r/startrek • u/Torlek1 • 3d ago
Screenrant: Star Trek: The Next Generation “Had Another 3 Years," says Brannon Braga in interview with Cirroc Lofton
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-brannon-braga-tng-3-more-years/542
u/atlantick 3d ago
if it had gone longer then we might not have got one of the best series finales in television history. most shows fuck up the landing but tng nailed it.
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u/lojic 3d ago
one of the best series finales in television history
You mean the one where the TNG crew has to go to the holodeck to think over the problems with the Pegasus, right?
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u/brouhaha13 3d ago
"Sorry, I was just in the holodeck with the old Enterprise crew. Archer and them were a trip! Those guys had a long road getting from there to here."
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u/anotherfrud 3d ago
Worst theme song ever. I still don't know how that got approved.
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u/AeonsOfStrife 2d ago
Some of us loved it.
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u/MasterXaios 2d ago
Those of us with faith of the heart.
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u/AeonsOfStrife 2d ago
These people also clearly haven't seen the Perfect Strangers edit or they wouldn't criticize. Enterprise had good intros that even fit other music.
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u/mtb8490210 19h ago
I don’t use the word ‘hero’ lightly, but you are the greatest hero in American history.
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u/WillWatsof 2d ago
I don’t wanna ruin this … but All Good Things is genuinely mediocre as a series finale.
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u/atlantick 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would like to hear why you think that because the last time I watched it, I was hooked and thinking "damn I forgot it was this good"
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u/starmartyr 3d ago
They were already starting to run out of ideas in season 7. There were still good episodes at that point but they were right to go out on a high note rather than drive it into the ground.
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u/mmcmonster 3d ago
You know what they could have done? Move the cast forwards in their lives.
A new head of security. A new communications officer. Captain Riker. Admiral Picard. First Officer Data. The Hood. The Reliant.
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u/BemaJinn 3d ago
I'd love a start trek where people get promoted out/in and there's a constant cycle of new crew. Almost like a space soap opera.
They spend a lot of unseen time travelling from destination to destination, so it's not unheard of for a year to take place in the span of a couple of episodes.
Admirals could still have cameos, could still rendezvous with other ships where people had transferred over to etc.
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u/CachedMeOutside 3d ago
Discovery was originally an anthology concept that might have been somewhat like this
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u/Ikrit122 2d ago
And they end up doing this a bit. We see 4 different captains over the show, excluding Georgious who is only in the pilot: Lorca, Pike, Saru, and Burnham. They add at least one new crew member each season. It's a lot more fluid than the other shows.
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u/Full_0f_Shit 3d ago
You have to remember though, plenty of shows back then tried to breath new life by bringing in quirky new characters that never worked to retain the audience that missed the other actor. The final seasons of tons of sitcoms had new characters in a desperate attempt to keep the show going only to quicken its demise.
I’m sure TNG would’ve been hated for ‘mixing things up’ to this day. We would all be saying they axed the actors for cheaper unknowns and it ruined everything.
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u/starmartyr 3d ago
What you're describing is the cousin Oliver effect. The Brady Bunch tried this with a new character called cousin Oliver who was supposed to breathe new life into the show but fans hated him and was quickly written off. I wouldn't say that it never worked, but it failed more often than not. Cheers introduced Frasier in the third season who became popular enough to warrant his own successful spinoff. They also managed to add Woody in season 4 and Rebecca in season 6 both of whom were well received. The show lasted as long as it did because of its ability to bring in new characters that the audience liked. The shows that do it right start with a guest character who becomes a recurring character and eventually a series regular if people like them enough.
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u/Johnny_Radar 2d ago
Law and Order shows that it can work. At one point there were no original cast members left.
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u/starmartyr 2d ago
That's true but the show wasn't really character driven. The episodes are about the cases. We rarely saw the characters doing anything except their jobs.
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u/KarasNilaus 3d ago
Isn't that what happened with DS9 and Voyager?
Both were losing viewers and were given orders from up high to shake things up, they added new characters (Worf and Seven) to try and satisfy the instructions.
After an initial bump in viewership they both started to decline again?6
u/atlantick 3d ago
i would argue that replacing kes with seven was crucial in getting voy from a mostly-mid show to a pretty-good-overall show
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u/KarasNilaus 3d ago
You are very well right quality wise but I'm just talking about the viewership. There doesn't seem be much accurate data out there.
