Your honest opinion on the Berman era

[Ray Hardgrit]

You can kind of see the shape of what Star Trek is by the things that definitely aren't Star Trek, or at least feel wrong for Trek.

For example:

Voyager's Course Oblivion is considered to be a decent episode, but it's nihilistic and tragic, denying the heroes even the slightest win, and this doesn't feel Star Trek.

Section 31 is considered to be trash, and philosophically opposed to Trek in some ways. So Star Trek isn't trash, and it's got a philosophy. It's not a B-movie.

The producers of TOS had a bit of creative conflict about the amount of comedy in the series, with the last shot in the conflict being Spock's Brain, considered one of the worst stories in the whole series. Star Trek is generally supposed to be something you take seriously as drama, it shouldn't break suspension of disbelief.

TNG tried to avoid cliches like space pirates because the producers wanted it to have higher standards. But every episode had to have some sci-fi crisis whether the writers wanted it there or not because it was also a space adventure show. Star Trek is about intelligent stories where the protagonists face an outside problem.

Series like Lexx and Farscape sold themselves as being NOT Star Trek, with amoral characters making a mess of everything due to their own personal agendas. Trek is too compassionate and takes itself too seriously to have fun screwing over other people.


There are also themes that come up over and over. TOS continually came back to the idea of how it's better to work for something than to just sit back, do nothing and have an easy life for instance. TNG had individualism versus being part of a collective.

Like Stargate, the series generally have a militaristic setting, with ranks and codes of behavior. The professionalism and pomp is considered part of the appeal, while the characters being friends and having fun outside of their roles is also appreciated.

Etc. and so on.

 

[Starflight]

I feel you still haven't answered this:
If you feel that DS9 is recognizable but the newer series are not, then I ask you: What is it about the newer series that makes them unrecognizable? What fundamentally changed between the newer series and the older series?

I did reply to it, I said I don't think latter-era DS9 is recognisable.

Let me put it this way, let's go through the series, adding each one and updating the definition:
TOS = "Star Trek" refers to this show. It's an anthology adventure series about the Enterprise and its crew.
It has a clear visual identity.
TAS = "Star Trek" now refers to TOS and this family-friendly animated adaptation of it. Alright.
TOS films = "Star Trek" now means "Kirk and Spock on the Enterprise in some way", though the films don't tend to feel anything like the TV series tone-wise or visually.
TNG = "Star Trek" now means "a ship called the Enterprise in the 23rd or 24th centuries". TNG preserves TOS' storytelling format for the most part, so you could argue it feels like it works within the established framework (some people argued and continue to argue otherwise, and I don't think they're necessarily wrong, it's a fair subjective call to make).
DS9 = "Star Trek" now means something like "a show about people who belong to an organisation called the Federation/Starfleet", though what that actually means isn't consistent across shows/films. It also no longer promises an anthology adventure format.
VGR = more in the TOS/TNG format, doesn't really do much to change the above definition of "a show about people who belong to an organisation the script refers to as the Federation".
ENT = now means "a show about people in space in what's nominally all one setting, though the setting can be represented as basically anything", a definition I suppose you could carry forward through the Kurtzman era.
Kelvin Films - "the Star Trek setting" now means several distinct things.
DSC = "a show about people in space in what's nominally 'the Star Trek setting'" still works, but the aesthetic and thematic details of the setting are changing again in a way that makes "the setting" increasingly impossible to define and thematically nebulous.
PIC = by this point, "Star Trek" seems to mean "a sci-fi series", which raises the question of what it means at all.

This isn't making a judgment on the quality of each of these shows - you can find DSC and PIC to be outstanding television and still see the shape of what I'm saying, I hope.

 

[Kor]

In theory, I like the idea of different Trek productions catering to different audiences. Trek can be a lot of different things, to different people. It's a big universe, and a potential sandbox with possibilities for all kinds of storytelling.

Kor

 

[DonIago]

^This is a generalized

I did reply to it, I said I don't think latter-era DS9 is recognisable.

