Something made them hinky (to this day I'm not sure what) and we got passed along from officer to officer, higher and higher up the chain, and in increasingly darker and more isolated rooms. Finally we had the head of the local office interrogating uys on every aspect of our trip [...] As so often happens, money greases the skids of both business and government.
My advice is simple: Bribe early, save money. The higher up you go, the more expensive it gets.
You can get away from a cop for a 50, a judge will cost you a yatch.
GR had to quit after the second season of TNG. He was dying of cancer. He was too sick to get involved with producing TNG. That was when Berman came in and when the show started to improve.
The show started to improve when the writer strike ended.
Coincidentally, that was about the same time as when Rick "the devil" Berman seized the fact that the show's creator was dying of cancer to take over the franchise. Gene had picked him, but regreted it when he realized Berman was a studio suit kinda guy after all. Roddenberry was still interfering with Berman's twisted plans after the second season.
Buffy was produced by Fox and shown on the WB and UPN. Production companies and TV stations don't seem to be too closely linked. Then again, Start Trek has been a flagship for Paramount for years, they might not want to let it go.
Buffy is a Mutant Enemy production, it was coproduced by Fox, but that is not at all the same dynamic as the Star Trek franchise, which is completely owned by Paramount.
Yeah, because a bigger network would never take over a failing network just to get a few strong series and gut the rest in favor of novel programming. Why, you'd have to be NBC looking at Sci-Fi to do something like that; Sci-Fi would never be involved in such a... hey, wait a minute.
Man, you know nothing about media convergence, do you?
UPN, Paramount and the Star Trek franchise are all owned by Viacom Sci-fi and NBC are owned by General Electric and Vivendi.
Yeah, or like Sonic should be on the... hey, waitaminute again...
False analogy: Sega backed away from the console market. When Paramount gives up ownership of all it's television networks, then you can make that analogy (hint: not gonna happen).
"Bashing a WWII hero"? What the hell's the matter with you? First of all, since when exactly does having fought in WWII make you immune from criticism in ANY field?
What legacy? Roddenberry never did anything especially impressive.
You said he never did anything especially impressive. I corrected you.
Secondly, sure, Roddenberry deserves credit for his casting choices, but let's be honest here, we were talking 1966, not 1866, it was an accomplishment but not an unheralded one. By this time the country was well past the bland, white picket world of the 50's.
The show was rejected 3 times! He got told that no one would believe a woman could be second in command of a ship, not even in 300 years. He was told the guy with the pointy ears would scare the women!
You think that television studios were run by hippies? No, they were run by old white men, conservatives who were adults in the 50's. You are grossly underestimating the edginess of Star Trek for it's time.
Those weren't "casting" choices, those were characters purposefully written with different races and ethnicities in mind. A ship captained by an American and piloted by a Russian? In the height of the cold war? A black woman who gives orders to white men, and they just obey? Today that's normal, not so in the 60's. Why do you think the name "Martin Luthor King Jr." was repeated so often these past few days?
Definitly not! It was shaky during the first season (hey, they didn't know what kind of show they were making yet, first seasons need to be tolerated a bit), the second season was AWFULL, BUT that year there was a writer's strike, so blame the union. TNG took off with Best of Both Worlds (end of s2, start of s3), and the best years were 3, 4 and 5. 6 and 7 were still much better than one and two, but by then they had momentum, the actors and writers were comfortable with what they were doing, and they had a few good ideas in stock.
They still managed to do completly insane crap like take a Geordie ep about new shield technology and make it a Beverley ep where she suddenly goes to shield technology conferences for no apparent reson. Or take the great idea for a 2 parter about why there's so many humanoids all over the place and squeeze it into one hour, spoiling it much in the process.
Berman deserve very little credit, and Roddenberry deserves very little blame (I won't say he's a saint, but it's his eutopian vision that made the show something more than the drivel Enterprise is).
A quote from the Chief U.S. weapons hunter on the absence of WMDs in a thread about the U.S. saying there's no WMDs... off-topic? WOW! Now THAT is blindly pushing an agenda!
