VegasTrekCon10: Brannon Braga Answers Fan Questions On TNG, Voyager & Enterprise

Brannon Braga, Star Trek’s most prolific (and often controversial) writer came to the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas to interact with the fans. Braga answered questions about his time on Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise, revealing some insights and new details. Get a breakdown below.

 

Brannon Braga on TNG, Voyager, Enterprise and beyond

Brannon Braga started his appearance by saying that he loves coming to the cons every year to hear what fans have to say, but then noted "I’m always nervous that some disgruntled fan is going to come here to try and kill me."  Here are some highlights from the Q&A of Star Trek’s most prolific writer/producer:

On  TNG

  • His first day as intern at TNG Braga met his mentor Michael Piller who was writing "Best of Both Worlds, Part 2", noting "I came in just at the right time"

  • Was not fan of series before joining and Gene Roddenberry encouraged him to not watch the original Star Trek "because he wanted Next Gen to be different", notes "of course, I became a fan"

  • Even though Ron Moore and Rene Echevarria were discovered via fan submissions, Paramount phased out taking submissions because it became a "legal nightmare"

  • Michael Piller asked him to join DS9 at the end of TNG’s sixth season, but he declined because he "wanted to see Next Generation through" and noted it was right decision because he and Ron Moore got to write the finale "All Good Things" which he is proud of and he was "so invested" in Next Gen

On VOY

  • "Had the most fun" working on Voyager, and feels that the best episodes were the two-parter "Dark Frontier" and "Someone to Watch Over Me"

  • Braga says he "hopes" there will be future films or TV set in the original (prime) timeline set after Voyager, but notes that for now the only work is being done in the new universe of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie (which he said he liked)

On ENT

  • Original idea for Enterprise was to be "more like the JJ Abrams movie and the building of Starfleet" with show being more "grounded and gritty" with first season all Earth-based ending with launching of first starship

  • Studio didn’t like idea and wanted it to be "starship show" and didn’t like it being set in the past so they introduced Temporal Cold War to add a future element

  • Temporal Cold War originated as idea for a different TV show of Braga’s

  • Confirmed that T’Pol was originally going to be T’Pau but was changed to avoid having to deal the "legal component" of original TOS writer who created the character, and also because T’Pol was easier to pronounce

  • Reason Enterprise looked more futuristic than TOS is because "we had to make it look cool", noting "we couldn’t go back to the bold colors of the sixties, we wanted to do something retro but would satisfy contemporary audiences", also noting that the look of the Enterprise in the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie "that bridge looks more futuristic than anything ever seen on Star Trek"

  • Also noted on design differences "who cares!? I think it is more about characters, than production design"

  • Thought the "AIDS metaphor" episode Stigma was best example of Enterprise dealing with moral issues, "part of Star Trek episodes at their best dealing with issues in an oblique fashion"

On career in general and other projects:

  • New Terra Nova will premiere May of 2011 and will take place "in the distant future and the distant past at the same time"

  • On 24, it was "the hardest show" he worked on, will not be involved in the planned 24 movie

  • Says he has "always gravitated" towards time-travel because "it allows me to manipulate reality, like a lot of my Next Gen episodes tended to be bizarre and kind of twisty-turny and lots of weird stuff" 

  • Swore he wouldn’t do time-travel again, but is doing it again with Terra Nova

STLV10-Sat-61
Brannon Braga at Star Trek convention

REMINDER: Brannon Braga appearing this weekend at First Contact Screening

The Summer Star Trek movie series at the Laemmle Royal Theater in West LA picks up again this weekend with a showing of Star Trek First Contact on Saturday August 14th at midnight. Preceding the film will be a Q&A with Brannon Braga. I will be asking Brannon questions on the film and his time with Trek. If you have any questions suggestions, let me know in the comments below.

 

 

More Vegas Star Con 2010

For more from the con see our full reports:

…And much more to come with coverage of TNG and Enterprise stars from Sunday.

