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Old 12-13-2006, 04:32 AM   #6
MoriartyL
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As it so happens, I've also rewatched "All Good Things..." very recently. There couldn't possibly be a more fitting end to this wonderful series. Like the immediately following "Generations" as well as "First Contact" (my personal favorite), it was written by the team of Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga.

I find the coupling fascinating. Ronald D. Moore, who also wrote such heartfelt episodes as "Tapestry" and "Relics", tends to deal with human drama and interesting characterizations. If you look at the credits of all the major Klingon episodes which fleshed out their culture in TNG, you'll find that he did all of that he did all that pretty much single-handedly. After leaving Star Trek in Voyager's sixth season (tired of its approach to science fiction), he eventually went on to create the new Battlestar Galactica, which is concerned with human drama and the strange Cylon culture.

Brannon Braga deals with a whole different type of science fiction. He specializes in weird, gimmicky and fairly geeky mock-science concepts. Most of these concepts come from some form of either time travel or alien mind-possession. He is a very uniquely quirky writer, to be sure. My favorite TNG episode he wrote was "Cause and Effect", which was pretty much one big puzzle the crew had to solve. Other memorable episodes of his were "The Game", "A Fistful of Datas", and "Parallels". In Voyager, he got more and more influential to the identity of Star Trek, given a chance to run wild with his ideas. Many have noticed how large a percentage of Voyager's episodes deal with variations of time travel, and I think that's partly thanks to Braga, considering he wrote a lot of those episodes, including "Timeless", "Year of Hell", "Endgame", and one of my personal favorites, "Non Sequitur". He also wrote a lot of "alien mind-control" episodes, including one of my favorite Star Trek episodes: "The Killing Game". He became so involved that by Enterprise he was running the show along with Rick Berman, and indeed all too many Enterprise episodes deal with alien mind-control, and even from the pilot the main subplot of the show was an entirely misplaced focus on time travel. Then he went on to the short-lived Threshold, which I'm sorry to say I haven't seen.

My point is, while both guys are pretty unique sci-fi writers, they're unique in completely different ways. Each writes from a completely different end of the sci-fi spectrum. But they complement each other so well. If you look at "All Good Things...", you can clearly see which bits came from which writer. The premise -Picard shifting between times due to an outside influence- is Braga in the extreme, being a slightly silly sci-fi concept combining time travel and alien mind-control! Beyond that, the plot itself is made up of a fascinating intellectual puzzle which is also exactly Braga's style, about which I will say no more because I don't want to give away the solution for anyone who hasn't seen the episode. Meanwhile, Moore focuses on the drama between the characters, highlighting how far they have come in seven years by comparing to their younger selves and extrapolating the most likely course for the future provided the continue along the same path. But even though their contributions are so distinct, they fit together like two pieces in a puzzle- Braga keeps the stories exciting, while Moore keeps them human. Together, they represented the best Star Trek had to offer.

The same applies to Generations: Braga worked out a way to twist time around to get Picard and Kirk together and Moore found the contrast between their identities. Braga twisted Data's mind around for comic relief while Moore killed off Picard's family (which he himself had introduced) to play Picard's life story as a tragic, lonely tale without a happy ending. Braga came up with a way for the Enterprise's old enemies to manipulate Geordi into helping them without his knowledge, while Moore had the villain debate Picard about the ruthlessness of the passing of time. First Contact was even more split: The plot was again a fascinating time travel story, which was then used to comment on society's incorrect perception of its heroes. The Borg queen's technobabble plans for the deflector dish lead to an exciting action scene, while her seductive yet philosophical dialogue sounds exactly like Galactica's Number Six! The crew members comment on how hot the room is getting (part of one of Braga's little puzzles), then we cut to Picard and Data talking about the "realness" of history.

They made quite a pair, and I hope we get to see something else from the two of them someday.
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