http://www.brannonbraga.com/2002/May_TVG_2002.htm
The Visionaries
Producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga chart a new universe for Star Trek
while true to its past. Here, they speak to that challenge - and tell a
secret or two.
They are the Torch Bearer and the Upstart, the Architect and the Anarchist,
the Brawn and the Brat. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are the guys
responsible for honoring and preserving Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's
original vision while at the same time moving the 35-year-old franchise into
the 21st century. Cocreaters and executive producers of UPN's Enterprise
(the fourth series spin-off of Star Trek), they come to this interplanetary
party with far different backgrounds and outlooks. Berman, the Torch Bearer,
came to Paramount as a programming exec in 1984 to help launch Star Trek:
The Next Generation. He went on to cocreate (with Michael Piller) Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine and (with Piller and Jeri Taylor) Star Trek: Voyager,
serving as executive producer on both shows. Since Roddenberry's death in
1991, Berman has been the official keeper of the flame. Braga, the Upstart,
became a writer-producer on Next Generation in 1990 and joined the writing
team on Voyager in 1995. He co wrote the movies "Star Trek: Generations" and
"Star Trek: First Contact," refashioning Trek history. TV Guide met with the
duo in Berman's Paramount office in Hollywood to talk to Trek, past, present
and future.
Enterprise has reenergized Trek fans. There is encouraging buzz about the
upcoming 10th Trek movie, "Star Trek: Nemesis." So things look good, yet not
all that long ago there was concern about the health of the franchise. What'
s the long-term prognosis?
Rick Berman: I think we are in extraordinary shape. Enterprise is right on
target and a strong success for UPN, and there is great electricity about
the movie. The footage - the dailies - look more like a Ridley Scott film or
a John Woo film than a classic Trek movie. I think - contrary to rumors -
that this is very, very likely not going to be the last movie. If this one
does well as I believe it will, it will be a mere matter of weeks - make
that days - before Paramount comes to me and says, "So, when are we going to
get to work on number 11?"
Has your vision of Enterprise been fully realized? Have you altered it due
to fan response?
Braga: The characters we figures would be the Big three - Archer, T'Pol,
Trip - did turn out to be the Big Three, though Trip is even better than we
thought.
Berman: We did not want these characters to be cookie-cutter Star Trek
people who are not fazed by anything. There has been a little too much of
that. Jean-Luc Picard would go into a new alien culture and say [Berman
breaks into a dead on Patrick Stewart impression], "Oh, hello. How are you
all?" We have moved into characters who respond to new adventures, new
worlds, new life-forms much more like you and I would. Some of that is
helped by the fact that the time frame of Enterprise is closer to our own
time.
Track the evolution of Trek for us, will you, Rick? How has each new series
enhanced - or altered - the Roddenberry vision?
Berman: You got a week? Gene's original series was a landmark
accomplishment, but one that was almost canceled every year of its run and
finally canceled in 1969 after its third season. It was really the success
of the syndicated reruns in the 70's that proved Gene's vision had more than
a cult following. Ten years after the cancellation came the movie. Then came
more movies, which put Gene in the position to do another series. The Next
Generation, which I think was really his greatest triumph in that his vision
was already 21 years old at that time and still proving vital. When the
opportunity to create Deep Space Nine came along, we couldn't place the show
on yet another spaceship - since t was running concurrently with Next
Generation - so we had to come up with a new concept: a space station. With
Voyager, we were allowed to return to the spaceship format, but we made it
unique by placing a woman at the helm and stranding her and her crew on the
other side of the galaxy.
DS9 garnered great interest at first because it featured an African-American
captain [Avery Brooks], but after a while, the casting wasn't seen as all
that big a deal, as opposed to, say, Voyager, where the gender of Captain
Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] remained a subject of discussion throughout the show'
s run.
Berman: When DS9 debuted, the presence of Avery Brooks as Sisco was a
refreshing change, but there were a number of other shows with black leads
at that time, and soon after it was no longer seen as something worth
talking about, which I guess is a very positive thing. It speaks to Gene's
vision of a future where race and color wont matter.
