THANK YOU EVERYONE for taking the time to share your thoughts and feelings. It means a great deal to me. Even those who still hate, your passion amazes me. To those who love (like James Wylder), I love you back. You say that I inspired you, but the reverse is even more true. Let’s please continue this dialogue in the near future…

- Brannon

I just wanted to thank all of you for (the most part) keeping things civil and of course a big thanks to Brannon for dropping by.

I forgot to mention it earlier, but I think Year of Hell was the closest Voyager ever came to being ‘cinematic’. I rewatched that episode recently and it seemed like most of the characters came into focus in that episode, moreso than they had in any other. Chakotay & Paris had some genuine tension between them, Seven & Tuvok forged a relationship I wish we’d seen more of and Janeway’s emotion over the breakdown of the ship really nailed it. Most importantly, in Annorax we finally had a sympathetic villain that wasn’t SO sympathetic you wanted to slap him. In the end when the little box with the lock of his wife’s hair shatters, I actually found myself shedding a tear for him. Serious kudos on that one.

This whole time I’ve really just wanted to say that you’re one of my Heroes,

Seriously.

After I watched Enterprise… Well I started watching other things you wrote and worked on, and I’ve really been inspired to have a career in writing now… Be it Journalism, or something more creative then that. I’ll be going to college soon trying to figure out which one I’m going to devote my life to I guess,

I have a bunch of questions,
but before these comments are closed I just wanted to say thank you for making all the stories you did, and I’d rather do that.

So thank you.

-James Wylder

Thank you for the “Voyager” series as it’s the most fun with Trek I’ve had since TOS. It really conveyed a sense of exploration and desperation. I love the Janeway character and Mulgrew’s portrayal is spot on. My entire family was spellbound by the episode “Year of Hell”. It was simply amazing. It should have been offered as a movie. Any thoughts on a “Voyager” movie? Is it possible to extend “Voyager” by revealing the series finale was simply a dream? The finale seemed too rushed or anticlimatic, it didn’t seem to do justice to a series that spanned 7 years. Thanks again for all your contributions to Trek.

As someone who had high hopes for ‘Enterprise’ and was saddened when it wasn’t what I hoped, I can now better conceive of the pressures that you and Mr. Berman must have been put through by the Network when creating ‘Enterprise.’ I did my share of ‘Beeb bashing’ in the day and I must apologize to you for doing so. I now believe that you are truly a creative person who was simply limited by the circumstances you were in, not out to ’stick it to the fans’ or any of that supposed crap. I think that while you will surely agree that there were a few episodes of ENT (and even VGR) that were sub-par, a lot of my rejection of ENT had to do with my personal expectations of what the series should be or what I wanted to see. Thank you for the wonderful contributions that you made to the Trek franchise in your tenure at Paramount, and I’d again like to offer congratulations for your good work and perhaps the small consolation that I believe I better understand the kind of work you were trying to accomplish.

Since we have this wonderful and unique opportunity to hear from you, I wonder if we might hear more about the original Earth-bound premise of Enterprise? In addition, I’d love to hear about what you feel are some of the biggest ‘missed opportunities’ from your time with Trek, either stemming from Network-imposed limitations or other.

Thanks again for everything, Mr. Braga.

I very much felt gypped by the ending. I was actually angry to the point that I didn’t sleep after I watched it. It seemed as though the characters were treated with contempt.

If I ever hit the lottery, I swear that I’d actually put up my own money to produce another episode, movie, whatever that sets this right. That’s how strongly I feel about it. The entire franchise is tainted by the existence of TatV. I have to actively pretend that it doesn’t exist whenever I rewatch an episode of ST:E in order to enjoy the show.

I realize that this is dog piling, and I apologize for that, but man, I’m still hot about it. I have a life outside Star Trek, I assure you. But it’s been a part of my life since I was a kid growing up in the 70s. Star Trek has always represented an escape from the realities of human life, while still being rooted in its best qualities. The theme of the social evolution of humanity has always been its greatest attractor for me. I love Star Trek, and always have.

