Star Trek’s Best Showrunner Knew Nothing About The Franchise When He Was Hired

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 15 seconds ago

These days, TV lovers are never afraid to play Monday morning quarterback with their favorite shows. For example, when a Star Wars fan is disappointed with a show like Ahsoka, he’ll blame everything on showrunner Dave Filoni and argue that Disney should have given the job to Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy. And when Game of Thrones fully and truly sh*t the bed in the final season, fans from every kingdom firmly placed the blame on showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, arguing that the job should have been handled by Thrones creator George R.R. Martin (he’s obviously not too busy writing, now is he?!).

Whatever the fandom, these arguments all have something important in common: the collective belief that only an established franchise expert would be able to successfully run a genre show. However, the biggest counterargument comes from two of the best sci-fi shows ever made. When Ira Steven Behr was hired to write for Star Trek: The Next Generation, he knew nothing about it and had to get a crash course on the show before he wrote a single syllable.  A few years later, however, Behr became the showrunner for Deep Space Nine, which remains the best Star Trek show ever made!

Star Trek Chooses The Behr

Ira Steven Behr’s Star Trek journey is filled with as many weird twists and turns as a good episode. He was originally hired by Michael Piller and began writing for Season 3 of The Next Generation. This was Piller’s first season as showrunner, and there were some growing pains in the writer’s room. Veteran writers Hans Beimler, Richard Manning, and Melinda M. Snodgrass were mostly loyal to ousted (and largely hated) former showrunner Maurice Hurley, and they didn’t like working for Piller. Behr actually kept them from all leaving the show in a huff, and he became a mediator between the showrunner and these writers for the rest of the season. 

While Piller clearly saw greatness in Behr, Behr had astonishingly little familiarity with The Next Generation when he was hired. His first job as a staff writer was to help rewrite “The Hunted,” but he didn’t know enough about TNG to do so (Behr’s knowledge was limited to The Original Series). Fortunately, his good relationship with those veteran writers paid off, and Beimler and Manning gave Behr a crash course in writing for this popular spinoff. Behr quickly established himself as an excellent writer, and Piller even offered him the role of showrunner for Season 4. But Behr declined, leaving TNG at the end of its third season.

When Star Trek Became An Intergalactic Epic

Normally, this would have ended Ira Steven Behr’s Star Trek journey. However, Piller remained quite fond of the writer, and when he launched the Next Generation spinoff, Deep Space Nine, he invited Behr to come write for it. Behr enjoyed the challenge of working on Trek’s most unconventional show and became one of its best writers. When Piller left this new spinoff to work on Star Trek: Voyager, he once again offered Behr the big chair. This time, Behr accepted, and he served as showrunner for DS9’s final four seasons. The last two focused on war with the Dominion, a kind of evil Federation that Behr helped develop from the ground up.  

Under Behr’s tenure, Deep Space Nine was nominated for a whopping 20 Emmy nominations, and it became the gold standard for Star Trek storytelling. To this day, fans are hoping that Paramount may someday deliver a new spinoff with this level of writing, acting, and crowd-pleasing character work. In retrospect, it’s fair to say that DS9 didn’t truly achieve greatness until Behr sat in the captain’s chair and boldly took this show where no Trek had gone before. Not bad for a guy who had absolutely no clue about modern Star Trek when he was originally hired!