Which brings us to Enterprise.
Berman: Well, after 526 episodes, of those three spin-offs, I felt it was
time for a big change. To me, the only direction that made any sense for us
was backward - that is, taking Gene's idea to an even earlier time when
humans weren't accustomed to space travel, when the equipment and technology
were still rough around the edges, where the could wear baseball caps and be
seen in their underwear. In other words, people much closer to us.
Does Star Trek not take on even greater resonance in the wake of September
11?
Braga: I think its optimism is even more appealing now than before. It's all
the more an escape from the horror and fear people feel.
Berman: Which is not unlike how people were feeling in the '60s, when Gene
Roddenberry started this whole thing. Kids were getting under their desks in
air-raid drills. There was the Cuban missile crisis and the Cold War. There
was then, like now, a sense of fear about the future. Will we still be here
a few years from now? Gene's idea was to assure us of a better future. It
was his great gift to us during scary times.
Suliban. Taliban. Coincidence?
Braga: Not at all. Rick named the Suliban after the Taliban. That was three
years ago. Like a lot of people, I didn't know anything about the Taliban.
We didn't draw a detailed analogy between the Suliban and the Taliban, other
than they are a vague, shadowy, scary group.
Berman: I'm not even sure it went that far. Taliban was just a mysterious,
exotic name to me. Several years ago, I went to Afghanistan - I used to make
documentary films and traveled around the world - and the Taliban regime was
just getting a stronghold there. To me, there was something incredibly
dramatic about the name Taliban - it was like something out of a Sinbad
story.
Give us a sense of how you work. At the risk of sounding mushy, do you
complete each other?
Berman: Now? Yes. Brannon and I have had a varying relationship over the
last 10 years. We started off with me being his boss's boss and ended up
with me being his partner, so the dynamic has changed. Working with him on
Enterprise has been the most fun I have ever had.
Braga: I think I speak for us when I say that we have more of a passion for
this show than for the others.
Talk about your reputation for being the Brawn and the Brat. Rick, you're
the guy who has made the muscle, the one who handles the big brass at
Paramount. Brannon, you're the irreverent one, the
shake-up-the-vision-and-see-what-we-get-guy.
Braga: The Brawn and the Brat is a highly overrated concept.
Overrated or incorrect?
Berman: It's past its time. When Brannon - if Brannon - was ever correctly
categorized as bratty, it was a long time ago. He would hate me to say this,
but he is very responsible.
Braga: I'm always looking for ways to turn a story on its ear, to shake up
the franchise. I have been accused of being iconoclastic, of not respecting
the franchise, but nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think a
week, even a day, goes by when we don't stop and say we have to keep in mind
what Star Trek is all about and not to stray too far.
Are you at war with [Roddenberry's widow] Majel Barrett Roddenberry? She
seems to have fallen out of favor with you since she started producing her
own series based on Gene Roddenberry properties.
Berman: My relationship with Majel is totally cordial; and always has been.
This is the first I've heard of a war.
She's not in the new movie.
Berman: She's not at the wedding of Riker and Deanna [the daughter of
Barrett Roddenberry's character] specifically because of a plat point. When
the adventure begins, Riker and Deanna are on their was to the planet
Betazed, where Majel's character is - but they never get there for reasons I
wont go into. I haven't discussed it with Majel, but I assume she'll be
playing the computer voice on the ship. She always has.
Reportedly, she's been a little snarky about Enterprise when speaking at fan
gatherings.
Braga: We see Enterprise as being more like the original Star Trek than the
other spin-offs, more true to Gene Roddenberry's vision. It truly gets back
to going "where no man has gone before." It's not clouded with the
geopolitics that evolved with the spin-offs. So I'm surprised to hear she's
disappointed.
For every creative decision you make, large or small, there's dissenting
chorus on the Internet. How annoying is that?
Braga: There are millions of fans and millions of opinions. You can't think
about that and still do your job.
Berman: We can't sit and balance out how the fans feel about every little
matter. When the fans feel strongly about something, we hear about it, we
listen to it, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to change
something. If there's a groundswell about something - pro or con - we try to
respond. For instance, we find out at conventions which characters seem to
be more popular, but then we're more interested in doing something about the
ones that are less popular.