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Who CARES about the designs? Basements all over the country are groaning with the sighs of nerds & their blueprints..HOW DARE YOU!!!

In some ways, it’s a close call as to whether the NuEnterprise’s bridge is more futuristic than the Enterprise-D’s. In some ways, it is — it’s got these moving screen graphics, for example, and it’s brighter. But in other ways, the Enterprise-D seems more advanced, with everything clearly touchscreen.

Also, unlike Braga, I think that production design does matter. As a fan, I care about it, and I think many others do, too.

Finally, to me, it’s sad that Braga that he thinks that there are fans out there who are so deranged that they would want to physically harm him. In the end, it’s just an entertainment franchise we’re talking about here.

^^ Correction: “sad that Braga said that….”

Also, I think that the TMP Enterprise bridge looked just as advanced (though less flashy) as the NuEnterprise’s bridge.

Braga is definitely is a talented guy and was involved with some of my all time favorite Trek episodes. He doesn’t deserve the flack some fans give him…

Disgruntled fans indeed…. Fans who criticize the wrong things and can’t understand that character is the most important thing are what truly ruins Star Trek.

#2. Even if they’re just internet postings, I’d be a little freaked out if I was in his position and reading all the hateful things that have been said about him.

He gets too much sh*t. He is responsible for some very fine work in the franchise, particularly with RDM, but in my view, he stuck around too long and perhaps burned out. As a result, his latter work was very laboured, almost as if you could feel how tired he was. He no longer had anything new to say.

But, he wrote All Good Things and First Contact, and for those things alone he should be lauded, let alone many of the other fine episodes he was involved with.

5, yeah. That’s part of why it’s sad — people write things on the Internet without regard to the concept that if they said it to the person they’re writing about, it would be considered a threat. The pseudo-anonymity of the Internet is often misused by people who shouldn’t use computers without adult supervision.

I am waiting for this one to be asked at a convention:

Braga- How was it being involved with the hottest woman (next to Uhura) in trek history?

#2 “Finally, to me, it’s sad that Braga that he thinks that there are fans out there who are so deranged that they would want to physically harm him. In the end, it’s just an entertainment franchise we’re talking about here.”

It is sad, but also … well, let me just say that even small-time creative types working on fairly fringe licensed material get some scary, scary vibes in email sometimes.

It is not a sane concern, but at the same time, it is in literal terms a reasonable one.

Yah i dont blame braga-even on this site many “fans” have said very cruel even hateful things for no sane reason—remember-john lennon was killed by a crazed fan-i never thought anyone would want to kill a musician/star icon like a beatle–especially one that seemed so wise n charitable n talented–yet it happened-i am still in shock over that one–

I liked the bridge, and the ideas of characters and the storry. But the show was booring. With old episodes in a new show. For example the Ent episode with Rene Auberjonois from a Ds9 ep with Rene Auberjonois).

Travis could be a focus, in the conflict beetween colonies and Earth. Hoshi was an annoying newbie as Kim. And Malcolm a security chief who likes explosions. They were stereotips. After the Babylon 5, and Serenity this show was too old.

And they ignored the humor. One most importent part of Trek series.

In the years of TNG, there were several Star trek writers. During the Ent remain just two pruducers. When Many Coto arrived show became better a bit. Similar situation than in Star Wars. Durin the classing trilogy were “brainstorming” and lot of argue. During the prequel trilogy just one chief and his orders.

So i hope Abrams will make series with writers. (Ha was on comic con with Wheadon:))

Meanwile i would like to read Enterprise comics from IDW…

And I want cheese!

All the stick Braga gets from certain quarters is very, well…. un-Star Trek. I happen to be a fan of a lot of his work, although I do agree that the time travel aspect was a crutch that was too heavily leaned upon at times.

