[Kyuusaku]

The Kyuu Continuum
By {UFP}Kyuusaku

Issue Five: The Worst Thing to Ever Happen to Trek
November 4, 2011

NOTE: The following views are to be treated as opinions unless otherwise stated and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of {UFP}.

Last column, I spent a lot of time gushing over the awesomeness that was Deep Space Nine. This column, I'm going to move to the opposite side of the spectrum and talk about the aspect of Trek that I felt was the worst.

This column was originally going to be about Star Trek: Voyager, but when I sat down to really think about what I felt was the worst bit of Trek, I decided that I couldn't put my finger on just one show. Every show has stories or episodes that were just plain rubbish. Nearly half of the first season of TNG falls into that category, along with a majority of the second. DS9's first season had a few episodes that were questionable. Voyager's stock-in-trade was pure rubbish, though the show had a few gems, here and there. Meanwhile, Star Trek: Enterprise managed to shatter new levels of crap with only two exceptions, neither of which are the series finale.

Who's to blame for this? I've decided to make Brannon Braga my personal Trek scapegoat.

When I was much younger and watching TNG in syndication, I did not know what writer did what. It was amongst those blue credits before and after that I didn't pay much attention to. It wasn't until later, when I decided I wanted to be a writer, myself that I started to seek out the writers that were inspiring to the sub-genre. Of course, the antithesis is that you always remember the ones that made your stomach turn, if only so that you never forget and avoid them like the plague.

Within Trek, you have a large number of amazing writers who've gone on to do a lot within the science-fiction genre. Tracy Tormé, the writer who gave us Dixon Hill, went from writing TNG to creating Sliders, produced Carnivalé for HBO, and produced the movie "I am Legend," with Will Smith. Ron Moore, who reinvented the Klingons for the TNG era, is perhaps most famous for his reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. René Echevarria, whose talent for telling Data-based stories was legendary, co-produced Dark Angel with James Cameron.

In this pool of amazing talent, obviously there are bound to be sub-par contributors. Unfortunately, instead of failing and being recognized for that failure, Braga managed to fail upwards. He eventually became a producer for TNG and subsequently moved over the Voyager production team where he continued to ooze hackery all over what might've been a tremendous series. His abilities were so poor that when his longtime friend and writing collaborator, Ron Moore, moved over from the final season of DS9, Moore quit due to creative differences. Moore specifically cited that Braga lacked emphasis on maintaining the series' continuity. Folks, when it comes to maintaining a long-term storytelling continuity, I think we can all agree that Ron Moore knows his stuff. That's a huge indictment on someone who would run not one, but two major pieces to the Trek franchise.

I've sat down and read the show bibles for Voyager and Enterprise. Jeri Taylor, another amazing TNG writer ("The Wounded," The Drumhead"), had her fingerprints all over Voyager's introduction and bible. She was an executive producer for the first half of the show and then Braga took over shortly after she left Voyager outright. If you ever get a chance to read it and you have a negative impression on the show as I do, I think you might be surprised to see how much the show's presentation changed from the genesis to the execution. Voyager had a lot of potential to it that was utterly wasted, and the lack of continuity between stories was apparent from episode-to-episode, outside of the multi-part stories. At least there was some continuity within TNG, and DS9 never had a problem maintaining its own storylines or arcs; in fact, as I stated last time, it raised the bar significantly.

The problem was that over time, Taylor's contributions spanned just fourteen episodes, while Braga's increased over the same period. In fact, Braga is the top prolific writer for Trek in its entirety, penning over one hundred episodes between TNG and Enterprise, along with two of the TNG films (Generations and First Contact). Oh, and we have him to blame for the existence of the Borg Queen, which essentially turned the Borg from a faceless entity to any other big bad enemy out there. I blame him for ripping the spine out of the Borg by doing so. After Voyager left the air, he obviously had had enough messing with Trek in the future, so decided to screw with established canon by moving to the distant past.

Once the abomination called Enterprise finally ended transmission, Braga moved onto other projects that had ties to science-fiction. He tried to take the title of one of the worst Trek episodes in history and turn it into a show, "Threshold." Thankfully, that got pulled off television in nine of the thirteen episodes ordered. Then he moved onto "FastForward," which was not too terrible, but had problems in executing the novel's story (which he later admitted they ultimately ignored).

Thankfully, he's admitted that his association with the Trek franchise has ended. If there is to be another Trek series in our future, it is my fervent hope that Brannon Braga has no part of it.

Next column, we'll explore the top ten best episodes in all of Star Trek. If you want to contribute your own list, do so in reply.

Until then,

[deuZige]

What a pitty... i thought your columns were so good and i enjoyed reading them.... until now... a shame... a real shame...

[Kyuusaku]

Hey, I'm not going to apologize for opining. That's the whole point of this column. If you didn't like it, that's perfectly fine. It's just a shame that you don't elaborate on why you didn't agree with it. The intention of writing these is to spark discussion.

Kyuu