What was up with the B&B hate back in the 90's & 00's?

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

What was up with the B&B hate back in the 90's & 00's? The Berman-era of Star Trek was 1987-2005. Generally, people are fans of TNG and DS9. Braga's gone on record to admit that the script for Generations suffered being written back-to-back with the TNG finale. Honestly, I think he and Moore were just on burn out and turned out the best they could. Everyone loves First Contact. Next up, Voyager: the first three seasons were pretty good, no? From Enterprise, fans seem to love the Xindi saga and the final season.

The Era of B&B Hate seems to specifically be 1997 to 2003, VOY S4-7 (including Insurrection) & ENT S1-2 (including Nemesis).

What did I miss? Please, no trash talking of B&B here and now in November 2024. I'm hoping to have a retrospective look at the VOY & ENT years and why the B&B hate back then.

 

[Tosk]

Some people need a villain. So every poor decision got put on B&B, and any good decision was something that somehow got past them. (That's not to say neither of them ever made poor decisions, they absolutely did in my opinion.)

The same thing still happens, just with different names. Same as it ever was.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I like it when Braga is blamed for stuff he had no part of or happened before he joined Star Trek.

 

[Lord Garth]

I never hated B&B, but I did get tired of them and didn't trust them creatively at a certain point. I'll tell you why that happened.

The fourth season of VOY is my favorite season of that series. Period. Bar None. That was also Jeri Taylor's last season as Showrunner. Outside of the fourth season, which I thought was relatively consistent, VOY was notorious for having up-and-down episodes.

The fifth season was no different, but it had a series of episodes I was extremely frustrated with: "Nothing Human", "Thirty Days", "Latent Image", "The Disease" (worst of all), and "The Fight". In the first four of those, I disagreed with Janeway and sided with the other characters. Not a good thing that I'm not with the Captain so much. So, I was starting to think that Brannon Braga didn't have the same handle on Janeway that Jeri Taylor did.

A handful of episodes I didn't like wasn't enough to make me turn on B&B at the time, though. Liking DS9 better than VOY wasn't enough to make me turn on B&B either. Though it definitely didn't help. What really did it was Ron Moore -- my Star Trek Hero at the time -- joining VOY, lasting three episodes, quitting, and then spilling his guts about the experience six months later. I was 20 at the time, impressionable, and his word might as well have been the word of God. Ron Moore said flat out that B&B didn't like TOS, they didn't understand it, and that if they wanted to create a series that took place before TOS (which turned out to be ENT), they'd better have a change of attitude. ENT was dead to me on arrival. As far as the rest of VOY, Ron Moore made it sound like B&B had a "who cares?" attitude about everything. And if they didn't care, I thought "Why should I care?" So, I was done with Star Trek -- at that point -- until someone else, anyone else, would take over.

There was also the fact that we're talking about the Turn of the Milennium here. 1999, 2000, 2001. At this point, '90s Trek was feeling stale. DS9 had ended. I thought the best days of Star Trek -- during that era -- were over. A year later, in 2002, Nemesis made it painfully obvious to me that First Contact was a fluke. Four TNG Movies and I only really liked one of them. Not a good ratio. So, I was done with Trek on TV and Trek in the theater.

I just wanted someone else in charge. But that's as far as it went. I bared them no ill-will. I didn't have an issue with them as people. Certain other fans, though, they took it to a whole other level. A level where I thought they were crazy with how far they were taking their B&B Hatred. So, I had to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. They wanted to focus on things they hated, I wanted to focus on things I liked.

 

[somebuddyX]

Bermaga's stuff just seemed to not push Trek in any real challenging areas. I am very sympathetic to the creatives for how Voyager kicked off and understand the conditions it was in from the network. But I also wonder how much did they try to push back or try to get stuff by under the radar. And Enterprise is an extension of that, written as a prequel to TOS by two guys who don't know a lot about TOS, using boring warmed up stories. I found early Enterprise had some interesting usage of semi-serialisation but then remembered TNG Season 3 had done the same thing over a decade before. Enterprise was too safe and easy and boring. Then they overreacted and did a big honking space terrorism arc. If they had just done some challenging dramatic episodes from the beginning they wouldn't have needed that.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I remember reading almost word for word the same arguments against Bermaga that I then saw against Abrams and now see against Kurtzman. And some of those people now defend Bermaga's Trek. The same Trek they trashed back in the day is now the epitome of Trek because they have a new villain who "is destroying Star Trek".

