Where is she?

[Equinox2003]

I have since been reminded that Berman has been with the Trek
franchise since 87. True, but it was after Gene's death in 91 that
Berman took over, hence, I listed 91 as the year Berman has kept
Trek running since.

[Oberleutnant]

I'm not saying that B&B should be running a franchise as rich and important as Star Trek, but it's not their fault that TNG and rest of the modern Trek are so pussified. Blame Gene Roddenberry who wanted to show a more "civilized" and "enlightened" Federation society, which equips its personnell with phasers that look like lady shavers. After Nicholas Meyer introduced his wonderful militarized movie-Trek, Gene was angered and created TNG in his liking.

Really, some of the things that many here blame on Bermann and Braga should be targeted at Gene instead.

[StarshipTitanic]

I'm not saying that B&B should be running a franchise as rich and important as Star Trek, but it's not their fault that TNG and rest of the modern Trek are so pussified. Blame Gene Roddenberry who wanted to show a more "civilized" and "enlightened" Federation society, which equips its personnell with phasers that look like lady shavers. After Nicholas Meyer introduced his wonderful militarized movie-Trek, Gene was angered and created TNG in his liking.

Really, some of the things that many here blame on Bermann and Braga should be targeted at Gene instead.

Were they obligated to follow his vision? No.

[Lord Pounder]

Of the Post OT Trek i've enjoyed DS9 to be honest. It was later that i found out B&B had little to do with DS9. Voyager itself had such potential. The plot looks so good on paper. Then the series started. The get tech in one episode that dissappears in the next. We get a holo doc trying to be Data, when that fails we get a Borg to do the same. We get the Q. The best part of DS9 is that the Q where rarely involved. Just the once IIRC.

[RedImperator]

Thanks very much for your opinion Red. Care to clear up a few points?

Yeah, undoubetly there are some me toos running around here

I know. And I seem to recall reading an annoucment that said to
stop doing that...and you were the one who wrote it. Ain't this
something? the guy makes an announcment telling people to
stop me-tooing and then he tells me I should not even comment
when I see people doing it.

Did you miss the part about how I'm the moderator of the forum in which I posted that announcement? Have you also noticed how I don't run around other forums and tell people to stop spamming? I don't have any authority to tell members in other forums how to behave, and neither do you. And before you jump on me for this, my final point to you was a suggestion, not a threat. You may feel free to continue to do whatever you like, including squealing about spam. Just don't act surprised when people tell you they don't want to hear your shit.


You also seemed to miss the part where I said you can comment on the me-tooing without being a whining, bossy little bitch. Other members have (seanrobertson comes to mind).

As for the comment about B&B runnning Trek into the ground, all
I can say is Berman has kept Trek in production since 1991 and
Braga helped him gross 281, 012,773 at the box office.
Name ONE other fiction show that has been around since 91.
That is what you call running something into the ground?

Law and Order debuted in 1990. The Simpsons season 1 was 1989. That's two, and neither of them had a built-in audience base or marketing machine, and they didn't have the advantage of being the network flagship from day one (the Simpsons later became one, but if it had failed in its first season, it would have gotten the axe and nobody would have shed a tear at Fox). And they've been pulling better ratings than Star Trek since their first season.


B&B did not run one show continuiously from 1991-2003, nor did they have more than minimal involvement in DS9. Braga, IIRC, didn't come on as Voyager executive producer until season 4. The last two movies were critical disasters and box-office flops. UPN could run a test pattern in Enterprise's time slot and get the same ratings. Convention attendance is declining, third-party developers are walking out on contracts, toy and game sales are down, and interest among the general public is as low as it's been since NBC cancelled TOS.

You could call all of this the market's fault, and you'd be partially right. VOY and ENT faced competition from shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies like The Matrix that TNG never had to. But Jesus Christ, open your eyes--the quality of the writing on the last two series has been awful, and that's strangling the franchise. Can you honestly claim that the scripts we're seeing on Enterprise are as good as TOS, TNG, or DS9? As good as their competition on other networks? And even if you think they're just great, the public, the critics, and a lot of the fans don't agree with you at all, and enough of them are jumping ship to put this franchise in serious trouble. Ultimately, the blame has to fall on the heads of the two men who write a lot of the episodes and have to approve the rest, along with every other major decision made on the show--B&B.

