in animated shows like The Real Ghostbusters and Gargoyles. The seasons of those shows made for weekday syndication were able to skew older and be more daring with their story content than the seasons that were made for Saturday morning network airings, because the network added another layer of oversight and censorship.
I wonder if you might find, under inquiry, that people who express a hatred for Berman-and-Braga actually have no particular feelings about the living, breathing persons known as Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, but are instead using it as some kind of shorthand to express ``the locus of creative decisions and executions made during the later years of Rick Berman's tenure in Syndicated/UPN Star Trek shows, particularly when Brannon Braga gained a more prominent role in decision-making and execution''.
If so, that's certainly not the impression they choose to give. It always does feel very personal. Especially when they incorrectly and unfairly blame Braga for decisions that were made by or in collaboration with others. That's more scapegoating than anything else.
Indeed, and even then, the only times Braga had any real authority were seasons 5 and 6 of Voyager and all four seasons of Enterprise. Even then, Braga took a bit of a backseat in Enterprise's fourth season and handed the reins over to Manny Coto. Fandom in general seems to have some weird idea that Berman and Braga were partners in running the franchise (into the ground, they'd have you think). Back when Berman tried pitching a Romulan War movie as Trek XI, even though Braga had no part in it, almost everyone referred to it as a "B&B" movie. When I pointed out Braga had no involvement most people responded "but he has to, he's Berman's partner."
The worst it ever got was during Enterprise's run. I remember starting a thread (might even have been here) pointing out Braga has nowhere near the control over the Trek franchise everyone seems to think he does, and the response I got was "that's like saying a serial killer is only guilty of killing seven out of the twelve people he's accused of. The crime has still been committed." People say Abrams and co. get unfair treatment from certain corners of fandom, but I have never seen anyone say anything that inflammatory about them.
To be fair, it was excessive when Abrams brought up in every interview (even on the DVD) that he was more of a Star Wars fan than Star Trek. Reminded me of my Catholic aunt who once went to Anglican church and went out of her way to tell everyone there she wasn't Anglican.
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This is pretty much how I feel. They got Trek down to a formula and kept on doing that formula until they drove it into the ground. If I have any bad feelings about them, it's mainly because they didn't leave when things started to go south.
Well, I'd say that the big difference there is that Bennett and Meyer both made an effort to learn about Star Trek when they got the job, screening every episode and developing a real understanding of what made TOS work. And the success of their movies speaks to that. Braga just applied the formulas he learned on TNG to TOS (whether or not they actually applied), and Abrams just tried to turn Star Trek into Star Wars.
As has been said here once or twice already, if one considers the level of output that the two were responsible for (especially Berman), the very idea that a blanket condemnation can have any validity, other than being simply vastly overgeneralized and self-congratulatory personal screeds, quickly appears as the illusory fantasy that it is. To make such a an overarching charge or sense of animus hold any currency at all, one has to show that all the competing influencers' actions are accounted for and acknowledged thoughtfully and with true purpose. It's all well and good to suggest that free rein existed for Berman to make over later iterations in whatever creative direction that might have changed many viewers' perception of the franchise as a dynamic, organically malleable vehicle, but in reality those that believe that was really possible are just whistling in the wind.
Meyer was always very upfront with what he did with Trek. He was hired to change things, and he did so via ditching a lot of what had 'defined' the series up until that point and making what he wanted to see. I also don't think he ever has said that he's watched the entire series. As far as I know, the 'homework' (eg. picking Khan) was Bennett.
Which leads to this: Meyer and Bennett also copped their fair share of criticism for only adhering to their own formula (especially by TUC in Meyer's case). In terms of critical response (and not just the good/bad Rotten Tomatoes one) there's really not much difference between Meyer and Braga's Trek movie output.
Metacritic
TWOK- 71% (Meyer)
TSFS- 55%
TVH- 67%
FF - 43%
TUC- 65% (Meyer)
vs
GEN - 55% (Braga)
FC- 71% (Braga)
INS- 64%
NEM- 51%
^Except that GEN and FC were by Ron Moore and Braga, not by Braga solo. As I said, Braga is a career collaborator, a team player, not a solo auteur. Plus, Meyer directed TWOK and TUC, making him the top dog of the whole thing, while Braga was merely a co-scripter on movies that were produced and co-plotted by Rick Berman and directed by David Carson and Jonathan Frakes. In movies, writers are always lower on the totem pole than directors and producers. The only Trek film where Meyer's involvement is analogous to Braga's is TVH, where Meyer was merely a co-writer.