And to have the franchise wrapped up with the inexplicable petering out of what could have been (and what appeared to be) an epic romance coupled with the death of a main character under relatively mundane circumstances was a slap in the face. It violated the unspoken contract between fan and creator – our expectation is that if you’re going to give us a tragedy, that it is worthy of the heroes you’ve lead us to admire over the years. That there is time to examine grief and feel the loss.

But beyond that, if I want that sort of tragedy, the one wherein bad things just happen to good people, I can watch the news. I watch Star Trek to escape the damned news. I want to be entertained by it, but I also want it to give me some hope.

Brannon, I’ve loved a lot of the episodes you’ve written. Really loved them. But that finale, oh, what a solid disappointment. I’m still in denial about it.

Don’t like an event?

Let’s just undo it.

How about the Voyager episode in which the ship and crew were deteriorating throughout, only to have a totally different Voyager pass by after it had dissenegrated with no explaination?

The Voyager placement of federation future craft in the 20th century that attempted to tell us we also would have been too dumb to invent printed circuit and other technologies unless craft from the future had been reverse engineered?

These grandiose, big idea themes are fine when used maybe two or three times in a series. But they were used over and over and over again.

And the way in which they were used were almost patronizing and insulting to the innovation and hard work that has been done by real scientists – not just the history of Trek.

My father was an electronics engineer who saw in his lifetime the development of today’s technology evolve from tubes, crystals and wire to what we have today – and none of the technology we have today – at least none that we the general public have seen – required the reverse engineering of future or alien technology.

It has required a ton of hard work in the last several decades however. Work that should be respected – not diminished.

In fact, had mankind sociologically looked at technologies a little differently, we might have landed a man on the moon a thousand years ago.

The Greeks had a working steam engine two thousand years ago, but rather then build trains and railroads, they used it as a novelty to move food back and forth on tables during feasts.

Had someone looked at it and simply said, “Why not make it bigger? Use it to move goods and people?”

the industrial age might have begun almost two thousand years earlier then it did.

The TCW and other time-hoping plotlines that were used over and over and over and over and over and over

undermined the value of everything that came before it and told us that any moment everything we were watching could and often would be made irrelevant.

It told us that the federation wasn’t made up of the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants pioneers struggling and earning it’s success.

It told they were always being helped along by boring bureaucratic Big Brothers from the future.

The grandiose story archs were heavy handed and way overdone, remember the several episodes of Voyager that were made moot by the year that never was?

I sincerely hope that the new movie(s) and any future series don’t devalue, not just Trek history, but the history of the real world scientists and engineers who are among those we depend apon to truly improve mankind’s lot.

Part of Trek’s original appeal was that it showed us a future in which we developed and learned to use technology to better one another’s lives, rather then used the technology to annihilate one another.

I understand Mr. Braga’s desire to paint sweeping epics.

But those sweeping epics shouldn’t undermine the value of what came before them the way his over use of time-hoping did.

Mr. Braga, you have produced some excellent work in the past.

What happened to you during your involvement with Trek I would respectfully compare to what happened to the writings of Anne Rice.

Her early work was brilliant. But after her first few successes she refused to be edited anymore by her publisher and they unfortunately allowed themselves to be convinced that that was a good idea.

It wasn’t.

I think you can be a much better artist then you have become.

Because of your position I doubt many people wanted to seriously critique and help you edit your ideas, and definitely no one had the authority to overrule you before you fell into some of the writing habits you learned to over rely apon.

In your future endeavors, surround yourself with writers who are excellent at writing dialogue. Writers who love to sit in restuarants and cafe’s and study people.

Work in tandem with such writers and study the motivations of people, groups etc.

If you can spend more time perfecting the small conflicts, rivalries, motivations, aspirations, the saints and the sinners among us and make us believe and care about the people in your future stories more,

you may find the little pictures that you will have then learned to string together can make you grand artistist vision one that people once again can relate to and care about.

Ideas are important. But only if you can move people to care about them beyond an intellectual level.

Surprising, shocking and daring doesn’t really matter if people don’t care about the characters.

Plus, you can only be surprising, shocking and daring – grandiose – so many time before that itself begins to become formulaic.