XPost: alt.startrek, alt.tv.star-trek, alt.tv.star-trek.enterprise   
   From: fluidstates_NO+SPAM@REMOVE-ME.verizon.IHATESPAM.SPAM_VAC.com   
      
   "George Peatty"  wrote in message   
   news:lll152p0q9vf02o2rval7d13kirfppfhre@4ax.com...   
   > On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:07:32 +1200, Anybody    
   > wrote:   
   >>Beavis & Butthead were never actually interested in making "Star Trek"   
   >>and were simply trying to boost their own careers by being on a big   
   >>name project ... which they failed miserably at since they're both   
   >>extremely hopeless (as proven when one of them made their own show   
   >>which was quickly cancelled).   
   >   
   > The jury may be out on Braga, but Berman's career helming Trek has been an   
   > unqualified success:  25 *years* worth of episodes, and millions - perhaps   
   > *billions* of dollars on Paramount's bottom line.  As a TV producer he   
   > deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Aaron Spelling, Jerry   
   > Bruckheimer, and Dick Wolf.   
      
   That really depends.  Berman's helming of Trek at the beginning was   
   *exactly* that.../helming/.  His decisions were great and far-reaching but   
   in the perfect example of what a television producer should, and should not,   
   accomplish.   
      
   Berman taking control of Star Trek was a Trek fully outfitted with the   
   creative individuals necessary to make the show function as it stood.   
   Producers make the money decisions, directors make the creative decisions.   
   This is the way the Hollywood system works and Berman was brought into Star   
   Trek because he knew the *business* of television.  In that he succeeded.   
      
   HOWEVER Berman - **by his own words** - was not and IS not a Star Trek fan.   
   He is a Hollywood man.  When Mr. Berman started taking greater and greater   
   hand in the everyday creative process beyond the business of keeping the   
   show running...Star Trek started to founder.  BIG TIME.  Berman alienated   
   known Star Trek writers, writers with a history of knowing both the fan base   
   and the "canon", which in Hollywood-speak is the "Writer's Guide".  Some of   
   them - Fontana - helped write that very guide.  It is a known fact that many   
   known creative entities in the Hollywood business started to get strong cold   
   shoulders from Berman's treatment of them - and they started leaving.  One   
   well known screenwriter felt so alienated he not only walked away from Star   
   Trek television but vocalized this to many.   
      
   I am babbling but if Berman would have STAYED a producer - in the proper,   
   classic "producer" mold, then for SURE (a) Trek would have survived and (b)   
   he would go down as one of the best Hollywood producers around.  But Rick   
   Berman thought he would start playing with the Star Trek pattern, start   
   rewriting Star Trek to fit his own image.   
      
   And everything blew up.   
      
   So, as for Berman...no.  Regretfully his early, wonderful years of helming   
   Trek is too strongly offset with his complete heavy-handed /botching/ of   
   Trek thereafter.  And since he both produced and wrote many of the episodes   
   which sealed Star Trek's long-term fate, the Buck must Stop Here, with him.   
      
   Failure, please step forward - your name is Richard B. Berman.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)