Your honest opinion on the Berman era

[The Wormhole]

The greatest flaw of the Berman-era was that the later two series were trapped under UPN middle management holding back serialization until it was too late.

That was certainly an issue for Voyager, though Enterprise did have an element of serialization pretty much right from the beginning. Granted, the first two seasons were largely episodic, but there were plot threads which ran during those seasons. The lamented Temporal Cold War, the tensions between the Vulcans and Andorians being the most prominent, though we also had things like the Space Boomers on freighters and the Tandarans imprisoning Suliban and later seeking revenge on Archer as well as Archer gaining a reputation because of his actions at their detention facility, Granted, these all had only lip service paid to them in the second season if not dropped entirely, but then that season had to contend with executives asking questions like "what is the hull?" so it goes without saying there was some shit going on behind the scenes that year. They did still manage a small loose arc of Archer being a wanted fugitive by the Klingons towards the end of that season.

TOS and TNG did just fine without serialization.

Serialization wasn't a thing when TOS was on the air. It was a thing when TNG was on the air and I'd argue TNG's refusal to include any serialization has worked against it in the long term.

 

[cooleddie74]

There was also the recurring Season 1 and 2 storyline about the V'tash ka'tur Vulcans who embrace emotions and the stigma associated with mind melds in the 22nd century. To their credit they did manage to keep reminding the audience that Vulcans in the ENT Era were not only more judgmental and dickish than they'd eventually become but also way more dangerous.

 

[BillJ]

Serialization wasn't a thing when TOS was on the air. It was a thing when TNG was on the air and I'd argue TNG's refusal to include any serialization has worked against it in the long term.

I think that had more to do with strip syndication than anything else. Plus, DS9 was largely stationary, which made serialization easier.

 

[The Wormhole]

That was the excuse Berman gave, but that doesn't really hold up since even in the early 90s there were other shows which had serialization in them to some degree which went onto healthy runs in syndication. By the mid 90s there were many shows which had figured out the sweet spot of just enough episodic to make it accessible to everyone and just enough serialization to make it rewarding to regular viewers.

 

[CoveTom]

Serialization wasn't a thing when TOS was on the air. It was a thing when TNG was on the air and I'd argue TNG's refusal to include any serialization has worked against it in the long term.

At the time it was on the air, TNG was easily the most successful Trek series that has ever been produced. Of course TOS became legendary in syndication, but it did not perform nearly as well in its initial run. And no Trek show produced since has performed as well as TNG in its initial run either. So it's kind of hard to argue with that kind of success, IMHO. It ran for seven seasons and spawned four feature films as well as a follow-up streaming series decades later. I think most shows would kill for that kind of a run.