Brannon Braga: Star Trek Is My Ex-Wife + More From Frakes On Leverage ‘Trek Reunion’

Veteran Star Trek writer and producer Brannon Braga is keeping busy these days on the FOX series 24 and he even has a new genre pilot for ABC in development. Our friends at iF Magazine caught up with the man with the most Trek writing credits to talk about Jack Bauer, JJ Abrams and much more, excerpts below. iF also has more from Jonathan Frakes about his ‘Trek reunion’ episode of Leverage.

 

Braga talks Trek past, present, and future

Brannon Braga on the controversial Enterprise finale "These are the Voyages”

I think that final, final episode, I may be understating it when I’m saying it didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. I think the intentions behind it sent a valentine to all the STAR TREK shows and a very genuine heartfelt one, because we knew STAR TREK would be off television for a long, long time, but it was kind of a lackluster story.

Braga on JJ Abrams taking over Trek

My analogy with STAR TREK is I divorced my wife, I love her dearly, she’s with a great guy, and I’m so happy for her. At the same time, in the back of mind, someone else is with my wife. That’s how I feel. I can’t help but feel emotionally attached to STAR TREK. But predominantly my feeling is it’s in great hands with J.J. Abrams and I can’t wait to see the movie.

Braga on if he would return to do another Trek series

I would do it if it were the right people and right idea. Right now, no way.

See the full iF Magazine interview for more much from Braga on Trek, 24, and his new show Flash Forward.

 


Braga at the "24" premiere party in January (WireImage)

More Frakes on ‘mini Trek reunion’ episode of Leverage + more pics
Like TrekMovie, iF also checked in with TNG’s Jonathan Frakes to talk about this week’s episode of Leverage, which he directed and has Brent Spiner and Armin Shimerman as guest stars. Goto iF Magazine for the whole thing, here is an excerpt with Frakes talking about what it is like working with his old pals.

It makes the shorthand more valuable. I think you can work faster and more fascicle with the actors because you have the experience of how they work. All three actors I knew would show up prepared. Some times you cast an actor, you’ve seen the audition, but you don’t know what you’re going to get on set. You’ve worked with people you’ve worked before, you can breathe a little easier.

Electric Entertainment has also sent over more pictures from tomorrow night’s episode.


Frakes (R) talking to Spiner and actress Lauren Holly


Spiner in "The Juor #6 Job"


Spiner in "The Juor #6 Job"

If you missed it, check out TrekMovie’s new exclusive interview with Frakes (Part 1 & Part 2).

Trek reunion episode of Leverage airs Tuesday
Make sure you tune in this week to Leverage "The Juror #6 Job", airing Tuesday February 10 at 10/9c on TNT. More info at tnt.tv/series/leverage. Check out a sneak peek at “The Juror #6 Job” below.

 

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Poor Brannon! Too bad he can’t get a Vulcan time ship to go back and fix that episode!

Spiner looks like Soran…

If Brent is Soran , it looks like he is in trouble !!
But …
Wonderful Comments to hear from Brannon !!

My goodness. This has got to be the first time Trek has been publicly described an ex-wife. Interesting.

It wasn’t the best episode but it did show us what TNG remastered could look like!

5 – Haha. So true.

Thank god Brannon is not part of TREK anymore. A very bad marriage.

Hmm, it wasn’t that the finale was lackluster, it was that they used another show to end Enterprise.

I do like his ex-wife analogy. He’s a talented guy but I’d be surprised if he ever came back to Trek now.

I have just one thing to say…24!

The ex-wife analogy isnt entirely accurate or necessarily cool because remember that OJ had an ex-wife, too. On the other hand, he had 2 of them and if memory serves, Marguerite was supportive of him at the trial.

oh yeah and also that song, ALL MY EX’s LIVE IN TEXAS. Clearly not applicable here.

the women!!

=h=

This criminal nearly destroyed our beloved franchise. But instead of begging our forgiveness on his knees, he has the audacity to smooth it over with a poor analogy and assume everything is OK.

He should be taken to the top of the Tower of Commerce, denounced to the crowd below and then pushed off.
DAMN YOU BRANON BRAGA! DAMN YOU

There’s a reason she left you, greasy.

We’re quite lucky to have Paramount find Star Trek a new “husband.” Braga could have just as easily put his “ex-wife” out to pasture for good. For all those who are skeptical about the new movie, just be thankful that’s there’s something Trek coming onto the big screen, with talk of a sequel even. Things could be far worse.

Brannon and Berman–although good at the beginning– lost the plot a long time ago. It was time they were pushed out.

Story plots became no more than good ideas with poor execution. I still do not consider “Enterprise” a part of official Star Trek canon. Bad alternate universe, maybe, but not canon.

