StarTrek.com has interviewed Rick Berman, the man who took over running the Trek franchise for Gene Roddenberry (all hail, The Great Bird of the Galaxy!).
Oddly quiet since his departure from all things Trek, Mr. Berman seems to be ready to open up about his controversial reign leading Star Trek. (For example, was 7 of 9 really necessary? Did DS9 take things away from Gene’s vision?)
And yes, folks, there’s a memoir on the way. This should get folks good and riled! Mr. Berman gives us a preview in Parts 1 and 2, with Part 3 posting tomorrow.
Edit: Part 3 is posted!
Talk about coincidences I happened to be watching the Deep Space Nine episode Improbable Cause when I read this. IMHO one of the best episodes of Trek ever.
Oh my gosh! I can’t wait!
Yes, DS9 departed from Gene’s vision of a utopian future, filled with moraly conscious inhabitants, but it was for the better.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved TOS, TNG and VOY, but DS9, with its gritty realism, appealed to me much more so.
With that said, Improbable Cause was a good episode Mike, but The Visitor takes the cake. It is hands down the most heartfelt, tearjerker, emotionally provocative episode of Star Trek, ever.
Best DS9 episode ever is In the Pale Moonlight.
DS9 is woefully underrated.
my favourite trek by a long way. Much more interesting stories. However I did enjoy TNG and Voyager.
I’d just finished rewatching the entire run of DS9 last week . . . this interview has good timing!
Of all the Trek shows I loved Enterprise best. Okay, there was that 9/11 “now let’s wipe out our enemies” revenge season that felt wrong then and is even more horrible in retrospect. However, for the very first time Trek characters felt just right to me. They weren’t demigods without emotion, who knew everything and had their prime directive to steer them in the right direction, no, they were human in the best possible sense. Seeing them fly off into the unknown limitlessness of space offered more of a “Star Trek” experience than any of the other shows did before. Just imho, of course.
Voyager had too much techno babble for my taste, TNG was great at its time but has aged worse than the original series imho, and DS9… Well, I admit it, I never made beyond the first couple of episodes. Coming straight out of TNG – that’s how the shows aired in Germany: TNG ended one day, DS9 started the next – people on a space station didn’t hold much appeal.
I got into watching Star Trek when Voyager started, and so i also caught up on the remaining parts of DS9, and watched Enterprise as it aired. (and am mostly caught up on TNG and the earlier DS9).
Enterprise did have some good characters being human – just trying to figure things out in space as they realize that they are the small fish in a big pond. The Xindi arc was novel storytelling – a season-long story where each episode got them one step closer to their ultimate goal. However, where it really shined was in the last season, with the 3-episode arcs, where they could do some really novel stuff for at least 2 of the episodes, and then have to bring us back to status quo in the last one.
The premise of Voyager was great, and the struggle of Federation values versus the need to get home / have no Federation support out there was good, but it felt that later on, exploring the Doctor’s and Seven’s humanities took away from the other characters too much.
TNG, like TOS, had some really good episodes, and some fun episodes, but also had some episodes that just made you cringe. DS9 took a while to find its rhythm – a lot of the early season Bajoran stuff felt slow compared to the opening of the Gamma quadrant and the Dominion War. While Roddenberry didn’t want a show about being in a constant war, having DS9 focus on that for a season i think was important – it’s easy to have utopian values when things are good, but when we are threatened, what do we do?
The Original Series was literally my first fandom. I was around a year old when my mom discovered she could get an hour of quiet when TOS was on the TV.
TNG is my favorite, in spite of the stinker episodes. Actually, I have a new appreciation for the awful TNG episodes, thanks to Wil Wheaton’s book.
DS9 was a favorite of mine; although I think they strayed a bit in the 3rd season.
Voyager started out as an amazing ensemble show. But I do blame Berman for losing sight of those interesting characters. It just spoke to a lack of respect for the fans.
And I think they did the same thing with Enterprise. They gave up the characters for the Xindi arc. And I think that’s what most Trek fans connect with.
(Some would say the same thing happened in Star Wars.)
The latest Trek movie brought it all back for me, though. SO much fun and great characters.
Paula-Very true about the latest movie!
I’m curious though, in what way did you think that DS9 began to stray in its third season? I always thought that that was when the show really began to pick up, with the Dominion plot line and all.