Watch Party S1 E9 | Ep. 33 - The D-Con Chamber

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our wonderful executive producer, mister Dave Tabb is in the
house today. God bless him. Thank you, Dave, Thank you
very much. Hey everyone, Connor here.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
We just want to take a moment to thank you
so very much for tuning in and being a part
of the Decon Chamber family. Your support keeps us going
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
And if you love what we do and want to
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Speaker 2 (00:33):
And don't forget to check out are awesome mergh because
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Speaker 1 (00:44):
Baby? Every little bit helps, I promise you, and we're
really very very grateful for all of you who make
this show possible. So thanks for being there and please
enjoy this episode of the Decon Chamber. This show has
been done. We've come.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
It's the.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Treky's and trekkers. Welcome
back to another watch party episode of the Decon Chamber.
I'm your co host, Dominic Keating, joined as always by
my bestie, my fellow co host, my old cast mate,
mister Conna Stranier's in the house and we have a
special surprise which is just lovely. We I don't think

(01:30):
we've all seen each other in over twenty years. One
of the co writers of this episode Civilization that we
shall peruse today, mister Mike Sussman is here. Thank you, Mike, Mike. Yeah,
you're looking well. I mean literally, that's an uncluttered life
right there.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
It's a special filter.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
It is. I've got to get one. It's an hour,
it's an aw loving the two posters behind you, we
were just talking before we came on here. That's the
poster that UPN assuaged me with my lividness when I
was left off the poster with the ev suits here
in town driving along sunset in my.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
And you may have to explain to your audience what
UPN is?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah? Really, what is UPN? The United Paramount Network for
those that are too young to have remembered its short
lived memory of being a network. It didn't get something
like you know, I don't know. I'm trying to think
what was the what what what made Fox Married with Children? No, No,

(02:39):
the cartoon or the Simpsons. The Simpsons. Yeah, we needed.
They needed a Simpsons and they didn't have one, or
a family Guy Family Guy.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
And maybe if our show had been animated it.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
No kidding, I would have watched that. I did my
best with the acting, but it wasn't enough.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Apparently before we get started to the episode, I would
like if you would wouldn't mind sort of walking us
and the audience through, like how does an episode get
written from the seed to production?

Speaker 1 (03:20):
How does how does it?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
What's the navigation of that?

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Especially as were you on staff? You were a staff writer.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Right, Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:28):
I was.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
I was on staff on Enterprise, and in fact, my
my writing partner at the time, Phyllis and I were
We were on staff on Voyager on its final season,
season seven, and we were carried over to Enterprise, and
so we went from being like the least experienced Voyager
writers to being outside of the show winners, the most
experienced writers on Enterprise. So it was you know that

(03:50):
that first season there were a lot of you know,
there's kind of a revolving door in terms of the
writers and the writing staff.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
There was, wasn't that.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, you know, the show was really trying to figure
out what it was and I think in some ways
this episode. I have a lot of affection for it,
for the cast, the guest cast. I think the production
design is really pretty good. Mike Vaihar I believe who
directed this. He's directed six or seven episodes that I yeah,

(04:20):
it was over Voyager and Enterprise. He's terrific. But you know,
as we'll get into there were some real world things
going on that affected I feel the episode. Plus the
episode itself was really, to me kind of emblematic of
what issues the show and the writers were struggling with

(04:42):
in that first season, like what was this show going
to be, how is it different from the other series?
What kind of stories were we going to tell? And
I think what we set out to do with this
episode was not perhaps entirely successful for reasons we can
chat about. That said, I have so much effection for
this episode, and there's a lot of sweet little moments
in it there. It kind of wears its heart on

(05:04):
its sleeve. It doesn't really work on a deeper level
in any way, like a thematic or a character level.
It's very light and that's okay, but I still have
a lot of affection for it.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
In many ways, I felt like it's a real throwback
to classic trek, you know, into the captain gets his
kiss and sure, you know, it's a it's a real
going to a planet, sorting some stuff out, some the
faarier stuff and moving on with as little footprint as possible.
And I and that's to me is classic.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
You know, yeah, no, absolutely, I think that Well, that's
you know, what we were going for. Whether we actually
accomplished it or achieved it, you know, I guess is debatable,
but you know, I think we had our heart in
the right place. But again, there was there was some
stuff going on in the world that was that was
really that made the filming of this episode really unusual
and difficult, and that you know, also affected the direction

(06:03):
of the show ultimately months and years down the line.
So for me, in some ways, this episode not only
the the conception of it, but but the outside events
that affected the production. It's kind of a demarcation line
for me, Like the show wasn't quite the same after this.
What was it? I mean around what it was? I

(06:23):
mean nine to eleven happened during the.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Production we were referring. Of course, it was the week of
nine to eleven, wasn't it.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Sweetpember eleventh, two thousand and one.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
It was a tough I've said over and over again
that you know, you have to remember that our show
was different after nine to eleven and there was no
going back. There was yeah, you know it it, Yes,
I sort of gave us our theme. It did ultimately
in the third season. But I think, you know, and
a lot of a lot of television shows really struggled

(06:52):
with this, comedy shows in particular, which we were not,
at least not intentionally, but you know, what was it
was the were we going to reflect what was going
on in the world?

Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I think at first it seemed, well, how could
we Enough time had not gone by and we need
to do our thing and kind of hold our head
heads up high. But I think ultimately it became something
we couldn't avoid, that we had to explore those themes
because that's what was going on in the world. But
you know, I mean, had nine to eleven not happened,

(07:24):
I think this this episode still showed that we were,
you know, really kind of struggling isn't the right word,
but like trying what what were we? What was enterprise?
Trying to be all the all of the Star Trek series,
even the modern ones, it seems the first two years
sometimes longer, they don't quite know what they are and
they're trying to find their footing. And you know, it's

(07:44):
true for Next Gen, it was, it was I think
true for Voyager, and it was true for Us. You
think it would get easier the more shows there have been,
but in some ways it's it's I think it's kind
of harder for each series to find, like what makes
it unique?

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Because you are you are it wants to be. You're
threading the needle with a variation of a theme, and
you know, how do you thematically change that to bring
originality to a new show? Is when when you're when
you're caught in the slipstream of the theme of the show,
and it's that's tricky.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Sure, well to answer. To go back to what Connor asked,
I mean, one of the first questions that you generally
get asked about an episode is why is this an
episode of Enterprise and not Deep Space nine or Next Gen?
Why would they have done this episode exactly the same way?
And if they would have, then there's something wrong with
the premise and we need to find what makes it
unique to our series. One of the the writer I'm

(08:44):
sure whose name has been brought up to you before,
Michael Pillar, who's the show Next Gen and Voyager and
you know, co creator of Voyager and U Space nine.
And I didn't really know Michael very well. He was
running Voyager when I was an intern there in the nineties,
but you know, he had this. His dictum was basically,

(09:08):
each episode had to be about a particular member of
our crew. This is a Jeordie episode this week, this
is Balona Torre's episode the following week, and so how
do the events, how do the plots affect our character?
And I think one of the lessons that we didn't
follow with this particular episode, Civilization, was that there was
some nice stuff for everybody, but it wasn't really, you know,

(09:32):
an Archer episode. It wasn't a read episode, it wasn't
a trip episode. Again, everybody got some nice things to do,
I think, but it didn't really work on a deeper
character level that we aspire to. And I think, you know,
we always aim for that. I mean, we don't always
achieve it, but we aimed for it.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
All right. When you're handed what are you handed? Are
you handed?

Speaker 2 (09:55):
An outline? Of the story. Then you go with at
the time, Philip and go and write it together.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
How does how does it?

Speaker 2 (10:03):
How does it evolve from idea to getting us in
the first draft than the.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Words Yeah, well, I'm trying to remember this may have
been our first written by credit for Enterprise.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
You pitch this to Brandon and Rick, as it were,
this was yours, This was.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Our idea because I remember we did an episode called
Strange New World Singular, which was a fun show as well,
but that was a story I think Rick and Brandon
had had given us, and so we were as Connor's
you suggested handed an outline. Here's like a six seventh
eight page outline with each scene with the main beats

(10:43):
that particular episode, Strange New World evolved quite a bit.
Uh this one again. You know, it's funny because our
first it's we were really going back to basics with
the show, or trying to. I mean, we're literally taking
apart the opening titles of the original series Space the
Final Frontier, you know, these to the voyages of the Enterprise.

(11:05):
We explore Strange New Worlds. That was one episode. Seek
Out New Civilizations that was this episode. Yeah, and so
I think it was. I can't remember the exact genesis
of it, but I know at one point our title
for this was Aliens, which would not have probably gone
over very well and probably would have seemed too threatening.

(11:27):
But we were really just trying to, you know, deconstruct
you know, the what Star Trek is, what what what
the missions are. And you know, part of the problem
maybe you simply don't want to look too closely, you know,
when you're dressing up in native garb and and you know,
meeting the locals and we have little funny things on

(11:48):
our forehead, it's all very cute and charming. It reminds
me of something I think Brent Speiner said once. Star
Trek is like half Shakespeare, half running around with a
Superman tape around your neck. Yeah, and you know, if
you you get too deep into the reality of it,
it can fall apart.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
It does look like they're all going off and again
in the in the shuttle pod, they're all going off
to summer stock. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
It really does, it really does. But again that's you know,
that's the charm of it. I wish this episode had
had a little more fun with that, a little more
self awareness. That's something I think some of the newer
shows do very nicely, and I think in the writers
room we were taking ourselves a little too seriously. And
I think you guys on the set would have you know,
totally played with a that you know, that lighter attitude,

(12:35):
had it been there in the script.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
But again, well, I mean that has changed a lot,
hasn't it? That dynamic in the shows, And now we
have Strange New Worlds, which really does have a ton
firmly in its cheek the whole time, and that was
not present during our years. As you say, the show
was did take itself quite seriously, right down to the