Are spin-offs percolating?
Berman: No. One of the blessings of the last couple of years of Voyager is
that we had only one Trek show on the air, and I feel the same way now.
There has been so much Star Trek that we're in competition with ourselves.
One new show at a time is the healthiest thing right now.
But what if you get that call from Paramount?
Braga: {Laughing] Then I guess we'll have to pull out that old Starfleet
Academy script!
The one you claim never existed.
Berman: It doesn't exist! I can tell you in all honesty, we have never even
discussed doing a series set at Starfleet Academy, much less written one.
Brannon, you cowrote two Trek movies. How do you feel about not being
involved with the new one ["Star Trek: Nemesis"]?
Braga: I don't really think about it. I've been so immersed in Enterprise.
But when I visited the set of "Nemesis" and saw how cool everything looks, I
realized I really miss Picard and the gang. There is something about working
on a big-budget version of Star Trek that's really exciting. OK, so I'm a
little jealous.
Speaking of big budgets, why doesn't Paramount cough up more money for the
films? Do you have the dough to compete, special effects-wise, with other
films in the sci-fi genre?
Berman: There's a certain frugality involved because the studio is very well
aware of what a "Star Trek" movie will do at the box office. And they spend
enough money accordingly, so we don't get the kind of money Steven Spielberg
gets. But they still give us a lot and we have people onboard who know how
to get those dollars up on the screen. As far as the TV series is concerned,
[the studio] has been extremely generous.
But do they get it? Do they love it?
Berman: There's a great deal of respect for the franchise. The executives
here probably run the same gamut as the public. Some have a great passion
for Trek, some couldn't care less. But Brannon and I have no complaints.
People who leave our shows and go off to do something else always come back
and say, "I can't believe what it's like out there! Do you guys know how
lucky you've got it?" And my answer is always, "Yes, I do." Even after 16
years of involvement with Star Trek, I still don't take that for granted.
TV Guide
May 5-11, 2002
Pages 46 thru 48
The Visionaries
Producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga chart a new universe for Star Trek
while true to its past. Here, they speak to that challenge - and tell a
secret or two.
They are the Torch Bearer and the Upstart, the Architect and the Anarchist,
the Brawn and the Brat. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are the guys
responsible for honoring and preserving Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's
original vision while at the same time moving the 35-year-old franchise into
the 21st century. Cocreaters and executive producers of UPN's Enterprise
(the fourth series spin-off of Star Trek), they come to this interplanetary
party with far different backgrounds and outlooks. Berman, the Torch Bearer,
came to Paramount as a programming exec in 1984 to help launch Star Trek:
The Next Generation. He went on to cocreate (with Michael Piller) Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine and (with Piller and Jeri Taylor) Star Trek: Voyager,
serving as executive producer on both shows. Since Roddenberry's death in
1991, Berman has been the official keeper of the flame. Braga, the Upstart,
became a writer-producer on Next Generation in 1990 and joined the writing
team on Voyager in 1995. He co wrote the movies "Star Trek: Generations" and
"Star Trek: First Contact," refashioning Trek history. TV Guide met with the
duo in Berman's Paramount office in Hollywood to talk to Trek, past, present
and future.
Enterprise has reenergized Trek fans. There is encouraging buzz about the
upcoming 10th Trek movie, "Star Trek: Nemesis." So things look good, yet not
all that long ago there was concern about the health of the franchise. What'
s the long-term prognosis?
Rick Berman: I think we are in extraordinary shape. Enterprise is right on
target and a strong success for UPN, and there is great electricity about
the movie. The footage - the dailies - look more like a Ridley Scott film or
a John Woo film than a classic Trek movie. I think - contrary to rumors -
that this is very, very likely not going to be the last movie. If this one
does well as I believe it will, it will be a mere matter of weeks - make
that days - before Paramount comes to me and says, "So, when are we going to
get to work on number 11?"
Has your vision of Enterprise been fully realized? Have you altered it due
to fan response?
