Worth checking out: Rick Berman on 18 years of Trek

[DigiFluid]

http://trekmovie.com/2011/02/09/rick...y-ds9-voy-ent/

Rick Berman Writing Star Trek Memoir + Talks Roddenberry, DS9, VOY & ENT

Four years ago, shortly after he ended his tenure at Paramount, producer Rick Berman said that he planned on writing a memoir of his Star Trek years. Noting much had been heard from Berman since, but apparently he is still working on it. In a new interview with the official Star Trek site, Berman says:

I have been writing. I’m working on something that I hope will eventually resemble a memoir about my 18 years at Star Trek.

Berman also says that he has been traveling, doing charity work and that returning to writing and producing is "on the backburner".

Some other highlights of the Berman interview

• Bristles at notion that he was a "a studio suit", noting he won an Emmy and "had been a writer and producer for 15 years of my life" before working on Trek.
• Attributes two reasons for Gene hiring bringing him on to TNG: being younger than rest of team and having no Star Trek knowledge
• Says he wasn’t interested in putting his own "imprint on Star Trek" but to continue on with "what Gene set out to do with TNG"
• Setting for DS9 on non-Federation station was to allow character conflict without breaking Gene’s rule that by 24th century "human conflict that exists today had subsided"
• Finds notion that DS9 show-runner Ira Behr "tricked" him into allowing controversial elements into show "hurtful" and "not true"
• Did disagree with Behr over DS9 war arc and felt it "went on too long" and conflicted with Roddenberry vision
• Still feels adding sexy Jeri Ryan to Voyager was right move, saying she became "a very three-dimensional and textured character played by a wonderful actress
• Says he was "reluctant" to do Voyager at first and noted it was "difficult" to keep the shows "from getting stale and repetitive"
• Also reluctant to launch Enterprise so soon after Voyager and admits it didn’t connect, noting "I could take the blame for it. I could put the blame into the scripts. I could put the blame into franchise fatigue. I don’t know why it didn’t work"
• Admits that Enterprise finale "These are the Voyages" failed, upset the actors and says "I would have never done it if I had known how people were going to react."

For the full interview at the official Star Trek site: Part 1 & Part 2 (a third part will be posted tomorrow).

[nx01a]

Hindsight's a ___, ain't it?

[Sp!der]

quite interesting to read it! Like him...

[jsonitsac]

I get the sense that for most Trek fans Rick Berman is a guy who you either hate or loath. Still, I largely agree that he tried to keep Gene's vision alive, and, for the most part did so.

[jelgate]

I get the sense that for most Trek fans Rick Berman is a guy who you either hate or loath. Still, I largely agree that he tried to keep Gene's vision alive, and, for the most part did so.

He largely is hated because of what happened to ENT which I have always thought was unfair because of all the good work he did on the other series

[Giantevilhead]

He largely is hated because of what happened to ENT which I have always thought was unfair because of all the good work he did on the other series

He's also hated for Voyager.

[jsonitsac]

He largely is hated because of what happened to ENT which I have always thought was unfair because of all the good work he did on the other series

I think people have been hating on Rick since Gene died...

[Sp!der]

I love ENT... still dont know what all the hating is about this show! I think ENT is one of the best trek shows out there.

[Snowman37]

People hate Rick Berman, because he failed to keep people from getting bored with Star Trek no matter how good the show was. The older fans moved on, younger people were more interested in dark and edgy shows.

[Giantevilhead]

I love ENT... still dont know what all the hating is about this show! I think ENT is one of the best trek shows out there.

It's an extremely poorly written show that's got a lot of flash but no substance. It's like an action movies made by one of those hack directors like Michael Bay or McG, that's really exciting and full of explosions, and can get your adrenaline pumping but that's all it does. Once you get used to the noise, you realize that the show's full of gaping plot holes and the characters act like a bunch of annoying tourists rather than trained explorers.

[jsonitsac]

Berman answers fan Q&As part 1 here part 2 here

Here are what I think are some highlights:

Throwing gas on the DS9 B5 feud:

Spoiler:

Berman: It was purely a fan thing. There was a time when, I don’t know whether it was specifically Straczynski or other people, it was implied that he had pitched an idea similar to DS9 to Paramount and that it had been rejected and that, lo and behold, a year or so later DS9 came about. The implication being that Michael Piller and I perhaps stole all or part of his idea, which was always amusing to Michael and I because it was completely untrue. We had no knowledge of this gentleman. If he did pitch something to Paramount, we never heard about it. DS9 was a show that was created by Michael and me and Brandon Tartikoff, who was the recent head of Paramount at the time, without any knowledge of Straczynski or of anything that he had ever pitched. So when we were accused of stealing his idea it was a little sad but at the same time a little comical to us.

More studio obfuscation about the lack of gay Trek characters:

Spoiler:

Berman: It was not the studio’s decision. I know that when Gene (Roddenberry) was alive he was very ambiguous about the idea of a gay character or gay characters on the show. He felt it was the right thing to do, but never quite had any idea of how he was going to do it. As Michael Piller had said many times, the idea of seeing two men or two women in Ten-Forward holding hands was not really going to be an effective way of dealing with it. So Gene basically didn’t do anything about it, and then when Michael and I were involved with the concepts of the stories on the show, we just felt it would be better to deal with concepts of prejudice against homosexuality and topics like AIDS metaphorically, in ways other than human gays on board the ship. So we developed a number of different stories that dealt with same-sex relationships, that dealt with metaphorical diseases that were similar to AIDS. But they were all done in alien fashion to try to get people to think about these things as opposed to just hitting it right on the head, which would be having a gay character on the ship. It’s something that Michael and I discussed. It’s something that Brannon Braga and I discussed, that Jeri Taylor and I discussed, and we never really got around to coming up with a way of just adding a gay character. So we tried to deal with it in a more abstract science-fiction way.

Berman admits he should have paid more attention to us (not like the 1990s had some kind of invention that would have made it easier):

Spoiler:

If I had to do it all over again, I think I probably would have paid more attention to the fans than I did. Not that I ignored the fans, but I was very, very busy and I was not really one of the people who kept abreast of how the fans were feeling about things. I think if I had to look back at one thing I wish I had done differently, it probably would have been that.

And his favorite episodes are "Brothers," "Broken Bow," and "All Good Things..."

Spoiler:

Berman: I always have a warm feeling toward “Brothers,” which was the first episode that I wrote on TNG. I think “Broken Bow,” was a terrific episode that I conceived and wrote with Brannon. I think that the final episode of TNG was something that was cooked up and written in an incredibly short time. I was only involved peripherally with that, in terms of the concept of it. It was Ron and Brannon’s idea, and I think it turned out – considering that it was two hours and conceived and written in such a short time – to be the best season-ender we ever did.

[FrodoFraggins]

He's also hated for Voyager.

I really dislike Berman and Braga for Voyager. Voyager on paper was an interesting idea, but they did their damnedest to rapidly turn the ship and crew into just another happy federation crew.

I am slightly sympathetic to the idea that he wanted to honor Roddenberry's vision of the future. But it sure did make for boring character drama. I get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I hear that Berman or Braga are attached to something I would normally be interested in.