Word: berman
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Captain: Producer Rick Berman is now the Master Trekkie...
...Star Trek was never, and hopefully never will be, my vision of the future," says Berman, 48, a former documentary filmmaker and children's TV producer. "It's Gene Roddenberry's vision that I agreed to uphold." The job is trickier than it might seem. Berman, a vice president at Paramount when Roddenberry tapped him as the producer of The Next Generation, has had to sail his enterprise between the Scylla of Roddenberry's own "prime directive" -- a stricture against any conflict among members of Starfleet -- and the Charybdis of mass-market appeal...
...went through a rather strenuous apprenticeship," recalls Berman, a workaholic with few outside interests other than his wife Elizabeth and their three children. "I learned what was Star Trek and what wasn't. I learned all the nomenclature, all the rules and regulations. I learned the difference between shields and deflectors -- that was a day right there. Slowly, Gene began to trust my judgment and also to trust that I would adhere to the rules, that I would not be someone who would want to change Star Trek...
Conflict, however, is the stuff of drama, and space battles are what the paying public wants to see, especially on the big screen. Since Roddenberry's death, Berman has evolved Star Trek into something darker, more elemental and more mysterious. "Rick was a little more broadminded about what I was permitted to explore as a character," observes Patrick Stewart, TNG's Captain Picard, and the new shows are stretching the Star Trek guidelines even more. On the current Deep Space Nine, set on a remote space station, Starfleet officers tangle with the alien races who share the outpost...
...remains to be seen, since Trek fans are notoriously alert to any noncanonical deviations from Roddenberry's holy writ. "The laws of Star Trek are totally fictional but are held by the fans with such reverence that they have to be followed as if they were Newton's," says Berman. "You have to treat them very carefully, because there are people who for 25 years have considered them sacred." Even so, there are times he contemplates heresy: on his desk sits a bust of Roddenberry, its eyes and ears covered by a blindfold. "Things are sometimes said in this office...