Trek set mood down; Berman out?
by Doc on Jan.31, 2004, under Television
Cinescape is running a rumor about the mood on the set of Star Trek: Enterprise (not good), but also that Paramount prez Garry Hart might consider concessions to UPN to keep its franchise alive – and that could include ousting production staff, including long-time show runner Rick Berman. I think I hear cheering…
February 1st, 2004 on 3:59 pm
Yay! Yay! Yay!
Let’s just hope that they can find someone who thinks of Star Trek as a wonderful story instead of a “franchise.” And that they start hiring real writers instead of “TV writers”.
February 1st, 2004 on 4:44 pm
Re:Yay! Yay! Yay!
Well, Fred Frieberger passed away last year, so he can’t kill another show…(he did the last season of both the original Star Trek and Space: 1999…
February 2nd, 2004 on 3:00 pm
Fire them already!
From what I have heard from cast members griping at conventions, is that Berman is not the only problem. Both him and a number of cast members partake in what is called “Pissing on the script”, altering the script in various ways to include more of a particular cast member, or other things. Some of the scripts were said to be pretty decent before this, but with the rather large number of them with plotlines copied right from TOS, I doubt the validity of that statement as well. At present, the “franchise” as it is, is severely damaged by the presence of Enterprise. Personally, I feel the only viable path left is to clean out the production team, cancel the show, declare it non-canon to the rest of the series, and start over with something else.
February 9th, 2004 on 7:28 pm
Re:Fire them already!
I like Enterprise, mostly because its better than most of the other stuff on TV, but I’ve been much disappointed with it.
At this point I think its certainly salvagable, but they’d have to get some really good writing in, and I don’t think the management there can/will do it.
I still think the best thing to do would be to create a Trek-universe anthology series where they tell stories from the Trek universe often changing actors and sets. Short stories could take only one episode, long stores could take 4 or 5, or as many as it takes to tell the story. They could pick up loose threads from all the other series, expand on alien races (they can set stories in any alien setting without trying to work the Enterprise into the story somehow), jump forward and backward in time to show details about historical events and trace their effects (these could be done as 1 or 2 part episodes sprinkled among the others. Good writers could put in some very cool surprises, perhaps a minor character who keeps cropping up in key places in various historical scenes, but who remains mostly unnoticed until viewers finally peice together what is going on. (preferably without excessive leading by writers, not everthing has to be as obvious as the plots in traditional Trek, this kind of thing would lend depth to the series)).