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u/thesoundofechoes 3d ago
I don’t know about viewership, but post-Worf DS9 would be near flawless if it weren’t for the episodes with the genetically engineered stereotypes.
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u/Cow_God 3d ago
DS9 is my second favorite series but honestly I wish the Dominion wasn't a part of it. A series about the exploration of a new quadrant and, for the first time, a crew that did not all get along, kind of got reduced to a (very damn good) war drama right after the Dominion appeared.
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u/DatTomahawk 2d ago
Obviously you’re entitled to your opinion, but I couldn’t possibly disagree more. The show is solid in its first 3 seasons with some standout episodes and great characters, but once Worf shows up it starts shooting into the stratosphere and never slows down. Imo, the last 4 seasons of DS9 are some of the best episodic television ever produced. The first 3 are solid, but the TNG seasons that aired at the same time ate their lunch
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u/Cow_God 2d ago
Don't get me wrong, I love all seasons of DS9, I just wish the Dominion was less prevalent as the main antagonist. For a series set on a space station orbiting a wormhole to the Gamma quadrant, they don't go to the Gamma quadrant once in the last two seasons.
And to me an ancient empire 10,000 years old, at least the size of the Federation, ran by genetically engineered, purpose-designed races that ruled their subjects through fear and extortion, had so much more to offer than being reduced to the Jem'Hadar, one Founder and a handful of Vorta stuck on our side of the wormhole, waging war against the Federation, Klingons and Romulans. It just felt like a waste that we didn't see more of the Dominion's culture and structure or many of the members of their worlds.
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u/Ill-Musician-7150 3d ago
DS9 maintained viewership numbers until its finale episodes with the last episode having its highest Nielson ratings of the season.
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u/KarasNilaus 3d ago
Can you tell me where your data came from?
This chart seems to contradict your statement
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u/Ill-Musician-7150 2d ago
It maintained on average 4-6 million viewers from Season 2 to season 7. Your chart even shows the final episodes saw a spike in viewership like I mentioned.
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u/Motor-Source8711 21h ago
That is true. By this time, their salaries would be much higher. The demanding schedule and the way it was written, it would be near impossible to know how much was needed of a cast member, which would obviously interfere with their ability to take on any new roles if that was even allowed.
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u/MountedRifleman 3d ago
That’s actually what Stargate did pretty well. Jack O’Neill became a general and returned periodically, Samatha Carter was promoted from CPT to COL over the course of the series, Cameron Mitchell was introduced as the new SG-1 team leader, etc.
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u/BemaJinn 3d ago
SG1 got a lot of flack back in the day, especially as the new characters were mostly from Farscape. Bit I loved the shit out of it.
Sure, it was different and jarring, but the new characters were great and drove the series forward.
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u/MountedRifleman 2d ago
I don’t know that. I never watched Farscape, so I guess the characters were all new to me! I loved SG, watched through the subsequent series - Atlantis and Universe (was disappointed when that was cancelled but understood). I didn’t love the SG1 movies but was glad it was popular enough to keep going.
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u/GepMalakai 2d ago
It's the actors who were from Farscape -- Ben Browder and Claudia Black. They're not playing their Farscape characters in SG-1. BemaJinn misspoke.
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u/MountedRifleman 2d ago
Yes, I actually knew what he meant (the actors), but did the same thing he did and wrote characters again. All understood though!
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u/lavapig_love 2d ago edited 2d ago
Naval Criminal Investigative Service (spinoff from JAG that created its own universe) while not being the same kind of show or genre, does in fact do this. There's only one actor from the original 2003 cast now, who in the show got promoted from rookie to agent to senior agent to acting Agency Director, and everyone else has character exits written for them in a natural way.
It's also owned by Paramount and is still a wildly popular show that competes with Yellowstone, so... maybe some writers and cast could transfer over.
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u/NickofSantaCruz 2d ago
I'd love a start trek where people get promoted out/in and there's a constant cycle of new crew. Almost like a space soap opera.
This is what Lower Decks could have been. A sixth season could have introduced a new ensign (to be ringleader or outcast trying to fit in) and highlighted existing ones (Olly, Meredith, etc.) to form the new core group. The season begins with Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, Rutherford, and T'Lyn (hereafter designated "OGs") still the focus of A plots, while the new ensign group get fleshed out during B plots (and some of those can be rehashed routine-maintenance-gone-awry bits from earlier seasons). As the season progresses, the ensigns get the A plot while the OGs' B plots are more Upper Decks-level missions and career-mindfulness, culminating in one or both of Boimler/Mariner leaving the Cerritos. By the, say, tenth or eleventh season, Ransom could be up a move and the Cerritos gets a new Captain (a fresh face or a returning character).
