#joe menosky

[isagrimorie]

In 'Scorpion Part I' [Janeway] was becoming a little more risk-taking, and edgy, and frankly, a little bit more like Kate Mulgrew. I've always said, even Jeri Taylor used to always say, 'If Captain Janeway were only more like Kate, we would have a much better captain on our hands.' For whatever reason, our writing and Kate's kind of freewheeling personality seemed to come together a bit more, at the end of the [third] season -Joe Menosky, Star Trek Monthly, issue 33

--

We realized we were going too far and too fast and pulled back. It’s a real strange feedback phenomenon. You’ll do an episode, see what works, and adjust with a new character accordingly if you feel as though you’ve gone off track. It’s also true of characters that we felt weren’t working entirely successfully; you find new directions for them based on feedback. Jeri Taylor would say, “If Captain Janeway was only half as cool as Kate Mulgrew, we’d be better off.” So in the third season I specifically remember doing some dialogue for Janeway with Brannon, and Kate just played the hell out of it. We realized we should do it more, because we had done something that allowed Kate to inject her personality even more into it. So we gave her more of those kinds of moments, like in “Scorpion” where she’s making her deal with the devil, actually the Borg.

JOE MENOSKY, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From the Next Generation to J. J. Abrams

Even Kate Mulgrew felt she played Janeway better when the writers allowed a little more of her personality to inhabit Janeway:

"And when they finally allowed Mulgrew to inhabit Janeway, she took off. I'd say that was about the end of the second/beginning of the third season. Every nuance that I could give to her, all those subtle endowments that were mine, that Mulgrew brought to Janeway. That's when you fall in love. I couldn't do it without her, and she couldn't do it without me." : – Kate Mulgrew

The Voyager writers are so funny.

If Jeri Taylor's been saying: "if Captain Janeway were only more like Kate, we would have a much better captain on our hands."

WHY DIDN'T YOU GUYS WRITE JANEWAY LIKE THAT EARLIER?

The moment they finally wrote towards their instincts with Janeway, Janeway began to really sing.

[usstrekart]

I give "Year of Hell, part I" (S04E08, Stardate 51268.4)high marks for the big swings it takes. An antagonist with no interest in negotiation, Voyager unaware they are being messed with until the end of the episode, and finally forced to contend with life far away from home without support. Lots to chew on here.

[nerds-yearbook]

In 1967, a hippie named Henry Starling found the remains of spacecraft from the 29th Century that had come back through time because of a time rift. Starling copied the technology and started his own company called Chronowerx that lead to the micro computer revolution in the 1990’s. ("Future’s End", Star Trek Voyager, TV)

[tv-moments]

For All Mankind

Season 3, “The Sands of Ares”

Director: Dan Liu

DoP: Stephen McNutt

[trillscienceofficer]

Behind the scenes on season four [of Star Trek: Voyager], things continued to evolve. Jeri Taylor, after a long and successful career in television, announced her plans to retire at the end of the year, and Brannon Braga, who had started as an intern on The Next Generation, was now being groomed to take her place as showrunner (the first time he would hold that position). Braga, for his part, wanted to put his own stamp on the series, though it wasn’t always an easy thing to do as Rick Berman remained firmly in charge of the franchise. BRYAN FULLER: I was coming into Voyager in Jeri Taylor’s last year, and so she was handing the baton over to Brannon, and Brannon was very much a new showrunner. There were things that he really wanted to do and should have been able to do, and which would have made the show even better and bolder and bright, but he was not allowed to. Rick Berman more or less told him, “No, you can’t do that, because I can’t control Ira Behr on Deep Space Nine and I have to control you.” The influences of Rick on Brannon’s instincts sort of dampened what the show could have been. Brannon was a great showrunner and had great, bold ideas, but he was working for Rick Berman, who was a daughter of the syndication era. And the show had to be very specifically traditional in a certain sense, and he really squashed some of Brannon’s better ideas. I would love to go back in time and see Brannon do the Voyager that was his instinct to do. [...] You know, my experience with Star Trek consisted primarily of highlights. It was so fantastic to be able to walk onto a Starfleet ship and walk through the corridors. Being in those corridors was surreal and transportive. It was also an interesting time, because I was terrified of screwing it up and yet I was also fascinated with the politics of Rick Berman and Brannon on one show, and Ira on another show. Looking at somebody who had been a showrunner before and had the confidence and the ability to say no with someone who was still reporting to someone and still fulfilling a portion of someone else’s vision. BRANNON BRAGA: I thought Voyager could be a big, expansive, cinematic show. I wanted to up the ante from the production point of view. I would eventually get that chance. I remember Joe Menosky and I went to Jeri Taylor and said we wanted to start doing a series of two-part episodes that would let Voyager make its own stamp. Every single two-parter we did was fucking great and a barn burner. Real scope, and from a really high concept. I always thought Voyager could be high concept. BRYAN FULLER: Despite Rick’s determination to have a stronger hold on Voyager than he could on Deep Space Nine, I’d not deny how much Brannon actually did achieve with the series. He very much was eager to get into more high-concept science-fiction storytelling, like harder science-fiction storytelling. The great stuff with Species 8472, the Borg arc, the “Year of Hell,” the Hirogen and “The Killing Game.” There was a lot of iconography brought back into the world of the storytelling, and less sort of diplomacy and navigating new species and more “Holy shit, we’ve got to fight these guys!” And that was really Brannon coming into his own. Actually Brannon and Joe Menosky were really the creative voices of those last few seasons.

