William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: for all my claims of how scientific this study is I have done very little in the way of actual research into any of the things I'm writing about. Of course I'm watching the episodes in question but beyond that? I might look at Wikipedia or IMDB to get the date the episode aired or to check what I know a particular character actor who pops up as a guest star in a given episode from but other than that? Nothing. I mean I have random one off characters whose names I've just spelled out phonetically because I can't even be bothered to look up how they're actually spelled. That's the level of hard hitting research I'm willing to engage in.

Occasionally I've come across little bits of trivia in the aforementioned Wikipedia articles or IMDB entries that are interesting that I've mentioned in my write-ups, but by and large I've never really gotten into the behind the scenes stuff about Star Trek: The Next Generation. As I watched these first two seasons though there was a single question that kept coming into my mind, time and time again: "Why do these episodes suck so much?"

Granted, for most shows it takes a season or two before things really come together and everything is firing on all cylinders but generally it's gradual improvements leading to the high watermark for the series. For Star Trek it was complete and utter dreck for seasons 1 and 2 and then a consistently good run for the remainder of the series. 

Clearly something was afoot and fortunately there is a one hour documentary that delves into the behind the scenes shenanigans that lead to Star Trek: The Next Generation sucking ass for two seasons. So today we're going to go a bit outside our comfort zone and dig into the documentary film, William Shatner Presents Chaos on the Bridge.

Preexisting Prejudices

I've not seen this at all so I have no opinions about it one way or another. That being said, I love documentaries. I like feature film length documentaries and documentary series on television. The only things I watch on Netflix (outside of Star Trek: The Next Generation) are B-movie action flicks and documentaries. Over on YouTube it's kind of the same where my recommendations are entirely old wrestling shows and short-form documentaries. I'll watch documentaries about things I'm interested in in and of themselves and things that I care little about. So there you go. Now you know a bit more about the author of this here Fuck Report.

Plot Synopsis

After some brief introductory stuff to set up the premise of Chaos on the Bridge we get some rapid fire opinions of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry that run the gamut from saint to complete and utter douchelord. From the jump it's clear that the documentary is less keen on lionizing Roddenberry than some other, more official documentaries might be. They set him up as kind of a has-been who had one surprise hit that he never really followed up on the promise of with any of his subsequent work.

With the success of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one where a punker with a ghetto blaster flips off Spock on a bus) it became clear to Paramount that even 20 years after the original series had debuted there was still a demand for Star Trek and so the decision was made to do another television series with Gene Roddenberry involved.

Roddenberry, however, was in no shape to actually be involved in making a television show since by 1986 was a drug addict and an alcoholic so according to writer David Gerrold, in the months leading up to the show's planning stages, his wife, Majel Barrett (aka Troi's Mom and the voice of Computer) would put him on the train every week and send him off somewhere to get his shit together.

And get his shit together he did! Well, at least in regards to the booze and the crank, the comments of others throughout the documentary would make it clear that he had not gotten his shit together in the broader sense of the term but well get there when we get there.

With Gene all clean and sober he moved into an office on the Paramount lot and began conceptualizing what would become Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's around this point of the documentary that we are introduced to the only individual that uniformly hated by every single talking head, Leonard Maizlish, Gene Roddenberry's attorney.

While Gene was getting sober, Maizlish had entered into negotiations with Paramount on Gene's behalf and was able to get Gene a pretty handsome compensation package worth in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars. Per the agreement, Paramount would retain ownership of the Star Trek brand but Roddenberry would be given complete creative control over the new show.

As the development of the show got underway, Roddenberry almost immediately brought in people from the Original Series that he had worked with and trusted: producers Eddie Milkis and Bob Justman, as well as writers David Gerrold and Dorothy (D.C.) Fontana. From the get go the show was plagued by internal conflicts. The studio heads wanted a two hour pilot, Gene only wanted to do a one hour pilot, he ultimately relented but then told D.C. Fontana to write the script.

She did but the added and revised her script, inserting the entire Q subplot of Encounter at Farpoint which I guess kind of answers my question of why the humanity on trail part seemed like a completely different episode just kind of smashed into the other more straightforward first episode, "Here are the characters and the concept of the show" plot. Anyway this act by Roddenberry kind of pissed off Fontana since he ended up getting a shared writing credit for the episode.

Who got writing credits seems to be a big deal to Fontana in particular since she's also the one who relays the stories of the archfiend, Leonard Maizlish, sneaking into people's offices and randomly revising scripts on their computers or bringing the writers, "notes from Gene" that were clearly not in Gene's handwriting. She'd eventually narc him out to the Writer's Guild for violating Guild rules and we was eventually removed from the Paramount lot but somehow managed to find a way to come back. David Gerrold mentions one time when he saw Leonard standing next to an open window and thinking to himself that if he were to push Leonard out the window no one would care.

Things weren't only chaotic on the writing side of things. Elsewhere the prospect of getting Star Trek on television again was proving to be a bit more challenging than Paramount head John Pine had anticipated. The show was originally slated air on Fox I but they only wanted to commit to a 13 episode season which apparently wasn't enough so he went looking elsewhere. None of the other networks were interested since it was the mid-80s and there really wasn't any sci-fi and so the show ended up as a first-run syndicated program.

The documentary also goes a bit into the casting process of a single character: Captain Picard. Apparently Gene Roddenberry hated Patrick Stewart for being bald and British but was ultimately won over by Stewart during an audition in which he wore a wig that had been FedExed to him from England. Stewart talks a bit about asking Roddenberry for some direction on what sort of man the character of Picard was supposed to be and being handed a stack of Horatio Hornblower books by Roddenberry.