Anyway tho. From what I remember back in the day some very vocal fans didn't like how ENT "messed up canon". I even understood the annoyance, at least up to a certain point, I didn't understand why they were making a TOS prequel of all things (something like this seemed to be inviting trouble by default, especially since Bermaga weren't exactly known for being TOS experts) and I didn't like ENT much either when it aired because it seemed to be throwing a lot of established things out of the window just for the sake of it. Or it had half-baked excuses like "if we don't SAY that the Ferengi are called Ferengi we won't break canon of them actually being encountered in person for the first time on TNG". That riled quite a few people up, too. And the final straw for some was the absolutely terrible final ENT episode that Bermaga called "a love letter to the fans". Umm... yeah. About that... lol. I think Bermaga both missed the perfect time to get off the Trek train and hand the franchise over to someone else with new ideas. And some fans were vocal about this and wanted for them to leave Trek be already - hence the hate.

 

[The Wormhole]

People always vilify whoever's in charge. You see it today with Kurtzman, or a decade ago with Abrams. Outside of Trek, the various showrunners of modern Doctor Who all got shit on by fans while they were in charge, Star Wars fans tore into George Lucas during the Prequel Era, and Kathleen Kennedy gets torn apart today. Fandom's hate whoever is in charge, this is the way. Sure, Terry Matalas seems to be a darling among some fans at the moment, but that's mostly because he's not in charge of the franchise, giving him a sort of underdog aura which seems to appeal to Kurtzman's detractors. I guarantee if Matalas ever did get the keys to the franchise that his cult seems to think he deserves, he'd become the next hated authority figure.

There is the oddity of Brannon Braga being blamed for things he had no involvement in as mentioned above. Braga only had any real authority over Voyager's fifth and sixth seasons, the entire run of Enterprise and was a co-writer on Generations and First Contact. To see him blamed for Insurrection, Nemesis, the darker "anti-Gene's Vision" aspects of DS9, or even the proposed Star Trek The Beginning Romulan War movie from around 2006 has never made sense. Worse, I remember when I pointed this out one time, someone replied to me saying "that's like saying a serial killer is only guilty of killing eight of the twelve people he's accused of killing. He's still a heinous criminal." People really wanted to hate Braga back in the day. I remember he even leaned into that one time when he was talking at some university, he asked the crowd "how many of you know who I am?" Several hands went up, to which he asked "and how many of you hate me?" When about a third of those hand stayed up he had a good laugh.

Bermaga's stuff just seemed to not push Trek in any real challenging areas. I am very sympathetic to the creatives for how Voyager kicked off and understand the conditions it was in from the network. But I also wonder how much did they try to push back or try to get stuff by under the radar. And Enterprise is an extension of that, written as a prequel to TOS by two guys who don't know a lot about TOS, using boring warmed up stories. I found early Enterprise had some interesting usage of semi-serialisation but then remembered TNG Season 3 had done the same thing over a decade before. Enterprise was too safe and easy and boring. Then they overreacted and did a big honking space terrorism arc. If they had just done some challenging dramatic episodes from the beginning they wouldn't have needed that.

Enterprise suffered from much the same network interference as Voyager did. Indeed, Berman and Braga originally wanted to do something that was more genuinely pre-TOS, but UPN fought them all the way. They didn't like the idea of a mostly Earth centric show, so forced the standard Trek planet of the week formula into it. They didn't like the plan to have no transporters, and forced transporters into the show. They didn't even like the prequel setting, but when it became clear Berman and Braga were not going to do a 25th century show, they forced the Temporal Cold War into the show. Even the Xindi storyline, or he "big honking space terrorism arc" as you put it was also studio mandated, in reaction to the sagging ratings.