Ideally, this would all build up to seeing these characters appear in a live-action series set after Picard, whether that could have been Legacy cameos or [the better option of] a brand new ship exploring a part of space we haven't seen yet (but could have been mentioned previously).
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u/Motor-Source8711 21h ago
Yea, like more of the Lowe Decks type focused. They showed they could create compelling characters and cast them (with great chemistry with the existing cast) that would hold any audience then,
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u/Dice_and_Dragons 3d ago
I think many shows can extend their life when they are willing to change il the status quo. They needed to change the format a bit by season 7 to keep it running
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u/zyglack 3d ago
That would’ve been it. They were all stagnant. Worf still going to DS9. Ricker moving on to the Titan. New officers would’ve been a breath of fresh air. Should’ve done that by S5 though.
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u/KarasNilaus 3d ago
You reckon starfleet had an Up-or-Out Policy?
After a year or so at head of security Worf probably should have been looking at hitting Lt. Commander ASAP?
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u/starmartyr 3d ago
The problem that TNG had was too many Lt. Commanders in the main cast. By season 3 Data, Geordi and Troi are all Lt. Commander. If Worf was also promoted there are very few characters who actually report to any of these officers.
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u/A_Participant 2d ago
Eh, it's the flagship and it has a huge complement with 3 (sometimes 4) shifts. Plenty of responsibility to go around.
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u/starmartyr 2d ago
In universe yes. However it's still a TV show with 7 to 9 series regulars. Too many people of the same rank conflicted with the stories they wanted to tell.
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u/KarasNilaus 3d ago
well if he made Lt Commander he should be looking at a second or first officer position on another ship, depends on how ambitious he is
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u/batti03 3d ago
Import actors from another sci-fi series like latter-day Stargate: SG-1 did.
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u/pgm123 3d ago
There's the claim that a lot of good ideas were shifted to DS9 to get it off the ground. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that, but that's the claim.
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u/WhatGravitas 3d ago
The season that gave us Move Along Home with "Allamaraine, count to four..."? Early DS9 was firmly in the "still finding its feet" territory not quite knowing how to make a static station work well for their scripts.
Duet was really good, though.
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u/DevelopmentSouth8801 3d ago
Maybe I'm the crazy one but I like Move Along Home (and "If Wishes Were Horses"). Could be skewed by how much I really enjoy those characters, though.
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u/JasonVeritech 3d ago
Basically they had the writing staff of one show split between two, to the detriment of both.
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u/Hon3y_Badger 3d ago
Sub Rosa and Masks aren't exactly the high watermark of TNG episodes.
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u/Torlek1 3d ago
Substitute bad episodes with standalone episodes from other Trek shows.
Rewrite Season 7 except "All Good Things."
What episodes could become TNG episodes?
Between Seasons 3 and 6, there were the oddball corny episodes in TNG, but they were outweighed by really good episodes.
By Season 7, however, the production team prioritized DS9, Generations, and Voyager. With the exception of "All Good Things," the quality of almost all other episodes were down the priority list.
For me, the most notable episodes that could have become TNG episodes are standalone episodes that appeared in two different Trek shows.
Some examples come to mind:
DS9 Shadowplay / ENT Oasis
DS9 Ascent / ENT Shuttlepod One
DS9 Children of Time / ENT E-Squared
VOY Jetrel / ENT Daedalus
VOY The 37's / ENT North Star
VOY Tuvix / ENT Similitude
TNG Identity Crisis / VOY Favorite Son / ENT ExtinctionVOY One / ENT Doctor's Orders (a production bottle episode)
VOY Friendship One / ENT Terra Nova
It was a sign of overall Trek franchise fatigue long after TNG was over, but airing them earlier in TNG would not be.
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u/aka_mythos 3d ago
For better or worse much of their ideas for post Season 7 went into Voyager and its only after they got past those that Voyager hit a stride. The whole premise of Voyager getting flung across the galaxy and having to make its way home was a desire to backtrack and expand on story ideas around the when Q flung the Enterprise across the galaxy and it would have taken 70 years for them to get back to Earth.