(12:57):
dead letter, perfect rendition of everything you wrote, and there
was never any leeway for improv or yeah, there is
a distinct difference.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know how much improv
they get to do on the show these days, but
they get some. They do.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, they always get a take where you know
you've got they've got it in the in the can
and now it's like do whatever you want, and sometimes
it works and often it's not. It won't, but but
they do.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I was I was going to say too, I think
I always find it kind of amusing that whenever talking
about a pre industrial.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Civilization, it's always Shakespeare time. Yeah, that's what they've got
in the in the costume debt.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
That's right, that's right, you.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Know out in the valley. You know, there's a lot
of I thought that. I mean, I think it's a
very cute episode, and I think some of it. I mean,
when his translator goes off and he uses the ruse
to kiss her not once, but three times to cover
that up is charming. I giggled furiously.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yeah, that was lovely and it even ended up becoming
like the tag of the episode. I want to give credit.
I think what credit is due. I think that was
a contribution that my writing partner Phyllis had contributed. But
it was just it was just I mean, for me,
that was like the best moment in the script. And
but you know, the show could have used a little
more of that. We we were definitely looking to infuse it.

(14:26):
That was something that came up very late, I think,
in the in the writing. But yeah, it was it
was a lovely little moment.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
I've noticed been watching this first season and this changes.
But initially, anytime anybody but the captain is at the helm,
it's kind of.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Like, oh, like.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, and it all takes the takes once or twice,
and I think Tripp is ready to throw mutiny exactly.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
We don't s You've got another really good trip line
in there. What is it again? You know he haw line?
Do you remember what it was? It is so he ha.
I can't think what it was now.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Well, speaking of lines, I think you could. You could
make a Star Trek drinking game out of this one
episode and probably be hammered by the end of it.
Every time somebody says some kind of I mean I
caught it at least four or five times and maybe yeah,
some kind of force field, some kind of dampening field,
some kind of energy weapon. It was just like, oh

(15:35):
my god, yea.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
And from from you know, pinned to screen, what's your
take on how it turned out? Well, again, you know everything,
and you know what you can control.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
As it were, I mean, clearly we could not control
what was going on in the world, and I think
that kind of cast a pall over the whole episode.
It's hard for me to separate my memory and my
experience of making the episode and what was going on
in the world. And if you recall, we shut down

(16:17):
production that day, which is you know, I don't know
that we ever did previously or again on our show.
It was it was really hard to look at that show,
even now watching it, knowing what was going on in
the world and how dark things were, to kind of

(16:38):
sit back and enjoy this little, lighthearted ROMs that was
a throwback to the original series. It just feels like
it just feels wrong. It feels wrong, and you know,
we couldn't know what was going on when we were
writing it or what was going to be happening in
the world. But again, it just it really is that
what was going on outside the walls of the studio

(17:00):
really did effect where the show wanted to go, where
it needed to go, and ultimately, you know, there was
a course correction and probably you know, the end of
season three, the recognition that we needed to address that,
and we did, and we did plenty of terrific episodes
I think in the first two seasons. But you know,
the world was changing, Television was changing, Serialized television was

(17:23):
starting to become a thing. I think the one show that
didn't struggle with nine to eleven was twenty four, which
had just and was heavily serialized, and you know, some
of our writers, you know, Brandon obviously and many Cooto
who would come on in season three went on to
write for twenty four and they were able, without talking

(17:45):
specifically about the events of nine to eleven, were able
to do stories that reflected on those themes. Ultimately, we
did that as well on our show, but it was
it was a struggle. It was a struggle knowing, you know,
when was it going to be appropriate to do that
and do it in a Star Trek kind of way.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
There was only kind of a disconnect between our audience
and what was going on and what we were doing
at the time.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think one in particular, you.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Know, I I don't know. I think again, I think
even the you know, the audience was reeling about what
was going on in the world, and I think, you know, look,
we're entering some very interesting, uh days in the world
right now, and I think people need an escape. I
think they want to they want to watch their shows,
their dramas, and that can take them away from painful

(18:38):
events that are happening in the world. And I think
we did provide that. But Star Trek has always been
a show that addressed what was going on in the world,
you know, through Aligre Ataphoor or whatever. And even though
we did try and keep those events at bay, ultimately

(19:01):
it became something we had to embrace. At least the
feeling was we had to embrace it and embrace it
in a big way, which we did. But yeah, I
think the audience was struggling along along with us. Quite frankly,
was it a.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Big lead in the writer's room with Brannon and Rick
to serialize season three like twenty four. That was quite
a break for Star Trek that these works standalone, particularly episodes.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
And sure, I mean we're all very as writers, were
all very excited by it, certainly, but we had never
really done anything that heavily serialized. I mean, Deep Space
nine had done a a Dominion war and a Klingon
War arc that lasted several seasons. But I think I
would dare say our third season was more heavily serialized

(19:53):
and had, you know, a direct threat to the planet
Earth that our characters had to deal with and put
our characters in, you know, morally questionable situations, which again
was sort of the you know, the point of doing that.
But yeah, we we you know, we had only like
the vaguest idea of where we were going in season three.

(20:19):
I'm trying to remember, did we do twenty four twenty
six episodes in season three?

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I th season three? We did two?

