Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
TREKCORE: How did you get the gig on the Next Generation?
BRAGA: It was a matter of being in the right place
at the right time. I had just
finished school at UC Santa Cruz, and
I got an internship through the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences; that's the organization that puts on the Emmy Awards
and is kind of the keeper of all things television
in Los Angeles, kind of like the Academy is to the Academy Awards.
They have a superb internship program
and I got one in there, screenwriting.
And they sent me
on to... there were two screenwriting internships that year.
One went to some sitcom that lasted for about six
episodes, and one was on a show called Star Trek: The Next Generation.
My counterpart intern
went this way, I went this way, and I got the luck of the draw and ended up
on Next Gen at a time
of transition, where Michael Piller was running the
show, and Ron Moore was the only writer he had on staff.
A quiet place. Piller was writing 'Best of Both Worlds, Part II',
that's the time,
when I came in... I did
my internship and never left. And I remained
there for seventeen years.
TREKCORE: Writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation is, obviously,
something you have to get used to over time and have much experience doing
were you familiar with The Next Generation before you came on board?
BRAGA: My experience with Star Trek was limited.
In school - in grade school, middle school, and high school -
there were the fantasy...
...the Dungeons and Dragons guys; there were the Star Trek dudes;
and there were the horror guys. I was part of the Stephen King set.
Fantasy and sci-fi...
I would end up getting into sci-fi big time once I hit college
when I really started reading hard
science fiction novels, and just went crazy
for the genre. But I was more
into Twilight Zone and horror, and the Star Trek guys
were going to conventions - primordial conventions -
and reading things like "Spock Lives!" in paperback.
I didn't get it. It wasn't my bag.
I didn't get into Star Trek until I watched The Next Generation when it first came out.
I was one of those people who said, "You know what?
Maybe, because I can get in on the ground floor for something
I'll try this Star Trek out." And it wasn't my bag
again. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about The Next Generation.
By the way, this is a story I think a lot of people will tell.
I didn't quite get it; I wasn't sure about Data,
an android named Data, are you kidding me? It just seemed childish
even to me, at age twenty-one.
Then, a couple years went by. So I didn't really... I watched the first episode with
those aliens with the sticks... it just was like, "This isn't good."
It confirmed my reservations about Star Trek.
But a couple years later, I was in college at
UC Santa Cruz, and someone said, "You need to watch The Next Generation. It's good."
And I suspect that was not
an uncommon experience. And they were right.
I started watching the show, and it was
a stark difference. The writing was so good.
I can't remember the first episode I actually watched...
It was a Geordi episode, with Worf
supposed to give part of his blood or something to a Romulan,
and he refused. The guy dies, and
Picard is pissed off... I'm like, "This is good stuff!"
This was not like the NextGen I first watched.
And then, when I got the internship on Next Generation,
I was into it. I was into Next Gen. That was a long answer.
TREKCORE: So, you were obviously prepared to write for it at that stage? BRAGA: I was not prepared to write for it.
TREKCORE: But you were into it? BRAGA: I was into it; I knew the characters.
TREKCORE: You've confessed that a lot of people see you as
somewhat of a 'hack' with certain topics, like time travel or the Borg.
There are these rabid fans who somehow got this opinion about you.
But in The Next Generation, certainly, these topics produced amazing episodes.
"All Good Things...", "Cause and Effect"- these fantastic episodes
Why do you think that some fans
seem to accept those episodes, but not other episodes
which you're still equally proud of, from, say, Voyager or Enterprise?
I did some great... we broke new ground
on Next Generation, from a storytelling perspective. I mean, the stuff
that we did, structurally - like with "Cause and Effect" - was so new
that viewers were calling the TV stations
thinking something was wrong with the broadcast. That, nowadays,
is completely different. People accept that kind of storytelling as part of our vernacular.
It was wild. It was like the Wild West back then.
We were breaking a lot of rules, and
I think... some unpleasant fans
I've read, will go online and say,
"If you really work at Braga's early work, that sucks too."
I kid you not. So there's some revisionist people.
Anyway, who knows - they may be right, I haven't seen those episodes in so long.
TREKCORE: No, trust me - they're still good, Brannon.