And Berman did fight UPN on these matters, but it turned into a matter of choosing which battles to fight. For example, UPN wanted the ship to be an Akira class, Berman had to pull teeth to get them to agree to the "retro modifications" that would make it look pre-TOS. And then more infamously, when Berman absolutely refused to include the ship-board boy band which would break out into a musical number each week, UPN slashed the show's budget in half because of that.

 

[Forbin]

Rick Berman was a good producer, but a terrible writer. Unfortunately, he insisted on writing. There was no greater example of his lack of skill and imagination than the finale of Enterprise plopping onto the screen after Coto's much-better season 4.
Also Berman's insistence on only bland background music on TNG was just plain stupid.

 

[CommanderTrip]

Trek was on the decline and fans needed someone/something to blame - Berman and Braga foot the bill nicely. Braga could write some interesting stories, but struggled in other areas. He and Ronald D Moore were a great team amd could collaborate on the best stories (All Good Things). Berman was trying to keep Roddenberry's legacy going in a way he felt Gene Roddenberry would have done things. Problem is this led to some decisions which maybe held Trek back instead of letting it flourish.

(ex. No sovereign class ships in Dominion War, cut Quark cameo in Insurrection, limiting crossovers/ serialization, vetoing ideas from the writers, etc.)

 

[scotthm]

Next up, Voyager: the first three seasons were pretty good, no?

No. The first Voyager episode I saw was The Cloud, which right away gave me the impression Janeway saw her ship and crew as disposable. When I got around to seeing The Caretaker I realized that Janeway actually had to violate the Prime Directive to strand her crew in the Delta Quadrant, which reinforced in my mind Janeway's disregard for her crew's welfare. And then there's the little matter of the worst episode of Star Trek from any series, a little gem by the title of Threshold...
---------------

 

[Turtletrekker]

I have to be honest, I've just never been a fan of Brannon Braga's writing. His best writing is on The Orville. I found Voyager to be bland TNG-lite that was too concerned with status quo and the writing on Enterprise in the first and in particularly the second season, was unengaging and frankly boring at times. Braga's best work on Star Trek came when he had a good writing partner, which Rick Berman was not.

 

[Dukhat]

No. The first Voyager episode I saw was The Cloud, which right away gave me the impression Janeway saw her ship and crew as disposable. When I got around to seeing The Caretaker I realized that Janeway actually had to violate the Prime Directive to strand her crew in the Delta Quadrant, which reinforced in my mind Janeway's disregard for her crew's welfare.

But that's not how the show was advertised. Janeway cared deeply about her crew and wanted them all to get home. VOY definitely had its flaws, but 'Janeway's disregard for her crew's welfare' was not one of them.

And then there's the little matter of the worst episode of Star Trek from any series, a little gem by the title of Threshold...

That's not the worst episode. That honor goes to TATV.

I have to be honest, I've just never been a fan of Brannon Braga's writing. His best writing is on The Orville. I found Voyager to be bland TNG-lite that was too concerned with status quo and the writing on Enterprise in the first and in particularly the second season, was unengaging and frankly boring at times. Braga's best work on Star Trek came when he had a good writing partner, which Rick Berman was not.

I'm not trying to be a Braga (or Berman, for that matter) apologist, but the problem wasn't with them. It was with their bosses, UPN, who decided that they wanted VOY to be episodic, not have conflicts between the crew, or have any kind of major character development or change in the status quo of things like ranks (except for Tom & Belanna getting hitched, which I'm not sure why that flew). They even stopped caring about things like wasting power, losing shuttles and torpedoes, and even having the Delta Flyer blown to bits in a season-ending cliffhanger only to have it magically reappear the next episode. All of these things were UPN's fault, not B&B's. And this episodic style of storytelling carried over into the first two seasons of ENT, before UPN realized that this was no longer working.

 

[BillJ]

Burnout. Simply stuck around too long, feeding us the same basic Trek as the TV environment around them changed.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

For a moment I thought this was a bed-and-breakfast thread. (Never saw Berman and Braga initialized as such, until today.) Everyone loves beds and breakfasts obviously. Moving on....

 

[Lord Garth]

I remember reading almost word for word the same arguments against Bermaga that I then saw against Abrams and now see against Kurtzman. And some of those people now defend Bermaga's Trek. The same Trek they trashed back in the day is now the epitome of Trek because they have a new villain who "is destroying Star Trek".

