![]() Coming off the success of the third season, everything seemed much more relaxed, despite the fact that most of the show’s writing staff had quit. The gaps between the first three seasons had been quite traumatic and difficult, with the show in turmoil behind-the-scenes. It’s quite telling that the gap between the third and fourth seasons was the first point in the show’s run that Berman actually had time to write a script. And when I did manage to free up a little time, I wrote one episode, and then the next series I wrote another episode. The job I had, overseeing the scripts and giving notes, being in charge of production, being in charge of casting, and all of the editing and the post-production, was so time-consuming that I very rarely visited the set. I had worked on and done a lot of writing on The Big Blue Marble series and some other things that that I had written. I had done a lot of writing prior to coming to Los Angeles. Discussing it in the documentary Relativity, he explains that he had always planned to write for the show, but had simply never found the time: The relationship between Rick Berman and Star Trek will get more complex in the years ahead, but Brothers is notable as Berman’s first script for the series. Whatever the quality of the Star Trek released that year, that was a production peak unfathomable when The Next Generation was first rumoured. It’s unlikely – for better or worse – that we would ever have had that hyper-saturated Star Trek season between 19, with one show coming, one show going, another continuing and a movie released. It’s unlikely that there would have been one spin-off, let alone three. ![]() Then again, without Berman, the franchise would never have managed to tap into the early nineties zeitgeist as thoroughly as it did. The most obvious weakness is that it did remove a lot of the show’s distinctive “character.” The music became a lot more bland and the sets were never allowed to be quite as atmospheric and stylised as they had been in early adventures like Hide & Q and The Arsenal of Freedom. The most obvious strength is that the fact that Berman’s ruthless attempts to push The Next Generation out of the shadow of its predecessor forced the series to determine its own identity. He may have been in charge of Star Trek: Insurrection, but he was completely outside the blast radius of Star Trek: Nemesis.Īgain, like Berman’s general philosophy, there are strengths and drawbacks to this approach. Michael Piller only oversaw two seasons of Voyager. At the risk of being cynical, it also helps that Piller was essentially forced out of the franchise at the point where things really began to go downhill. It’s easy to see why he tends to take the lion’s share of the credit for salvaging The Next Generation. Piller was a more interesting and dynamic creative force, and one interested in really pushing the boundaries of what Star Trek could be. Rick Berman is just as pivotal a figure in the rejuvenation and success of The Next Generation as Michael Piller was. Rick Berman’s vision was pretty much perfectly in line with the franchise when it was at the height of its popularity in the early nineties. However, Berman’s critics tend to overlook one important fact about the man. They really can’t be ignored when talking about the grand sweeping history of Star Trek. These are all complaints that can justifiably be made about Berman. Given Berman’s production style, it feels strangely appropriate that Brothers is so carefully and meticulously structured and constructed. He’d only write one more episode of The Next Generation before the show went off the air. Berman had been serving as producer on the show since Encounter at Farpoint, but this was his first scripting contribution. Following the monumental season-bridging epic that was The Best of Both Worlds and the breathing space afforded by Family, Brothers is a good old-fashioned science-fiction adventure story revolving around one of the show’s most popular character and really written to satisfy a laundry list of Star Trek tropes and conventions.Īlthough its notable for maintaining a thematic consistency that is threaded through the fourth season, and also for affording Brent Spiner to play three different roles, the most striking aspect of Brothers from a production point of view is the fact that it is written by Rick Berman. Check back daily for the latest review.īrothers is Star Trek: The Next Generation getting back to business at usual. This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition.
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