Chaos on the Bridge

To the Trek fan, I found this a fun story and interesting bit of history that was well worth watching. It feels rushed in parts, glossed over in others and one-sided, but overall, a fun retelling. I think everyone knows that the behind the scenes making of TV isn't always pretty. Some of the underbelly is shown and some grievances are aired, but there's enough Trek in this little film to keep the Trekie interested. An entertaining hour I thought. 8 stars, possibly 8.5

This documentary rushes through separate lines spoken by former TNG actors, writers and directors, edited together to form a narrative of the creative and production problems behind TNG starting out.

To glue this narrative together and not just have people talking on screen, it is full of cartoon animation and animated photos too support the storyline of what the old crew is sharing.

The pace and production style of distraction makes it a little hard to follow, but if you're a true TNG fan, you'll still appreciate the back story of the first seasons of TNG and learn about a few interesting decisions that made TNG turn around and become a sustained success.

So, Gene Roddenberry was human!

Leave it to William Shatner to dredge all this up and confront the actors, producers, writers, and studio executives which he interviews in this film.

Somebody suggested that the music was inappropriate, however, since this movie was kind of made to look like it was based on a poker game which is totally appropriate for the next generation, the music is 100% spot on.

I remember when this show first aired, when I watched Encounter at Farpoint, I was thinking to myself that there was some kind of dichotomy, some kind of split going on within that episode.

The first part deals with exploring the new ship and showing its capabilities. The holodeck, the saucer separation. Gene had actually considered doing this in a possible fourth season of the original show, in the book "the making of Star Trek", Gene talks about a holographic recreation area for crewmembers and also the fact that the original Enterprise saucer section was detachable, just like the "D"- so none of that was new to me- as a matter of fact I was thinking congratulations for finally getting to these things.

It was wholly ironic for William Shatner to produce and direct this documentary. When I was watching the first season of next generation, I just felt that there was something wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it. Until I watched this documentary, and now I understand and I can even in my mind go through the seasons and the episodes and identify what was probably happening based on what I have been told through this documentary.

And I also never realized that Tracy Tormé was the son of Mel Tormé- there is a great resemblance there. And Tracy is basically the one who thought up the Borg, originally they were going to be connected to the parasite-aliens from Conspiracy, but that never happened. But from the last two episodes of season one, we are set up for the possible invasion from somebody.

Some people have complained bitterly about this movie, feeling that it degrades Gene, but I don't agree. This movie in no way changes how I feel about the man, he was the creator of Star Trek and he was always the great bird of the galaxy to me.

Except that I don't agree at all with Maurice Hurley's contention that Gene's ideas about the future of mankind were "Whack-a-doodle".

I actually thought some of Maurice' episodes were fairly good. But now that I know that he was elevated to the show runner position above two veteran Star Trek writers, and that he really didn't appreciate Gene's vision? To me that explains everything that was wrong with the first two seasons. And it wasn't Gene.

Now I always thought the second season was a huge step up from the first season especially from the start with Riker sporting a beard and Geordi being elevated to the engineer. Good ideas. And despite what is said about Dr. Pulaski, I liked her more than Dr. Crusher. Because she was caustic and acerbic just like bones. She was a female bones. I loved her character and I love the actress Diana Muldaur - except that in the documentary she kind of looked like how she looked in the episode "Unnatural Selection". I wish they would have tapped her for the new Picard series.

Anyways this doesn't make me hate the show or like it any less, this movie shines the light of truth onto something that we love, it explains a lot of things. And this could not have been done by anybody but William Shatner. God love William Shatner.

Also one thing is very clear, during the whole production of next generation where Gene was involved, he was ill the entire time. The show definitely took it's toll on him, he wanted to retire, not make a new Star Trek show. But he did it, selflessly and at risk to his own health.

I really enjoy having Shatner lead the documentaries for the development of star trek. My only wish is that they had delved into the writers issues developing TNG more... It just, maybe in hind sight, appears obvious to me that the creation of story conflict is easy between the federation values and of its characters against an antagonist. I think there is more to the story of the first two seasons of TNG than they could have dug into..

I'm happy this documentary was made. The interviews with the contributing cast and etc were very I intriguing as both a trekkie and an outsider interested in TV or movie production.

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.