Glancing over your post I see the standard "you must worship all
people with big post count" stuff standard newcomer tradition in
most places *yawn*

Nice strawman. If you'd been attacking an argument Spanky had made, nobody would have said a word. What YOU were doing was presuming to lecture a member of the forum with 7000 posts about the rules of the board.

By the way, I did not give any mods an order. I commented that
in accordance with your announcment that all the me tooing
should be stopped. If you did not like hearing it, I do not care.

This thread is fit to be locked.

What does that look like to you?

And let's get something straight here: first of all, my announcement applies to the Hall of Shame. I don't have the power to set the rules in PST and I damn well don't have the power to enforce them. And if I don't, YOU sure as fuck don't have the right to tell the mods to lock threads and tell other members what to post.

[Equinox2003]

Law & Order, The Simpsons. I see. This would put B&B in a most
unique group then. Of the entire fiction realm of entertainment,
3 sets of producers have managed to keep going since 91.
I am talking about the Trek franchise not just one show of it.
This would hardly make them the buffoons they are made out to be
on occasion.
I have no problem with people saying that they think the B&B Trek
era is a joke. And no, I do not think everything they touch is gold.
The Voyager Ep 'Futures End" had the biggest violation of Trek
history that I know of, and the last season of Voyager had, if
you ask me, only 2 shows that were not garbage.
However when I approach a thread, and what I would have said,
has already been said, I will not waste space by repeating it.
Hence, my 'bitching'.

I have no intention of "jumping on" you about that announcment,
I knew you had a reason for contradicting it, and brought it up in
hopes of finding out why. And now I have, the reason was you
were talking about a different forum. I thought "rules were rules"
and as such, thought they should be followed.
Yes, I did say "fit to be locked" I thought it was. As it should be
clear to see, I actually listen to mods. Did I not 'bitch' over
people seemingly not listening to you announcement? I do not
consider saying the above "giving mods orders"
And in the end, I do not think you had a problem with anything I
said, I think you had a problem with the fact that it came from
somebody with a low post count. No harm, No foul. Groups have
always hazed newcomers.

[RedImperator]

Law & Order, The Simpsons. I see. This would put B&B in a most
unique group then. Of the entire fiction realm of entertainment,
3 sets of producers have managed to keep going since 91.
I am talking about the Trek franchise not just one show of it.
This would hardly make them the buffoons they are made out to be
on occasion.

Those are the two I could think of off the top of my head, and they ARE a single series, not a multi-series franchise (though L&O now has, IIRC, two or three successful spin-offs). The main difference is that L&O, and to a lesser extent The Simpsons, have had to survive in a much more competitive environment and didn't have a built-in fan base to start. Nor were they continuiations of earlier series (well, The Simpsons sorta was, but honestly, who remembers The Tracy Ullman Show?)

Bergman and Braga are primarily responsible for Voyager and Enterprise, which have a significant and enormous advantage over any most other series on TV: VOY, and then ENT, are the flagship series for UPN, and as such are virtually immune to cancellation. It's telling that Firefly was pulling better ratings than ENT in a worse time slot and with virtually no promotion from Fox (the fucking PILOT was preempted, for Chrissakes), and yet it was axed before the first season was finished. Space: Above and Beyond was drawing more viewers than DS9 and Babylon 5 and was killed after one season. You can't compare the success of Bergman and Braga to that of Dick Wolf or Matt Groening/James L. Brooks, because they were given tremendous advantages to start with--and have largely squandered them. Yeah, they've kept Star Trek on the air since 1991, but so could almost anyone else, and it's tempting to imagine what Trek could have been like these last 12 years if better people had been at the helm.

[Wicked Pilot]

No harm, No foul. Groups have
always hazed newcomers.

Oh boo fucking hoo. We don't haze newcomers, we haze annoying cock suckers like yourself who cannot find anything better to do than defend two fellow cock suckers who have ruined a franchise most of use cared deeply about. Cry me a river you wininy little bitch.

[Uraniun235]

I'm not saying that B&B should be running a franchise as rich and important as Star Trek, but it's not their fault that TNG and rest of the modern Trek are so pussified. Blame Gene Roddenberry who wanted to show a more "civilized" and "enlightened" Federation society, which equips its personnell with phasers that look like lady shavers. After Nicholas Meyer introduced his wonderful militarized movie-Trek, Gene was angered and created TNG in his liking.

Really, some of the things that many here blame on Bermann and Braga should be targeted at Gene instead.