That part annoys me the most. It makes me think their opinions are reactionary instead of genuine. They only care about the bottom line: hating whoever's currently in charge.

If someone legitimately changed their opinion, and they can articulate it, fine. But if someone is just unifying "TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT!" as part of an "all hands on deck!" battle cry, then no. I think they're full of shit. There's no way for me to say it, other than just say it.

The only solace I take from this is that one day the more recent stuff that I like will become part of their battle cry. I'm going to get a huge kick out of it when True Fans add Discovery to their list of Acceptable Trek when fighting against whatever Star Trek there is in the future.

 

[Lord Garth]

Anyway, back to the late-'90s and early-'00s. I stopped watching VOY in 1999 and finished the rest of the series in 2008. I ended up liking the seventh season better than the fifth and sixth. The seventh season was when Ken Biller was Showrunner. So, my liking S4 and S7 better than S5 and S6 confirmed what I suspected: I just wasn't a fan of Brannon Braga as a Showrunner. To be fair, I liked most of the episodes, but the bad ones stuck out like a really sore thumb. These days, unless it's part of a re-watch, I just skip the episodes I don't like.

Then came ENT. I binged it in 2010 and 2020. It became a blur afterwards both times, but less so after 2020. My takeaway was that during the first season, when they focused on things specific to the 22nd Century, the series was fine. When they were doing Star Trek As Usual, I thought it was dull. Then, during the second season, it became duller even still. I mean dull, dull, forgettable dull. Probably why so much of it is a blur. I thought to myself, "Everything everyone said about the second season was true!"

The third season of ENT wasn't my thing. I can respect it for trying something different, but the Xindi didn't do anything for me, which hurts the season. The Bush/Cheney vibe really rubbed me the wrong way. I wouldn't care if Section 31 resorted to torture, I'd expect it from them. But Archer? No. Then the Xindi War went in this whole other weird direction and it lost me. I mentally tuned out, even though I was watching it during the Quarantine, and it also became a blur.

Then, came the fourth season. The season I liked, that felt like it was trying to be a prequel. And this was the season where Manny Coto was Showrunner. So, when I looked at VOY S5-S6 and ENT S1-S3 together, collectively, it strengthened my take even further: Brannon Braga didn't do it for me as a Showrunner.

As a writer though, yeah. I liked it when Brannon Braga was paired with Ron Moore. I liked it when he came up with crazy, off-the-wall episodes. Brannon Braga is also responsible for "Cause and Effect".

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I mentioned this already in another thread, but my memory is that B&B wasn't a thing until the two of them teamed up to create Enterprise. Berman had been involved in the development of all the Berman era shows, but for Enterprise it really was their creation, without any involvement from Gene Roddenberry, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor, Ira Behr etc. For the first time, it was all their fault. The successes and the failures.

Trouble is, Enterprise came out when TV sci-fi was at creative peak, as DS9 and B5 had just finished, Farscape and Stargate: SG-1 were currently airing, and Firefly, BSG and Atlantis were just starting. They released their show against that, when they were creatively burned out after years of constant Trek, so it's no wonder people were highly critical about their choices. Braga had written some absolutely terrible episodes in the past (among some really good ones), but this time he could be blamed for the entire direction of the show, and the Temporal Cold War. Berman had made some controversial decisions about music in the past, but the Enterprise theme was his worst one and he doubled down on it. And so on.

Overall the Berman era is probably the most beloved of the entire franchise and Braga gave us many of the best episodes, but they were very publically involved in some real missteps at the end and were the focus of everyone's frustration and disappointment with the franchise's decline.

 

[scotthm]

Janeway cared deeply about her crew and wanted them all to get home. VOY definitely had its flaws, but 'Janeway's disregard for her crew's welfare' was not one of them.

Actions speak louder than words. I never got the idea that Janeway placed the welfare of her crew above that of the various aliens of the week.

That's not the worst episode. That honor goes to TATV.

TATV was a decent ending to a mediocre series. Yes, I understand why it's hated by Star Trek: Enterprise fans, but just taken as a standalone episode and not a series finale there have been much worse Star Trek episodes. Threshold has no redeeming qualities.
---------------

 

[Dukhat]

Actions speak louder than words. I never got the idea that Janeway placed the welfare of her crew above that of the various aliens of the week.