Back on the writing side of things we are introduced to Maurice Hurley who was brought on to write. He had previously only done cop shows like Miami Vice. He was not particularly well liked by the other writers but somehow ended up as the show runner where he ran the show by trying to be as true to Gene Roddenberry's vision, even when that vision was self-contradictory or made for terrible television.

A lot of the writers talk about how Gene was insistent that by the 24th century humanity had risen above personal conflict, and how difficult that made writing television to be watched by people in the 20th century. Among these tales is Tracy Torme talking about how Hurley did want to put his script for a little episode called Conspiracy (aka the one with the brain fucklers aka one the only episodes from the first two seasons that's any good) because it was too dark and didn't fit with the vision of Gene Roddenberry. Ultimately someone else overruled Hurley and the episode was made but it kind of shows what a mess those early seasons were when legit good shit like Conspiracy people had to fight to make while episodes that were absolute dreck were getting churned out.

Also because of this documentary I learned that Tracy Torme is:

• A person who exists.
• Mel Torme's son.
• The dude who did that alien abduction movie based on a "true" story that I loved in middle school, Fire in the Sky.
• The dude who came up with the TV show Sliders, which I probably watched more religiously than any of the Star Treks that followed TNG.

In conclusion, Tracy Torme is a good egg, but I digress.

We get some more stories of backstage conflict with the documentary talking briefly about Denise Crosby leaving the show due to finding the role unfulfilling as an actress. She's pretty good in her interview, joking that she asked if the prop department could just make a mold of her legs to put behind Picard's head on the bridge since half the time that was all anyone could see of her and she had no dialogue. Hurley's kind of a dick about her leaving talking about how she went to become a movie star with such disdain that you can hear the implied air quotes around "movie star."  

There's also a bit about Gates McFadden leaving the show but it's presented as a lot less scandalously here than some of the rumors I've heard about why she before the second season. Here the story was that she was argumentative and stood up for herself which somehow led to her departure. They then touch briefly on Doctor Grandma being added to the cast and how no one liked her in the audience or among the other cast members, so that's a fun tidbit.

Like Gates McFadden, Patrick Stewart, was a bit opposed to bullshit and at one point threatened to leave the show so Hurley started to come up with a story arch where the entire Enterprise is destroyed and a new ship and crew are commissioned to investigate what happened, which is kind of a neat idea but one that I'm glad never came to pass. 

The end of the documentary sees Gene Roddenberry die and Michael Piller come on as a head writer for season 3 and these two things allowed Star Trek: The Next Generation to become the fondly remembered show that it is today. Under Piller, the documentary claims, that the structure of the show moved away from plot driven episodes to character driven episodes which resulted in more engaging television and stronger storytelling.

At some point in the documentary Ronald D. Moore points out that it was a testament to the audience that they survived beyond those first two seasons and someone (maybe him again, maybe one of the other talking heads) notes that if the show hadn't had the brand recognition of Star Trek the fans would have given up on it well before the third season. Having just watched the first two seasons I cannot tell you how true these two statements are.

Watching the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 2020 was a slog. Even with the knowledge that things would get markedly better once I got to the third season, there were many times that Id watch and episode and then ask myself, "Why am I even doing this?" It's hard to imagine people in 1988 wanting to stick with the show when there was absolutely no promise than it would ever get any better than shit like Code of Honor. 

How Rikered Was Jonathan Frakes?

We get surprisingly little Frakes as a talking head in this documentary but what we do get is solid gold! He relates some tale about how serious and British Patrick Stewart is/was and how he just came in and wanted to do the job or whatever but everyone else would be singing and dancing and stuff. Shatner looks at him in askance and Frakes is like, "Not all at the same time...c'mon Bill surly you did the same thing," and Shatner is his best William Shatner as a character voice is like, "No!" Jonathan Frakes...living the gimmick!

Final Thoughts

When I learned that Shatner was serving as the interviewer I was a bit worried that his oversized personality would end up overshadowing everything else but he's remarkably subdued. Honestly the only times he inserts himself into the proceedings beyond his role as interviewer and narrator are in the exchange with Frakes recounted above and towards the end of the documentary when one of the writers (the dude with a blue beard) asks him how he felt when he first heard that there was going to be a new Star Trek without him and he confesses to be a bit disappointed but that's pretty much it for Shatner being the focal point of any particular exchange. Overall I think he does a good job asking insightful questions and getting what read, to me at least, as honest answers from the people he's speaking to. 

There's a bit on one of Henry Rollins' spoken word records where he talks about recording a song with William Shatner and Ben Folds titled, "I Can't Get Behind That." During the recording session the three of them go out to eat and at the restaurant somewhere in Nashville, TN where everyone immediately recognizes Shatner and he's shaking hands and signing autographs gregariously and stuff. Of Shatner, Rollins says, "He's a very nice man. He's nothing like we are. He's a Canadian. Spontaneously friendly!" and I think it's this spontaneous friendliness especially with people he's worked with that engenders the sort of frank and honest answers we get from the interviewees here.

As for the content of the documentary, as someone who liked Star Trek well enough to watch it on TV but never to the point of super fandom I was unaware of the bulk of the information presented here. For someone with a more vested interest in the series most of the stories told here are probably old hat though. I thought as a stand alone documentary it was fairly entertaining and moved a long at a good clip and most importantly it answered my question as to why these first two seasons sucked so much ass: non-stop conflict about what the show should be and a fairly toxic work environment. Truly a tale as old as time.

Fuck Count

There's no fucking on camera though one of the talking heads featured throughout the documentary has "Gene Roddenberry's Personal Assistant/Mistress" on her chyron so there was some fucking going on at some point, but since none of that happened within the Star Trek universe it's well outside the scope of this study and thus not something that I'm going to record here.