Speaker 2 (20:24):
We did twenty six, twenty six, twenty five, twenty four,
didn't we.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Sounds about right? Well, I think we did twenty two.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
I fine, I might have been twenty two somewhere in there. Yeah,
I think we wound up with twelve two.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, we wound up with ninety nine and one hundred
if you count the pilot being.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Two episodes, right, right, right, I think it's ninety eight's actually, again.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
The business of television was changing, if you remember, UPN
was burning off sometimes two episodes a night of our show,
and you know, there was sort of a feeling because
I know I'd chatow with Scott about this, and I
think there was definitely a feeling in the writer's room
that you know, weren't getting necessarily the promotion the the

(21:04):
the show wasn't feeling that special if you're just sort
of dumping two episodes every Wednesday night and they weren't,
you know, it wasn't an event, It wasn't a special
two parter as Voyagers occasionally did. They did some really
excellent two parters.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
So what was the question again, Well, yeah, I mean
just how difficult it was to serialize that season three?

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Oh yeah, the serialization, Yes, no, it was. It was challenge.
It was a real challenge. And it's it's amazing because
I've heard on some of you know, you know, on
twenty four they would frequently have to throw out scripts
and then go back and shut down production. We didn't
have to do that on our show on season three,

(21:51):
but it was, it was, it was a challenge mapping
it all out, and you know, I wouldn't want to
necessarily do it again, do a twenty four episode heavily
serialized art. It was nice to do once. Today it
would be eight or ten episodes, which is you know,
much more doable.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Right, I mean, yeah, I just finished watching Adolescents.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Which is four. Yeah. Yeah, there you go, and it works.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
You know, it does come down to I guess you
have you know, you can rate your episodes throughout a season,
and as you were talking about, you know, it may
not have felt like, you know, your best one, but
you know, we've got to fill the gaps with especially
at the time an episodic television. Man, what a grind

(22:38):
to do twenty six, twenty four, twenty two regardless, what
a grind to have to accomplish that in what do
we have the nine nine and a half months.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
To do that?

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Sure? Yeah, again the Residents, it's what they did in
the Cooper Building. It really is. Over those years and
the legacy series of Trick, it really.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Is fun though. I mean it was a lot of fun.
And because there was such a heavy demand for stories,
you could, as a you know, a mid level writer,
which is really what I was, you know, writer producer
at the time, you could kind of you can get
your pet ideas on the show because they just simply
needed so many stories, you know, season one. Here we
were doing twenty six, and if something sounded like a

(23:23):
half decent original idea, it would get developed. One always get.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, I got turned down three times and they were
half decent ideas. I'll tell you ran control freak.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
So yeah, you know, you don't quite know an loog
I have. I have folders on my computer of ideas
that you.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Did, still got, Still got. It was Michael Pillar was
the one that really gave it you first, you wrote
your last the last episode for Voyager wasn't it? Was?
It meld? Is that right?

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (23:58):
That was?

Speaker 3 (23:59):
That was the first episode I wrote.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
It was the first episode you wrote. Yeah, and then
I'm trying to think you wrote thirty episodes pretty much
for was it for just the Voyager or Voyager and
Enterprise including.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
I think between you know, because you end up doing
a lot of writing and rewriting on things that you
that other writers are credited on, which is part of
the job. I think I've credited on like thirty five
something episodes between Voyager and air Prise, but a lot
of those I believing most of those were, you know,
with other writers. It really is a team sport, right.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, Well, we should talk a bit a bit more
sort of in detail about the episode. You know that
first teaser gag when you when we tease the captain
about you know, refirmed through rocks and uh, I mean,
how does that inception start? Is that? It was a
nice you know roll of the dice to come into

(24:55):
the episode.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, it was, you know, again, I think conceptually it's
it's not my favorite way into one of our episodes.
I don't know how if it was, you know, particularly successful,
but we were you know, we were trying to make
again the show was trying to be sort of a
lighter throwback. I was looking, though, I found some of
the other ideas that we had for starting this show,

(25:18):
because we pitched a bunch I think to Brent, and
I could be misaying, but I think what's in there
now was his pitch back to us. But like, one
idea was that that archer was in the mess hall
by one of those big windows and he was like
on a table sunning himself from the light of this
star that they were approaching. And so Paul comes in

(25:40):
and points out how he can't really get a tan
through the window, and he's, you know, he just wanted
to feel the warmth of the sun on his body,
you know, which is why you know, that was kind
of goofy. I'm glad we didn't do that, but we were.
We were again, we were looking for a very unfamiliar
entrepret you know, you never would have seen you know,
Picards sunning himself through a window on next year.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
You get his head burned, you get it.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
So, but yeah, that's that that's the kind of stuff
that we you know, just show.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
You know, you can't just make jokes about that.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, so we were we were trying to find you know,
how do we make this this this episode of this
show unique uniquely enterprised? And what did that mean to
be uniquely enterprised? I still ask myself that question twenty
twenty five years later.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
It's a it's an interesting delicate balance, you know. So
you're writing a blade when you're talking about going to
meet a you know, pre industrialized group of people and
having you know, what, what influence could you have had
if somebody found you out? And it felt like a
little bit bull in a china shop, if you know

(26:51):
what I mean. In terms of going down. There was
a little bit of thinking about whether or not, you know,
giving that woman who was wonderful what.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
She we're going Diane di Lascio, she was.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
You know, and then at the end of the episode,
he's like, you know, kind of like, don't.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Tell anyone.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
That we were here.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
You know, I like this. So it was laid out
that she was clearly ahead of her time in her
time in a parking. In any other world, with any
technical advantage, she would have been a brilliant scientist. I
also love that scene where she's tintling around her apothecary
desk and archer says, I what are you making? And

(27:33):
she goes tea. I thought that was absolutely charming. Would
you like some very good gag.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
Like that?

