Death of Trek: Yup, another rant about Star Trek

I caught the last bit of a History Channel special, "How William Shatner Changed the World." It was on how Star Trek, mostly on the original series, changed how people looked at the world.
But it was then last segment that got me iffed. What it was on how Star Trek fell. Their assessment: first, people wanted a darker view of technology (which born the ideas of the Borg and Deep Space Nine). Second, people wanted more technology at work rather then less (making much of Voyager's techno-babble). But that didn't connect as many people, and viewership went down until Enterprise was cancelled.

That is a terrible, corporate style assessment that doesn't even face what was the problem. What killed Star Trek was not its enviroment, but its story.
Almost everyone agrees that the last great Trek series was Deep Space Nine (DSN). Ironicly, much of its greatness came after Voyager went on, where Rick Berman and Brannon Braga left DSN to do Voyager. In came Ron Moore. You should recognize that name, since he is also the guy behind the new and much acclaimed Battlestar Galactica series. DSN went from an okay series to a good one. The format even changed to serial, where each episode affects the next (see Babylon 5). And epic storylines came along, including the Dominion War.
Voyager never had that. It was partly serial, but nothing actually that good. If anything, Voyager had more unoriginal ideas in its run then the animated Legend of Zelda series. In fact, here's one paragraph from the IGN review of the second season DVD (found here: http://dvd.ign.com/articles/517/517614p1.html).

"With The Next Generation, Trek's top brass waited until the show was accepted by fans before bringing in the old names. Unfortunately, that didn't happen here. They pulled the trigger too soon, bringing back Captain Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and quite possibly the best character since Khan, Q (John de Lancie)."

Yes, it took only the second season to bring along past Trek characters. At least DSN did something with the Next Generation characters it recieved (notably Worf).
But mostly, it was Pinocio style characters that dominated the scene, especially in Voyager. You have both Seven and the Doctor taking the "trying to be more human" role. One of the reasons Data worked was not just that part of his character, but that he was a neutral observer. He didn't have emotions that other races have, so he thinks purely through logic. This aspect wasn't in, nor needed, in the other Treks.

Mostly, the bad Trek series was lost. Berman and Braga just didn't know how to make a good story good. I'll admit they did have some good ideas. Heck, Nemesis was full of good story ideas. They just couldn't get it translated to a full story, including real, evolving characters.

The only saving grace for Trek was when new blood was introduced to the creative team. Manny Coto, who headed up the last season of Enterprise, did a terrific job with it. Viewership notably went up in the last season. I just think the execs didn't care much of if that last season succeeded or not (note only one possible reason why Coto was brought in); the show was axed.

The point, which I probably didn't convey all that well, was that story killed Trek. Berman and Braga's means was not to make a good story, but to get good ratings. The problem with focusing on the latter is that it leads to the creative team making decisions more like an executive then a story teller. What execs should know when something works, let the creative team do their job. If the team can't, then throw them out. If they are doing a good job, let them be. Don't make decisions to boost ratings, because most of the time it does the opposite.