TATV was a decent ending to a mediocre series. Yes, I understand why it's hated by Star Trek: Enterprise fans, but just taken as a standalone episode and not a series finale there have been much worse Star Trek episodes. Threshold has no redeeming qualities.
---------------

I disagree with both of these statements.

The third season of ENT wasn't my thing. I can respect it for trying something different, but the Xindi didn't do anything for me, which hurts the season. The Bush/Cheney vibe really rubbed me the wrong way. I wouldn't care if Section 31 resorted to torture, I'd expect it from them. But Archer? No. Then the Xindi War went in this whole other weird direction and it lost me. I mentally tuned out, even though I was watching it during the Quarantine, and it also became a blur.

I've never seen the third season. By the time they were producing it, I had given up on ENT as I saw it as nothing more than a bargain-basement VOY, just with a different crew and a different ship. I also knew that S3 was supposed to be a thinly veiled 9-11 allegory, which I had no interest in watching.

 

[Admiral Archer]

I never hated B&B, but I did get tired of them and didn't trust them creatively at a certain point. I'll tell you why that happened.

The fourth season of VOY is my favorite season of that series. Period. Bar None. That was also Jeri Taylor's last season as Showrunner. Outside of the fourth season, which I thought was relatively consistent, VOY was notorious for having up-and-down episodes.

The fifth season was no different, but it had a series of episodes I was extremely frustrated with: "Nothing Human", "Thirty Days", "Latent Image", "The Disease" (worst of all), and "The Fight". In the first four of those, I disagreed with Janeway and sided with the other characters. Not a good thing that I'm not with the Captain so much. So, I was starting to think that Brannon Braga didn't have the same handle on Janeway that Jeri Taylor did.

A handful of episodes I didn't like wasn't enough to make me turn on B&B at the time, though. Liking DS9 better than VOY wasn't enough to make me turn on B&B either. Though it definitely didn't help. What really did it was Ron Moore -- my Star Trek Hero at the time -- joining VOY, lasting three episodes, quitting, and then spilling his guts about the experience six months later. I was 20 at the time, impressionable, and his word might as well have been the word of God. Ron Moore said flat out that B&B didn't like TOS, they didn't understand it, and that if they wanted to create a series that took place before TOS (which turned out to be ENT), they'd better have a change of attitude. ENT was dead to me on arrival. As far as the rest of VOY, Ron Moore made it sound like B&B had a "who cares?" attitude about everything. And if they didn't care, I thought "Why should I care?" So, I was done with Star Trek -- at that point -- until someone else, anyone else, would take over.

There was also the fact that we're talking about the Turn of the Milennium here. 1999, 2000, 2001. At this point, '90s Trek was feeling stale. DS9 had ended. I thought the best days of Star Trek -- during that era -- were over. A year later, in 2002, Nemesis made it painfully obvious to me that First Contact was a fluke. Four TNG Movies and I only really liked one of them. Not a good ratio. So, I was done with Trek on TV and Trek in the theater.

I just wanted someone else in charge. But that's as far as it went. I bared them no ill-will. I didn't have an issue with them as people. Certain other fans, though, they took it to a whole other level. A level where I thought they were crazy with how far they were taking their B&B Hatred. So, I had to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. They wanted to focus on things they hated, I wanted to focus on things I liked.

That part annoys me the most. It makes me think their opinions are reactionary instead of genuine. They only care about the bottom line: hating whoever's currently in charge.

If someone legitimately changed their opinion, and they can articulate it, fine. But if someone is just unifying "TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT!" as part of an "all hands on deck!" battle cry, then no. I think they're full of shit. There's no way for me to say it, other than just say it.

The only solace I take from this is that one day the more recent stuff that I like will become part of their battle cry. I'm going to get a huge kick out of it when True Fans add Discovery to their list of Acceptable Trek when fighting against whatever Star Trek there is in the future.

