[samwiseb]

I don't suspect it was ever within Shatner's capability to decline an appearance as the character that he was most famous for.

[Saquist]

Berman was competent in one thing only. Managing people.
He wasn't necessarily good at finding creative people
He had no creative style of his own.

TNG was Roddenberry's dream.
The people that helped construct that Dream were
Jeri Taylor
Michael Piller
Ronald D. Moore
Brannon Bragga
Rene Echevarria

Berman was credited as a writer but he only contributed ideas in the most modest of ways. He was never a "writer" anywhere else but Trek. He overseered. That's what he was good at and when he began making more writing calls that's when the show took its decline with the other series.

The Releasing of Ronald Moore was frankly asinine. Where as directors like Quintin Tarantino understood the impact of the score, Berman wanted...elevator music. 15 years later Ron Moore's soundtracks are the 10 ten best seller tracks for Star Trek. He might have been on pace to create scores on John's Williams level of recognition.

Note Berman has NO credits in Television since Star Trek.
He maintained the franchise well but in Television where you're always fighting from drowning in the declining ratings that will never...ever be enough to be called a competent producer and as Trek entered the information age it was the first causality of advancing programing like reality TV shows which were cheaper and easier to manage along with other "scripted" reality drama's that were popping up at the time.

Trek never had much competition under his rule: 28 Days, Xena, Hercules, Babylon Five, Tek Wars, Earth Final Conflict, SG-1, Sentinel, Viper. Many Failures. Hollywood was HORRIBLE at making Sci Fi at this time... Times changed.

Comparing Enterprise with Alias and 24 which came out the same year drawfs Trek best efforts under Berman. Nemesis was in production that year aswell and instead of using the studio's CONFIDENCE in Trek to bolster Enterprise as a series he manages to nose-dive the film into movie infamy. The Series languishes but dies soon after.

No one is going to higher such a person that takes a success like Trek and drives it into a nine year Coma.

[samwiseb]

"Every once in a while, declare peace." Berman managed to keep the ratings steady throughout TNG's run. For that alone, I think he deserves to be called a competent producer. Otherwise TNG might not have become a franchise (And I still sort of wish it hadn't).

I also can't acknowledge Brannon Braga or Jeri Taylor as being among the more talented people who worked under Berman during his regime of ST. I could see adding Maurice Hurley and Ira Stephen Behr to the list though.

Everything else I pretty much agree on.

[Commodore]

Originally Posted by Quark

I'm just saying that if I were Shatner, I just would have left it alone and not agreed to sign onto Generations. Unless he was bored or just didn't have anything better to do, or just wanted to be a part of TNG and leave his mark, I can't find any other reason as to why he wanted to do it. Does anyone know if there is an interview of Shatner as to why he agreed to play Kirk and kill off the character?

William Shatner: "When Rick [Berman] first called me and told me about wanting to knock off the Captain, it really didn't bother me at all. Not one bit. In fact, I got really excited, thinking 'Well, if this really is going to be Kirk's last hurrah, what better way to close the book?'"

http://mario.lapam.mo.it/films/st7.htm

Originally Posted by samwiseb

I don't suspect it was ever within Shatner's capability to decline an appearance as the character that he was most famous for.

Essentially it was this. Hindsight is always 20-20, but there was no reason for Shatner not to play the role one last time in '94. His part was integral to the movie and the money was good. As a working actor, those last two reasons are why you sign onto a movie (Nimoy passed on Generations because the role they offered him wasn't integral enough for him, so it was rewritten for Scotty; Kelley felt that the same way, so his role was rewritten for Chekov).

[kevin]

Plus, I've always been sure Shatner already has his book planned.

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by samwiseb

"Every once in a while, declare peace." Berman managed to keep the ratings steady throughout TNG's run. For that alone, I think he deserves to be called a competent producer. Otherwise TNG might not have become a franchise (And I still sort of wish it hadn't).

I also can't acknowledge Brannon Braga or Jeri Taylor as being among the more talented people who worked under Berman during his regime of ST. I could see adding Maurice Hurley and Ira Stephen Behr to the list though.

Everything else I pretty much agree on.

