Berman Looks Back At His Involvement With Trek Movies

Though he may no longer be affiliated with Star Trek Rick Berman is still more than happy to talk about his involvement with the series and the movies that he was proudly involved with. In a recent interview for Startrek Magazine, which celebrates the Star Trek movies, Berman was more than happy to wax nostalgic about the 4 TNG movies, which he helmed as a producer.
Berman’s first step into the world of Star Trek movies came in 1994 when he produced Star Trek: Generations which as the title suggests attempted to bridge the Generation gap between the original Star Trek cast and the new cast. The movie was sold as a passing of the baton movie, however early on it did run into its fair share of problems, the biggest of which was finding a director. The script for Generations was penned by Ron D. Moore and Brannon Braga and was heavily based on an idea that Berman had.
“Our idea, my idea originally, was I felt it was important to bring members of the original cast into the story to pass the torch. Now, obviously, because there was a century time difference we had to come up with a story that would allow that to happen. And we did. We created an idea that could take advantage of some or all of the original cast, depending on how things would work out.
“Then, when it came time to select a director, after everybody was happy with the script, the first person we agreed we would go talk to was Leonard Nimoy. Leonard was not pleased with the script. He wanted to do some pretty dramatic work on redeveloping the script and there was a lot of differing of opinions on what evolved at that point, but let it be said there were disagreements and the end result was that their was a bit of a falling out and Leonard’s involvement with the project did not happen.”
Of course eventually veteran television director David Carson who had proved to be among the more solid directors on Star Trek directed the movie, which premiered in November 18 of 1994.
Next up for Berman as a producer was Star Trek: First Contact, which to this day is the Star Trek movie, which generated him the most commercial success. Many felt at the time that Berman and company had learned their lessons from Generations. In terms of bringing everything together Berman had very few of the problems on this production which plagued him on Generations, and finding a director wasn’t a problem. First Contact premiered on 22 November 1996 and grossed just shy of $100 Million domestically and $50 Million elsewhere around the world.
Insurrection however would not do as well. Insurrection as a movie was heavily criticised as being too much like an extended episode of Star Trek, however many also feel that it was the closest movie out of the Next Generation movies to actually conveying Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future. Berman credits the late writer Michael Piller for much of this.
“I agree that it was classic Star Trek and one the reasons for that was Michael [Piller],” says Berman. “We ended up making a film that still dealt a great deal with principal, with conflict, with conflict within Starfleet. It had romantic themes. It was true to Star Trek in a way that Michael felt was essential to his story. We had some wonderful actors in it. F. Murray Abraham was terrific.”
Insurrection premiered on 11 December 1998, and made $70 Million domestically and $42 Million elsewhere.
Nemesis however would not be as fortunate with box office takings than Insurrection was, and to this day Berman is as bemused as ever as to what actually went wrong.
“Star Trek was going through some changes,” Berman says. “Deep Space Nine had ended. Voyager had ended. Voyager’s ratings had not fared at all that well. Enterprise was on the air (and struggling). I think that the studio was not in a big rush. Patrick Stewart was kind of busy. There was a sense I was getting from the studio that perhaps the next film we produced might be better off if we did it with a new cast. I felt, right or wrong, that because we were introducing a new cast with Enterprise that to introduce a new cast almost simultaneously was not a good idea. I felt since it had been awhile, four years I believe, since the audience had seen Picard and company, that we should give the cast of The Next Generation another shot.”

Of course as we all know Nemesis was plagued with on set disagreements between cast members and director Stuart Baird who was not familiar at all with the Star Trek Universe. Ironically Berman pointed out that he only hired Baird to direct the movie at Paramount’s insistence.
“I was encouraged to consider Stuart Baird. Stuart Baird was a world-renowned film editor (Who most recently edited Casino Royale), but he’s also directed Executive Decision and U.S. Marshals. I met him and he was self effacing and absolutely charming, and he knew his stuff. I’ve always found, at least in television, editors make very good directors. They know exactly what they need. And he seemed to have an understanding of what went into all of this.”
Though as a movie maker Baird knew his craft, he was let down by a lack Star Trek knowledge which often brought him into conflict with most of the cast throughout his working on the project. Nemesis was sold very much as an action adventure Sci Fi Movie and performed shockingly at the Box Office only managing to take $43 Million at home and $23 Million elsewhere. The movie also heralded the end of Rick Berman’s reign as producer of Star Trek movies.
Of course when Nemesis premiered it was up against some pretty stiff competition from movies such as Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers as well as the 20th Bond Movie ‘Die Another Day’. Many people feel that being up against such blockbusters didn’t help Nemesis cause, however Berman agrees to differ.
“I don’t think that’s a valid complaint because if that were true we would have done better in other countries where it did not open close to that film and it did not do any better in those countries. I don’t know what to blame it on. The reviews of the film were, I would say, 80 per cent miserable, as were the opening weekend numbers. It went against the tracking, the quite scientific approach the studios use to determine how a film is going to do. The film did nowhere near as well as the tracking results had predicted.
“I still believe that Nemesis was a very good film and I, to this day, don’t quite understand what went wrong.”

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