Braga: The characters we figures would be the Big three - Archer, T'Pol,
Trip - did turn out to be the Big Three, though Trip is even better than we
thought.
Berman: We did not want these characters to be cookie-cutter Star Trek
people who are not fazed by anything. There has been a little too much of
that. Jean-Luc Picard would go into a new alien culture and say [Berman
breaks into a dead on Patrick Stewart impression], "Oh, hello. How are you
all?" We have moved into characters who respond to new adventures, new
worlds, new life-forms much more like you and I would. Some of that is
helped by the fact that the time frame of Enterprise is closer to our own
time.
Track the evolution of Trek for us, will you, Rick? How has each new series
enhanced - or altered - the Roddenberry vision?
Berman: You got a week? Gene's original series was a landmark
accomplishment, but one that was almost canceled every year of its run and
finally canceled in 1969 after its third season. It was really the success
of the syndicated reruns in the 70's that proved Gene's vision had more than
a cult following. Ten years after the cancellation came the movie. Then came
more movies, which put Gene in the position to do another series. The Next
Generation, which I think was really his greatest triumph in that his vision
was already 21 years old at that time and still proving vital. When the
opportunity to create Deep Space Nine came along, we couldn't place the show
on yet another spaceship - since t was running concurrently with Next
Generation - so we had to come up with a new concept: a space station. With
Voyager, we were allowed to return to the spaceship format, but we made it
unique by placing a woman at the helm and stranding her and her crew on the
other side of the galaxy.
DS9 garnered great interest at first because it featured an African-American
captain [Avery Brooks], but after a while, the casting wasn't seen as all
that big a deal, as opposed to, say, Voyager, where the gender of Captain
Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] remained a subject of discussion throughout the show'
s run.
Berman: When DS9 debuted, the presence of Avery Brooks as Sisco was a
refreshing change, but there were a number of other shows with black leads
at that time, and soon after it was no longer seen as something worth
talking about, which I guess is a very positive thing. It speaks to Gene's
vision of a future where race and color wont matter.
Which brings us to Enterprise.
Berman: Well, after 526 episodes, of those three spin-offs, I felt it was
time for a big change. To me, the only direction that made any sense for us
was backward - that is, taking Gene's idea to an even earlier time when
humans weren't accustomed to space travel, when the equipment and technology
were still rough around the edges, where the could wear baseball caps and be
seen in their underwear. In other words, people much closer to us.
Does Star Trek not take on even greater resonance in the wake of September
11?
Braga: I think its optimism is even more appealing now than before. It's all
the more an escape from the horror and fear people feel.
Berman: Which is not unlike how people were feeling in the '60s, when Gene
Roddenberry started this whole thing. Kids were getting under their desks in
air-raid drills. There was the Cuban missile crisis and the Cold War. There
was then, like now, a sense of fear about the future. Will we still be here
a few years from now? Gene's idea was to assure us of a better future. It
was his great gift to us during scary times.
Suliban. Taliban. Coincidence?
Braga: Not at all. Rick named the Suliban after the Taliban. That was three
years ago. Like a lot of people, I didn't know anything about the Taliban.
We didn't draw a detailed analogy between the Suliban and the Taliban, other
than they are a vague, shadowy, scary group.
Berman: I'm not even sure it went that far. Taliban was just a mysterious,
exotic name to me. Several years ago, I went to Afghanistan - I used to make
documentary films and traveled around the world - and the Taliban regime was
just getting a stronghold there. To me, there was something incredibly
dramatic about the name Taliban - it was like something out of a Sinbad
story.
Give us a sense of how you work. At the risk of sounding mushy, do you
complete each other?
Berman: Now? Yes. Brannon and I have had a varying relationship over the
last 10 years. We started off with me being his boss's boss and ended up
with me being his partner, so the dynamic has changed. Working with him on
Enterprise has been the most fun I have ever had.
Braga: I think I speak for us when I say that we have more of a passion for
this show than for the others.
