I stopped watching Voyager after Braga's "Voyager" script where Paris breaks Warp 10, turns into a newt, and has little newtie babies with Janeway. Ugh!
Was that not the most drastically ridiculous, most positively ludicrous, most thoroughly wretched science fiction concept ever on Star Trek? For one thing, I thought Warp 10 was impossible, and even if not, what in the world does that have to do with turning into a newt (and even further, how do you dare pass off "newt-form" as a superior, evolved version of humanity)?
A close second would be the episode where a transporter accident merges Tuvok & Neelix into one hybrid person named Tuvix.
As far as the possibility of firing Rick Berman... Do you think he is mostly to blame for Trek's present snooziness? I don't know how much creative input he has, but I think he's turned Trek into more of a business franchise than a story-telling entertainment franchise.
If I remember correctly, Ira Steven Behr was greatly responsible for making Deep Space Nine better. Granted, he did so by making DS9 more like B5, but still, do you think turning Trek over to him might help? More than likely, it would be better to turn it over to new blood, and let someone else have a crack at it.
Here is my recipe for a better Star Trek series:
1. Keep Trek series off air for at least two years; make people miss it.
2. Meanwhile, tempt fans and experiment with new ideas with a few Trek TV movies.
3. During the break & TV movies, talk with fans online (sound familiar?).
4. Take no less than 12 months planning the new series (digging deep).
5. Focus plans around overall concept, backstory, and characters (with no more than half the cast being Federation/Starfleet type characters).
6. Base series in place and/or time period that makes it very different.
7. Establish story-telling "commandments," such as prohibiting stories about holodeck oddities, transporter mishaps, spacial anomolies, phaser harmonics, temporal phasing, 24-hour DNA mutations, or deflector dish miracles.
8. Worry about sets, costumes, make-up, and FX last (Paramount will pay for it all no matter what), and agree not to change hair-styles or costumes mid-stream unless they make sense or serve the story.
9. Form a talented & trustworthy writing staff, and gradually narrow down the staff until only your best writer(s) is/are writing every episode of the series by the middle season (sound familiar again?).
10. Hire a freakin' script supervisor who knows what the #@!! they're doing and are determined not to give Phil Farrand enough material to write another Nitpickers' Guide book.
11. Make every season have a self-contained "theme" (like B5 or Buffy:tVS), and if you do any summer cliffhangers, make sure the resolution is twice as awesome as the setup and plan out Part 2 *before* summer hiatus.
12. Do not stray from the "goal" of the series (unless the producers & writers *unanimously* agree that a newfound direction is *drastically* better--and plausible in respect to the original direction).
13. In the process of steps 1 thru 12, especially the last few, make fans laugh, cry, ponder, gasp, and generally soil their underwear (in a good way).
Short of turning the whole thing over to JMS or Joss Whedon, or the people who run Alias or E.R., those 13 steps sound possible for Paramount to pull off, don't they?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Guess they're looking for an excuse to kill Enterprise.