From “The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years” by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman (2016)

[jone-slugger]

I was reading on Memory Alpha that regarding the episode "11:59", "Joe Menosky regretted the decision to exclude science fiction elements from this episode. He related, "Ultimately, to me, it was a lot of domestic scenes, which I am not interested in writing"... and it's like?? HELLO, YES, PLEASE GIVE ME DOMESTIC SCENES, I'LL TAKE 20000. Science fiction is good, but have you thought about THE CHARACTERS?

Anyways, all this to say that I love 11:59.

[writergeekrhw]

A small detail I've always wondered about is why the rest of the senior crew represents different parts of Bashir's personality in "Distant Voices".

I think I'm just missing something, but why is it that they represent parts of his personality that don't align/somewhat contradict their own? (i.e. Dax's aggression and O'Brien's pessimism are uncharacteristic, even though Sisko's professionalism is similar to his own.)

Are the inconsistencies meant just to be a sign that the whole ordeal is a hallucination? Or is there something significant about Julian's perception of them to be found in the form they take inside his head?

I know this is kind of a trivial question, sorry if it doesn't really have much of an answer!!

Honestly, it's been so long, I don't really remember the logic. Best guess, they don't match up completely, but, as you suggested, there's some internal dream logic to it, in that Bashir perceives those traits as mapping to those people. He sees O'Brien as pessimistic (which O'Brien can be). He perceives Dax as aggressive (which she can be), etc.

Sorry I can't give you a better answer, but it's been a while. Plus, Joe Menosky wrote the story, and the simple truth might be that Ira and I stuck to his original structure and character mapping.

[the-last-dillpickle]

DS9 trivia from IMDB - Part 5

- The number 47 pops up an inordinate amount of times on computer screens, serial numbers, dates and so on. This tradition was started by Writer and co-Producer Joe Menosky and was soon picked up by the rest of the production team. Menosky said that he chose that particular number because when he was a college student at Pomona College, Professor of Mathematics Donald Bentley proved as a joke that all numbers are equal to 47. Interestingly, Alias (2001) also featured the number 47 many times, and incorporated it into its on-going storyline.    

- References are frequently made to Starfleet "ground troops", and some Starfleet characters have different uniforms (a black uniform with a small colored stripe across the middle). Fans generally accept that these characters are part of a Starfleet Marine Corps; this was an idea which Gene Roddenberry conceived for Star Trek (1966), but never found an opportunity to use until the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) where the men accompanying Kirk and crew down to Nimbus III were later confirmed to be marines. There was a Starfleet Colonel West in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), who was most likely a Starfleet Marine since the rank of Colonel doesn't exist in naval organizations. Colonel West was played by Rene Auberjonois, who played Constable Odo on this show. The existence of Starfleet Marines was finally explicitly shown and stated on-screen in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001), indicating that they have been around in the Star Trek universe since at least 2153.    

- The Jem'Hadar were described in the script as tough warriors who were almost impervious to phaser shots. Make-up Supervisor Michael Westmore immediately thought of the thick skin of rhinos and reptiles when he read that description, so he designed the Jem'Hadar to look like dinosaurs, specifically triceratops, complete with horns.    

