- Joined
- Jun 10, 2003
- Messages
- 26,359
- Real Name
- Josh Steinberg
I was a reader for TNG at the time Piller came in. More than anything he changed the culture of the kind of material that was being submitted and accepted, as well as doing a great job, IMHO, of handling the writing staff. Granted I am probably biased because he gave me a lot of opportunities to submit treatments (and he gave me a better job), but in my opinion he did more to help TNG than to hurt it.
I totally believe that. I think it's possible that he just ran out of steam by the time Insurrection rolled around. It also doesn't seem to help that Rick Berman encouraged a lot of bad ideas in that script instead of suggesting that they throw it away and come up with a new idea. At a certain point, the blame can't all be on the writer - the writer writes what he's been hired to write. And one of the difficulties of working on a movie vs. a weekly show is that if this week's episode doesn't come out as good as everyone hoped, oh well, there's always next week; when you're doing a movie, the stakes are a little bit higher.
There's absolutely no question in my mind that TNG became a better show once he climbed on board.