Nov 23 | Chuckreturns to NBC with a special two-hour show on Sunday, Jan 10, 2010, before returning to its regular time slot, Mondays at 8pm on the following night. It's return to prime time television can be attributed to a successful fan renewnal campaign last year. CHUCK is a one-hour, action-comedy series that follows Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi, "Less Than Perfect") -- a computer geek who is catapulted into a new career as the government's most vital secret agent. This upcoming season will include some special guest stars, including Brandon Routh of "Superman Returns" who will play CIA agent Daniel Shaw in an episode, and the addition of SUBWAY restaurant as a major advertiser to the show. Chuck averaged a 4.0/6 rating last season, about eight percent better than the recently cancelled "Trauma". Ratings-challenged Heroes moves back an hour when Chuck returns on Monday nights. STAR TREK VOYAGER's Robert Duncan McNeill serves Chuckas a supervising producer and director.
Nov 17 | Originally hired as co-executive producer to help with the second half of the show's first season, Kevin Murphy has now taken the reins of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel on Syfy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He now serves as an executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson and oversees the day-to-day functions of the show.
Nov 12 | Star Trek star Zachary Quinto is loosely attached to star in the romantic dramedy Whirligig, reports Risky Business.Quinto would play the lead role in the independent Canadian film, which is aiming to shoot early next year. The movie centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman's adopted son.Chaz Thorne is directing the pic, based on a screenplay by Michael Amo, creator of the Canadian supernatural series "The Listener."
Nov 11 | The CNS Foundation, is hosting an on-line charity auction at www.charitybuzz.com. One of the items they are auctioning is a signed movie poster of the new Star Trek movie which has all the cast members and writers. The president of our organization is Carol Abrams, JJ's mother, and she arranged for the donation from Bad Robot Production Company. J.J. Abrams is also a major donor to their organization. The funds raised will go to help find a cure to neurological disorders in children. The auction link is here.
Nov 10 | Candice Bergen, Charles Lisanby, Don Pardo, Gene Roddenberry, Tom and Dick Smothers and Bob Stewart have been selected as the next inductees into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. They will be honored at a Jan. 20 ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "This year's inductees have challenged and shaped popular culture, changed television for the better and entertained us royally while doing so," TV Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner said. More info at the Hollywood Reporter
In part two of our interview with Ira Steven Behr, the former STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE writer/producer reflects on the critically-acclaimed series. We also asked Behr what he sees in the future of the STAR TREK franchise, undoubtably in an ambivalent position -- with ENTERPRISE struggling on television and, strangely enough, another new prequel project in the early stages of development as an eleventh feature film.
TW: What is DS9’s greatest contribution to the STAR TREK franchise?
IB: I think the series as a whole was the greatest contribution. Getting back to telling character-oriented stories, getting back to having conflict between human beings; plot at the service of character. We did our share of space anomalies, usually to screw up O’Brien, [but] I think we created a much more complete universe in which you can have all these characters with all these backstories, all these races, all these supporting characters. You knew more about 'Garak' or 'Gul Dukat', ultimately, than you knew about 'Riker'. So that to me is the contribution.
Plus we brought back money, greed, racial bigotry, war, all the stuff that disappeared that I just could not wrap my head around in terms of the reality. We obviously did the thing we made a big deal about in season two, which was for me when I began to see opportunities that I hadn’t seen before. It was then [that] we decided that Earth is paradise--we’ll buy into that (I don’t quite understand it, but we'll buy it. It’s unique and "it’s easy to be a saint in paradise" is one of the things Sisko said in "Maquis, Part II." And to have a Federation person say that as opposed to a Cardassian or Ferengi or Bajoran was telling because Sisko was learning things. That opened the door in my mind for the rest of the series. We certainly took the series where [co-creator] Michael Piller would freely admit he hadn’t thought of [taking it at the outset].
TW: How do you respond the criticism by some that the series disrespected Gene Roddenberry's "vision"?
IB: Everyone speaks for Gene Roddenberry, who’s gone, and I would not speak for Gene Roddenberry or be so quick to speak about what Gene would want or not want. The Gene Roddenberry of 1966 was a hell of a lot different than the Gene Roddenberry of 1989 and I'm sure had he been around in 1997 he would’ve been different from the Gene Roddenberry of 1989. So that criticism I don’t care about at all.
What I resented a lot of the time in both series, TOS (which I was a huge fan of) and TNG, was their "having their cake and eat it too" attitude. When they needed to blow up ships, they blew up ships. But there was no repercussions to it, usually, not really. No one sweated, it was like a tea party in the Hamptons. People were getting killed, there was no sweat, there was no fear, there were no repercussions, and I don’t care whether they're people on a ship and you don’t see them and you don’t care--bad, bad, bad, no good, bad, bad, image!--[and] bad storytelling.