Talk about your reputation for being the Brawn and the Brat. Rick, you're
the guy who has made the muscle, the one who handles the big brass at
Paramount. Brannon, you're the irreverent one, the
shake-up-the-vision-and-see-what-we-get-guy.
Braga: The Brawn and the Brat is a highly overrated concept.
Overrated or incorrect?
Berman: It's past its time. When Brannon - if Brannon - was ever correctly
categorized as bratty, it was a long time ago. He would hate me to say this,
but he is very responsible.
Braga: I'm always looking for ways to turn a story on its ear, to shake up
the franchise. I have been accused of being iconoclastic, of not respecting
the franchise, but nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think a
week, even a day, goes by when we don't stop and say we have to keep in mind
what Star Trek is all about and not to stray too far.
Are you at war with [Roddenberry's widow] Majel Barrett Roddenberry? She
seems to have fallen out of favor with you since she started producing her
own series based on Gene Roddenberry properties.
Berman: My relationship with Majel is totally cordial; and always has been.
This is the first I've heard of a war.
She's not in the new movie.
Berman: She's not at the wedding of Riker and Deanna [the daughter of
Barrett Roddenberry's character] specifically because of a plat point. When
the adventure begins, Riker and Deanna are on their was to the planet
Betazed, where Majel's character is - but they never get there for reasons I
wont go into. I haven't discussed it with Majel, but I assume she'll be
playing the computer voice on the ship. She always has.
Reportedly, she's been a little snarky about Enterprise when speaking at fan
gatherings.
Braga: We see Enterprise as being more like the original Star Trek than the
other spin-offs, more true to Gene Roddenberry's vision. It truly gets back
to going "where no man has gone before." It's not clouded with the
geopolitics that evolved with the spin-offs. So I'm surprised to hear she's
disappointed.
For every creative decision you make, large or small, there's dissenting
chorus on the Internet. How annoying is that?
Braga: There are millions of fans and millions of opinions. You can't think
about that and still do your job.
Berman: We can't sit and balance out how the fans feel about every little
matter. When the fans feel strongly about something, we hear about it, we
listen to it, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to change
something. If there's a groundswell about something - pro or con - we try to
respond. For instance, we find out at conventions which characters seem to
be more popular, but then we're more interested in doing something about the
ones that are less popular.
Are spin-offs percolating?
Berman: No. One of the blessings of the last couple of years of Voyager is
that we had only one Trek show on the air, and I feel the same way now.
There has been so much Star Trek that we're in competition with ourselves.
One new show at a time is the healthiest thing right now.
But what if you get that call from Paramount?
Braga: {Laughing] Then I guess we'll have to pull out that old Starfleet
Academy script!
The one you claim never existed.
Berman: It doesn't exist! I can tell you in all honesty, we have never even
discussed doing a series set at Starfleet Academy, much less written one.
Brannon, you cowrote two Trek movies. How do you feel about not being
involved with the new one ["Star Trek: Nemesis"]?
Braga: I don't really think about it. I've been so immersed in Enterprise.
But when I visited the set of "Nemesis" and saw how cool everything looks, I
realized I really miss Picard and the gang. There is something about working
on a big-budget version of Star Trek that's really exciting. OK, so I'm a
little jealous.
Speaking of big budgets, why doesn't Paramount cough up more money for the
films? Do you have the dough to compete, special effects-wise, with other
films in the sci-fi genre?
Berman: There's a certain frugality involved because the studio is very well
aware of what a "Star Trek" movie will do at the box office. And they spend
enough money accordingly, so we don't get the kind of money Steven Spielberg
gets. But they still give us a lot and we have people onboard who know how
to get those dollars up on the screen. As far as the TV series is concerned,
[the studio] has been extremely generous.
But do they get it? Do they love it?
Berman: There's a great deal of respect for the franchise. The executives
here probably run the same gamut as the public. Some have a great passion
for Trek, some couldn't care less. But Brannon and I have no complaints.
People who leave our shows and go off to do something else always come back
and say, "I can't believe what it's like out there! Do you guys know how
lucky you've got it?" And my answer is always, "Yes, I do." Even after 16
years of involvement with Star Trek, I still don't take that for granted.
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