11. I have to disagree. I thought Hoshi was a good character on Enterprise (though her skill for learning new languages came almost TOO easily, without any great deal of frame-of-reference to back up her skill). And I thought Mayweather was more the Harry Kim type (who actually went on to become one of my more favoured Voyager characters as the series progressed) – the naivety, despite being one of the characters who had more experience of “space time” than a lot of the others. I just felt he was never particularly well developed and, to be honest, I didn’t really fancy Anthony Montgomery as an actor. I also happened to be a big fan of Lt. Reid. He had a bit of an interesting past to draw upon, and there always seemed to be something that was left unmentioned that created a bit of mystery about him. He was, for all intents and purposes, and despite his being the armory officer, the show’s equivalent of Worf: always focused on duty, loyalty and honour, and sometimes inclined to let those get in the way of actually performing his duties to the best.

Also have to disagree with the humour element. I thought it went back to being humorous where Voyager was the one that really disregarded it, at least until Seven came into the show and became developed as a character. It might have had a more ham-fisted, TOS-style of humour, but it was certainly there at times, despite a very dark subject matter.

Some of those early ideas for Enterprise were intriguing. I like the idea of the. 1st season being mostly earth based as it would have given us an opportunity to see something not really explored in Trek and would have really emphasised the historic nature of their mission as well as building up a lot of excitement for season 2.

I think Brannon was clearly joking about getting assassinated by a fan but all the abuse he’s had over the years for something he’s invested so much energy in must really hurt. Sure there has been a few duff episodes over the years but we all have a bad day at the office now and again! I personally would like to thank Brannon for the many hours of enjoyment I still get from rewatching those shows!

Those original Enterprise ideas… I was familiar with the first-season pitch, but not with the studio disliking the story being set in the past.

Those pitches sound so much better than what we got.

13. When you consider how many actual episodes of Star Trek there have been, from “The Cage” to “These Are The Voyages”, it’s actually astounding how the quality of the writing hasn’t faltered more than it did. Just by sheer volume alone.

“Also noted on design differences “who cares!? I think it is more about characters, than production design””

Uh, I care. Because if it’s a crappy set that looks unconvincing, that can totally take you out of the episode/movie. You know? Like the Brewery from the new Star Trek film. You’re lucky Enterprise had all sets.

brannon wrote some great episodes but like piller at some stage he real needed to move on and not become to showrunner for voyager and enterprise, im so glad he decided to stay with next gen and finish the programe off as who knows what sort of danage he might of done to ds9 which i am sure given the shit the top blass gave them brannon would be bitching about it now and srewed it up instead of what the writer did and some how made it make sence out it

#2

I’m sure if you were Braga and you read the countless millions of internet posts wishing his demise or harm you might begin to believe that there are at least a few nutters out there who do want to harm you.

Note the other reason he liked Voyager the most is because the majority of fans forget that for a short while he was schtooping Jeri Ryan.

I guess I’d enjoy that period of my life too.

Could you ask Braga at the screening if the Borg became a prominent villain on Voyager because of the success of First Contact or if they planned to use them before the film was written.

I’ve been a critic of Braga over the years, but I also acknowledge that he contributed some of the best Treks ever. And I did like the way he wrote episodes that were twisted and maze-like. Sometimes they worked really well, like “Cause And Effect,” while others, like “Frame Of Mind,” didn’t do much for me.
But badgering of Trek writers/producers is an ordinary thing in Trek-dom. It’s easy to be vicious, rude and obnoxious while hiding in virtual anonymity. I doubt most of such people would be so bold if they were standing face to face with their “victim.”

I would ask Brannon:

Over the course of nearly 20 years of doing Star Trek, how did you keep the energy going? Where did you find inspiration and motivation?

I HATED the temporal cold war subplot of Enterprise. Nice to know that the series was originally intended to be more like season 4 and was typically f’d up by brainless studio hacks.

I think most fans – I include myself – keep forgetting how much Berman, Braga et al were beholden to the uninspired powers that be at Paramount.

Still, I think Enterprise could have been glorious…..