When did Roddenberry step out due to health problems? Season 3 IMO was the best season of TNG.

[Equinox2003]

Oh boo fucking hoo.

Snips homo-erotic ramblings of Wicked Pilot.

Sorry Pilot, I am not gay. But thank you for giving me a reason
to squeeze one more post out of this thread.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Shut the hell up, you snivelling little worm...

[Wicked Pilot]

Snips homo-erotic ramblings of Wicked Pilot.

Sorry Pilot, I am not gay. But thank you for giving me a reason
to squeeze one more post out of this thread.

You brought it up homo.

[Macross]

Oh come now. How many holodeck traps the crew episodes were there in TNG?

Voyager was fun, and LESS inclined to technobabble than TNG! It was still present, of course, but not more so than TNG or DS9. I don't want to go into a whole diatribe about Why I Like Voyager though. Let's keep it on topic.

I haven't finished the book, but as I said, so far it treats Voyager's return to Earth very well. Has anyone else read it?

Your joking right? Voyager was nothing but technobabble! I will admit that the technobabble got bad on TNG after a while, but it was nowhere near as bad as the technobabble on Voyager.

[Lord Poe]

Your joking right? Voyager was nothing but technobabble!

I don't agree. Voyager had a lot of good stories, and fun stories that had nothing to do with technobabble storywise.

I will admit that the technobabble got bad on TNG after a while, but it was nowhere near as bad as the technobabble on Voyager.

Again, I disagree. The technobabble on Voyager was no WORSE than it was on TNG or DS9.

[Macross]

Your joking right? Voyager was nothing but technobabble!

I don't agree. Voyager had a lot of good stories, and fun stories that had nothing to do with technobabble storywise.

I will admit that the technobabble got bad on TNG after a while, but it was nowhere near as bad as the technobabble on Voyager.

Again, I disagree. The technobabble on Voyager was no WORSE than it was on TNG or DS9.

Im no expert on Voyager, as I only watched it first run, but I find Voyager to be just the opposite. I found a lot of its stories to be boring, unimaginative, and rely too heavily on technobabble. There were just far to many instances where the problem of the week was resolved though technobabble instead of a real solution. But thats just my opinion.

[Darth Wong]

As for the comment about B&B runnning Trek into the ground, all I can say is Berman has kept Trek in production since 1991 and Braga helped him gross 281, 012,773 at the box office. Name ONE other fiction show that has been around since 91. That is what you call running something into the ground?

Yes, since it was done at the cost of customer goodwill.

Let me tell you a little story: in the 1970s and 1980s, the managers of GM's Cadillac division were winning promotions and monster bonuses because each of them in succession was generating record profits. Their method was simple: cut costs while keeping the price high and banking on customer goodwill to keep sales up.

This works ... for a while. But what eventually happens is that the brand name becomes tarnished, and eventually loses its value completely. That is what happened to Cadillac, which has never recovered the loss of brand-name value suffered during the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s when they allowed BMW and Mercedes to basically take the North American luxury car market away from them. By the late 1980s, the name "Cadillac" was a joke, and the short-sighted tactics of the past had finally caught up to them. Cadillac, like the rest of GM, was hemorrhaging money.

Star Trek is in exactly the same boat. They reduced quality, stopped taking creative risks, used hack writers, and banked on brand-name recognition to keep butts in the seats. This worked ... for a while. And you are still trying to use the successes of the past as justification for the present, using pretty much the same logic that the late 1980s managers of Cadillac undoubtedly tried to use in their own defense at board meetings.

Honestly ... trying to use the cumulative grosses of all Star Trek movies over the last 12 years in order to distract from the fact that the latest Trek movie got its ass kicked by "Maid in Manhattan"? Let's not even discuss the TV shows that are kicking Enterprise's ass. Your little dodge is a classic example of boardroom evasiveness, and the combined gross you cling to is not even all that impressive: less than $300M for what, four films?

Face it: B&B are running Trek into the ground. You can do your "Baghdad Bob" impression all you like, but you can't erase sagging ratings and pitiful box-office performance.

[Robert Treder]

Name ONE other fiction show that has been around since 91.

The pilot for "The Simpsons" aired in December of 1989, and the first episode of the first season aired in January of 1990. And it's still going, and it hasn't turned into a shitty, basically out-of-continuity prequel spinoff series, either.

EDIT: Which I see Red Imperator already pointed out. But it's important enough to reiterate.