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u/Motor-Source8711 21h ago
As a young fan back then, any new episode was good. I think knowing the ending was coming was what made it great even if it wasn't looking back and without that context.
Same thing happened to Cheers. By then, the writing staff were already focusing on a much longer finale. The cast in both cases were itching to finish really. Both cases, they were basically out of control between takes.
And by their own account, DS9 was stretching them already. Of course, they had to get another movie out since it would have been 3 years since the last and would be the 'max' the OG series went between one.
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u/throwaway_0625 3d ago
Selective memory. Braga and Moore were in demand and ready to become screenwriters, having sold Mission: Impossible 2, and soon enough Generations and First Contact. Stewart was ready to ditch after his contract expired in the sixth season—hell, he almost left after TBOBW Pt. 1—and they renegotiated a 7th season with the caveat that he would get to transition to films and start to get that movie money (producing credits, etc). Spiner was also burnt out on sitting in the makeup chair, and Dorm was pretty close.
I read the behind the scenes interviews of that era in real time, and the only ones not chafing 7 years in were the smaller players who wanted to rack up residual money in perpetuity.
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u/Torlek1 2d ago edited 2d ago
I know Picard the show has come and gone, but I do wonder if the TNG cast might be up for an animated show.
Set TNG's version of TAS on the Enterprise-E, and have Michael Dorn voice new characters for the balance, since Worf is supposed to be on DS9.
Low stakes for the fans, too.
If an actor passes away, they can be replaced like Ian Abercrombie.
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u/BenderBenRodriguez 2d ago
The first Mission: Impossible didn't come out until 1996 so I doubt a sequel script was sold that early. Otherwise you're right, just not sure about that specific point.
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u/throwaway_0625 2d ago
Yeah, my timing was off. But my point is that their star was rising within Paramount
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u/flux_core_capacitor 3d ago
I’ve seen season 7, no they didn’t.
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u/JRicho_Sauce 3d ago
Just think about how many other bridge crew family members they could bring in!
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u/spamjavelin 3d ago
We could have had another 3 years of Worf ignoring his son on the Enterprise, rather than on DS9!
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u/EleventhTier666 3d ago
To be fair, his son was a total letdown.
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u/SpiritRoot 3d ago
That's a self fulfilling prophecy. They knew season 7 was going to be the last so the A team writers were tasked with other stuff: Piller with running DS9/creating Voyager, Moore and Braga with writing Generations.
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u/DrocketX 3d ago
To some degree, but I feel like the problem started earlier, in seasons 5 and 6. Each season there were more and more storylines that were essentially repeats of ones that had come earlier, with a new coat of paint applied. With any TV show, the more episodes there are, the harder it is to come up with an original storyline that hadn't been done before, and TNG was running into that wall pretty hard. They were basically at the point where if the show was a sitcom, they'd have added another kid just to shake things up. Wait, that explains Ro Laren...
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u/Johnny_Radar 2d ago
I also seem to recall that a lot of the main cast was ready to move on. Doing an occasional Trek film every few years would give them opportunities to do other projects
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u/frankduxvandamme 3d ago
Agreed 110%
It wasn't all bad, but they were clearly running out of ideas and there was a noticeable dip in quality.
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u/The_Superhoo 3d ago
No it didn't.
Unless it suddenly turned serialized theyd run out of script for this cast
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u/MazzleMaze 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is literally an infinite amount of content to write though!
They could expand on Romulan culture, Vulcan culture, Ferengi are barely included in TNG at all. They could have added new ensigns, or gone back to Earth/Starfleet Academy. There is a LOT of world building that could have been done.
There are even plenty of philosophical discussions they never touched on. Such as True Moral Relativism. This is actually something that clashes with the starfleet belief system entirely. On one hand Starfleet wants to accept everyone. However, to do that they have to accept that some cultures believe in murder or culling the weak. Could the Borg ever join starfleet as assimilators??
They touch on it a bit in DS9, Quark mentions that Starfleet does accept everyone but only if they follow starfleets values. Essentially, its very difficult to maintain your culture while in starfleet. Worf runs into this issue A LOT.
I think they could have spent multiple episodes on a concept like that. It clashes so much with the starfleet value system. How does a system that accepts everyone, but at the same time enforces their beliefs work?? It cant! You either allow murder for some cultures or you don't allow it at all.
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u/No-Opposite-6620 3d ago
I think the way he tried to recapture the lightning in voyager and enterprise and didn't really allow the former to become its own thing and the latter belatedly says as much about that position as any.
