Perhaps those living in quadrotriticale houses shouldn’t throw Tribbles.
Rick Berman didn’t have a problem killing off Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in 1994’s forgettable film, Star Trek Generations. However, Berman does seem to have an apples-and-oranges issue regarding what is and isn’t appropriate Star Trek behavior.
While appearing recently on The D-Con Chamber podcast, one of those who oversaw the demise of Kirk actually called out Strange New Worlds for characters high-fiving! Berman's words were an obvious jab at the SNW episode "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans," in which Mr. Spock (Ethan Peck) and fellow Vulcan Doug (Patton Oswalt) exchange high fives. Berman said:
“I watched an episode of one of the newer Star Treks [aka NuTrek], where people were saying things like, ‘Give me five.’ And it just doesn’t sit right to me. There’s a certain classical element to Star Trek.”
By “certain classical element," does Berman mean killing off beloved characters in a way that will ensure how he is going to be remembered in Star Trek history? Well, the death of Kirk will always be a stain on Berman, Brannon Braga, and Ronald D. Moore's legacies. And Berman is worried about two characters high-fiving after what he did to Kirk over 30 years ago? Really?
What makes Berman, Braga, and Moore’s treatment of Captain Kirk in Generations so perplexing is that this talented trio created hundreds of hours of memorable Star Trek content that includes The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise when you stack all their resumes up together.
In fairness to Berman, he did shed some light on the whole ordeal of producing Generations, including the death of Captain Kirk and how the team wanted Leonard Nimoy to direct the film. Berman said during that in-depth interview with StarTrek.com back in 2011:
"It was kind of naïve for myself and Brannon (Braga) and Ron (Moore) to jump into the movie business with really very little experience on how it worked. We had a bit of a falling out with Leonard Nimoy, in retrospect, over the procedural elements of how the development, writing, production, and direction of a feature film are different from television.
As a result, we selected David Carson to direct Generations. We got a lot of criticism for the way Kirk was handled, which I felt was unfortunate. As far as fans of TNG were concerned, Kirk had been dead for years. It was a century later. We thought, 'Wouldn’t it be great to somehow pass the torch, in a way? To somehow bring Kirk and Spock and the others into this, to find some way to marry the two together?'
And from that came the idea of the Nexus and the ribbon and all of that, and that Kirk had, in fact, not died and that he comes back for one last, grand adventure with Picard. That was something that was our way of paying respect and honor to The Original Series. But it was taken by a lot of people as going against canon of the show, and about our killing Kirk, when in fact Kirk had been dead for decades, most likely, as far as anybody knew.
Scenes that were written for his death were somewhat pitiful and weak, and we ended up going back and doing the best we could to make it more dramatic. It was a first for a lot of us, and it made money and it ended up being, for the first time out of the wheelhouse, not such a bad picture."
Most fans (57% Popcornmeter) and critics (48% Tomatometer) disagree with you, Mr. Berman. Take a long, hard look at the scores Generations received on Rotten Tomatoes and you'll realize it was "such a bad picture" after all.
If high-fiving Vulcans is the most controversial thing that ever comes out of Strange New Worlds, I'd wager Trekkies can live with that. But after 30 years, many fans are still upset with Berman, Braga, and Moore's boneheaded decision to kill Captain Kirk.
Please, though, tell us more about how "there’s a certain classical element to Star Trek," after you screwed over one the franchise's most iconic legacy characters so spectacularly.
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