BRAGA: I think some of the stuff we did on Voyager was even more sophisticated
from a storytelling point of view. "All Good Things..." was just the beginning for me,
I was just getting going. I wasn't done!
I really got into the stuff on Voyager.
I honestly look at some of these Voyager episodes that I'm enormously proud of,
like "Timeless", the hundredth episode of Voyager. TREKCORE: Huge, huge.
BRAGA: That's a time travel episode; it's relatively simple, but it's filled with striking imagery
and character moments. The image of a frozen ship
is just perfect... TREKCORE: The opening shot before the credits
where it pans up... BRAGA: Yeah. If that had been a Next Generation episode,
it would be a classic. It would be 'one of the good ones.'
I think a lot of it has to do with the crew. A lot of it
has to do with it just being a different show, or maybe
just being around too long. I stand by
the body of work on Voyager as much as I do - if not more so than The Next Generation.
TREKCORE: Well, "Timeless" was brilliant.
The emotional impact of hearing Janeway's last log; just filled with, actually, the kind of same
moments that the new film had, the emotional resonance of that first scene
with Kirk. I mean, you're still writing time travel stories - you mention you're doing a comic.
What do you think it is that time travel, emotionally
or intellectually, brings to a story that makes it something you keep writing
and going back to? You must feel very passionate.
BRAGA: I was never interested in time travel in terms
of it's mechanics. It's mechanics can be a bit of a headache.
It's emotion. You can get... you can put a character through an emotional trial
and take them to places to you can't otherwise.
I look at "All Good Things..." which was a very ambitious piece
of time travel, but if you really look at it
it's... if it was a novel, or
even... if you took the time travel out, it could just be a
story that happened to take place in the beginning, middle, and end
of someone's life. And I'm sure novels like that have been written; stories like that have been written.
If you simply say, "This isn't literal; this is just the way we're telling the story",
you think to yourself, "Well, what's the big deal?"
It's not until you literalize it
that you take it to the next level, and you say the person is
experiencing this. Then it becomes
emotional, times ten. Does that make any sense at all?
TREKCORE: Yeah, I think so. I think once you
moved on from The Next Generation to Voyager, there was
some fans who went the Deep Space Nine way, some fans went the Voyager way.
What are your feelings about Deep Space Nine? I don't think I've ever heard your thoughts on the series.
Have you seen it all? BRAGA: Of course I've seen Deep Space Nine.
I was very aware of Deep Space Nine. The writers worked in the same building.
We saw each other every day. There was
some cross-pollination;
I wrote a couple of Deep Space Nine scenes
with Bashir, in an episode called "Birthright" in The Next Generation.
So I actually... the only character I've ever written
for DS9 was Bashir. But
Ron and I, you have to remember,
Ron Moore and I were working very closely on the movies at that time, so he
always knew what I was doing, and I always knew what he was doing. He was always writing
a Deep Space Nine script, and I was always writing a Voyager script.
We talked all the time; we cross-pollinated
I thought Deep Space Nine was terrific. Again, I will say there are episodes of that show
like "The Visitor" that are considered classics,
but, for some reason, aren't neccessarily
spoken in the same breath as some
of the Next Generations. But that's because it was a newer thing.
TREKCORE: Do you think that Deep Space Nine, in a way, enjoyed more liberty
being in syndication, whereas Voyager was confined to this network so you
had the network bosses dictating a large amount of what you can and cannot do?
BRAGA: I don't think Deep Space Nine benefited from being in syndication. I mean, I can't say for sure,
I would say Deep Space Nine benefited more
from being third.
Being the third series, and there it was... but then
Voyager came along, and it was almost like - it's hard to describe.
they started to experiment
with serialized storytelling. Stuff that
for some reason, they just got away with; that they were able to do.
because they were... maybe they almost HAD to do something.
They had to set themselves apart, somehow.
I don't know. I wasn't in the writers room.
Personally, with Deep Space Nine, I don't think Voyager should have come on the air so quickly.
I think Deep Space Nine should have been on its own for a while. TREKCORE: Do think it was pushed out too fast?
BRAGA: I think it was, for want of better words, I think they were just kind of
laying low and doing their thing, those Deep Space Nine guys. They quietly
built an amazing television show.
In some ways, I suspect, maybe Rick Berman
was more focused on other things, and they
just were able take bigger risks than we were.