Let me put it this way, let's go through the series, adding each one and updating the definition:
TOS = "Star Trek" refers to this show. It's an anthology adventure series about the Enterprise and its crew.
It has a clear visual identity.
TAS = "Star Trek" now refers to TOS and this family-friendly animated adaptation of it. Alright.
TOS films = "Star Trek" now means "Kirk and Spock on the Enterprise in some way", though the films don't tend to feel anything like the TV series tone-wise or visually.
TNG = "Star Trek" now means "a ship called the Enterprise in the 23rd or 24th centuries". TNG preserves TOS' storytelling format for the most part, so you could argue it feels like it works within the established framework (some people argued and continue to argue otherwise, and I don't think they're necessarily wrong, it's a fair subjective call to make).
DS9 = "Star Trek" now means something like "a show about people who belong to an organisation called the Federation/Starfleet", though what that actually means isn't consistent across shows/films. It also no longer promises an anthology adventure format.
VGR = more in the TOS/TNG format, doesn't really do much to change the above definition of "a show about people who belong to an organisation the script refers to as the Federation".
ENT = now means "a show about people in space in what's nominally all one setting, though the setting can be represented as basically anything", a definition I suppose you could carry forward through the Kurtzman era.
Kelvin Films - "the Star Trek setting" now means several distinct things.
DSC = "a show about people in space in what's nominally 'the Star Trek setting'" still works, but the aesthetic and thematic details of the setting are changing again in a way that makes "the setting" increasingly impossible to define and thematically nebulous.
PIC = by this point, "Star Trek" seems to mean "a sci-fi series", which raises the question of what it means at all.

This isn't making a judgment on the quality of each of these shows - you can find DSC and PIC to be outstanding television and still see the shape of what I'm saying, I hope.

No mention of LDS or SNW or (whatever the initialism for Starfleet Academy is) or PROD?

This is a broad generalization, but it doesn't really clarify to me why you feel the newer series are "unrecognizable". What did they do that crossed the line for you? Or, if you prefer, what's the breaking point?

 

[Starflight]

No mention of LDS or SNW or (whatever the initialism for Starfleet Academy is) or PROD?

I've not watched Prodigy so it didn't feel fair to comment; as for the other two I thought my post was already getting a bit too long

SNW I suppose doesn't really change the definition any further, and nor does LD since I'd already reached the ultra-broad definition of "a show that nominally takes place in the Star Trek setting, a setting with no defining characteristics", which LD doesn't change.

This is a broad generalization, but it doesn't really clarify to me why you feel the newer series are "unrecognizable". What did they do that crossed the line for you? Or, if you prefer, what's the breaking point?

I'm not sure really; again I want to make it clear I'm not slamming all the new stuff, nor am I a TOS purist or anything (pound-for-pound, I like more of the Berman era than TOS).

I think DS9's back half is the first point where it obviously becomes hard to define what "Star Trek" means anymore, since it no longer refers to a clear setting or premise in any meaningful way, nor even a storytelling format.

Enterprise - which I quite like - pushes it further by deliberately distancing itself from what's left of the notion of "the setting". Discovery and Picard do feel like the final blow, but again I'm not trying to bash them as standalone things, I think they're just the icing on a cake that had been baked decades ago. And again I want to re-emphasise that I think "Star Trek" is damaging to these shows as much as they're damaging to it - I'd love some more original fresh sci-fi series that don't feel the need to lean on a sixty-year-old name.

DSC could have been the show that launched an all-new franchise for the modern era, but instead it wound up faceplanting over tripwires that had been placed sixty years ago.

 

[fireproof78]

Kelvin Films - "the Star Trek setting" now means several distinct things.

Honestly, I think these are closer to TOS/TNG in some ways than even some of the TOS films

 

[Starflight]

Definitely a fair point to be made there; the main reason I brought them up is because of the alternate timeline concept. Not being a canonista it doesn't mean much to me, but it does push the definition of "Star Trek" ever further (in that it adds "can be in one of two universes that the creators have said are distinct" to the definition).