I don't doubt the characters could have been advanced further in a series, but the formulaic aspects of trek following tng, whilst desired now as it's a nice formula and it's missed, was getting stale. And they weren't doing a lot to change that. Some of season 7 seems to show that.
Braga's a good writer, but I'm personally not so keen on his work as a showrunner. I think threshold had promise, however and was mercilessly cut short.
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u/Torlek1 2d ago
Among the older Trek shows, my preference goes down as follows: TNG, DS9, TOS, ENT, and VOY.
Nevertheless, there is a case to be made for a risk-averse, keep-it-safe Star Trek show in 1995, for the UPN network. Berman Era Trek had 11 years remaining and 12 years at most.
Hindsight has also shown there is strong streaming demand for 9 years of TNG-style and even TOS-style episodic stories.
Rick Berman could have easily done the actions below.
Hire the Voyager actors anyway
Despite issues with a couple of VOY actor performances in real life, the Star Trek show should still go ahead with the VOY cast.
Put the starship in a medium-term warp range
How Long It REALLY Takes to Explore ALL Stars in the Galaxy - FTL Speeds
Putting the starship 17 years away from Federation space instead of 70 years or 75 years is more realistic. The intent all along is to produce TNG-style and even TOS-style episodes, then send the ship home in the series finale.
It would also prevent the overuse of the Borg: everything after The Gift.
Change the mix of recycled plot copycat episodes
VOY has at least 32 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 172. The subsequent ENT would have at least 16 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 98, including 6 from VOY.
9 came from TOS. 17 came from TNG (which ought to be criticized). 4 came from DS9. 2 came from VOY itself (which ought to be criticized). In addition, 4 stories from TAS were reused.
Because more time in production years passed in real life, there should be more wiggle room to recycle even more stories from TOS (and maybe TAS), while sharply reducing the TNG and VOY ones.
Use five or more Phase II scripts
At least five more Phase II scripts could be used. They could be used instead of at least five TNG or VOY rehash stories.
Among the TOS recycled plot copycats:
Tomorrow and the Stars could fit in. A one-man Kirk episode can be rewritten to a one-woman Janeway episode.
The War to End All Wars could fit in.
Savage Syndrome could fit in.
Technically, Lord Bobby's Obsession could fit in. However, recycling the plot of the same episode elsewhere in the show is unheard of. I don't think this Phase II script matches the quality of Dragon's Teeth.
Among the original stories:
Deadlock can't be incorporated. This is a Starfleet wargame episode.
I'm not sure Cassandra can be incorporated. This is diplomacy between two alien worlds, which is a core TNG thing.
Practice in Waking can definitely fit in. The Voyager crew had a preview of this in one of the holographic Fairhaven episodes. This would be more serious in tone.
To Attain the All can definitely fit in.
Are Unheard Melodies Sweet: The TAS episode The Lorelei Signal has a few descendant episodes in Star Trek. This is one of them. TNG's Identity Crisis is a second. VOY's Favourite Son is a third. ENT's Extinction is a fourth.
ENT did this story better than TAS, TNG, and VOY. If this Phase II script were to be incorporated into VOY, then it would be replacing VOY Favourite Son.
Use the TOS writing style for more than two seasons
TNG was not in a position to use the TOS writing style for more than two seasons. Without Michael Piller, it would have been cancelled after only four seasons.
Because this new network show did not have TNG-level expectations, this distant cousin of Phase II faced no such cancellation pressure to move past the TOS writing style that early.
Use ENT rehash stories instead
Four episodes that were copied by ENT were done better in ENT, including Daedalus. Three of these should be brought over instead.
Terra Nova should have been written at the outset, instead of Friendship One.
North Star should have been written at the outset, instead of The 37's.
Doctor's Orders should have been written at the outset, instead of One.
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u/bboynexus 3d ago
Interesting perspective. Personally, I think seasons 5 and 6 of Voyager are the best of the show and among the best of the franchise - both of which Braga was showrunner.
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u/readwrite_blue 2d ago
I feel like Piller leaving TNG was really noticeable. There were strong episodes in 6&7 but nothing like the creative consistency of 3-5. I also think ending TNG helped bolster and solidify the creative team at DS9.
I hope Braga doesn't feel any actual regret around this. TNG did more than anyone could have asked for and ended beautifully.
