Chaos on the Bridge

Old school Kirk and Spock era Star Trek, if you follow the plots, are essentially police stories codified or dressed up as aliens, monsters and spaceships. The stories you are seeing are essentially law enforcement, security and the occasional health story of how police and other first responders encounter and deal with psychopaths, megalomaniacs, psychotics, or regular people who were smarter than average criminals and flaunted social convention.

You are essentially seeing police tactics and psychiatric regimes of how to tackle and sometimes treat people who have a leg up on everyone else, and are going to cheat, steal, or even kill their way to the top to get what they want.

So, when I watch this documentary and listen to the contradictory opinions and stories of who Gene Roddenberry was, what was happening, and who did what with what impact, I shrug my shoulders. When I worked on films and video one of the habits from everyone was to tell a story regardless of how truthful or dishonest it was. And that's the vibe I get off of this documentary.

Pretty much most of film and TV are like that, but with science fiction the idea is to inspire the smarter and more imaginative audience members to consider careers in law enforcement, military, medicine, or even intelligence services.

Original Trek was created in the wake of the end of the second world war and during the Cold War. And the Enterprise was the police cruiser that went around administering justice and law with some health overtones. Star Trek the Next Generation was essentially a giant therapeutic wing of a hospital where there were no problems, and that the audience was essentially the patient. My take is that once a fan had seen an episode that reflected their issues, they would leave and no longer be a fan. The pot served the subplots which became the focus.

What does this all mean? It means that this documentary, from my perspective, and what I've written here, was and is all smoke and mirrors trying to mask a mass hospital agenda that the production had for the audience. If you ever visited a private mental hospital everything is antiseptic and "perfect", where there are no problems and where there are no conflicts to facilitate the patients. And that's what the Enterprise-D was and is.

Ergo all of the stories about infighting, to me, are just more fodder fed to what fans this show has left, to mask the true agenda.

You know, I'm really just all Trekked out. This fictional property will never get back to the great writing it had in the 1960s. How anyone can watch Star Trek the Next Generation and be a fan of it, is just beyond me. But, all those sociologists and psychiatrists must know what they're doing, because apparently people like turning off their brains for TV and absorbing anything that gets presented to them.

So, remember, old Trek was a police show. New Trek in 89 was a primer for a younger and broader audience as a preparatory measure for the net connecting the world socially. Anything that tries to explain both flavors of Trek is just garbage, an effort at smoke and mirrors to obscure the true objective of the show.

Seeing Shatner interview people about so-called back stage dramas, again it comes across disingenuous. Part of undercover police work is to be able to act and tell a good yarn to get witnesses and perpetrators to reveal what they know. And that's kind of what film and TV are all about.

As a former wide eyed fan of the show, some of the happiest times I ever had were as a boy and young film major watching reruns of old Trek, and trying to come to terms with the new show in 89. After two writers' strikes, the first of which is mentioned in this documentary, and having seen personality conflicts and dramas for a TV show or two that were shot locally in San Francisco, the happiest day of my life was when I left a world of deception for the sake of it, a lot of which was to keep out anyone who had any ideas of misusing media for personal agendas.

Had I known now what Trek was really all about, in both of its iterations, I would have never had "stars in my eyes" about making my own Star Trek like show with a different setting, different technology, and just a different fiction altogether. But, I can watch this show without the acid flowing in my gut that I used to experience everyday I worked.

I didn't like Star Trek the Next Generation when it aired, hated it all these years, and now I understand why, and it took someone like Shatner to present to me the deceptive truth of how modern Trek was formulated with a bunch of fictional accounts of personality clashes. Oh well.

Should you watch it? Only if you're a die hard fan and think that this documentary will enhance your knowledge and pleasure of the fiction. As for me, well, knowing my parents [probably met mister Roddenberry, and helped contribute to the show's genesis, I can safely wave goodbye to the fiction.

P.s. The mysterious figure who didn't know how to write scripts but kept screwing with everyone's work, was probably a child psychologist and psychiatrist. Because that's all TV shows are all about.