Speaker 1 (27:43):
I think yeah. And I think that also. Wade Williams
is that his name? Yes, Wade Andrew Williams. To be
fully correct, it wasn't he.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
O God, you know, I felt like I was listening
to Orson Wells. He had the that was you could
tell he was definitely a theater trained and a theater actor.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah, and he didn't gild the lily too much at all,
you know, there was no sort of doctor evil about it.
I mean, I like the fact that to him it
was like, you know, what's a few al what do
they call the alkali? What's a few are kali for
the betterment of you know, getting ridium for our people
and a few casualties along the way, you know, such

(28:28):
as the way of things, you know, you know, toughen up, mate.
I rather like that, and uh, you know, plus Sachons
as they say, yeah, the right was.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
The writing still being finished when nine to eleven did happen,
because that would echo like a nine to eleven kind.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Of reaction too.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
From what he says and what you're just mentioning, Dominic,
Were you mid writing or were we in production by
the time, because I know we were in production. I
remember not going to work the next day.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Oh yeah, no, we were, Yeah, you must, I can't.
Were we starting that episode the day it went off?
Or have we done as have we shot to day?

Speaker 3 (29:06):
I feel like you may have shot.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
I think they may have shot a day because yeah, yeah,
and then Mary Howard rang us all and said, you know,
we're taking the day and we were back the next day.
I never I was only a Green card holder in
those days, but I never felt more American in my
life going to work.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
I do know, if you recall, I mean at the time,
you could pre nine to eleven, you could just drive
onto the Paramount lot and wave to the guards.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
And that changed very quickly right after. And I know
it's also the score of this episode. I'm trying to remember.
I think it was a Jade shadoway who who scored it,
one of my favorite Trek composers, But I don't know.
It kind of has like a dour theme to it,
which again, maybe it fits the visuals, maybe it fits

(29:56):
what you know, we wrote and what the cast performed,
but it doesn't quite have the And again, had he
done something a lot more up upbeat, might have like
totally not worked.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
But a lot of the scene as a shot at
night as it were in the Twilight, you know, and
undertother and spying on and that's probably what he was
going for.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, there was a lot of like there was kind
of an X Files mystery going on, productions and things
like that, which was you know, cool and relatively suspenseful.
But again, this particular episode didn't quite know, I think,
what it wanted to be. And had we had we
drilled down a little more, I think on character and

(30:39):
made it a more personal story for you know, one
of you gentlemen, or for Scott's character or Hoshi or
whoever it is, it might have had a little more
of an emotional core to it.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
We done.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
We'd done a lot of those episodes prior to this,
you know, we were sort of introducing and establishing who
these characters were. And you're right, this is one of
the first ones where we sort of all have a
little shot in the episode, which.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
I think you can get away with if you have
like a like a Star Trek also does really wonderful
heavy plot Leyden shows that don't necessarily have a strong
character element, but it has to be I think, a
kind of a fun, original, high concept story for that

(31:28):
to work. Like in season two, Phillis and I did
an episode with the Borg regeneration, you know, and I
think ultimately was kind of a successful episode. Didn't really
have it had a little bit of a alumnai I
think for Archer, but it was just kind of a
really fun romp with like hints of time travel and

(31:51):
connection to the larger franchise and a great action a
lot of the action pick set pieces that I think
David Livingston directed, and it just totally worked. This episode
didn't really have that plot you hadn't seen before. You know,
we've seen this bott on Star Trek before, yet done
better quite frankly, and in our efforts to sort of

(32:14):
like deconstruct it, we could have dug a little deeper again,
you know, into character, into into story and figure out what,
you know, what made this a unique a unique story
to tell on our series. And I, you know, I
just I throw that back at us, the writers. We
just didn't dig deep enough.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Do you do you sorry, do you, as writers, do
you have a post mortem in the room after an
episode airs or do you ever do anything like that?