- The role of Jadzia Dax was initially offered to Famke Janssen, whose character make-up from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) season five, episode twenty-one, "The Perfect Mate" inspired the change in Trill character make-up from a forehead prosthesis. She turned down the role in order to remain available to appear in theatrical movies.    

- The U.S.S. Defiant was first envisioned to look like a beefed-up version of a runabout. When that didn't work out, they used an existing design for an alien cargo ship as basis, and developed it as a battleship. It was first called the U.S.S. Valiant, but Producer Rick Berman vetoed any name beginning with letter V, since he didn't want to create confusion with Star Trek: Voyager (1995), which they were setting up at the time. Defiant was chosen because like Enterprise, it was a name that had been used for a ship in Star Trek (1966) as well.    

- There was a level of friction between fans of Babylon 5 (1993) and this show. Babylon 5 (1993) fans felt that writers for this show had stolen many aspects of Babylon 5's premise (occurring recently after a war or occupation, episodes taking place on a space station not located in Earth territory, the cast discovering an ancient malevolent race that would become a major threat, the overall story of the show being less reliant on story-of-the-week episodes, and more of an overarching story arc, et cetera), asserting that Paramount Pictures had rejected J. Michael Straczynski's proposal of Babylon 5 to them in the late 1980s, but used certain details of the pitch by inserting them into the story and premise of this show. There was a concerted effort to bury the hatchet, especially by having Majel Barrett (widow of Gene Roddenberry) appear on Babylon 5 as an alien prophetess who spoke on behalf of her recently deceased husband (a nod to Roddenberry, who had passed away a few years before her appearance).    

- Regarding season seven: after Terry Farrell's departure from the show, a replacement had to be found to play the new host for the Dax symbiont. The showrunners were adamant not to cast a man in the role, as they wanted to maintain the running joke where Sisko refers to a young female Dax as 'Old Man'. It was decided that 'Ezri Dax' would be a young person, fresh from the Academy, who would display some adjustment problems because she had become stuck with an old Trill soul without going through the standard Trill training first. Numerous fans were initially reluctant to accept Nicole de Boer as the new host for the Dax symbiont, rather derisively referring to de Boer as "Ally McTrill", due to her slightly neurotic personality resembling Calista Flockhart's Ally McBeal (1997).    

- It is frequently stated that there are 285 official Ferengi 'Rules of Acquisition', although only 44 were ever mentioned in Deep Space Nine and subsequent Star Trek series. Because of fans continuously asking for a complete list, and knowing that someone would otherwise make one sooner or later, Ira Steven Behr finally took it upon him to write 'The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition' (ISBN 0-671-52936-6), credited as "By Quark as told to Ira Steven Behr."    

- Executive Producer and co-Creator Michael Piller said that when coming up for an idea for the series concept of this show, there were initially three ideas considered: another starship adventure, a space station concept, and a remote frontier colony. The frontier colony idea was briefly considered, with the idea that since Star Trek (1966) was compared to Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) in outer space, the new series would be compared to Gunsmoke (1955), but on a remote planet. The frontier colony idea was eventually dropped since it would've required a lot of on-location shooting, and the space station idea was ultimately developed instead.    

- On occasion, sets from Star Trek: Voyager (1995) are used as other Starfleet locales. (For example: a holosuite grid in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Inquisition (1998), the entire U.S.S. Bellerophon (which was an Intrepid-class starship, same as Voyager) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges (1999).    

[staringdownabarrel]

Lately, I've been binging For All Mankind. It's Ronald D. Moore's new show, but other former Star Trek writers like Bradley Thompson and Joe Menosky write for it, too. The concept is that it's this alternate history where the Soviet Union lands a man on the moon a month before the Apollo 11 mission does, and this spirals out to a much more extensive space race than what existed in real life.

Honestly, I really like it. The acting is good, the writing is good, the characters are good, the pacing is good, the effects are good. It's really interesting seeing where the show's alternate history closely mirrors real life history and where it diverges.

