Today, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is viewed as one of the best sci-fi TV series ever made , with legions of fans, multiple movie spin-offs, and even a quasi-revival series in the form of "Star Trek: Picard." There's no doubting its cultural cache, but at the time it was first launched, it was a huge risk. Believe it or not, longtime "Star Trek" producer Rick Berman almost said no to the job because of those risks. "There were three reasons not to do it," Berman told Entertainment Weekly during a roundtable retrospective. "One, this was a sequel, and sequels on television had never been successful. Two, it was science fiction, and in the 1980s, science fiction was not successful. And three, it was going to be syndicated, not a network program."

That's right: It may be hard to fathom

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