I don't hate the two of them but they do deserve the criticisms they got for Voyager and Enterprise. Enterprise disappointed me the most because they were suppose to start fresh and new and we ended up with ferengi,Borg, time travel, technobabble and Riker with Troi as a final insult. By the end it was painfully obvious that Star Trek needed to clean house.
But they wanted to do something much more distinctive. They wanted to take a whole season before NX-01 even got into space, basically doing "First Flight" for a whole year. They wanted to avoid transporters and Klingons and familiar elements like that. It was the highers-up at the network and/or the studio who were uncomfortable with such a revisionist take and insisted on including more familiar Trek elements -- as well as insisting on the time-travel angle as a way to bring in elements from the established Trek future. None of that was what Berman and Braga wanted to do, which is part of why they were so half-hearted about it.
See, this is the problem with scapegoating. When people just assume that the most visible people are to blame, when they don't bother to find out the facts but just base their accusations on guesswork, then that's unfair. People need to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.
Well,people usually like to use the Cardassian method.
Also,I think the people-in-charge shouldn't say things like "I liked [insert name] more than what I am currently working on. It makes (more) people hate him if he fails. (Although it's pretty much a matter of perspective)
People don't make others hate them. Others choose to use their behavior as an excuse to hate them.
I don't think the two are single-handedly responsible for the mediocritization of Star Trek. Both deserve a decent chunk of credit for what happened to TNG in season 3. They had ideas for Voyager they weren't allowed to act on because of the network. But, plenty of other writers produced much fresher ideas under the same restrictions, and managed their characters better. Berman preferred simple storylines with simple takeaways over more complex ones and didn't do much to escape his nice comfortable groove. He doesn't deserve to be the one scapegoat for the creative decline of 90s Trek, and it doesn't take away his role in making TNG a great show, but he didn't make much of an effort not to become mediocre either.
The season Braga joined the 24 production team is the season they started treating their core cast as completely expendable. Braga's best episodes are 'Anomaly of the week' episodes mostly, he doesn't have much of a good track record of managing characters in any of his projects. Braga is great at thinking of cool things to happen to the characters but terrible at making them likable and meaningfully evolving them over time.
The season Braga joined the 24 production team is the season they started treating their core cast as completely expendable. Braga's best episodes are 'Anomaly of the week' episodes mostly, he doesn't have much of a good track record of managing characters in any of his projects. Braga is great at thinking of cool things to happen to the characters but terrible at making them likable and meaningfully evolving them over time.
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Berman did, sure, but Braga didn't begin interning on TNG until season 4 -- which was his first employment anywhere in television. He was a staff writer on seasons 4 and 5 and a story editor on seasons 6 and 7, at or near the bottom of the writing-staff hierarchy. It was Michael Piller who was in charge of the TNG writing staff on seasons 3-5, with Jeri Taylor taking over for seasons 6-7 while Piller moved over to DS9. Braga was way too low on the TNG totem pole to be considered responsible for its overall direction at any point in its run, let alone a year before he even broke into the industry.
Braga then moved over to VGR, where Piller was initially in charge and Taylor then took over. Braga rose through the ranks on VGR until he finally became showrunner in season 5. Between seasons 5-6 of VGR and seasons 1-3 of ENT, Braga has been a showrunner for only 5 out of modern Trek's 25 total seasons -- 6 at most, since Manny Coto still essentially answered to him on season 4 of ENT in much the same way that Jeri Taylor answered to Piller on early VGR.
The thing is, Berman wasn't primarily a writer until ENT. He contributed two scripts to TNG and co-plotted a variety of story outlines for all four shows, but he was mainly focused on the production and logistical side, which was his real strength -- all the Trek shows he made had exceptional production values (though his preference for melody-free, atmospheric music was unfortunate). ENT was the first time he really took the lead in the writing side of things, and that wasn't playing to his strengths.
I don't think it's even possible to define a consistent "Braga style" across the shows he's run. They've all been so different -- Voyager/Enterprise, Threshold, 24, FlashForward, Terra Nova, Cosmos, Salem. Again, he's more a workmanlike team player than the kind of creator who has a strong individual voice or vision. He's always been part of a collaboration, and on each project he's had different collaborators, so in each case he's been an ingredient in a different mixture. It's a mistake to treat him in isolation.
No, they don't. As has already been mentioned, a lot of what went wrong on those shows was the result of network interference. For example, when Braga originally pitched Year of Hell, it was meant to be a season-long story arc with profound long-term impact for the series. Berman was even supportive of the idea. But when UPN heard the idea they immediately rejected it, saying it could only be a two-parter and had to end with a reset button. Then it was going to be the season 3 finale/season 4 premiere story, but due to First Contact's popularity, UPN requested that be a story involving the Borg.
