Roddenberry Disliked Berman

[StarshipTitanic]

I’m of the opinion that you don’t get a free pass to have your plot be goofy, nonsensical bullshit simply because you throw in some social commentary. Social commentary is fine, but it doesn’t excuse the ridiculousness of Roman Planet.

I don’t mean to sound like a critical hard-ass, but the plots of Gangster Planet, Wild West Planet, etc. were absolutely nonsensical crap by pretty much any standard. I’m completely baffled by how trek fans could complain about Berman’s stories when much of the stuff on the original series was orders of magnitude worse.

It's called setting. Did you sit through each of those episodes in disgust because the setting was disagreeable? It's telling when you rely on superficial details to make a decision. Do these 6-7 TOS episodes compare to entire seasons of bad plots allowed past Berman by Berman?

[nasor]

It's called setting. Did you sit through each of those episodes in disgust because the setting was disagreeable?

Well, yes. I consider 1920s era Chicago to be a jarringly improper setting for a show about future interstellar exploration.

It's telling when you rely on superficial details to make a decision.

Do you really consider setting to be a ‘superficial detail’? I think most people regard setting as a one of the most critical parts of a story.

Do these 6-7 TOS episodes compare to entire seasons of bad plots allowed past Berman by Berman?

I’m not saying that Berman’s stuff is any good – in fact I agree that most of it was/is pretty crappy. But I think most of the Berman-haters would do well to remember that a great deal of the original series episodes that were made under Roddenberry weren’t any better, and that the absolute worst star trek episodes were all pre-Berman.

[General Zod]

Do you really consider setting to be a ‘superficial detail’? I think most people regard setting as a one of the most critical parts of a story.

the setting is largely superficial to the story itself. a truly excellently written story can be taken and put just about any time period or backdrop and still work. the setting is typically only essential inasmuch as it determines the genre of the story.

as an example, take cowboy bebop the anime. you can take the majority of its storylines, set them in any era, or location and it would still work. the actual setting is largely inconsequential.

I’m not saying that Berman’s stuff is any good – in fact I agree that most of it was/is pretty crappy. But I think most of the Berman-haters would do well to remember that a great deal of the original series episodes that were made under Roddenberry weren’t any better, and that the absolute worst star trek episodes were all pre-Berman.

the number of shitty episodes pre-berman is relatively minor compared to the number of shitty episodes post berman, however.