Bruna. 28. Bisexual. Brazil. I've got a film degree.
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[video description: two tiktoks side by side. the original tiktok is a person cosplaying riker from star trek: the next generation. the video is labeled “riker maneuver by difficulty.” the duet video is jonathan frakes reacting. a larger caption says “starfleet’s finest meets starfleet’s funniest 🖖 ”]
Do you guys want to feel warm about the people who worked on TNG? Here you go.
REQUIRED READING
Transcript:
Image 1: I sat in the chair, and my makeup artist, Jana, began to touch me up. “I heard about what Shatner did to you.” she said. “Fuck him. He’s a jerk, and has been for years. He’s probably just jealous that you’re younger, better-looking, and more famous than he is.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to be a jerk, and I didn’t think he was jealous of anything. I was certain I’d done something wrong.
“I guess so.” I said as noncommitally as I could.
Image 2 (contiuing the conversation): She put down her makeup sponge, and turned the chair away from the mirror, so I was facing her. She looked me in the eye, and said, “Don’t let him upset you, Wil. He’s not worth it.”
“Okay,” I lied. I knew I was going to be upset about this for a long time.
“Okay,” she said, and dusted my nose with translucent powder.
Image 3: I walked onto the stage, and took my seat on the bridge of the Enterprise D, next to Brent Spiner.
“I heard about Shatner,” Brent said.
Jesus, was this on the news or something?
“Yeah,” I said.
“You know he wears a toupee, right?”
I giggled. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Yup, hes balder than old baldy over there.” He tossed a good thumb over his shoulder at Patrick.
I giggled some more, as the stored up adrenaline coursed through my veins. “Boy, that’s pretty bald.”
Image 4: I passed the craft service table, setup behind the starfield that hung next to the Ten-Forward set. Michael Dorn and Jonathan Frakes were pouring cups of coffee.
“To hell with him, W,” Jonathan said. I love it when he calls me “W”.
“To hell with who,” Michael asked.
“Shatner shit all over Teen Idol,” Jonathan told him.
Beneath his latex Klingon forehead, Michael rolled his eyes. “You want me to kick his ass, Wil?”
“No, that’s okay. Thanks, though,” I said.
“I’ve got your back, man,” Michael said.
Image 5: “He’s expecting your call. Just a second, Wil.” There were two clicks, and Gene’s soft, gentle, friendly voice filled my ear.
“Hi Wil, how are you?”
“I’m okay, how are you?”
“Fine, fine. I understand that you had some words with Bill Shatner today.”
Oh my god. Was he going to be mad at me?
“Uh… yeah…” I said.
“Wil, Bill Shatner is an ass, don’t you worry about him, okay? I am proud to have you on my show. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Did Gene just call WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER an ass? And then said that he was proud of me?
“Gosh, Gene, thanks,” was the best I could do.
“Come by my office soon, okay?”
“Okay.”
“See you then.” He hung up.
Image six: I began to feel better. Although a childhood hero had kicked me in the nuts, a bunch of people who I cared about and respected had all made effects to put it in perspective. I felt loved, and protected.
“Michael Piller really thought of [TNG] as a drama and, by the way, his thinking of it that way made the show better. He focused on the humanity. I always saw it as a crazy sci-fi show personally, and as a result, my episodes seem to be bereft of any so-called character development.”
-Brannon Braga,
The
Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J.
J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of
Star Trek, p. 177
This is in the TNG section of the book, but it makes sense of a whole lot about Voyager and Enterprise, doesn’t it? I’m remembering back in my ENT fandom days we had no love for B&B, as we called them - Berman and Braga - as we felt, rightly or wrongly (mostly rightly!), they did poorly by the characters.
“I felt that the [TNG] writers and producers could not escape from their own essential rigidity in their attitudes to women. They were continually featured as sexual objects, as softer, weaker, and therefore - it always seemed to me—second-class individuals. And because I believed and still do that the show represents what our underlying philosophies are, it doubly irritated me that in that area I thought we were failing. There is a kind of boys’ club about Star Trek, do you understand? It’s in the air all around the show, in the producers, in the front office, in the writers’ building. Our actresses were not finding sympathetic ears for the things they had to say, and I think at times they simply got exhausted by the battle.”
I know Gates McFadden and Marina Sirtis both found it ridiculous that in episodes with combat scenes they did stupid girly stuff like drop heavy objects on enemy heads while their male colleagues were using weapons. Gates in particular had a whole lot of combat training as an actor. As Stewart says, their protests were not heard by the higher ups. It got better in later seasons, but clearly there was a presumption about gender roles that treated women differently from men.