With Enterprise, about the only failure of the show which Berman and Braga are entirely responsible for is TATV. But really, misguided though that episode was, their heart was in the right place.
Actually, for the seasons where Braga was executive producer of Voyager, the lion's share of the writing probably is his. Even episode's where he's not credited as a writer could have still undergone re-writes by him. Kind of a reality of television production.
Braga's reputation is actually as the writer of the weird episodes, and that's even what he was known for among TNG's staff.
Braga was known for his head game type episodes, were he has the characters deal with some kind of unreality, or twisted reality, and he could do some really good twists.
Personally, I harbor no ill will towards either of them, and don't understand the hatred towards them either, but I also don't get the bile directed towards Abrams either. But, as Christopher, among others, has mentioned there seems to be a need for a scapegoat of some kind. I've noticed that scapegoating has happened in Trek history before and continues on. GR would harp about the network interference as part of his creative limitations, Michael Piller would complain about "The Roddenberry Box," etc, etc.
For me, I became more aware of it with the hatred towards Abrams, which left me scratching my head. No matter how much I don't like a particular episode of Star Trek (or any entertainment media) I don't get the venom pushed against the creators. There isn't that personal familiarity with them as people that I can form an opinion of them, either liking or hating.
I think that Abrams has certainly earned a target on his back, and I think Lin will end up doing the same. I think that scapegoating is a part of the process, for good or ill, and it's a weird thing to watch unfold.
Personally, I harbor no ill will towards either of them, and don't understand the hatred towards them either, but I also don't get the bile directed towards Abrams either. But, as Christopher, among others, has mentioned there seems to be a need for a scapegoat of some kind. I've noticed that scapegoating has happened in Trek history before and continues on. GR would harp about the network interference as part of his creative limitations, Michael Piller would complain about "The Roddenberry Box," etc, etc.
For me, I became more aware of it with the hatred towards Abrams, which left me scratching my head. No matter how much I don't like a particular episode of Star Trek (or any entertainment media) I don't get the venom pushed against the creators. There isn't that personal familiarity with them as people that I can form an opinion of them, either liking or hating.
I think that Abrams has certainly earned a target on his back, and I think Lin will end up doing the same. I think that scapegoating is a part of the process, for good or ill, and it's a weird thing to watch unfold.
I imagine it probably starts with one person expressing legitimate criticisms about the show and specific work done by a writer/producer, that resonates with fandom. And then it snowballs from there with everyone and their neighbour wanting to get attention and they do so by badmouthing said writer/producer since 1) it's apparently fashionable to insult this guy and 2) look at how intelligent I am, I know the producer's name.
'Hate' is too strong a word.
Some people are disappointed with the general direction that Trek took over the nearly two-decades that Rick was involved with it. In particular, some people were disappointed with some of the later years of the franchise under his aegis.
On the other hand, Rick was in effective control of The Next Generation during the period where it became the juggernaut that it did, he was co-creator of three different Star Trek shows, this was an experienced and intelligent man who clearly knew his craft as a TV producer. In many ways, he was simply a victim of circumstance: being in charge of the show for so long meant that he was still at the helm when it fell into it's (arguably) inevitable decline. By which point, the same people who were full of praise for his decisions back in the TNG days became much more vocal in their disappointment. Tie this also into it being the time period when the internet was just coming into it's own, and what we saw was the rise of the 'armchair critic', people who were able to get their thoughts out there to a very wide audience. The result is often that the loudest voices often get heard over the ones who are more moderate in their praise for the shows.
I hold no 'hate' in my heart for Rick Berman, even though I'd be the first to acknowledge I didn't agree with everything he did with Star Trek.
Some people are disappointed with the general direction that Trek took over the nearly two-decades that Rick was involved with it. In particular, some people were disappointed with some of the later years of the franchise under his aegis.
On the other hand, Rick was in effective control of The Next Generation during the period where it became the juggernaut that it did, he was co-creator of three different Star Trek shows, this was an experienced and intelligent man who clearly knew his craft as a TV producer. In many ways, he was simply a victim of circumstance: being in charge of the show for so long meant that he was still at the helm when it fell into it's (arguably) inevitable decline. By which point, the same people who were full of praise for his decisions back in the TNG days became much more vocal in their disappointment. Tie this also into it being the time period when the internet was just coming into it's own, and what we saw was the rise of the 'armchair critic', people who were able to get their thoughts out there to a very wide audience. The result is often that the loudest voices often get heard over the ones who are more moderate in their praise for the shows.
I hold no 'hate' in my heart for Rick Berman, even though I'd be the first to acknowledge I didn't agree with everything he did with Star Trek.