New series? The “right people” and the “right ideas” he mentioned would be…well…not him.

Brannon Braga is not a very masculine name is it?

I don’t hate Braga… the guy had great ideas when it came to the stories he wrote… but 1) his dialogue was borderline banal & trite and 2) he spread himself waaaaaaaaaaay too thin by taking on so many scripts.

In the end, I find him spectacularly mediocre.

And does this mean that Abrams is finally giving TREK the big “O?”

If he loved his ex-wife so much, he shouldn’t have put her through so much abuse.
Don’t get me wrong – the man wrote the best mind-twister episodes in the franchise, but I think he got what Trek was about – ever.

17-LOL. The size of the “O” Abrams delivers depends on the box office.

I like Brannon Braga and regret that he’s taken as much crap as he has over the years.

To simply write the man off as having always been a bad influence on Trek is laughably ignorant.

I meant “never got”. Ever.

“I would do it if it were the right people…”

Oxymoron.

I got pretty upset the first time I saw “These Are the Voyages…”. I mean, it wasn’t /that/ bad (I love Riker and Troi, and it made me quite the happy girl to see them among the cast of ENT) but the story itself wasn’t that great. The sendoff for the franchise (which, at the time, it really was) could’ve been way better. But at least Brannon Braga was man enough to admit that he wasn’t exactly pleased with how it turned out.

I know people are always sayin’ bad stuff about Braga, but I thought he did a wonderful job on Enterprise… Especially the last two seasons. It was different, but I liked it and was sad to see it go.

#20 – Completely agreed.

Braga was always one of my favorite TNG writers. (Granted, this was particularly true when he was paired with my favorite Trek writer of all time, Ronald D. Moore.) I liked the guy a little less with Voyager, but that was just because I liked Voyager a little less.

I enjoyed Enterprise, I really did. I thought it hit the ground running with ‘Broken Bow’ (the best pilot of all Trek series, bar none), and they did a pretty good job. (Things did improve when Manny Coto joined the team, though.)

As for ‘These Are the Voyages…’, well, if he says the intent was there, I believe him, but yes, they dropped the ball, big time. It’s just what krikzil said in #8: They used a different show to end the series. And the killing of Trip was pointless. Had it been a mid-season episode, I might have liked it better.

#14

Canon is canon, for better or worse, whether you consider it to be or not.

#17

That is damn funny.

brannon braga the very name just make me feel ill, i dont mind to much as a writer he did some good episodes but he shound never have been put in charge i re-call hearing about enterprise and hoping he was not going to be the boss but some how i know he was and look how bad that was untill manny took over and as for the last episode oh please it was a next gen episode and not an enterprise episode not a good way to finish off a programe i try and forgets this episode as the two parter was way better

I still think “These Are The Voyages…” would have been much less derided if it hadn’t been the final episode of the last Trek on TV. If it had been in the middle of season 4, I’ll bet most fans would have loved it. At any rate, while I didn’t agree with everything Brannon did over the years (VOY’s ‘Threshold,’ anyone?), he and his team did a lot of good, solid Trek. For that I think we ought to cut him a break.

It’s prettty obvious that two Trek writer/producers are running 24 this year. The technojargon so far has been WAY overplayed – heck, last week the bad guy had a “command room” with a wall-sized display that he viewed as he barked out commands! It was SOOO Trek…

He was a good writer and came up with some good episodes, but I just don’t think he ever got what Star Trek was about. Star Trek was always much more than good sci-fi.

Well what can I say.

Braga means diaper in Spanish, and Brannon means Raven in Celtic.

Make of that what you will.

Or should I say “suppose” to be.

#20. Exactly right. Thanks for posting.

I have been re-watching Enterprise on Universal HD and it’s holding up better than I remember it when I originally watched it. The first season, especially, has a very Star Trekian TOS feel to it. Do I wish they had the Borg and TNG Klingons? no. Was the acting too wooden and some of the technology a bit too advanced? yep.
I think ENT had the potential to really be a great show with a pioneering crew making history with every lightyear and leave all that ‘temporal cold war’ garbage behind.
The concept was an interesting one, however, the execution just rang a bit too close to Voyager and all that entailed.
TPTB might have made this one work with another year of development to hash out a five (seven) year mission and taking it off a network that had nothing in common with the franchise that started it.

As far as I’m concerned, Enterprise ended with “Terra Prime.”

Braga has gotten an undue amount of crap from fans, though.

“I would do it if it were the right people and right idea. Right now, no way.”

Well that sent quite a shiver down my spine …

“There’s a reason she left you, greasy.”

That was hilarious. Best laugh of the day. Kudos, sir (or madam).

Berman, was the weak link in the Trek Franchise!
He had to have something that was solely his own creation or as close to it as possible. Finally someone at Paramount must have finally opened some fan mail!