Speaker 3 (32:43):
God, you know, that's a great idea. I mean, you know,
I mean yes and no. I mean you might get
you know, you might get a pat on the back,
you know from your boss. Hey, that was you know,
Sully episode last night. It was really good. But again,
as you guys probably know, I don't know if you
have time to always watch the show when you were
working on it. I'm sure at the end of the

(33:03):
long day, that might be the last thing you'd want
to do. There are certain episodes that I don't know
that I've ever been seen in their entirety, having watched
like all the dailies and participated in the rewrites and
all the different versions of the script. By the time
the actual episode airs, if it wasn't mine, if it
wasn't one that I was shepherding and producing, and probably

(33:25):
had like sort of like let it go, because you know,
we were we were on a train here. We had
we had twenty six episodes to figure out, so you know,
we would have we would come in and when we'd
have meetings, we talk about where the show was going,
how this, how the series was working with direction, we
wanted to go with characters we hadn't serviced in a while,

(33:46):
and what stories we'd have for those for those people.
But that's actually a really good idea. Connor, the idea
of sort of like.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
It wasn't sort of you know, required that you actually
watched the shows. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Very thankful to sit there the next day after the
episode air and have all your writer colleagues pick apart
all the things you do.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Yeah. Right, Well, let me ask you if you if
you were let's say, we're going to make to the
sort of you know, the real central figure of this episode,
what can you think of ways that you would have
dug a little deeper into his relationship with Rheann or
his handling of this you know Menchara class but you know,

(34:35):
somewhat ancient civilization.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I said I did.
I wish I had in the twenty plus years, figured
out how to make this a better episode, But I
haven't really. I mean I what I can do is
compare it to the other shows that have done undercover
episodes like this, you know, next Gen did a really

(34:58):
wonderful episode called Who Watches the Watchers? I don't know
if you guys are familiar with that one, where they
they find sort of a proto Vulcan type society and
they live in the desert and anyway they Picard has
to come clean with them and basically break the prime
directive and tell them. They begin to think Picard is
a god and he needs to and they start to

(35:21):
worship him.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
So is that when it happened.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
And it went to Patrick Stewart's head, you know, like a.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Man who would be King kind of thing, which, well,
Man who would Be King was an episode of Voyager.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Quite frank they did a really terrific episode that was
very much inspired by that, which was a sequel to
the Next Gen episode. So again, I think had We
Glombed Onto not necessarily a movie that had already been done,
but a kind of a higher concept story, you could
have done our version of you know this episode right now?

(35:55):
It's it's just it is, you know, it's a very
straight ahead story. There's some bad guys on a plan
it mucking around with the locals, and we're gonna we're
gonna put a stop to it.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
There was. It was.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
There was a very convenient action, you know, by using
the the teleporter to you know, get that work, that
nuclear warp coil reactor.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, react, that was.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
It was a very Star Trek sort of gag where
we you know, beam up their own weapon and use
it against them.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
You know, it worked, we used We used it before.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
I think that may have been the first time. I mean,
I think that was. I think it was a kind
of an old chestnut of mine because I've done that
on other o epense of our show, where we beam
off a component from the adversary and then use it
against them. But it's a fun idea. You just can't
keep doing it over and over again, right as I did.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Your favorite episode that you wrote for our show.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
You know there's a couple, uh, you know in season
four the last episodes I wrote for Star Trek for
our show where the Mirror Universe episodes, those were a
lot of fun you did.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, it wasn't rated in the in the telling of
our show. I know, they they're very popular.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah it was. It was just a lot of fun
to you know, throw you guys at curveball and give
you something different to play. Put you put you in
the makeup chair for longer than you probably want to know.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
We get no offense to you guys, but I hated them.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Well he got, he got, he got scupping into playing
a pirate by and.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, Jim Conway banked some banked a scene that I
was like, I was kidding, I was kidding, but I
had to do that for the next three weeks.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
And of course it was through What's that you really
were paces right pieces charge to church art.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
You have to look at those episodes though, it's you know,
it's it's the it's an upside down Star Trek universe.
I mean, who prevails in the end. But you know,
Hoshi and Travis all right, more often than not got
the least to do on our show and the other
one standing tall at the end and everyone else, And.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
That of course has a very odd place in the
you know, the annals of our history, because it was
in between that those two that we got canceled, that's right,
remember that. And whoever was going to direct the second one,
I don't know whether it was because we were canceled
suddenly they didn't show up to direct, and Marvin Rush
ended up stepping up and it was in many ways.

(38:33):
I've said so many times it was very fitting that
it was so in house, and yeah, it was a
family affair. That second episode.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
Of the it was a lot of fun. But I
mean to answer your question, what was probably my favorite
episode was a season three episode of called Twilight.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yes, good episode.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Yeah, I think both of you, gentlemen, because it had
this alternate future. Well, Connor, you got to be the
captain of the yeah, and dond you got your own
ship too, if I remember that, so you're welcome.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Didn't it didn't stick, but thank you?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
No pay that week, right, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
That's would come to us at least, But no, no, Joe.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Lene, what what in terms of writing for character and
like you just mentioned, you know, uh Hoshi and Travis
and you know what.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Are you?

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Is it predetermined who's going to be the focus of
an episode if there is one?