They still could have told the story they wanted and still be be a space-based show. Like “Lost” used flashbacks to show how the characters wound up being on that plane. They could have used flashbacks to show how NX-01 came to be. They did it for one great episode but that was it.

Who wrote these are the Voyages, the finale episode of Enterprise. As a fan of Enterprise i was pretty pissed off about that episode and the stupid way they shoehorned riker and troi into it.

I kind of like Braga, he comes across a bit of a pompous person but I’m sure he’s a nice guy and I dunno if it’s just me but his comment about Enterprise and his original concept for it being identical to that of JJ Abrams movie – It just kind of makes me respect him less since obviously it wasn’t that the concept sucked, it was that you had people so involved with Star Trek for 18 or so years, who’d got so sucked into the TNG formula that they were unable to bring anything fresh to the table, I don’t even think it crossed Braga’s mind that perhaps contemporary wasn’t really the way to go with Enterprise… As far as he’s Star Trek career, I just think he did his best work on TNG with First Contact being the last great piece of writing he did – after that it desperately needed new blood to take it forward – whist I don’t dislike Voyager or Enterprise, I feel those concepts would have been executed better if they had been produced by a totally different team – it would have probably saved Berman’s reputation too had he handed the “key’s” to a new team on a high note…

Besides DS9 (I thought that was a really really great series) I think the overwhelming feeling I get watching anything after Star Trek: First Contact was the potential Star Trek had but was squandering with badly conceived concepts, poor and re-hashed scripts and just a lack of anything fresh or original that hadn’t been seen in TNG – Where as the likes of TOS and TNG are considered classics of their generation with some episodes that are just classics in their own right, I don’t think anyone will remember Voyager or Enterprise in the same light even if they are remembered much at all.

Deep Space Nine was a fantastic series but I don’t think it was a very Star Trekky concept so for the purpose of this post I’m leaving DS9 out of it….

Braga gets way too much flak and not enough credit. He deserves constructive criticism as much as anyone, but some of the psychotic ranting aimed at him is just silly.

Would absolutely love to share a few brews with him one day. I think he’d have a lot of interesting stories to share.

I cant agree with him about the ship and bridge design, The Ship IS a character as well, And it also sets the “mood” for the show in many ways.

The Enterprise from ENT simply looked like a stripped down version of something we would see in TNG or Voyager, not a pre-TOS vessel. His argument about the New Enterprise bridge looking so advanced isnt valid either IMO, The new Enterprise comes from a different timeline, built under different circumstances.

The ENT Enterprise is supposed to be in the same timeline as TOS, just earlier. I think it would have been “cooler” to actually have it retro instead of what they built.

and it just goes to show how studios can indeed ruin projects, aka ST: ENTERPRISE. just think of how cool that show would have been if they would’ve let Braga have his creativity flurish the way he intended.

i also believe that i had once mentioned how the first season should’ve been exactly the Braga wanted it: the build-up and launch of the ship and no stupid Temporal anything (although the Xindi storyline in season three was kinda entertaining, and season four was just a hoot, thanks Manny Coto).

Ha HA!

Brannon Braga just re-confirmed what Roberto Orci has been saying all along:

The Prime universe is alive and well.

If Brannon reads these posts, as he sometimes does, would love to know what the grand vision was for the remaining un-aired years of ENT. I figure the Romulan Wars and founding of the Federation, but what else was buzzin’ ’round the writer’s room? hmm. . .

Oh , yeah, contemporary audiences don’t like things looking retro.

Sure. Yeah. right.

I stil believe a more TOS style bridge, only updated, would’ve looked great and the general audience would’ve accepted it.

Enough with the negative connotivity associated with TOS. It was the best! I loved the uniforms, sets, bridge, actors, Engineering, etc.

@ 27 – What do you expect them to receive?

