It was! Quick and to the point, too, which was nice. While I’m sure there was some bias present, it was still fascinating. Some of Stewart’s interviews were hilarious.
Oh yeah, it really explained why the first two seasons of TNG were mostly a shitshow.
The answer seemed to be “sideline Roddenberry and his new lunatic rules and ideas”.
Exactly, which is why season 3 is so fucking good. It’s like “We can now do the stories we’ve been wanting to do for two years!”
Thanks very much you two, for pointing this out. I love good behind-the-scenes dishing on Star Trek. On most other TV shows and movies, I don’t care, but Star Trek behind-the-scenes stuff is always fascinating to me.
For my own recommendations, if you get a hold of the DVD set that came out in the early 2000s for Next Generation, I recommend seeing all the documentary features on it. There’s lots and lots of little mini-features in each season’s DVD set. Some are from the FX department, some from the makeup department, some from the actors. But my favorites were always shorts that featured something from the show runners and writers. Those were the best. Michael Piller is in a lot of those, and later seasons have a lot of Rick Berman, Braga and Ron Moore. The Deep Space Nine seasons are great because they feature a lot of the writers. You get to see a lot of Ira Behr and Ron Moore and the first season has a lot of Michael Piller, since he helped create Deep Space Nine before handing it over to Ira Behr and Ron Moore in later seasons.
This particular documentary (Chaos on the Bridge) was fascinating to me, because a lot of this stuff was not mentioned at all in the shorts that are on the season DVDs. However, you will get to see a lot of Michael Piller, and my favorite story from him is how he wrote the Best of Both Worlds Part 1, and he wrote himself into a corner, and he ended the season in that cliffhanger, and even he didn’t know how he was going to write himself out of it the following season when they took a break. Eventually he decided he was going to do a two part episode to start the fourth Season. There was just no way around the fact that he was going to have to cheat to bring Picard back. But to make up for that, he wanted the second part to be about how Picard was now a broken man who needed healing. That’s why the second part was “Family” where Picard is back on Earth. (Pillar also pointed out that Family is the only episode of Next Generation not to feature the Enterprise Bridge).
Anyway, I just finished Chaos on the Bridge, and it was great. You guys are right in how fast it is. It gets right to the good stuff, and covers a lot of material in one hour. A lesser documentary would have tried to cover the same material in a longer running time. Here they cover 1986-1991 in an hour.
Just to be clear, I’m watching this ‘documentary’ right now. David Gerrold is a self serving asshole. I spent time with him at an early Star Trek con. He also tried to feel up my first wife at the same con. A lot of this film is blatant bullshit.
I will add this. Hatchet job and bullshit.
But Enterprise is in the same universe, and the last episode ties Enterprise to TNG and Riker. In fact it ties it to one of the most icon Episodes in TNG, when Riker admits to being part of illegal cloaking research.
I’m pretty sure that final episode is one of the most hated in the series and it was pretty rude to the Enterprise cast for them to do it. For history sake, sure same universe but in terms of how the series felt, like the style and the look Enterprise was totally different.
I think the producers of Enterprise felt that it needed a different feel, given the dramatic difference in settings, time-wise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Star_Trek):
Enterprise: years 2152-2155
TNG: years 2364-2370
DS9: years 2371-2375
VOY: 2371-2378
TNG/DS9/VOY occupy roughly the same decade. Enterprise is set over 200 years before that. If anything, I think it was critized for basically having the same technology, just 10% worse. That’s a like one of those lame 4X games where the only benefit of research is +1% effectiveness, without any substantial change.
Imagine watching a period show set in 2017 versus being set in 1817. It shouldn’t have the same feel.
I don’t know if you are trying argue with me or what. Let’s review what we’re talking about right. lumped TNG/VOY/ENT as having the “same feel”, saying DS9 was different. I responded to that saying I don’t think ENT should be lumped in with TNG and VOY, it’s feels, look and was not set-up the same. Lego pops in months’s later talking about the universe. I remind him that I didn’t say they weren’t the same universe. I just don’t think they have the same style or look or set-up really as TNG and VOY. Then you pop in replying to ME, that it shouldn’t have the same feel.
Well guess what, that’s what I said to begin with. I don’t think those three should be linked as in being the same, just like you.
But David Gerrold is such a small part of the whole thing! I did notice that a lot of the interview subjects had different perspectives and contradicted each other. I liked the montage at the beginning where people are describing Gene Roddenberry and are all contradicting one another. Now I’ll have to watch it again sometime and see what David Gerrold was saying that contradict the other interview subjects.
Game of Thrones name-dropped!
[quote]
“Game of Thrones changed television,” Berg says. “They almost made it difficult to fall in love with people because you didn’t know if they were going to be taken away from you. That show’s had an influence on all TV dramas that have come after it.”
Adds Harberts: “Death isn’t treated gratuitously on this show. It’s not for shock value. But when it happens we want to make sure that people really feel it.”[/quote]
I need to stop reading about this show and coming to this thread. I’ve already grown to hate the show and it hasn’t even premiered yet.
Game of Thrones didn’t really change television though, and Death Trek doesn’t sound that appealing at all.
Looks like they are just warning people that Jason Isaacs is going to be doing a Sean Bean on the show.
[quote=“Cormac, post:604, topic:77660, full:true”]
Looks like they are just warning people that Jason Isaacs is going to be doing a Sean Bean on the show.
[/quote]OMG, SPOILERS!..
When they say they aren’t doing for ‘shock value’, what they mean is they won’t pay him enough to come back for a second season once the show is established.
Hey, Trek had that dramatic Tasha Yar death… (Ugh)
(Plus when Dr. Pulaski died falling down the turbolift shaft…)
Killed by an angry oil spill. Ick.
For that I call her Tasha Tar.
You go girl