Anyway, back to the late-'90s and early-'00s. I stopped watching VOY in 1999 and finished the rest of the series in 2008. I ended up liking the seventh season better than the fifth and sixth. The seventh season was when Ken Biller was Showrunner. So, my liking S4 and S7 better than S5 and S6 confirmed what I suspected: I just wasn't a fan of Brannon Braga as a Showrunner. To be fair, I liked most of the episodes, but the bad ones stuck out like a really sore thumb. These days, unless it's part of a re-watch, I just skip the episodes I don't like.

Then came ENT. I binged it in 2010 and 2020. It became a blur afterwards both times, but less so after 2020. My takeaway was that during the first season, when they focused on things specific to the 22nd Century, the series was fine. When they were doing Star Trek As Usual, I thought it was dull. Then, during the second season, it became duller even still. I mean dull, dull, forgettable dull. Probably why so much of it is a blur. I thought to myself, "Everything everyone said about the second season was true!"

The third season of ENT wasn't my thing. I can respect it for trying something different, but the Xindi didn't do anything for me, which hurts the season. The Bush/Cheney vibe really rubbed me the wrong way. I wouldn't care if Section 31 resorted to torture, I'd expect it from them. But Archer? No. Then the Xindi War went in this whole other weird direction and it lost me. I mentally tuned out, even though I was watching it during the Quarantine, and it also became a blur.

Then, came the fourth season. The season I liked, that felt like it was trying to be a prequel. And this was the season where Manny Coto was Showrunner. So, when I looked at VOY S5-S6 and ENT S1-S3 together, collectively, it strengthened my take even further: Brannon Braga didn't do it for me as a Showrunner.

As a writer though, yeah. I liked it when Brannon Braga was paired with Ron Moore. I liked it when he came up with crazy, off-the-wall episodes. Brannon Braga is also responsible for "Cause and Effect".

Sorry to multi-quote so much wordage, but I agree 100% with everything you just said. I think you and I had a similar exposure to Star Trek when we were younger, with a few key exceptions. For example, I didn't get to see DS9 or Voyager when they were on the air because my parents weren't fans (We were pretty much a TOS and TNG only household lol, and to this day I mostly agree with them) and I only saw bits and pieces of Voyager when a friend lent me his VHS taped recordings of "Scorpion" and "Year of Hell". That alone made me think I'd missed out. And maybe somewhere lost in translation Voyager could have been a great show, but the majority of it was just so bland.

And in spite of my username (which I only picked because it was the only Prime Universe character mentioned in Star Trek 2009 other than Spock Prime), I agree wholeheartedly with you about Enterprise as well. That one I watched with my dad, although like you we were turned off by season 3, and actually my dad was so pissed off at the new country music sounding version of the theme song and the very gung-ho pro-war message that he stopped watching altogether. Aside from one episode "Twilight" in Season 3, I never got a chance to watch the rest of the show, only seeing "These Are The Voyages" because Riker and Troi were in it and I hoped we might see them on the new USS Titan, set after Nemesis (when they posted sneak peak photos of the Enterprise-D sets, I was like "HA! I knew that the Titan was a Galaxy-class! With a name like that she has to be a big ship!" Sadly I was wrong).

The biggest difference of opinion I can see is that what I have seen of DS9 was enjoyable, and in some places absolutely fantastic, but it misses the heart and soul of Star Trek by a mile. DS9 feels, well, alien in concept, which is cool I guess, but it is tied with Enterprise Season 3 as my least favorite Trek. When you see your Starfleet heroes who claim to be beyond the barbarity of war sink to that level, it is disappointing at best and downright soul-crushing at worst. It's a sign that even the best of us is able to be corrupted. I don't like the concept of Sisko being one culture's literal Messiah figure, only to commit war crimes against another. This show, Voyager, and Enterprise all fell short of what I desperately wanted to see from Trek when I was a kid, and it's why I don't return to the Berman era often in my viewings, unless it is latter season TNG (which I still adore, flaws and all).

All that said, I absolutely adore everything post-2009 because it's all unmistakably STAR TREK while taking us to new places, new worlds to be honest, and touching on modern issues in ways Berman era never could. Thank goodness for JJ Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and all the modern Trek creative staff. Berman killed Star Trek in the 2000s, and those fine people totally saved it.