Your honest opinion on the Berman era

[Turtletrekker]

Berman had two major negatives, IMHO: he kept writing episodes tho he was a terrible writer; and he insisted on boring background music instead of anything interesting or exciting.

He was afraid to take any chances or big swings.

 

[Oddish]

He was afraid to take any chances or big swings.

And unwilling to let his series live up to their premise. Voyager wasn't a ship of castsways, it was a pleasure cruise. And Enterprise was a prequel in name only.

 

[XCV330]

And unwilling to let his series live up to their premise. Voyager wasn't a ship of castsways, it was a pleasure cruise. And Enterprise was a prequel in name only.

Between the two I'd say Enterprise lived up to its premise much better than Voyager did. But yes the technology was still too good.

They should not have had a transporter, or at best as they hinted at the first episode, used only for nonliving transports.

The galaxy had far too many nearby neighbors. Where did all these species-of-the-week go by TOS when they were right on Earth's back porch? Why not deal more with human made threats still ongoing? It's a big solar system. They wanted to jump right into a Picardian "we've fixed all our problems and now it's time for a little well earned gunboat diplomacy"

The Universal Translator should have never worked very well, as it was new tech. The gave a reason for Hoshi Sato then almost got rid of same reason within an episode when communication issues could have factored into better plots. They generally took the easy route when they didn't have to.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I think on the whole it’s very good.

In short doses, but I think that of most things.

Have the likes of TNG and so on aged well?

Not really, but nothing does. Everything is of its time. That can’t be helped.

Watched the Apollo episode of TOS the other day. The sexist honk that comes out of Kirk/McCoy’s mouths is unbelievable.

But that was the 60s.

Berman era is the 80s/90s/early 00s with all the good and ill you might expect.

 

[Sim]

The Berman era was probably the era that defined Star Trek most.

Before that, we only had one show with one tone and one crew, but the Berman era proved Star Trek works not only as one show, but as a franchise based on world building, that can take many forms, different characters and settings ... and on the way defined what's "essential" for Star Trek, or its "core".

Imo, not only TOS defined Star Trek, but TNG and DS9 did not less so. In my view, these three shows are the gold standard, the true "classicism" of Star Trek all later productions are compared against.

Imo, VOY and ENT were rather mixed bags in comparison, and didn't quite meet the standard TNG and DS9 had set, but they were still decent enough not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, or bashing the Berman era in its entirety for their shortcomings.

 

[Shawnster]

And unwilling to let his series live up to their premise. Voyager wasn't a ship of castsways, it was a pleasure cruise. And Enterprise was a prequel in name only.

In fairness can that all be laid at Berman's feet or is that also the fault of the network? Berman had people to answer to. People who had enough power to cross promote wrestling with Star Trek by having The Rock star in a VOY episode.

 

[The Wormhole]

he kept writing episodes tho he was a terrible writer

Berman only wrote two episodes himself, TNG's Brothers and A Matter of Time. All his other writing credits are either story development credit, or co-write. In the case of the scripts he co-wrote, I'm fairly certain the other writer (usually Braga) did the heavy lifting on those scripts.