I hope some honest moderators will go through the thread to undo the dammage that bozo is doing. I doupt I'm the only one on the recieving end of this moderator abuse. Let's just hope the metamod backlash takes his moderation privileges away, he's hurting America with it.
If someone had told me twenty years ago that I'd be getting my good SciFi from a remade Battlestar Galactica while Trek and Star Wars would make my stomach turn I'd have laughed till I cried.
Indeed!
This whole "age of aquarius" thing isn't turning out as advertised;-)
I think a darker grittier Star Trek would be a good thing, but it needs good direction and writing.
DS9. Voyager. Enterprise.
Dark and gritty isn't a bad idea, but it's not what Star Trek was about. There's Firefly, New Galactica, Farscape, they do dark and gritty well. Then again, none of those had Berman in charge.
I'll never forget watching ST:TNG when the Enterprise came to a Borg cube at a season finale (I forget which, sorry)
Never forget huh?;-)
"Best of both Worlds" part one was the season 2 finale, part two was the season 3 premiere. The first Borg cube seen was in the episode "Q-Who?" where Q hurled the Enterprise in the Beta Quadrant to show them that humans weren't ready to face what the galaxy had to throw at them.
It doesn't help matters that the last few Star Trek series rely on gimmicks to pull them along. Voyager had the Borg (lots and lots and lots of Borg), and Enterprise has lots of time travel.
Of the first 4 episodes of Voyager, three ended with the time-travel-reset-button and therefore didn't actually happen. I think that's the ratio for the rest of the series too.
And lots of Borg? I think you forgot the biggest cheap-shot ever: Voyager was on the other side of Borg space, and when they got to it's border, the eye-candy alien bimbo (the one that was supposed to age 10 years for each of ours, but only ever untied her hair in the 3rd year) used her newfound magic powers to get Voyager exactly one width of a Borg space closer to the earth, said goodbye, and left them with a new babe. At least the Doctor bragged about his mad cosmetic surgery skillz when they introduced BigBoobs of Borg.
It was on a flight from Calcutta that his plane lost two engines and caught fire in flight, crashing at night in the Syrian desert. As the senior surviving officer, Roddenberry sent two Englishmen swimming across the Euphrates River in quest of the source of a light he had observed just prior to the crash impact. Meanwhile, he parleyed with nomads who had come to loot the dead. The Englishmen reached a Syrian military outpost, which sent a small plane to investigate. Roddenberry returned with the small plane to the outpost, where he broadcast a message that was relayed to Pan Am, which sent a stretcher plane to the rescue. Roddenberry later received a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his efforts during and after the crash.
Not to mention fighting with studio execs of the 60's to have a multicultural crew, having a woman in a technical job, on the bridge, and a black woman at that! He never did anything particularly impressive? sheesh.
if you think Enterprise is bad, i highly suggest you go back and watch seasons 1 and two of TNG... they are truly AWFUL. way worse than enterprise ever was. i think they get a pass because back then, people just sort of expected trek to be campy and bad.
In 1988, there was a writer's strike in Hollywood. So they used rejected scripts, or had unqualified people (*cough*B&B*cough*) write scripts.
Then you'd have to defeat the Borg (again) to get the cookie back to its baked state.
Well, the way the Borg have been in Voyager and Enterprise, throwing a raw cookie at them would probably kill 'em anyway, so that's not much of a problem.
UPN moved enterprise to friday (from its original wednesday) up against the much stronger (in that slot) stargate. This means that Sci fi fans are competing on which show they will watch, as opposed to being able to easily watch *both* which would ensure better rating for the now much less crappy Enterprise.
Why do they always do shit like that?
You have two similar shows, they can't resist putting them in conflicting time slots. This ensures that they loose part of the target audience. It's not as if I'll watch their reality-crapfests that run the rest of the week.
I know everyone loves to bash Berman, but to be honest, the problem isn't him.
You're confusing "honest" with misinformed/delusional.