That's another issue I'm going to be frank about as well. "Hollywood nepotism "or the liberal good Ole' Boy System" was working strongly in Trek. Writers get burned out on a franchise. If you look at ALL series they did bring in new blood but the major players in Trek stayed the same for some 20 years.... They were the ones making the pivotable stories and at the top Berman was hedging it all to fit inside his vision of Trek.

During this time, Trek, had mild flashes of Greatness.
BUT NOTE:
That some of it was directly attributed to PARAMOUNTS intervention and dictation. DS9 would have FAILED without Paramount executives stepping in and adding Worf and the Klingon conflict in Season Four. The First two Season were awful for a starting series.

Paramount also directly stimulated Voyager into kicking Kes for Seven to boost the ratings. They were going to kick Garrett Wang instead.

Point being..
Paramount was intergal for sustaining Trek. THAT's They're job.
Berman's job was to go beyond sustaining.
A heart an lung machine may keep you alive but it doesn't allow you flourish.

[Quark]

Originally Posted by Commodore

William Shatner: "When Rick [Berman] first called me and told me about wanting to knock off the Captain, it really didn't bother me at all. Not one bit. In fact, I got really excited, thinking 'Well, if this really is going to be Kirk's last hurrah, what better way to close the book?'"

http://mario.lapam.mo.it/films/st7.htm

Thanks for that!

[martok2112]

DS9 was my favorite series, not only for all the action it had (and some gorgeous space battles) but because it was the first of the shows to have really series spanning story arcs. (Ronald D. Moore responsible for a LOT of that. )

[samwiseb]

Originally Posted by Saquist

That's another issue I'm going to be frank about as well. "Hollywood nepotism "or the liberal good Ole' Boy System" was working strongly in Trek. Writers get burned out on a franchise. If you look at ALL series they did bring in new blood but the major players in Trek stayed the same for some 20 years.... They were the ones making the pivotable stories

First of all. I've never disagreed on any of this, and it is one of my main criticisms against the eighteen-year 'second generation' or Berman Trek franchise. The feature films (particularly Generations) were heavily effected by this as well.

and at the top Berman was hedging it all to fit inside his vision of Trek.

Which goes back to what I said in my initial post. Again, I don't disagree on any of this.

During this time, Trek, had mild flashes of Greatness.
BUT NOTE:
That some of it was directly attributed to PARAMOUNTS intervention and dictation. DS9 would have FAILED without Paramount executives stepping in and adding Worf and the Klingon conflict in Season Four. The First two Season were awful for a starting series. Paramount also directly stimulated Voyager into kicking Kes for Seven to boost the ratings. They were going to kick Garrett Wang instead.

Here I'm forced to disagree.

I don't know about the areas where the studio did or didn't intervene. And (frankly) this is the first I've heard that they did. However:

All of the series (following TNG) showed a consistent and mostly-steady decline in ratings from start to finish, and each series performed worse than the one before. This means that the first two 'awful' seasons of DS9 were actually its strongest performance-wise because the numbers continued declining thereafter. The addition of Defiant, Worf and Seven into their respective series was a move of desperation, and it was widely recognized as such at the time (even among fans who seemed to approve). There is no evidence that these changes slowed the decline in any way, or had any (lasting) effect whatsoever. There is no evidence the series would have otherwise failed, or declined any faster. That's speculation.

TNG on the other hand, performed consistently if not better during its latter years. Whether it deserved to or not (especially by S7) is another story.

I also feel the need to point out that ratings decline is an issue most series struggle with. And even the best of producers are often robbed, by Circumstance, of being allowed to claim that they did more than 'sustain' their series.

The lesson not learned by Paramount (And Berman) was to stop producing Trek and give it a rest. The decisions they made instead were sort of tragically inevitable. And for that they unfortunately deserve much of the blame.

[Commodore]

The thing about VOY ditching Kes for Seven is actually a myth, but it's easy to think that was the case because of how it turned out. Originally, the idea was to have both Kes and Seven on the show:

In A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, Stephen Edward Poe states that in 1997, when producers were ironing out the details of the introduction of Seven of Nine, they had already lined up Garrett Wang (Harry Kim) to take the bullet and leave in order to free up enough budget for a new main actor. Then that year, Wang was chosen by People Magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World." Suddenly Wang was in, and Lien was out.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lien

Had it not been for People Magazine, Kim would likely have been killed off in "Scorpion."

As far as DS9, yeah, the ratings continued to go down after Worf's introduction.