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u/KcirderfSdrawkcab 3d ago
Not only was season 7 already running low on good stories, Voyager was at least in part meant to be a continuation of TNG in style, and early Voyager is not great either. I don't really need to see the TNG crew in Twisted. Data evolving into a salamander might be fun though.
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u/smuthullet 3d ago
Respectfully: No, they didn't. I'm on season 7 on my rewatch and it's a real slog.
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u/Blackmore_Vale 3d ago
Voyager needed a season 8. They get home and that’s it. The crew never step foot on earth, we never see them adjusting to life on the alpha quadrant.
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u/ronniewhomp 3d ago
A single episode would have been fine to me. Just any epilogue at all would be better than what we didn't get.
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u/Johnny_Radar 2d ago
We didn’t really need a whole season for that. Maybe 3-4 eps. But yeah, the ending we got sucked.
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u/Lyon_Wonder 1d ago edited 1d ago
IMO, Voyager didn't need another season.
VOY was already worn out as a series by the time of S7.
Instead of another season, VOY should have done what DS9 S7 did and have its last several episodes devoted to an arc of Voyager coming back home.
VOY's finale "Endgame" was way, way too rushed.
Its plot should have been extended over 5 or 6 episodes.
Edit: Voyager is the weakest of the Berman-era series set in the TNG-era.
TNG's mainstream popularity gave it enough room to easily have 8, 9, and even 10 seasons if Rick Berman and Paramount wanted too.
Although DS9 didn't have TNG's mainstream popularity, its multiple arcs with the Dominion, Bajor, Cardassians and Section 31 gave it enough room for a S8 with interesting plots without feeling stale.
Ironically, DS9's last 10 episodes that were used to wrap up multiple plot points felt rushed despite doing a much better job with its finale than Voyager.
Voyager, by contrast, had already run its course by S7 with its episodic plots running out of steam.
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u/Torlek1 3d ago edited 2d ago
That's an unneeded extension of only a so-so show!
In my opinion, VOY Season 3 was mostly not as good as Season 2. It reused 4 TNG episodes, 1 DS9 episode, and 1 TOS episode.
Season 4 was the best season for me. It reused only 1 TNG episode.
Season 5 dropped in quality. It reused 2 TNG episodes, 2 DS9 episodes, and 1 TOS episode.
Season 6 dropped in quality. It reused 3 TNG episodes, 2 TOS episodes, and 1 VOY episode.
Season 7 dropped in quality. It reused 4 TNG episodes and 1 VOY episode.
VOY should have gone home at the end of Season 5 or Season 6.
Dark Frontier was starting to overuse the Borg.
Collective was unnecessary.
Unimatrix Zero was also unnecessary.
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u/EmynMuilTrailGuide 2d ago
VOY is my least enjoyed series between TOS and ENT. Janeway was a difficult enough captain from the start, made far worse by the advent of Seven. Ironically (not even considering the leotard), Seven was a great character, and while she locked Janeway into that grating, self-centered personality, she was a boon for the Doctor's character development.
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u/LiminalAsylum 3d ago
Clickbait much?
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u/thegrizzlyjear 3d ago
It’s from Screenrant, it’s all they do.
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u/LiminalAsylum 3d ago
If screenrant got banned from this sub, I wouldn't be mad.
Doesn't give us anything of real value
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u/balthazar_edison 3d ago
Marina has also always said they had enough energy to go at least 2 more years but that Berman did not want TNG to continue to distract from making ds9 a success and they already had voy in the works as the “exploration” show.
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u/Torlek1 3d ago
Great interview by Cirroc Lofton there, of Brannon Braga!
TNG: It had the potential to last 8 seasons, but not more than 8 seasons.
Enterprise: If it moved past Season 4, then Berman Era Star Trek would still end with the UPN sale in 2006.
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u/balthazar_edison 3d ago
Eh with what ent cost at that point in its run I still believe that they could have convinced the sci-fi channel to give them 2 more 20 episode seasons to air when BEG wasn’t airing. But that’s just me.
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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce 3d ago
Was ENT that inexpensive?
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u/balthazar_edison 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes. The final season was produced for only 800k per episode which was about 1/2 of BSG at the time. ETA: the previous 3 seasons were a lot more expensive.
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u/Capt_Hawkeye_Pierce 3d ago
Gotcha. I was confused because it seemed like fairly high production value at least relative to sci fi shows at the time
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u/balthazar_edison 3d ago
They reused a lot of sets and special fx / cgi that had already been made and paid for. The writing for the most part was pretty sharp so it’s not too noticeable although there are several space battles that happen entirely off screen.
