Enchantermon on 29/4/2006 at 14:43

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Um.....what?

Wyclef on 29/4/2006 at 18:29

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I never used my Heir to the Empire roleplaying manual because I had no friends who were interested in playing :(

Parker'sSire on 30/4/2006 at 14:54

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He was. He claims to have never seen a ST episode before taking over the movie group. Just knew what he as doing and listened to what the fans wanted; he picked the Khan thing while screening the whole series at home. He immediately "got it", unlike other studio people and some game producers who still don't.
but he's not there now... different people, same idea. But he may have had the right idea. Keep the older fans by staying close to what they love, but build new ones with new production values, modern stories, etc. We'll see.
... I hadn't thought of this before, but the some of the best ST seems to have been put together by people who never had anything to do with ST or didn't know much about it at first. e.g. Bennett, director Nicholas Meyer (Khan, The Undiscovered Country), basically every writer during the first year of the orig series... Maybe Abrams will do it justice.


Dia, you are a nice lady.

And you're right. I'll bet they wouldn't let B&B get within 50 miles of this project.


Actually, Paramount did basically "can" him pretty early on. Ill health, true, but in reality, the first season of TNG was considered so "bad" that they had brought in Berman, then made him the guy in charge. Roddenberry still had the fans behind him (remember, he was the "Great Bird of the Galaxy" and could say or do no wrong) but had very little, if anything to do with ST after that. He, apparently, had nothing like story or script approval. They even became pretty tick'd off that his wife Majel was still the computer voice and played Troy's mother. They couldn't get rid of her. Lots of politics. Particularly after he died. Notive that "Enterprise" orig is not have the words Star Trek in the title? That was also a shot at the Roddenbery family
The biggest changes when Roddenberry died concerned money and came at the fan's expense... fans used to do a lot of fan fiction, prop & costume & model building and selling, lots of web sites & I.P. use (if that's a correct way to word it), etc. that was, technically, copyright infringment.
Roddenberry, for all his faults (sorry Dia, but he was not known to be the nicest of people) DID believe that the fans WERE Star Trek and loved that they did stuff like this. He recognized that they were the ones who kept it alive all these years.
After he died, Paramount started sending cease and desist letters out like crazy and permanently PO'd the core fanbase in ways that the studio either didn't "get", or didn't care about. Paramount got their money from all the toy rights, etc but lost a lot of credibility and good will with fans.
Very bad move.

Berman et co. did build the story lines in TNG that kept it going for 7 years. But I still think they were better at working w/other people's ideas than coming up with their own from scratch. I think they screwed it up, but it happened long after Roddenberry died. And, he died right before ST6 was released... they would have screwed up the movies when they started the Next Gen movies whether Roddenberry was alive or not.

Parker'sSire on 30/4/2006 at 20:33

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I feel your pain, but since he didn't have much to do with ST anymore (outside of the fan connection) he probably wouldn't have had much to say about the TNG movies. In fact, he said that he considered ST-5 to be "apocryphal" and probably not to be seen as 'real" canon events- he didn't get script approval, even though they used to tell the fans that he did.

Let's see..TNG movie writers:
Generations:Berman, Braga, series producer Ronald Moore
First Contact: Berman, Braga, series producer Ronald Moore
Insurrection: Berman, Pillar
Nemesis: John Logan, Berman, and Brent Spiner (Data)

yeah, I guess that just about sums that up.

And... well... I wasn't actually refering to Roddenberry's "womanizing".. I kinda meant his tendency to steal people's ideas and credit for their work. As well as boldfaced lies at conventions regarding co-workers, writers, and cast members. The list is pretty long, Dia, and the story's are pretty well substantiated.
Shatner's another story. The only cast member who wouldn't talk with Shatner and hated him till the end was Doohan (Scotty). The rest say that they believe that Shatner never understood how he acted on set or thought about what it meant to the other actors. Walter Koenig (Chekhov) said that when they made ST-5 with Shatner directing, the 4 of them (Chekhov, Sulu, Scott, Uhura) made a pact that the first time that Shatner "started doing it" (his words) they'd walk off the set.
Koenig said that he felt ashamed afterwards because Shatner was the most supportive and "giving" director they'd ever had. Almost to the point of being embarrassing.

(too verbose again.....sorry)

D'Juhn Keep on 1/5/2006 at 00:50

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Yeah, what happened here then? First Contact is excellent.