I've been a Berman hater since 1991. Why? Because of a magazine article I have where he explains all that he thinks that is wrong with Star Trek. He basically lists all the reason why Star Trek became a phenomenon instead of a forgotten low-budget campy sci-fi show.
He hates the humanist message. He hates the bridge cammaraderie. He hates the para-military Starfleet mainly in charge of commercial space travel, exploration and self defense. He hates the techno-eutopia of earth. He hates the idea that humanity could grow and become better than it is now. He hates the entire message that Gene Roddenberry gave us.
He then described how he thought Star Trek should be, and you know what it was? Exactly what the first 3 years of Enterprise was: Darker, lower tech, on-ship conflicts, etc.
When Gene Roddenberry died, they had a bust of him made. That bust was in Rick Berman's office, with a blindfold and earplugs on, because he damn well knew that Gene would not approve of what he was doing to his creation. And you know what? The fans don't approve either, the commercial partners don't approve, the ratings don't approve.
The only reason his endaevours haven't COMPLETELY tanked is because of the recognizable brand-name. He's been riding the inertia of Star Trek's past quality, but he's been making nothing but crap since.
Rick Berman must die. Nothing short of this will save Star Trek: It's in the hands of am egomaniac who's been twisting something beloved by generations of sci-fi fans into his lame, insipid vision. Had he made these shows from scratch instead of abusing a known setting, he would never had made it past a single season.
I think I'm not alone in saying this, but if Rick Berman were to show up on my porch selling Star Trek cookies, I think I'd still slam the door in his face.
I wouldn't. If Rick Berman showed up at my door I've invite him in...
After a few weeks Paramount would find someone to replace him, maybe put a "in memory of Rick Berman, whereever he may be" line at the end of an episode.
Slashdot Mirror
you can't block every hole in security. Sometimes you just have to hope, right?
How's about not introducing new holes? That would be a good start.
Something made them hinky (to this day I'm not sure what) and we got passed along from officer to officer, higher and higher up the chain, and in increasingly darker and more isolated rooms. Finally we had the head of the local office interrogating uys on every aspect of our trip [...] As so often happens, money greases the skids of both business and government.
My advice is simple: Bribe early, save money. The higher up you go, the more expensive it gets.
You can get away from a cop for a 50, a judge will cost you a yatch.
GR had to quit after the second season of TNG. He was dying of cancer. He was too sick to get involved with producing TNG. That was when Berman came in and when the show started to improve.
The show started to improve when the writer strike ended.
Coincidentally, that was about the same time as when Rick "the devil" Berman seized the fact that the show's creator was dying of cancer to take over the franchise. Gene had picked him, but regreted it when he realized Berman was a studio suit kinda guy after all. Roddenberry was still interfering with Berman's twisted plans after the second season.
Buffy was produced by Fox and shown on the WB and UPN. Production companies and TV stations don't seem to be too closely linked. Then again, Start Trek has been a flagship for Paramount for years, they might not want to let it go.
Buffy is a Mutant Enemy production, it was coproduced by Fox, but that is not at all the same dynamic as the Star Trek franchise, which is completely owned by Paramount.
Yeah, because a bigger network would never take over a failing network just to get a few strong series and gut the rest in favor of novel programming. Why, you'd have to be NBC looking at Sci-Fi to do something like that; Sci-Fi would never be involved in such a ... hey, wait a minute.
... hey, waitaminute again...
Man, you know nothing about media convergence, do you?
UPN, Paramount and the Star Trek franchise are all owned by Viacom
Sci-fi and NBC are owned by General Electric and Vivendi.
Yeah, or like Sonic should be on the
False analogy: Sega backed away from the console market. When Paramount gives up ownership of all it's television networks, then you can make that analogy (hint: not gonna happen).
You said he never did anything especially impressive.
I corrected you.
Secondly, sure, Roddenberry deserves credit for his casting choices, but let's be honest here, we were talking 1966, not 1866, it was an accomplishment but not an unheralded one. By this time the country was well past the bland, white picket world of the 50's.
The show was rejected 3 times!