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Well sure, I mean again, that's that's the lesson that
I think. You know, Brandon was our showrunner, and Brandon
learned at the knee of you know, Michael Pillar and
Michael's and Michael who came in season three of Next
Gen that the show was kind of uh, you know,
foundering at the time in terms of the scripts, and

(39:59):
they were doing a lot of very techie and plot
heavy shows, and he decided to just kind of do
a one eighty and decided that every episode of Next
Gen was going to have a focus on one of
the standing characters. So you can do a super sci fi,
high tech mystery story or action story, but how does

(40:19):
it affect you know, how does it affect Jeordie, How
does it affect Beverly? How is this a the card story?
And that gave those episodes an emotional depth that the
show had really been missing. And so yeah, I think,
And there have been episodes like there was a Voyager
episode I worked on. I was had I was a

(40:40):
freelancer and I was brought into write the script for
an episode. But it was like episode twenty five of
season six. So they gave me this sort of like
half thought out idea of like this ghost story on
the Voyager on Voyager, and quite there, it wasn't about anybody,
it wasn't about any of the particular characters. So I

(41:02):
was like grasping. I was like grasping at straws. How
do I make this? How do I make the audience care?
Whose story is this, and I settled on Neelix. It
was a wonderful little, you know, wonderful, little, wonderful character,
and he just seemed to be He just kind of
fit this sort of haunted house thing we were trying

(41:23):
to do. But I didn't really have like permission from
anybody to make it a Neelix story. And when I
turned in the draft, it was actually not well received
because I had sort of like split the difference. I'd
tried to make it a kneeling story but like didn't
go all the way. And because they had to shoot
the damn thing, the writers and producers took it rewrote

(41:44):
it made it like one hundred percent of Neil story,
which I take a little, you know, give myself a
little bit of credit for, even though it's very little
of what I did, and there's some of it, like
maybe twenty percent of the episode is made. But yeah,
if you're given an outline, you have a story that
does and have a character focused, boy, you're going to
find that out really quickly when you go to teleplay.

(42:05):
Scenes are just gonna lie there. They're just gonna be flat.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
It's scarce the Jesus anime sitting down to sit in
front of a blank screen and going, well, who says
what first? And where are they saying it? I mean,
do you just just dive in and get that first
draft done and then use that as a framework to then,
you know, better it as it were.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, I mean I think that's what you're supposed to do.
I've never been particularly I'm jealous of writers. I work
with writers who could just what they call it the
vomit draft, right where you just kind of, you know,
the first thing that comes to mind, just put it
on the page, and then you come back and rewrite
it again. The you know, the really great thing about
working on Star Trekers because you get to write so much.

(42:49):
You really do. Back in the day, during the Rick
Berman era, there were so many stories somebody you couldn't
You didn't have the luxury of sitting in your office
and just staring out the window and throwing, you know,
a baseball at the ceiling over and over. You You
had to figure things out quickly, and you had deadlines.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
You know.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
I spent nights in that office, many many late, even
in New Year's Eve once believe you kidding?

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Did you have a did you have a cost?

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Did not have a cat. I had a I had
a uncomfortable couch that was actually a couch that I
had hauled across the country.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Believe it or not. And I love those stories about
you know, actors and you know people are creatives. Were like, yeah,
I know that foots online too.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
I like to think that the couch is somewhere floating
around the Paramount lot being used by somebody, sure afternoon
quick naps or something.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Nothing else getting made there at the moment, I don't think, yeah,
did you how did you find yourself in the start?
Trenk Uh?

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Well, I pursued it. I pursued it like a maniac.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
You're a better a fight, you're a fan your check
check head?

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it was. It was certainly
the only show I was aware of that would even
look at scripts or story ideas from outside writers, and so, I,
you know, I was living on the East Coast and
at the time, you know, Michael Pillar realizing what a
you know bind he was in finding writers and find

(44:22):
more more importantly like finding ideas to give to the
writers who had already used up the ones that they'd
come in the door with. Uh. He instituted an open
door submission policy where if you wrote a script and
signed a release form, they would have a professional reader
summarize it and look at it. And so I wrote
a bunch of scripts and from the East Coast and

(44:43):
you know, mailed them in and I remember one time
it took like a whole year before I even got
a you know, a printed rejection form. But later, after
I moved out here, one of those same scripts got
me into the internship program at Voyager. On the last
day of that internship, one of my jobs as the
intern was to read the unsolicited scripts that had been

(45:05):
submitted to the show and and sit down with Michael
Pillar and tell him if there were any of them
that had an idea that we could borrow and turn
into an episode. And none of them really worked for him,
and he says, He's said to me, literally like is
that all you got? And I said, well, I have
an idea. I was very prepared and pitched him a

(45:26):
story and.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
That became that gave me the worst ones first, did
you yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
This is going to seem better than these idea And
that became the episode mel that I wrote the story
for hell play for for like a season two Voyagers,
So but yeah, I know I had my I had
my eyeset on Star Trek. That was kind of all
I wanted to do at the time. That was that
was my Unfortunately, you know, between Deep Space nine and Voyager,

(45:55):
you know, they were making fifty two episodes a year.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Yeah. What was Michael Pillar's background before coming to Trek?
Had he done science fiction stuff before? I'm not really
I was sure.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
He had done sci fi. I think he'd done Simon
and Simon and some more like network procedural type of things.
I remember because we sort of bonded again. I really
only knew him for those six weeks that I was there,
because when I came back on the Voyager, he had
become a consultant and moved on to other shows. But
we also both had a background in television news, so

(46:30):
we kind of bonded over that, and it's you know,
some of the earliest Star Trek stories that I sold
actually came out of my work as a newswriter. You
had to read all these different real world stories that
some of you'd write about, some you wouldn't for the newscast,
and a lot of them were like almost like quasi