I feel like the big thing I'm caught up on in terms of the alternate history is how it treats the Soviet Union's technological development. On one hand, it sorta has to treat the Soviet Union as if it's on par with the United States for the premise to work, but on the other hand they seem pretty adamant about dealing with the fact that there were times during the Cold War where the Soviets duplicated American technology. While in real life, this was often based around the smuggling of computer technology (something the Soviet Union traditionally struggled with), in the show this became a thing during season three's mission to Mars arc.

I'm not entirely sold on this, though. Even though in this setting, it'd make sense for the Soviets and the Americans to still be spying on each other and trying to reverse engineer each other's technological advancements, I don't really think a culture that could maintain parity with the US's space program would really need to be copying technology to this degree.

I feel like a more interesting route to go down would have been for them to still essentially have moles in NASA, but still have their own distinct solutions to certain engineering issues during the space race. This would have made certain episodes much more tense, but still allowed for the solutions to rely on moles in one agency or another already sorta knowing how the other's technology works.

I also feel like given how much thought this writing team put into how US politics in this setting might differ, it's disappointing that they hadn't put as much thought into how the Soviets' politics might differ as well. The writers sorta assume that the Soviet Union would remain mostly a closed society the entire time like it had been in real life, but I'm not entirely sold on that being as much of a possibility in a setting where they both had moon bases operating right next to each other for decades.

All of that being said, I feel like the bulk of this show really is very good. Really, I think the best thing about this show is that the ongoing space program forces the United States to become more progressive. While in real life, most of the world has dragged its feet on clean energy, the United States achieved energy independence by the early '90s, and the don't ask, don't tell policy was ultimately a short lived thing before the gays were allowed to serve openly.

The other thing I think For All Mankind did well was that it didn't rely too much on love triangles for character development. This is something that Ronald D. Moore's shows have traditionally had problems with. Deep Space Nine, for example, had the Odo/Kira/Bareil triangle and then the Odo/Kira/Shakaar triangle. Battlestar Galactica '04 had the Anastasia Dualla/Lee Adama/Kara Thrace/Samuel Anders love polygon.

Ultimately my objection to love triangles/love polygons is that they're fucking boring ways of developing your characters. To me, they've always read as "Oh, we have this character but we don't know what to do with them, so we're gonna force them into this silly little romance subplot".

This was something I was worried about with For All Mankind because I sorta knew this was an ongoing issue that Ronald D. Moore's writing teams had. I was pleasantly surprised when this never happened. There's definitely some moments where the show edged close to a love triangle, but ultimately it never really committed to any of them because the writers probably knew it would have fucked with the show's pacing.

I think the ten episode season really is a good fit for Moore in this sense. It's forced him to focus on a balance between advancing the plot and advancing the character development in ways that make sense. I think the fact there's a decade-long time skip between seasons has forced him to double down on this, too.

The character development over the seasons also makes a lot of sense. The years between seasons can explain away some of the changes, but they're also consistent enough that they aren't radically different people from one season to the next. Ed Baldwin has temper issues in 1969, 1983, and 1995, Ellen Wilson remains career driven in 1969, 1983, and 1995, and so on. How their personalities present themselves change a little bit over the years, but whatever drives them at their core remains consistent.

I feel like this is true to life in a lot of ways. Yeah, people do change as they get older, but they'll usually have a few core motivations that remain consistent, too. It's just a question of what remains consistent and how those motivations might manifest themselves as the years go on.

But yeah, this is just a really good show overall. I'm really looking forward to the next season; this is the best new show I've seen in years.

[spockvarietyhour]

would you recommend for all mankind for viewing? big ronald d moore fan and also liked raised by wolves if anything there informs an answer

Absolutely, yes. It won't hit the raised by wolves notes, but it's entertaining altverse/sf.

Also episode writers include Joe Menosky, Bradley Thompson & David Weddle, all familiar Trek names

[harrypotterhousequotes]

SLYTHERIN: "Given the circumstances, there is no reason to trust me. But trust isn't necessary. We need each other." –Brannon Braga + Joe Menosky (Annorax: Star Trek: Voyager: Year of Hell Part II)

[isagrimorie]

From this post about Fifty Year Mission:

BRYAN FULLER: Despite Rick’s determination to have a stronger hold on Voyager than he could on Deep Space Nine, I’d not deny how much Brannon actually did achieve with the series. He very much was eager to get into more high-concept science-fiction storytelling, like harder science-fiction storytelling. The great stuff with Species 8472, the Borg arc, the “Year of Hell,” the Hirogen and “The Killing Game.” There was a lot of iconography brought back into the world of the storytelling, and less sort of diplomacy and navigating new species and more “Holy shit, we’ve got to fight these guys!” And that was really Brannon coming into his own. Actually Brannon and Joe Menosky were really the creative voices of those last few seasons.