We wanted to say, "hey, people in this world that we live in can't get along in this little tiny planet and we have more in common than Cardassians and humans and we can’t get along." So why do we believe in our absolute arrogance that in the future we can have these disparate races and they will all find ways to avoid war, and we will find ways to avoid war especially with our Federation way of sucking people into our Federation [laughs]. It’s a very interesting universe that I did not think had been explored enough. We said, "we’re going to explore it, not fully certainly, we’re gonna go down some avenues that people won’t like, and some of it won't hold up to scrutiny, but at least we’ll be doing it instead [of the alternative]." DS9 certainly was the series that refused on a day by day basis to play it safe. We all knew it, every writer was behind it. It was an exhilarating place to be in creatively.
TW: What did you think of VOYAGER, which got a lot of the attention from the studio and perhaps allowed DS9 to go its own way?
I never saw it, except the premiere episode [when it was shown at the studio]. Putting the Maquis into Starfleet uniforms--that was already how I wouldn’t have done the show. But may they go into it with all good graces.
TW: Some of DS9's cast has said the show could've done an eigth season. If there had been, what's a story you would've liked to have told?
I talked this over with David Weddle and Bradley Thomspon (DS9 writers seasons six and seven) yesterday and I mentioned this interview and whether people still ask about if the show could’ve gone on. They totally agreed with me that yeah, we could have but... if its and buts were candy nuts, we'd all have a hell of a Christmas!
Fact is seven years, 170+ episodes. Wow, terrific, great, how lucky can we be to have been able to live there that long? The Beatles, everyone complains when the Beatles broke up in '69; would the world have been a better place with twelve more Beatle albums? Well, the fact is that you have the amount of Beatle albums that you have; enjoy them, revel in them, and be thankful you have that. I'm a big Sam Peckinpah fan. It kills me on one level that he only got to do twelve feature films and that's his body of work in films. But on the other hand, given Hollywood’s propensity for screwing over the rebels in their creative community, let’s just be thankful that he did twelve films and six of them were really fantastic and some of them were interesting failures and one or two were god awful. But they’re his films with his stamp on them, so you've got twelve of his films--enjoy it. Same thing with DEEP SPACE NINE. It’s ridiculuous, it’s the American way of looking at the world: "super-size me, give me more, I'm not satisfied, my belly’s big, I want to consume!"
TW: You briefly consulted on ENTERPRISE, or had a meeting with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga prior to the start of this past season. Can you summarize that?
IB: Rick called me up, it was his initiative. He asked me had I seen ENTERPRISE, I told him no. He asked if I could look at it--they were thinking maybe of stepping back and that "this be another DS9 experience," whatever that meant. I didn’t really think it over in terms of what were the chances of that reality happening again. They sent me the three shows, I went in, had a two hour meeting with Rick and Brannon. It was a very cordial meeting, but everything I said I am sure they did not like hearing. I would not liked to have heard it if someone came into my office and talked as bluntly as I was talking to them. Though again, it was done all cordially. After it was over I am sure they were uncomfortable, I was very uncomfortable, we shook hands, Rick said, "well, all interesting stuff, we’ll think it over," and I never heard from him again. That's the whole story and it's barely a blip in anyone's lives, it has no impact whatsoever on the franchise. It's just something that happened.
TW: What do you think of the future of the franchise? Does the franchise need a break?
IB: What I think doesn’t matter, we live in a capitalist society where it’s all about making money and that’s the bottom line and STAR TREK, no matter how many barnacles are attached to the hull of the franchise, is still a big behemoth moving forward sluggishly or not. And they are just gonna keep the ship afloat and plug the holes and keep on going. Yes, in a perfect world would it be nice to rest it? But Berman’s been doing this for 15, 16 years; what, is he going to turn around and do something else now? Why?
It’s a cash cow, so look here’s the bottom line from my tiny little view: whatever is good for the franchise is good for DEEP SPACE NINE. If the franchise is considered a joke and loses touch with the genre fans and the creative zeitgeist, it’s bad for DEEP SPACE because it’s just another lumpy STAR TREK series. If the franchise is considered viable and entertaining and interesting and a flagship in pop culture, people will be drawn to check it out and they'll look at DEEP SPACE NINE and I think they'll be intrigued. I want the franchise to do well, that’s beyond any personal feelings about anything else.
TW: You also consulted on an early draft of Michael Piller's INSURRECTION.