If you feel that DS9 is recognizable but the newer series are not, then I ask you: What is it about the newer series that makes them unrecognizable? What fundamentally changed between the newer series and the older series?

Thought about this some more and - again, as someone who thinks the Berman era did stretch the franchise too thin - maybe there's something to be said that TNG, DS9, and Voyager all shared a production aesthetic and some themes and plot devices which helped them feel like they connected with each other, if not with TOS.

Someone could very reasonably say that they think the entire era didn't feel "like Star Trek" (I don't think the people who felt let down in 1987 were as ridiculous or incorrect as people on this board sometimes make out), but Berman and his people did succed in creating what was for all intents and purposes a semi-coherent new franchise. They did what Kurtzman set out to do, in that they redefined the franchise and brought in massive legions of new fans.

Maybe part of why the Kurtzman era gets so much flak is because I'm not sure it's done the same - it feels vaguely-defined within itself, let alone within Star Trek as a whole, and simultaneously deeply tied to older works while also being largely nothing like them. I'd be surprised if many people are Kurtzman-era-only Star Trek fan in the way that there are a great many Berman-era-only fans.

 

[NigellaDeanna20]

This was the era of Star Trek for me. We had TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise so not a bad era at all. I know that Berman, apparently did a lot of questionable things especially in relation to both Wil Wheaton and Terry Farrell) but one has to give him credit for how he led the way after Roddenberry passed away in 1991 and all of the way up to 2005, so on the whole, an extremely good era for Trek at least in my own opinion.

 

[NigellaDeanna20]

I grew up in that era. TNG, DS9, and Enterprise are my top three trek shows and I don't think I would be the person I am today if I had not watched Trek in that era. Berman is not the only person who carried the Trek mantle in that era. He was the show runner and the handpicked Successor, but there were so many people who worked behind the scenes of those shows, and to this day I think the most underrated person behind the scenes of Star Trek is Michael Piller. But it wasn't just Pillar, it was Jeri Taylor, Ronald D Moore, Ira Stephen Behr, Brannon Braga, Joe Menosky, and hundreds of other people.

I will always hold that era in my heart, both for entertainment and nostalgic reasons.

Don't forget Melissa Snodgrass who wrote the Measure of a man in season 2. She was in there as well.

 

[BillJ]

(I don't think the people who felt let down in 1987 were as ridiculous or incorrect as people on this board sometimes make out)

Uh... I'll just keep quiet...

 

[DonIago]

Uh... I'll just keep quiet...

I can only imagine if the internet had been then what it is now...

 

[The Salt Umpire]

In the Before Times?
Life now would be like the WarPigs video

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[tomalak301]

I can only imagine if the internet had been then what it is now...

As someone who wears rose colored glasses for the 90s decade, I'm glad the Internet either didn't exist or was in its infancy. Of course I was in elementary and middle school for TNG and DS9 for the most part so I'm not sure how much I would really notice. It took me a while just to join this board (And I did it because of the startrek.com forums during the Enterprise era).

 

[Cicero]

As someone who wears rose colored glasses for the 90s decade, I'm glad the Internet either didn't exist or was in its infancy. Of course I was in elementary and middle school for TNG and DS9 for the most part so I'm not sure how much I would really notice. It took me a while just to join this board (And I did it because of the startrek.com forums during the Enterprise era).

It was actually fairly great. Most websites were either official or fan-made, so they were either promotional (essentially glorified press kits) or built from enthusiasm. Star Trek was still popular in the way that the early MCU would be, and the initial backlash to TNG was long past.

Kirk versus Picard was the touchstone of relative toxicity.

It's possible that Usenet, CompuServe, AOL boards, etc. were different, but their user base was older and less mainstream. (I didn't even know they existed until the mid-2000s, despite being regularly online starting as an elementary schooler in 1994).

 

[drt]

It's possible that Usenet, CompuServe, AOL boards, etc. were different

I was a regular on Usenet in the early 90s, the user base was largely college age and older. Everyone had been raised on TOS, so the discourse about TNG was pretty similar to how people react to the Kurtzman shows today.