Honestly? Yes. Anytime they have writing credits together on Voyager, it was fire. Joe Menosky usually can curb Braga's 'Braganess'. It's why Year of Hell was as fantastic as it was.

Look at the list of the episodes they worked on together:

"Future's End" (with Brannon Braga) "Future's End, Part II" (with Brannon Braga)

This is the start where they are getting into a groove.

"Scorpion" (with Brannon Braga) "Scorpion, Part II" (with Brannon Braga) (Season 4) - And this is when Braga and Menosky hit their stride.

"The Gift" - Bookended the trilogy with this beautiful episode where Seven becomes part of the Voyager crew and sadly, Kes has to leave.

"Year of Hell" (with Brannon Braga) "Year of Hell, Part II" - Solid Gold two-parter of all time.

"The Killing Game" (with Brannon Braga) "The Killing Game, Part II" (with Brannon Braga)

"Hope and Fear" (teleplay with Brannon Braga, story with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga) - I really enjoyed this finale, bringing it all together.

"Night" (with Brannon Braga) (Season 5) - My favorite standalone season opener. I love the quiet low-stakes atmosphere and character study of the crew and Janeway.

"Drone" (teleplay with Bryan Fuller and Brannon Braga) - Really Great Seven episode.

"Timeless" (teleplay with Brannon Braga, story with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga) - Again, beautiful. Let's ignore the Berman in this.

"Latent Image" (teleplay, story with Eileen Connors and Brannon Braga) - The moral struggle about the EMH Doctor's personhood and Seven's brilliant ripostes against Janeway's cold logic, that has Janeway questioning her decision to just reprogram the Doctor.

"Dark Frontier" (with Brannon Braga) - And, of course, this great two-parter.

"11:59" (teleplay, story with Brannon Braga) - I know its not everyone's cup of tea but I love how comfortable and cozy this Hallmark episode was. So low stakes but so many fun crew interactions.

"Dragon's Teeth" (teleplay with Brannon Braga and Michael Taylor) - This was such a great set-up for a recurring villain in the Vadwuaar that never went anywhere and I sense the heavy hand of Berman.

"Blink of an Eye" (teleplay with Scott Miller) - Not a collaboration with Braga but this was such a beautiful episode.

Honestly, I think the weakest of the two-parter work Menosky's done with Braga is probably the Unimatrix Zero story.

And I think this is the last thing Menosky wrote for the show.

It's no wonder Ron Moore snatched Menosky up for "For All Mankind". It's the closest thing we had to a prequel to Starfleet and the Federation.

[section-69]

'But of the characters on DS9, notes [writer, Joe] Menosky, "You can see right away they're not the perfectly engineered humans of TNG."'

👀👀👀

[nerds-yearbook]

The starship Voyager fell through a time rift after battling a spacecraft from the 29th Century. A hippie named Henry Starling had found the remains of the spacecraft from the 29th Century that had come back farther through time to 1967 because of the time rift. Sterling copied the technology and started his own company called Chronowerx that lead to the micro computer revolution in the 1990’s. The Voyager crew confronted Starling in 1996 but ended up getting their ship’s computer hacked by him. They learned that Starling was building a timeship to try to travel to the future to steal more technology, but they also learned that this would bring about a huge galactic tragedy. When the captain of the Voyager couldn’t convince Starling not to use the timeship, she was forced to destroy his timeship before he could enter the time rift. ("Future’s End pt 1 & 2", Star Trek Voyager, TV)

[tv-moments]

For All Mankind

Season 3, “Happy Valley”

Director: Wendey Stanzler

DoP: Stephen McNutt

[words-and-coffee]

Men think of themselves as rock, hard as stone. So they are. Hard, brittle, easily broken. Women know that we are mostly water. Sea around us, sea inside us. When I hurt, I remember that. I remember what water is, what it does. It flows. It changes. It endures far longer than the rock.

Joe Menosky & Adam Simon, Salem - The Red Rose and the Briar