He got told that no one would believe a woman could be second in command of a ship, not even in 300 years.
He was told the guy with the pointy ears would scare the women!
You think that television studios were run by hippies? No, they were run by old white men, conservatives who were adults in the 50's. You are grossly underestimating the edginess of Star Trek for it's time.
Those weren't "casting" choices, those were characters purposefully written with different races and ethnicities in mind. A ship captained by an American and piloted by a Russian? In the height of the cold war? A black woman who gives orders to white men, and they just obey? Today that's normal, not so in the 60's.
Why do you think the name "Martin Luthor King Jr." was repeated so often these past few days?
TNG sucked until GR was out of the picture.
Definitly not!
It was shaky during the first season (hey, they didn't know what kind of show they were making yet, first seasons need to be tolerated a bit), the second season was AWFULL, BUT that year there was a writer's strike, so blame the union.
TNG took off with Best of Both Worlds (end of s2, start of s3), and the best years were 3, 4 and 5. 6 and 7 were still much better than one and two, but by then they had momentum, the actors and writers were comfortable with what they were doing, and they had a few good ideas in stock.
They still managed to do completly insane crap like take a Geordie ep about new shield technology and make it a Beverley ep where she suddenly goes to shield technology conferences for no apparent reson. Or take the great idea for a 2 parter about why there's so many humanoids all over the place and squeeze it into one hour, spoiling it much in the process.
Berman deserve very little credit, and Roddenberry deserves very little blame (I won't say he's a saint, but it's his eutopian vision that made the show something more than the drivel Enterprise is).
Ignorance is Strength.
Thanks for the reminder.
Ironically enough, someone modded my post "off-topic". As if disinformation and revisionist history was off-topic to this thread.
Moderation +1
30% Informative
40% Offtopic
30% Interesting
A quote from the Chief U.S. weapons hunter on the absence of WMDs in a thread about the U.S. saying there's no WMDs... off-topic? WOW! Now THAT is blindly pushing an agenda!
I hope some honest moderators will go through the thread to undo the dammage that bozo is doing. I doupt I'm the only one on the recieving end of this moderator abuse. Let's just hope the metamod backlash takes his moderation privileges away, he's hurting America with it.
If someone had told me twenty years ago that I'd be getting my good SciFi from a remade Battlestar Galactica while Trek and Star Wars would make my stomach turn I'd have laughed till I cried.
;-)
Indeed!
This whole "age of aquarius" thing isn't turning out as advertised
I think a darker grittier Star Trek would be a good thing, but it needs good direction and writing.
DS9.
Voyager.
Enterprise.
Dark and gritty isn't a bad idea, but it's not what Star Trek was about. There's Firefly, New Galactica, Farscape, they do dark and gritty well.
Then again, none of those had Berman in charge.
It really did send a chill down my spine, I think that was one of the best moments in the Trek universe ever.
Definatly. I'd say that those 2 shows (part I & II) are the best 84 minutes of Trek in the entire history of trek.
I'll never forget watching ST:TNG when the Enterprise came to a Borg cube at a season finale (I forget which, sorry)
;-)
Never forget huh?
"Best of both Worlds" part one was the season 2 finale, part two was the season 3 premiere. The first Borg cube seen was in the episode "Q-Who?" where Q hurled the Enterprise in the Beta Quadrant to show them that humans weren't ready to face what the galaxy had to throw at them.
It doesn't help matters that the last few Star Trek series rely on gimmicks to pull them along. Voyager had the Borg (lots and lots and lots of Borg), and Enterprise has lots of time travel.
Of the first 4 episodes of Voyager, three ended with the time-travel-reset-button and therefore didn't actually happen.
I think that's the ratio for the rest of the series too.
And lots of Borg? I think you forgot the biggest cheap-shot ever: Voyager was on the other side of Borg space, and when they got to it's border, the eye-candy alien bimbo (the one that was supposed to age 10 years for each of ours, but only ever untied her hair in the 3rd year) used her newfound magic powers to get Voyager exactly one width of a Borg space closer to the earth, said goodbye, and left them with a new babe.