While i'd say the majority came ultimately came around to TNG, DS9 was particularly hated - prominent arguments were "they don't go anywhere" and "Paramount stole the idea of Babylon 5" - because as it happened, JM Straczynski was probably the first show runner to fully realize the power of the internet, and was personally on Usenet pretty frequently hyping up Babylon 5, so scifi fans got to know him and the show well before it aired, and were therefore quite possesive when Star Trek showed up with what appeared to be a suspiciously similar show).

 

[Reanok]

I finished watching season6 and started watching Season 7 of Tng. I like Decent parts one and two I liked seeing Beverly being in command of the Enterpriseand al the other TNG characters story arcs and Hugh again .And Data and Lore both being bad. And Data trying to defy lore.And stopping his evil plans

 

[suarezguy]

My honest opinion is that it was entertaining for a couple seasons, then became tired and formulaic.

Kor

I think most (procedural) TV shows become pretty formulaic by then, and yet most viewers don't mind that too much. But then by some point (after 9, 10, 12 years) more and more people do grow tired.

This is obviously an oversimplification, and I'm not even sure I know what I'm trying to say, but I think maybe my point is that I wonder if there's too much concern over what Trek fans don't enjoy and too little appreciation for the things they do enjoy. It's, of course, axiomatic that people are more likely to talk about the things they don't like than the things they do.

I think Trek is even worse off, with more people inclined to be increasingly critical and less satisfied, in that with it having so much stuff already made and seen that a lot of people even thinking new product is OK will tend to still complain it's a lot worse than, not in same league of what before was great. Although that happens with a lot of long-running series, most obviously The Simpsons, not surprising for more and more people to say let it, have it end already, or with Trek where there's at least some change, to at least take a break rather than have at least 2 shows for 10 years or more.

 

[Lord Garth]

I see what Starflight is trying to say. But I have my own view: I don't think Star Trek has become unrecognizable over the decades. I think it's become broader. In TOS, it was the adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise crew (and that could still accommodate TAS and the TOS Movies). With TNG, "Star Trek" meant the adventures of the Enterprise. Didn't matter it was Kirk or Picard, didn't matter if it was the 23rd Century or the 24th, it was the Enterprise and crew.

From DS9 onward that's when, for me, it became "the Star Trek universe in general." With the Kelvin Films and all the Temporal War time-travel craziness, it became "the Star Trek multiverse in general" but it's the same idea.

One thing I'm not thrilled with now compared to before is that back in the '90s, when there was a new Star Trek series announced, I was excited about it. From 2001 onward, it's been more scattershot. Including Enterprise, we've had what? Seven new series in the last 25 years? I've lost count, but it doesn't matter. I've only been excited about two of them. Discovery and Picard. Not a good ratio. I hope I click better with whoever takes over next. But if not, then oh well.

 

[seti alpha]

Ever since the initial pitch, Star Trek has been a format. It's a way to package anthology science fiction with the cost saving benefits of standing sets and a consistent cast.

IIRC, a fair number of TOS episodes were written by writers who had zero idea what Star Trek ‘meant’ and were just telling their stories in this format. This led to some inconsistencies, but also the sort of wild creativity that hasn’t been as well- received since.

I kind of wish DS9 and Voyager had been more willing or able to take advantage of the undeveloped natures of the Gamma and Delta quadrants to get back to some of this wild frontier style writing where sci-fi writers of the day get to toss some wahoo out-there concepts onto the screen.

But I’m fairly certain that modern audiences would not be as forgiving of that sort of thing as they are of its use in TOS.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

IIRC, a fair number of TOS episodes were written by writers who had zero idea what Star Trek ‘meant’ and were just telling their stories in this format. This led to some inconsistencies, but also the sort of wild creativity that hasn’t been as well- received since.

They also had writers like DC Fontana rewriting everything to make it fit the show and characters better, to Harlan Ellison's annoyance.