[RedImperator]

Honestly ... trying to use the cumulative grosses of all Star Trek movies over the last 12 years in order to distract from the fact that the latest Trek movie got its ass kicked by "Maid in Manhattan"? Let's not even discuss the TV shows that are kicking Enterprise's ass. Your little dodge is a classic example of boardroom evasiveness, and the combined gross you cling to is not even all that impressive: less than $300M for what, four films?

Face it: B&B are running Trek into the ground. You can do your "Baghdad Bob" impression all you like, but you can't erase sagging ratings and pitiful box-office performance.

It's even worse than that. VOY and ENT was and is the flagship of UPN (wrestling gets better ratings, but they pay for the right to broadcast it). Voyager launched the entire network. They've always gotten the sweetest time slot, the best promotion, and the full power of Trek's built in marketing machine. B&B have gotten unprecedented support from the network and the studio and are as immune to cancellation as any shown on TV. With all that, they're routinely pulling ratings under 3.0/5, and Nemesis lost sixty million dollars once the cost of promotion is factored in. I could get 3.0 ratings with home movies of me taking a dump--this is Star Trek for Chrissakes, not some piece of shit summer replacement. The ratings they're getting are an absolute disgrace. How Paramount hasn't fired them yet is beyond me.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

No the best ending would have been a reconning like that at the end of the oddessy....

Fed. Judges: They are all Maquee Sympasizers and Traitors
Chakotay: Your the real traitors

*The whole of voyager's crew kills everyone at starfleet command, Tuvok starts incorperating the chow yun-fat twin phasor's mojo, Also since phasors are impossible to aim anyways, everyone else starts adopting the quinten taritino sideways shooting style, and actually hit something....

Don't forget about the part where Torres finally lapses into Klingbonics after seven years, and where 7 of 9 finally just breaks down and starts giving the crew celebratory lap-dances. By the way, Wild Karrde, I have to give you props on the sig-pic. Never thought I'd see a rodent strangling a cat.

[Lord Pounder]

Snips homo-erotic ramblings of Wicked Pilot.

Sorry Pilot, I am not gay. But thank you for giving me a reason
to squeeze one more post out of this thread.

You brought it up homo.

As one of the actual homo's i'd ask you both nicely to knock that off please. Also what i'd ask is that n00d's mind thier place and stop dictating the boards attitude. There are many people who've bene here since the start who wouldn't even try and throw their weight arround like that. This is SD.Net Equinox the only dictators we tollerate are mods.

[Darth Wong]

Law & Order, The Simpsons. I see. This would put B&B in a most unique group then. Of the entire fiction realm of entertainment, 3 sets of producers have managed to keep going since 91.

Actually, that is not even remotely analogous. The Simpsons and Law&Order have persisted in their original series. Star Trek, on the other hand, quickly gets stale with each new incarnation and the only reason the series is still around is that they keep trying new spin-offs because they can't think of a way to keep old ones fresh.

If we use your logic, then we should treat "Cheers" and "Frasier" as a single show.

[RedImperator]

This is SD.Net Equinox the only dictators we tollerate are mods.

You're Goddamn right.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Law & Order also has two spinoff series (Special Victems Unit and Criminal Intent) for dramatic diversity, not for better ratings or to "try it again", as B&B seem to do ST (except they seem to "try it again" by doing the exact same thing).

Is it appropriate to mention that the BBC ran Doctor Who from 1963 to 1989, for 26 seasons?

[The Yosemite Bear]

At least Mulder & Skully knew when to hang up thier guns, B5 had a good six year run and until crusade was far better in it's worst then it's rip-off counterpart was on average/best. SG-1 has lasted since '95 on cable. Hell even with BBC raping them The Doctor still manages to pull in decent enthusiasm...

[The Yosemite Bear]

Law & Order, The Simpsons. I see. This would put B&B in a most unique group then. Of the entire fiction realm of entertainment, 3 sets of producers have managed to keep going since 91.

Actually, that is not even remotely analogous. The Simpsons and Law&Order have persisted in their original series. Star Trek, on the other hand, quickly gets stale with each new incarnation and the only reason the series is still around is that they keep trying new spin-offs because they can't think of a way to keep old ones fresh.

If we use your logic, then we should treat "Cheers" and "Frasier" as a single show.

All in the Family, Jefforsons, Rhonda, Gloria, Archie Bunker's Place, 112 Hauser St would be more to the point...