Though I’m truly pumped for the Movie, I feel Trek belongs on the small screen or DVD’s movies. I always liked the concept Star Trek Mini series. I don’t know if a single movie is going to fill that empty void!

“I enjoyed Enterprise, I really did. I thought it hit the ground running with ‘Broken Bow’ (the best pilot of all Trek series, bar none)”

Oh, I disagree there. “The Cage” is still the best Trek pilot. And as much as I loathe “Voyager”, I thought it also had a great pilot. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” is nothing sneeze at either. The TNG and DS9 pilots are fairly snooze-festy though.

Brannon Braga just insulted JJ Abrams And Trek. No Way??? Come ON!!!! Ugh. He had his chance.

…Would Braga’s ex please sue him for alimony to the point of poverty as punishment for Nemesis and the first three seasons on Enterprise? And if Abrams’ flick bombs, I’m sure we can get the Texas AG’s office to hit him up for back child support as well.

34. Tony Whitehead: ‘I have been re-watching Enterprise on Universal HD and it’s holding up better than I remember it when I originally watched it.’

I think that, using the ex-wife analogy, it’s hell at the time, but after everything’s over it’s easier to bear and you can be more positive about things. Strangely enough, I’ve become less tolerant of TNG as time has gone by and border on a deep loathing for that show.

On the other hand, I see Voyager as a missed opportunity and I definitely liked the cast and characters more than TNG. Janeway was a great captain, but the old ensemble cast system really didn’t work for it and it should have focused much more closely on a core team.

Enterprise really wanted to succeed, but given that Rick Berman admits he’s never watched all of TOS, even thought he ran Trek for 15-odd years, no wonder it couldn’t really work as a prequel to TOS until a team came on board that knew the original show! Up until then it was a watery prequel to TNG and felt like a prequel to TOS made by someone who had heard stuff about TOS, but had never seen it and had no feel for it!

DS9? Well, given how much Ron Moore’s gone on about the show being his testing ground for much of Galactica, I’ve picked up season one cheap on Amazon and figure I’ll give it a go when I finish watching my complete X-Files boxset (I’m currently on season five!)

Brannon’s such a sourpuss douche. He basically beat the crap outta his “ex-wife” and divorced her…hope the Trek universe never sees him ever again!

“My analogy with STAR TREK is I divorced my wife, I love her dearly, she’s with a great guy, and I’m so happy for her. At the same time, in the back of mind, someone else is with my wife. That’s how I feel. I can’t help but feel emotionally attached to STAR TREK. But predominantly my feeling is it’s in great hands with J.J. Abrams and I can’t wait to see the movie.”

…Or, to put it another way:

“This pretty boy rich scmuck stole my old lady, showered her with all sorts of new designer clothes and jewelry, and is now flaunting it in my face! Yeah, I’ll go to their wedding, just to laugh when some drunk barfs in the cake and his mother stands up and denounces the nuptuals as ‘gaudy and cheap’!”

Brannon Braga was the Dick Cheney of Star Trek.

Braga Bashing?

Get over it! He wrote some really good Trek TOO! Blaming him for the franchise’s problems is just plain dumb. If your paid to do a job and your bosses want it done a certin way then you do it, i’m sure that if Braga and/or Berman had TOTAL control of the franchise it may have ended diffrently. You forget that thay work for other people who have that control. Blame them all you want but the time travel/fanboy crap is getting real old now…..

Darth “Eat my Franchise” Ballz

A lot of the criticism leveled at Brannon Braga is adjust I feel. He always had the best interest of Star Trek at heart. Did he botch things up along the way? Of course he did but that’s just the nature of the beast. I was as dissapointed as anyone with the finale to Enterprise. What needs to be remembered is that apart from the finale and maybe one or tow dodgy episodes season four of Enterprise was one of the best seasons of any Star Trek series! Brannon Braga also helped to give us Star Trek: First Contact! If we’re going to recognise his flaws we also need to recognise the wonderful contribution he made to Star Trek!

Folks, the Braga hate has passed the merely ignorant and has now entered the realm of the boring. No one reads your poorly conceived Braga-rants anymore. You’re trite, you often can’t spell or capitalize, and you’re about ten years out of date in the ongoing “Here’s Why Star Trek Sucks” game that fandom’s been playing since 1976.

I’m glad he acknowledges how much TATV sucked. And I’m glad to be kept up to date on the man who spent so much of his life producing Trek. I know I’d feel the same way he does if I left a show after 15+ years of my life on it!

#12- #17- #22- #31
LOL!
Thanks guys.
: )

“I would do it if it were the right people and right idea.”

Don’t wait by the phone because it ain’t gonna ring.