Star Trek : Alex Kurtzman is the worthy successor to Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek The Next Generation Patrick Stewart and John De Lancie
Protesting the Next Generation
When Star Trek The Next Generation went into pre-production Gene was brought in by necessity, the studio simply couldn’t create a new series without Gene signing off on it, Gene was unlikely to sign off if he wasn’t involved. Moreover many fans were actively protesting the creation of a series without the original crew of the Enterprise aboard.
Some questionable decisions lead to a pretty well universally panned first season, there was also noted turmoil during the second season all of which has been well documented in a series of behind the scenes documentaries such as Chaos on the Bridge. The Studio eventually installed Rick Berman as a supervising producer, he was later promoted to Executive Producer and finally took over the entire franchise.
LOS ANGELES – JULY 20: (L-R) Rick Berman and Scott Bakula attends “UPN’s TCA Party” at Shutters at the Beach July 20, 2004 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
The Berman era
Rick Berman was initially brought on board to keep Gene and his people in check, he was a good studio politician and known for being on top of the budgets. He also had no vested interest in keeping to Gene’s formula or ideals, only to the betterment of the series.
The studio requested a second spin-off series from Rick, it eventually became Deep Space Nine, a series Gene would have never signed off on due to it’s very nature, however no longer beholden to Gene’s vision as long as it could be set in the same universe with a similar guiding principle it was good enough.
Over the years there were many notable disagreements between Rick and the cast, he did not have a very good reputation with regards to the actors and actresses he hired. This notably lead to the loss of such stars as Will Wheaton and Terry Farrell.
As the studio continued to ask new properties, the Next Generation movies, Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek Enterprise were all created by Rick. He maintains that he was against the timeline of creating both series and blames the studios pressure to produce both series for the supposed franchise fatigue which put Star Trek into its long sleep from 2002 to 2009.