Robert Meyer Burnett

Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

Robert Burnett
Birth name:	Robert Meyer Burnett
Date of birth:	15 May 1967
Place of birth:	Seattle, Washington, USA
Roles:	Producer/Editor, Exhibit and attraction staff

Robert "Rob" Meyer Burnett (born 15 May 1967; age 56) is an American director, producer, writer, and editor. A longtime Star Trek fan, his early contributions to Star Trek media included co-writing (with Mark A. Altman) and directing the 1998 film Free Enterprise (a Star Trek phenomenon referencing parody, featuring William Shatner) and editing multimedia displays at the now-defunct Star Trek: The Experience attraction in Las Vegas. Burnett is the CEO of Ludovico Technique, the entertainment production company which co-produced the special features for the Blu-ray releases.

After the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, Burnett, together with fellow "trekkies" director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie met in December of that year and discussed their mutual desire to create a new televised iteration of the Star Trek series, which was worked out in a pitch called Star Trek: Federation. The pitch, completed in January 2006, was never given to CBS as Paramount had already announced it was collaborating with J.J. Abrams for what eventually became Star Trek. [1]

Nonetheless, starting in 2011/2012, he worked as a lead producer, writer, and editor for the special features (for which he and colleague Roger Lay, Jr. introduced the term "VAM" – Value Added Material), that were included on the Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Star Trek: Enterprise Blu-ray releases. Burnett also served as host of the "Reunification: 25 Years After Star Trek: The Next Generation" roundtable discussion on the TNG Season 2 Blu-ray set.

The in-universe characters Robert Burnett Raymond in "The Neutral Zone" and Robert Meyer Burnett in "Inheritance" were named after him in the remastered versions of the respective episodes.

In a February 2017 Word Balloon podcast interview with John Siuntres (currently posted on YouTube), Burnett divulged that he was part of the Axanar (the fanmovie by Alec Peters he served on as editor) lawsuit that created a rift between some fans and CBS Broadcasting (Burnett's former "VAM" employer), also divulging (at 00:27:00 into the interview) that he, as a lifelong fan of "classic Star Trek", hated the alternate reality Star Trek films "to the core of my existence", even though he conceded that the movies were beautifully made. In this, he echoed the sentiment of former Star Trek production staffer Doug Drexler, who shared similar concerns about the movies, as had his former "VAM" colleague Lay already done in 2013 for that matter. [2].

In an exclusive March 2019 roundtable discussion with the staff of the YouTube channel Midnight's Edge, Burnett delved much deeper into not only his reservations about the alternate reality films, but also into his considerable reservations about Star Trek: Discovery for its, in his eyes, canon violations as well as "bad science" in the latter case specifically. Scientific plausibility having been a prerogative for Roddenberry/Berman-era Star Trek, Burnett likened Discovery to "Alice in Wonderland", coining the series a "maddening cartoonish, dumbed down" version of Star Trek, even though again conceding that it was well made. [3] On his stance on the dodgy science employed in Discovery, Meyer echoed comments made by intern Kirk Long in a November 2017 blog entry on the website for the podcast StarTalk, which is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. [4]

Star Trek credits

• TNG Blu-rays
  • Energized! Taking The Next Generation to the Next Level (2012) – Producer, Editor
  • Stardate Revisited: The Origin of Star Trek - The Next Generation (2012) – Writer, Producer, Editor
  • Reunification: 25 Years After Star Trek - The Next Generation (2012) – Writer, Producer, Editor
  • Making It So: Continuing Star Trek - The Next Generation (2012) – Writer, Producer, Editor
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - Regeneration: Engaging the Borg (2013) – Writer, Producer, Editor
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - Inside the Writer's Room (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Resistance Is Futile: Assimilating Star Trek - The Next Generation (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - Survive and Succeed: An Empire at War (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Relativity: The Family Saga of Star Trek - The Next Generation (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • In Conversation: The Star Trek Art Department (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • In Conversation: The Music of Star Trek - The Next Generation (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Requiem - A Remembrance of Star Trek: The Next Generation (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Star Trek: From One Generation to the Next (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Privilege of Rank: Making Chain of Command (2014) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Beyond the Five Year Mission: The Evolution of Star Trek - The Next Generation (2014) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • The Unknown Possibilities of Existence: Making "All Good Things" (2014) – Writer, Producer, Editor
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Sky's the Limit - The Eclipse of Star Trek: The Next Generation (2014) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • In Conversation: Lensing Star Trek - The Next Generation (2014) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
• ENT Blu-rays
  • To Boldly Go: Launching Enterprise (2013) – Producer, Film Editor, Post Production Supervisor
  • In Conversation: Rick Berman and Brannon Braga (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor
  • Star Trek: Enterprise - Uncharted Territory (2013) – Producer
  • Star Trek: Enterprise - In Conversation - The First Crew (2013) – Writer, Producer, Film Editor, Camera Operator

External links

• Robert Meyer Burnett at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Meyer Burnett at X (formerly Twitter)
• 2012 interview with Robert Meyer Burnett at TweakTown.com
• 2013 Seven part interview with Robert Meyer Burnett at TrekCore