The thing is whilst I see your point, It’s a flawed point. When Star Trek is good the people who work hard to create it are praised – when Star Trek is bad the people who work hard to create it get told so – What happened with Star Trek wasn’t to do with anyone’s talents – it was to do with the FACT that these talented people had been doing the same job for 18 years and after 18 years, especially in the creative industry, it’s hard to keep things fresh working on one thing – What killed Star Trek wasn’t because of franchise fatigue or a lack of interest, or that the people creating it weren’t good enough, it was because the people doing it had run out of new and fresh ideas – and thats no surprise. What frustrates me is that the Studio let Star Trek stagnate because unfortunately for the creative aspect of it, the business was still making money…

Nowadays, I am so so pleased that we have such a rich tapestry to enjoy and take away something from each adventure weather it be a feeling of optimism or nostalgia or something different. I love every incarnation of Star Trek but, although there are only so many stories to tell in this world, I am a hundred times happier that its now in a fresh pair of hands who can deliver a fresh approach that people so embroiled in the universe after 18 years day in day out just couldn’t deliver anymore.

When TOS ended and TNG began – everyone was shouting sacrilege! But look at that show, 7 years of pure sci-fi gold but it was only gold because they took a totally different direction with it than they did with TOS. TNG was made by different people with different ideas and opinions, It kept it fresh and different from TOS and that’s why it succeeded – Voyager and Enterprise lacked the new blood coming in to keep it fresh and relevant and the ratings and ultimately the fate of the franchise were sealed – now look at it, after ONE movie, Star Trek’s reputation is once again bouncing back among not just the fans but the wider world, critics and the mainstream alike are talking about Star Trek and the anticipation around the next movie….

It might interest you to know that many film and sci-fi mags are billing the next Star Trek movie as the most anticipated of the decade – shocking stuff for a franchise ridiculed only five years ago after the cancelation of Enterprise…

One thing I gotta say about Braga–he’s a survivor. He’s done a helluva good deal of work in a business that can pretty much suck you dry.

#4,#6: Right on the money. I think that the venom that’s directed at Braga was undeserved. He DID write or co-write some of TNG’s best episodes, and both he and Moore were one hell of a writing team. He’s had his bad scripts or ideas that didn’t work, but….who hasn’t?

#34: You hit the nail right on the head. And remember, not even five years ago or so all we heard was, “Let it die!! There’s nothing left to do!”

And even when Abrams and company took on the project, there was still the great wave of cynicism, the smug, arrogant belief that they would fail. Well, they didn’t, and thankfully, ST has been given new life, and a new chance.

If Brannon isn’t pulling any punches about what Enterprise was suppose to be all about, then once again we have forces outside the direct hands on creative team of the show, to thank for having the 6 years of stuff (minus the new STAR TREK movie) turn out to be less then steller as a whole.

I think that the take on ENTERPRISE that Brannon is proposing would have been an interesting one, and would have made for a good show. The first season and the second season would have been different enough from each other, that it would have been season 3 before the show started dragging its heals at all.

On the otherhand, I understand where the studio is coming from. If you can you want to invest all this time energy and money (mostly it’s the money), into a concept that you are relatively sure is going to work. You look at TNG that worked with flying colors. Voyager worked with the same flying colors. Now Brannon and Rick want to propose a Star Trek series, in which the first season takes place intirly on earth. and the studio’s thinking: “What are you smoking? we have no idea if that’s going to work or flop, we can’t invest in that kind of Unknown.”

Anyways, that’s why we got the ENTERPRISE that we did. While it was good, here’s to wishing that the studio had not interfered, so that the show could have been much better.

Given what Braga said about his vision of ENT, CBS should take him up on his words and ask him to submit a treatment for a Trek TV miniseries based on his vision.

Why not? Anything to jump start a Trek TV series of some kind.

When should the next series air? Not until after the next Trek movie. But it’s never too early to get the development process going.

