I just discovered that Netflix has a new documentary called Chaos on the Bridge. It’s about The Next Generation, and it’s written and produced by William Shatner, who seems to have appointed himself the Star Trek historian.
He interviewed a lot of the writers and other people on the show, and tells what went on behind the scenes. I’m finding it very interesting, and I’m sure others would too.
If he doesn’t tell the other side of Wil Wheaton’s “William Fucking Shatner” story the documentary is worthless.
Shatner actually did a good job of not making it about himself. He was basically there as a facilitator, drawing out the TNG people’s stories.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’m not a big TNG-era kick right now, from the Tor.com rewatch to Mark Watches Star Trek (completely blind) to putting together an archive of websites that were my first exposure to Voyager, so this is right up my alley, to working on fixing the logos on Wikipedia. Thanks for bringing it up!
Yip. The only thing he did was try to keep the documentary going on his theme of power shifts, which indeed made for a compelling narrative.
One thing I found really interesting that I had not heard before is that Roddenberry had become so enamored with his vision of the future that he thought he could have created a new religion out of it if he’d wanted to–like his friend L. Ron Hubbard.
Also, apparently everyone in Paramount loved Encounter at Farpoint, which makes me feel vindicated. I also like that, as arrogant as he was, Maurice Hurley recognized that the show got better once he left.
I was passing on this show because I feared it was going to be unmitigated Bull Shat.
Thanks for the tip.
I don’t have Netflix, but I found in the “cloud” as well.
We just watched this, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
It’s frightening to see how dysfunctional the management and production was.
While browsing IMDB for more info, it seems like more than a hobby for Bill. He has a bunch of those documentaries made.
This one was interesting but I liked his ‘Captains’ documentary more. That one is more about the affects of a TV series role on the lives of the Star Trek captain actors (mainly the Quantum Leap role for Scott Bakula).
It does include Shatner performing a singing interview with Avery Brooks (Captain Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine) about… I think I would call it the meaning of life :).