By Chris Snellgrove | Published
For many years, anyone who criticized shows that Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Picard he was called a small-minded bigot who couldn't appreciate all the continuous signings from writers. In fact, that signing was jangling keys to hide how unhinged these new shows often were (seriously, when they weren't killing their gays, they were branding them). However, over time, the culture war ceased to matter. Starfleet Academy it was canceled after only one season, and it wasn't the only one; under the leadership of Alex Kurtzman, everything NuTrek shows (minus Picardwhich was originally planned as three seasons) received early cancellations. The reason? Simple: not enough people watching!
Whether you love or hate NuTrek, this has led to painful upgrades. Paramount has halted all development of Trek TV and is heading the franchise to the big screen. Now, fans of all stripes are returning to classic shows and rediscovering the best series of all: Deep Space Nine. DS9 achieved a lot thanks to showrunner Ira Steven Behr, who was constantly pushing the franchise in new directions. Of course, he learned the hard way what worked and what didn't work for the franchise. Case in point: despite having an almost perfect script, Behr later declared the TNG episode “A Story of Vision” to be the worst Star Trek episode he's ever worked on!
Make it “No”
In season 3, Star Trek: The Next Generationn brought us “The Story of Vision,” a sci-fi murder mystery. When a lab explodes and kills a sketchy scientist, Riker is the prime suspect. Why? Because he was the last one to talk to the deceased and maybe he had an inappropriate relationship with the young man's wife. I say “probably” because this episode uses the holodeck to recreate events for different characters of what actually happened. Eventually, Riker is freed, and shockingly, we find out that the dead scientist accidentally blew himself up trying to kill Riker.
On paper, “The Story of an Idea” has only one author: Ed Zuckerman. However, staff writer Ronald D. Moore (who would serve as the show's Battlestar Galactica reboot) asked in a recent AOL interview with fans that the entire crew help out with an unauthorized rewrite of the episode. One of those writers was Ira Steven Behr, who had an elliptical relationship with Star Trek. He started to write The Next Generation in Season 3, peace is established between the old writers and Michael Piller, the new producer. Piller eventually offered Behr a job as a runner; instead, Behr left the show altogether.
When Everything Blows Up In Your Face
However, Piller really liked Behr and later brought him in to work Deep Space Nine. After three seasons, Behr replaced Piller as DS9's showrunner. There, he oversaw some of the biggest sci-fi episodes ever created and wrote a few himself. Today, DS9 is rightly remembered as the best Star Trek show ever made. How did Behr maintain such high quality when it came to storytelling? Another way was to learn what not to do. For example, in the TNG Season 3 specials, he called “A Story of Vision” a “disaster” and his least favorite Trek episode he's ever worked on.
What makes this even more surprising is that “A Story of Vision” was not a poorly written episode. As recorded in Captain's Logs: The Complete Voyage of the Unauthorized Voyagerunner-up Piller declared that he was “very, very, very happy with the script,” one that “was the best murder mystery I've ever had a hand in creating…because every detail falls into place, every line comes together…it works in a mysterious way.” In addition, this story “was very complicated, but if you split that script, nothing comes out of it.” However, he felt that it “didn't translate well” and ultimately “didn't think it was very good television.” Behr and Moore both agreed, though they were harsh in their criticism.
“A Matter of Vision” is a solid hour Star Trek: The Next Generationthat uses futuristic technology to tell a very compelling story. However, Ira Steven Behr was one of the many writers who thought they were dropping the ball when it came to bringing this story to life. At the time, this was a minor misstep in a career that would eventually be defined by the greatest sci-fi franchise of all time. He was once a showrunner for Deep Space Ninehowever, his ability to tell if a script would work on screen helped him create the best Star Trek series ever made.
As the Temporary Investigation Department would put it, the rest is history!