RDM (Moore) got what he wanted with the new BSG. BSG was DS9 reimaged as “Lost.” (Yes, you read it here first. ;-) ) That is, if JJ (“Cloverfield”) Abrams had been asked to direct a modern-day episode of DS9, with complete creativity, then it might have looked a bit like an episode of the RDM’s “Battlestar (“hide the ball, make mysterious references, do totally weird and wonderful character and plot twists, drop philosophico-religioco-sociological references”) Galactica.” (I mean, Starbuck as a woman? Only a truly creative mind would have imagined that, and made it work.)

Anything to jump start a Trek series.

Braga has had a few years off the Star Trek hamster wheel. Creative fatigue should have abated by now.

Let him do it. See what happens.

Even in the Altered Universe, Star Trek: Enterprise and the NX-01 are still an integral part of the pre-2233 universe. Did not the line “Admiral Archer’s Beagle” resonate?

Oh, to see a USS Kelvin era series. THAT was how a starship-based prequel should have looked. Best part of the movie overall was that newly-conceived first 15 minutes. It gave us Trek we REALLY hadn’t seen before.

I used to associate him with “the death of Star Trek” but now I think it was more the studio than anything else. I think that if his original ideas for Ent had been put into place that things would have been much better for that series. Ironic, isn’t it? The big network studio that thinks it knows fans so well and what they want changed the show to what they thought fans wanted, when in reality it was the exact opposite!

That said, I think Ent is better than most give it credit for and there were some quality stories told, specifically during season 4 of the show which I think is probably closer to Braga’s original vision of the show. I hated the temporal cold war for the main reason that it never went anywhere and sort of fizzled out at the end of the show.

It also doesn’t help that Ent came about at a time when Trek was no longer the big sci-fi series on the block, and there were more shows showing up. Galactica, Farscape, SG-1, Firefly, Smallville, just to name a few, Trek had some tough competition and the fact that it wasn’t advetised outside of UPN or to anybody but Trek fans at all was a big problem. I sort of see JJ Abrams’ Trek movie as how Enterprise SHOULD have been, as Braga says. Instead they wanted him to write it like every other Star Trek and try to pretend that it was different.

To be perfectly frank, I was quite a fan of the first half of the first season of ENT and I followed it until about the second season. I kind of lost interest after a while, but then I heard that it was great again in what turned out to be the last season.

Do you remember the fan-based campaign to save ENT? I was morally completely in support of that effort in that I wished it well. But by that time, it was too late to save ENT.

I sometimes think we overestimate the rationality of big corporations. Any large entity is made of people, and directed by people at the top who may be all too eager to surround themselves with yes-men and who may be prone to make decisions — conservative decisions — calculated, perhaps, to save their own skins. That’s why art is so rare in television; it’s a bean-counting business, just the way that our economy is based on dollars and cents.

I don’t know of a single account of UPN or any of the controllers of the Star Trek properties on television that portray its leaders as visionaries or men or women of great talent. Art and business coexist very uncomfortably, for the most part.

What was and is lacking in American business is the sense of risk-taking that used to characterize the American spirit. Captain Pike’s commentary on Starfleet at the beginning of ST2009 could be taken as a commentary on Hollywood as a whole. It’s just a business; the Hollywood studios are just an arm of corporate America. Corporate America is responsible for shareholder money (or at least, it’s supposed to be — Enron notwithstanding). It’s also responsible for financing obscenely outrageous CEO salaries at the cost of nearly everything else, including actual talent and creativity.

Star Trek may be a vision of the future, but it’s a vision subject to the whims of the present. There’s a saying that it’s hard to soar with the eagles when you are surrounded by turkeys. And that gobble-gobble sound you hear so loudly these days is the sound of Wall Street and its attendant interests.

Ah, well. Ars long, vita brevis, as they say.

By the way, the news says that former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe may have been in a plane crash that reportedly killed former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. A sad day in aviation.

^^ By “controllers” I mean everyone OTHER THAN Gene Roddenberry, Robert Justman, et al., who were associated with TOS, TNG, etc. Producers such as Roddenberry and Justman, and talented writers and production staff such as Dorothy Fontana, et al. were true visionaries, whatever else one might say about them.