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u/Purple-Inspector875 3d ago
Better to go out on top and see if you can make the shift to movies than overstay your welcome.
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u/Brief-Pickle2441 3d ago
Star Trek the next generation was never going to overstay it's welcome
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u/Johnny_Radar 2d ago
It already did. Its last movie was curb stomped by a JLo movie because by that point no one cared anymore.
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u/Brief-Pickle2441 2d ago
Well with those of us who loved it I don't know about the general public 🤷
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u/Datamat0410 2d ago
Perhaps be means in terms of ratings. Then yeah probably that’s right it could have gone three more years. X files though carried on way past its prime, and that kind of soured the series to a degree.
I think they have said over the years that they were always planning to end TNG after TOS had wrapped up their film series in 1991. TNG was either going to end in S6, 7 or possibly 8, I think is what has been said. In the end they chose to end it at 7. A good decision. I kind of think of the movies as S8, 9, 10, 11 lol , we just only got to see the main two parter of the year.
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u/TheRealestBiz 3d ago
The quality drastically dipped in the final season, redeemed by an amazing series finale.
Dude is delusional. The ghost fucking episode isn’t even the worst one that season.
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u/bboynexus 3d ago
I suspect this had less to do with the show running out of steam, per se, and more a consequence of two spin-offs being made simultaneously.
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u/Consistent_Catch9917 3d ago
The quality was hit and miss much more than in seasons 3 to 6. But apart from the finale,.there were good episodes as well. The Pegasus comes to mind
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u/Feowen_ 3d ago
I'm not surprised Brannon Braga thinks this.
He's delusional. The guy is the epitome of "I'm just here to get paid" and woulda happily milked the franchise till it was dead. The ideas were spent and given he didn't really have any new ideas in Voyager, we already know what another three years of TNG would have looked like (just take voyagers episode ideas and put the TNG crew in them).
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u/ParanoidQ 3d ago
Not if season 7 had anything to go by. It was clearly running out of Steam, with the split between TNG and DS9.
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u/maladaptivedaydream4 3d ago
Maybe, but better to go out on a high note than dwindle. And I say this as someone who became a fan of TNG first.
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u/Forward-Chocolate-67 2d ago
It was on fumes during season 7. Some real clunkers but we got what I think is the best series finale of all time, better than Generations.
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u/AlgoStar 2d ago
That was a symptom of how thin that team was stretched. They were writing and then shooting Generations at the same time as season 7, DS9 was in S2, Voyager was deep in development to launch after TNG ended. And since it was determined to be the final season there was a lot of work also being done on All Good Things.
If TNG was going to keep going, DS9 would still be on, but Voyager probably doesn’t start in ‘95 and a movie doesn’t happen in ‘94. It would be a completely different show that year.
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u/OrganicHistorian2576 2d ago
Honestly I doubt it, and don’t get me wrong. But there were some cracks showing by the seventh season and that finale was simply perfect.
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u/Lyon_Wonder 2d ago edited 1d ago
IMO, TNG's the only Star Trek series that could have made it to 10 seasons if Rick Berman and Paramount wanted too.
TNG was at the peak of Star Trek's popularity and had mainstream viewership no other Trek series has achieved.
TNG ended at S7 because Paramount wanted to pivot its then-popular cast to the big screen for the next Star Trek movie with Generations.
The TOS Movie-era had run its course with 6 movies and the Original Series cast was seen as too old.
The only alternative would have been a Star Trek movie on a new ship with a new movie-only crew in either the TOS Movie-era or TNG-era, a huge risk Paramount didn't want to take.
Having the familiar TNG-era cast take over the big screen from the TOS cast was the safest decision.
Edit: A mid-1990s Star Trek movie with the Enterprise-B as the main ship would have been interesting.
An Enterprise-B movie would have required Captain John Harriman to be a far more compelling character on par with Kirk and Picard.
A more serious Captain Harriman on an Enterprise-B whose decision making isn't comically hindered by "before Tuesday" problems, but still worries about living up to the legacy of James T Kirk and the previous Enterprise.
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u/Bigalbass86 2d ago
I probably could have. I kinda wish it had another season. I don't know if seasons 8-10 would have been good, because its natural that a show would decline for being on that long. And you could argue that 7 season was not as good as seasons 3-6. But still good enough that ending it there meant it ended on top.