I found Mr. Shatner's work here very interesting, well developed, and it contained the real story behind the re-booting of Star Trek with Star Trek -- TNG. I can't imagine the series with any of the final three actors who read for Captain Picard and they were very lucky someone insisted Sir Patrick Stewart get a reading too. I always thought Gene Roddenberry was the driving force behind the franchise . . . and it turns out TNG happened, continued and flourished in spite of him more than because of him. But it's a great example of holding something too tightly -- he was getting older and trying to catch lightning in a bottle the second time. Nothing takes away from the Roddenberry legacy. The story of how Rick Berman became the driving force behind TNG was interesting to learn. I guess I best liked Patrick Stewart's behind-the-scenes recollections since, in many ways, he personifies TNG. There was more than enough new details and information to keep this life-long Trekkie involved.

I was very surprised when I saw "Chaos on the Bridge". After all, for decades there has been a mystical sort of image of Gene Roddenberry as an avuncular sort of guru whose vision was THE basis for everything great about "Star Trek". Well, here this is NOT the sort of guy you hear about...that's for sure. It's a shame the guy is dead, as I'd love to see his reactions to so much hostility. But, according to the documentary, everything that was wrong with "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was due to Roddenberry and his unwillingness to create any sort of tension within the show. Instead, he insisted on a perfect, Utopian future where all the humans got along and loved each other....which is just fine except it created a rather bland package. Almost no one defended this apart, at times, aside from Maurice Hurley--who alternated between saying how much he hated Roddenberry but how he tried to stay loyal to his image. Some were nice but insisted Roddenberry was a poor addition to the show but others were quite blunt. I was frankly quite shocked to hear all this. While I could see that the show VASTLY improved in the later seasons, why was something I'd never heard anyone talk about before or so candidly.

Overall, this is very revealing and well made. However, it did have one problem--the pace was too quick and it seems stretching it out to 90 minutes or so would have made the film a bit stronger...though it still is very well done and I urge Trek fans to see it with an open mind.

"Chaos on the Bridge" has a story worth telling (the creative staff disorder during "The Next Generation"'s nascent years), but it suffers from that reality TV editing that ruins everything. You know the kind: the rapid cuts and frenetic pacing, like the producer (or Shatner in this case) has a deathly fear of slowing down. It's the last thing a Star Trek documentary needs. I know it's not comprehensive, but even at a mere 60 minutes, surely there's some room to let the thing breathe.

That said, there's enough here to entertain even the ardent TNG fan. I was surprised to learn that Mitchell Ryan and Yaphet Kotto were among those actors considered for Captain of the Enterprise for Paramount's glitzy new Star Trek series. And that the revolving door creative staff was due to a leadership vacuum.

I genuinely like the spirit of this thing, and would love to see someone tackle a broader documentary down the road (one that covers the series as a whole). Shatner's onto something here, if he wants to shed light on Star Trek shows.

Just stop cutting it like a reality show.

6/10

William Shatner, formerly Capt. Kirk of TV's beloved "Star Trek", executive-produced, wrote, directed, narrates and appears as interviewer for this behind the scenes documentary on the popular syndicated science-fiction TV series, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987-1994). With creator Gene Roddenberry's health on the wane (and his creative output in question), the series met with some sharp turns and thorny paths after finally finding an actor to step into Kirk's shoes (Patrick Stewart--a bald man with an accent!--whose careful but acerbic comments here are the centerpiece of the film). Shatner wasn't able to round up much of "Next Generation"'s cast, but the producers and writers of the show have some interesting stories to share, while Paramount's apparent lack of enthusiasm for the series--and condescension for its actors and crew--is a curious morsel. Shatner's healthy ego maintains that the star of this enterprise is Shatner, and his reactions during interviews are way over the top. His film doesn't have a nostalgic feel (in fact, it's quite icy), while Catalin Marin's country bumpkin music is horrendously out of place. Certainly of great interest to "Star Trek" fans, as well as aficionados of television history. ** from ****