He’s not wrong at all. Plenty of deranged lunatics in the fan base. Plenty.

40: Hatrick

You are absolutely correct, but what we are seeing with CBS is an almost complete lack of understanding that Star Trek needs a full-court press between films to keep newbie interest healthy, and attract those who caught the film on video.

It’s not about sillies spending $7000 on a painting of Spot, but about an animated series and associated toys which should continue to be released in the long stretch between films. Otherwise, the equity won in Trek thanks to the new film simply dissipates. ST 2012 is a second re-launch, marketing it once again to the newbies who forgot about it three years ago.

enterprise should have looked like the ring-shaped enterprise we saw in both TMP and enterprise…….
And had primitive tech., inside, build with a near-warp-drive(fusion-ion-based) engine and the crew should had been flying in vulcan-ships, up until season 2……..and in the mean-time we should have been known the the ring-shaped enterprise was coming, and it should ALL the way had focused on the events building up till season 4!!!!!!!!

and moved on the the romulan-war……..

Earlier it was mentioned that TNG worked cuz it was totally different from tos and went in a different direction with new people–

I think that Gene Roddenberry himself, the same creative force behind TOS designed and made TNG what it mostly was…he did make lightning srike twice or once anyway since tos wasnt really a hit until after life….

Watching some of the shows on BBC America again I was reminded that even though other fans derided the first few seasons of TNG the ones with the EXEC PRODUCER GENE RODDENBERRY seemed to me to be the ones that set up many of the concepts and storylines expanded later in the series…also those episodes did remind you more of the old tos shows as well. At least to me….

Not that it was perfect we all know every show is human….still think Yars Death was handled terribly..being killed by a puddle of hated Oil…GULF COAST OIL FROM BP MAYBE? ohwell…

I think I see how Trek is fleshing out:

Prime Trek Universe – reserved for TV

Abramverse – reserved for film.

I enjoyed every ep he penned for TNG! Very talented and prolific…AND he banged Jeri Ryan…

#23–That has been one of my points when I defend Berman, Braga or anyone else involved at the time. People sometimes forgets, Paramount held the purse strings. If they did not like something, you either yielded to their will or you looked for a new job. That’s showbiz people. You can stand on your laurels and say, hey that’s a sucky idea, while you stand on the unemployment line and someone else does your job.

I did not really have a problem with the set design. Look, they had a no win scenario of their own. The show took place about 100 years before the original series. But let’s be honest, the sets from the original series are outdated even by today’s standards. How can they make it look literally less advanced than the original series sets and still look futuristic? The same people that complained about how advanced the ship looked now would have been complaining about how primitive and ridiculous the ship looks and how we could make something more advanced today. Zimmerman, Drexler and all involved did the best they could. The ship was still smaller than the Constitution class ship, it did not have shields, force fields or tractor beams, could only travel warp 5 instead of 8, did not have photon torpedoes and phasers, and the transporter was in it’s infancy. Maybe the sets had to be dialed up to be more futuristic by today’s standards, but the technology the NX-01 had was still lightyears behind the NCC-1701.

I do agree that the Berman regime did have issues with franchise fatigue. They produced a lot of TV and 4 movies. Eventually you get drained, whether you liked it or not.

I admit I was a little disappointed at first with the design of the NX-01, both the interior and exterior. I was hoping for something a little more close to what Spock had described about mid-22 Century vessels in “Balance of Terror”. But I also understood why they went the direction. As much as I love Trek, I realize it is entertainment and not reality.

And I didn’t mind the Temporal Cold War at first because I had always assumed Future Guy would turn out to be a Romulan. But as time went on I began to realize that they were just pulling it out of there @$$.

I don’t hate Braga, he DID write some great episodes. But with him it’s a lot like football: some people are great offensive coordinators, but terrible head coaches. He was a great writer, but not a show runner.