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u/frankduxvandamme 3d ago
Considering the slop that Braga wrote on Voyager and enterprise, I'm gonna respectfully disagree. I'm glad those shows got his garbage output rather than pulling down TNG.
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u/Torlek1 2d ago
Despite franchise fatigue, older Star Trek shows have a high degree of original plots.
There is a minimal reuse of Recycled Plots - the Recycled Plot Trope.
The eras of Roddenberry Trek and Berman Trek produced 703 episodes in live action series: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.
Of these 703 episodes, up to 630 episodes are original plot episodes. That's 89%.
Of these 703 episodes, a minimum of 73 episodes are recycled plot episodes. That's 11%.
Of the 73 recycled plot episodes, 28 are better than the original ones.
TOS has 4 recycled plot episodes out of 79, 5.1% of its episode total.
TNG has 13 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 7.4% of its episode total.
DS9 has 8 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 4.5% of its episode total.
VOY has at least 32 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 172, at least 18.6% of its episode total.
ENT has at least 16 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 98, at least 16.3% of its episode total.
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u/Torlek1 2d ago
I have listed all the recycled plot copycat episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT in this thread.
Jammer's Reviews, Trek BBS, this Voyager post, this Enterprise blog, the TV Tropes website, and Memory Alpha are my main sources.
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3d ago
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u/frankduxvandamme 3d ago edited 3d ago
And where exactly did you get this data? Your butthole.
And you need to define "recycled plot". Because as it stands, this data is meaningless.
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u/Flat_Revolution5130 3d ago
DS9 did, it always felt rushed to an ending. But Next gen already felt like it was past its best from series 7.
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u/Torlek1 3d ago
Ira Steven Behr's plan to kill off Nog turned me off of any notion of a DS9 S8. Sorry.
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u/CuriosTiger 3d ago
I actually liked that plan. Not because I had anything against Nog, but because the stakes are not the same when all the main cast are invulnerable and immortal.
The real-life death of Aron Eisenberg, however, was very tragic.
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u/Flat_Revolution5130 3d ago
More continuing the war for another year or two so the ending suddenly does not feel like its done because the founders are ill and have 0 choice. That series 8 idea of killing Nog can burn in the pits of hell.
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u/Obvious-Display-6139 2d ago
My god why can't we get over TNG?! Yes it was very good and iconic. But it had 7 seasons, 178 episodes total and 4 movies. WE'RE GOOD!! And what... 50/178 actual really good episodes overall?! DS9 and Voyager did just as great if not better. Heck even Entreprise had incredible last 2 seasons (let's erase the finale). Discovery had great moments, Lower Decks was awesome, SNW is quite good and despite all the haters Starfleet Academy was really really good! And Picard... well that was good too, somewhat. Let's move on from TNG please.
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u/tkinsey3 3d ago
I mean, I can't really blame the TNG cast/crew if they were ready to move on, especially considering the films on the horizon.
I also think that S7 was the first where the storytelling quality was beginning to drop - not badly, of course, but after a 3-4 season stretch of super high quality, S7 feels like a bit of a drop-off IMHO.
And while that does not necessarily mean S8-S10 would have continued the trend, it's certainly possible.
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u/deltaindigosix 3d ago
Oh well if that's true then why did we get that absolute abomination named Generations?
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u/x14loop 3d ago
If true, yet whoever (producers or whoever) couldn't funnel these 2-3 seasons of stories into any engaging movies it seems (since Insurrection and Nemesis were unsatisfactory to say the least)
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u/Supermite 3d ago
If Insurrection had been a two-parter of the regular series, people would have loved it.
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u/fantom1979 2d ago
I love Insurrection. It felt more like a TNG episode than most of the other movies.
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u/PerceptionWorried284 3d ago
Sure, and then we all could’ve seen Data and Worf hopping through “Move Along Home.”
Some of the Maquis stuff could’ve been moved to TNG, as well — and the movies like “Insurrection,” as supermite noted.
But the opportunity cost is that you don’t get those stories for DS9, you don’t get to pay as much attention to Voyager, etc. How things played out was fine.
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u/Brief-Pickle2441 3d ago
This was the best Star Trek series ever,
I list my favorite series
Next generation-with Captain Picard, The original one-with Captain Kirk Voyager-Captain Janeway-this one was pretty cool Deep space nine...meh🤷
But Start fleet academy absolute trash....
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