At least the Doctor bragged about his mad cosmetic surgery skillz when they introduced BigBoobs of Borg.
Not to mention fighting with studio execs of the 60's to have a multicultural crew, having a woman in a technical job, on the bridge, and a black woman at that!
He never did anything particularly impressive? sheesh.
if you think Enterprise is bad, i highly suggest you go back and watch seasons 1 and two of TNG ... they are truly AWFUL. way worse than enterprise ever was. i think they get a pass because back then, people just sort of expected trek to be campy and bad.
In 1988, there was a writer's strike in Hollywood.
So they used rejected scripts, or had unqualified people (*cough*B&B*cough*) write scripts.
Then you'd have to defeat the Borg (again) to get the cookie back to its baked state.
Well, the way the Borg have been in Voyager and Enterprise, throwing a raw cookie at them would probably kill 'em anyway, so that's not much of a problem.
Speaking of Sci-Fi, maybe they should take it over. They've done it before.
Both UPN and the Star Trek franchise are owned by the same company. So it will never go to a competing network.
It's like saying that the next Mario game should be on PS2.
UPN moved enterprise to friday (from its original wednesday) up against the much stronger (in that slot) stargate. This means that Sci fi fans are competing on which show they will watch, as opposed to being able to easily watch *both* which would ensure better rating for the now much less crappy Enterprise.
Why do they always do shit like that?
You have two similar shows, they can't resist putting them in conflicting time slots. This ensures that they loose part of the target audience. It's not as if I'll watch their reality-crapfests that run the rest of the week.
I liked Star Trek better before it got so preachy
So, basically, you only liked the first 3 seconds of the 1967 pilot?
I know everyone loves to bash Berman, but to be honest, the problem isn't him.
You're confusing "honest" with misinformed/delusional.
I've been a Berman hater since 1991. Why? Because of a magazine article I have where he explains all that he thinks that is wrong with Star Trek. He basically lists all the reason why Star Trek became a phenomenon instead of a forgotten low-budget campy sci-fi show.
He hates the humanist message.
He hates the bridge cammaraderie.
He hates the para-military Starfleet mainly in charge of commercial space travel, exploration and self defense.
He hates the techno-eutopia of earth.
He hates the idea that humanity could grow and become better than it is now.
He hates the entire message that Gene Roddenberry gave us.
He then described how he thought Star Trek should be, and you know what it was? Exactly what the first 3 years of Enterprise was: Darker, lower tech, on-ship conflicts, etc.
When Gene Roddenberry died, they had a bust of him made. That bust was in Rick Berman's office, with a blindfold and earplugs on, because he damn well knew that Gene would not approve of what he was doing to his creation.
And you know what? The fans don't approve either, the commercial partners don't approve, the ratings don't approve.
The only reason his endaevours haven't COMPLETELY tanked is because of the recognizable brand-name. He's been riding the inertia of Star Trek's past quality, but he's been making nothing but crap since.
Rick Berman must die. Nothing short of this will save Star Trek: It's in the hands of am egomaniac who's been twisting something beloved by generations of sci-fi fans into his lame, insipid vision.
Had he made these shows from scratch instead of abusing a known setting, he would never had made it past a single season.
Dont fire the crew. Fire Berman!
Actually, what they SHOULD do is set Berman ON fire. Make a DVD out of it: I'd buy THAT for a dollar!
space-nazis?
Don't seel them short now: Space-nazi-nosferatu-vampires!
TNG made it beyond the first couple of seasons (which IMHO were some of the worst Trek episodes ever)
During the second season, there was a writer's strike. So they were using rejected scripts. No wonder they sucked. Bad.
I think I'm not alone in saying this, but if Rick Berman were to show up on my porch selling Star Trek cookies, I think I'd still slam the door in his face.
I wouldn't. If Rick Berman showed up at my door I've invite him in...
After a few weeks Paramount would find someone to replace him, maybe put a "in memory of Rick Berman, whereever he may be" line at the end of an episode.