IB: He asked me to read the first draft, which was a first draft, and he asked me to come in and give him notes. I came in and, most people who know me know that I wear sunglasses a lot, and I sat down and took off my sunglasses and put on my regular glasses and when I did that, Michael claims he thought, "oh my god, he’s taken off his sunglasses. I’m really in trouble!", which is very cute. Michael is very near and dear to me, one of my oldest compadres in Los Angeles and I love the guy. It was a first draft and I gave him notes and he agreed with a lot of them, I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know or suspected. He wrote some book about it that never got published about the whole experience. But that's what happens when you're a big part of the corporate structure--you can only have positive news stories and positive recollections, unless you're a disgruntled actor.
TW: You're now working on DR. VEGAS with Rob Lowe. What is it about Vegas that inspired you to create a whole Vegas universe inside STAR TREK and now are writing in the real Vegas?
IB: It’s real simple: it’s a double whammy. I loved the original OCEAN’S ELEVEN, I saw it when I was a kid and I loved it then, but I never was involved with the culture more than that. I just loved that movie, as bad as it might be. As I got older I finally did come to the whole Sinatra, Dean Martin, that whole style. That whole world finally opened up to me when I realized I could like things beside Iggy Pop and Bob Dylan.
And then my Dad was a gambler his entire life and in the last ten years of their lives my parents lived in Vegas so I was going with my family four or five times a year. So my kids know Vegas as well, which hotels, where to eat, which one’s kid friendly, which one isn’t. So the whole Vegas thing was something I got more and more into and was fascinated by and read a lot about. This idea of the holosuite which I thought wasn’t always used all that well, and the idea of what could be the thing you would least expect to see on a STAR TREK series is a Vegas rat-packer type giving advice about love and life to members of Starfleet, let alone Ferengi. It just became an idea that we toyed around with for a year and when we were heading toward the end of the line we just realized now or never, let’s just goddamn do it. I know there were people who hated it, which is fine, and people who really dug it, which is even finer. That moment when Avery Brooks and Jimmy Darren were singing together, I knew the lunatics had taken over the asylum! We had a Starfleet captain, Starfleet god, basically, singing a duet with a holographic ball of light. It doesn't get better than that, at one level.
***
Ira Steven Behr is the executive producer of the sci-fi miniseries THE 4400, which premiered on USA last Sunday, and will air four more installments Sundays at 9p in coming weeks. Read Part One of our interview about THE 4400. DR. VEGAS has a 13 episode committment with CBS Friday nights at 10p.
I agree, this was the most candid interview of a producer-type I've heard in years. It makes me think Ira Behr was one of the main strengths behind DS9 and someone ENT probably desperately needs.
This part of the interview speaks volumes to me about ENT: Quote:
TW: You briefly consulted on ENTERPRISE, or had a meeting with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga prior to the start of this past season. Can you summarize that?
IB: Rick called me up, it was his initiative. He asked me had I seen ENTERPRISE, I told him no. He asked if I could look at it--they were thinking maybe of stepping back and that "this be another DS9 experience," whatever that meant. I didn’t really think it over in terms of what were the chances of that reality happening again. They sent me the three shows, I went in, had a two hour meeting with Rick and Brannon. It was a very cordial meeting, but everything I said I am sure they did not like hearing. I would not liked to have heard it if someone came into my office and talked as bluntly as I was talking to them. Though again, it was done all cordially. After it was over I am sure they were uncomfortable, I was very uncomfortable, we shook hands, Rick said, "well, all interesting stuff, we’ll think it over," and I never heard from him again. That's the whole story and it's barely a blip in anyone's lives, it has no impact whatsoever on the franchise. It's just something that happened.
I think it's obvious that B&B didn't listen to much of what was said and didn't take much of the advice. Hopefully it was slowly sinking in.
Very few ENT fans can argue that the character development of many of the main cast characters (Mayweather, Phlox, and Hoshi especially, maybe Reed also) is very low compared to most of the other series. Remember TOS only lasted 3 years, but we know quite a bit about characters like Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty.
I agree. Completely cool interview. I had a few disagreements with Ira's choices, too...but not many. And I'm glad he took chances. I'll take the bad choices with his sense of risk rather than have them play it safe. It's funny...all the DS9 guys on 4400, the Pillers on Dead Zone....they're actually making better sci-fi with better characters than Star Trek itself. It's hard for me to admit. I'm a big ST fan, but I have to admit that Dead Zone and 4400 look like better shows. (I know 4400 only has 2 hours behind it, but the characters were very vibrant and multi-dimensional. It completely beats ENTs premiere). I'm just glad Chris Black and Manny Coto are involved now.
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