(46:50):
sci fi or a story that you could turn into
a sci fi parable and some of the you know, again,
the very first stories I did. I did a two
part episode of Voyager as a freelancer called Uni Matrix Zero.
It was about the Boorg. It was the first Borg
story I sold. But that came from an article about
the anniversary of the Internet at the time, it was

(47:12):
like nineteen ninety nine or two thousand or something, and
I just found a way to fuse the idea of
the Matrix and the Internet with the Board and put
a fresh spin on the boarg, who by that point
had been kind of done to death almost really on
Voyager and give it a new spin. But we really

(47:33):
drove it into the ground with that episode. So but yeah,
that was that was always my objective. That was really
the only thing I knew how to do or wanted
to do, which was to write for Star Trek. So
it was a great thrill to not only write for Voyager,
but to come aboard this show at the very inception,

(47:55):
be there from the beginning. I remember looking outside my
office window. It was I think it was the day
that we got confirmation that Scott was going to be Archer,
and you know, they'd been pursuing him, and they hadn't
been pursuing any other actor for that role, and we
just learned that he had been signed and and you
know who the Cooper building was. We were not the
heart building. Rather, we looked down on the commissary and

(48:18):
the restaurant, the Paramount restaurant, and we saw all of
you guys the cast like sort of like mingling outside
and it was like before lunch or after lunch, and
we saw Scott. We were like, oh my god, is
that Scott back either We hadn't we hadn't met him
aet and he was shaking hands with everybody and were like,
did we just watch like this crew meet for the

(48:38):
first time.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
It was like that's cool, Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
That must have been after our read threat through the
table read. Yeah, indeed.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
And those were some amazing days, really.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Were They were halcyon days. I mean, Connor and I
never stopped. Yeah. Sensing that now all these years later,
just how fortunate we were to be on that franchise
show at that studio at that time. It really, you know,
we were we were pigs in clover. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
It was some of the last times I think that
you know, it really felt like a proper studio, at
least it did for us, and now it just seems
to be a sort of a patchwork quilt of different things.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Either going on or not going on, you know, the
I don't know what's going to become of it. Now.
It's going to get split up, isn't it. I mean
I've sold it right, it's it is, Yeah, it's the
deal's been done.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Are you talking about that at the sky Dance acquisition. Yeah,
I don't know. I mean for what I hear it
hasn't been completed yet.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Well, yeah, no, it happened.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Maybe it might be a renaissance for that lot. I mean,
it's it's a really beautiful lot. It's kind of sad though,
you know, going visiting you know, Fox or some of
these other lots. In recent years, there's just not a
lot going on like there used to be. Yeah, hopefully
we'll find a way, whether it's through new tax breaks breaks,
you know, to bring these shows and movies back to

(50:04):
la because.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, no kidding, I mean it's when you the fact
that it's cheaper to go to South Africa and take
an entire cost then shoot in Town is just nuts.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Yeah, yeah, you take a lot now in in work,
not shooting in LA or working in LA. I'm sure
you can stay wherever you are as a writer, but
do you do you travel to production out of LA?

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (50:32):
I mean I certainly have. I've done a you know,
a fair amount of stuff in Canada. You know, I've
been lucky and that maybe the projects I've worked on
have have shot here. But that's that is such a
rarity these days, and it's hard because it introduces a
separation between the writers and the cast and crew.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Because you're not actually there as it were, right, Yeah, now.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
It's you know, it's kind of interesting. And you know
about our show, you know, because we had to do
so many episodes, the prevailing attitude in the Heart Building
was that if you're on the set hanging out with
the director in the cast, then you probably don't have
enough work to do. Like we've got stories to break

(51:17):
back here in the Heart, But what are you doing
hanging out on the set. That philosophy has like down
a complete one to eighty these days, where writers are
on the set working with the director, you know, scene
by scene, explaining the tone, maybe making some dialogue adjustments.
I think that was One of the reasons, perhaps the
reason why you know you the cast was asked to stay,

(51:41):
you know, letter perfect, was that there was simply no
time to have anybody down there to approve a change.
And if we could afford to have afford in terms
of the time, afford to have a writer on the
set who could say, you know, Connor Don just had
this really terrific idea, why don't we try this? But
we we just couldn't do that. We you know, we'd

(52:02):
had six, seven, ten writers on how many we have
on season one, there were a lot and they were
all needed all the time on rewrites in the writer's room,
breaking stories, coming up with the you know, coming up
with an episode, an episode that's already been shot in
the can that Livingstone directed, and it's like ten minutes short,
and now you need to write brand new scenes for
a finished episode. Bit in it perfectly, but the guest

(52:26):
cast and the sets are struck. It's it's there's just
there was so much to do. It just felt like
a luxury to be down there.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, we never saw you guys, I mean really from
the once the pilot was done, it was it was
a round.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Phillip spent Phillips of any of the writers spent more
time on set than I think anybody.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
I can remember, Oh yes she did. I did make
it past season one. I might be lying that.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
It's a lot of fun to be on the set.
It really is, or it can be, and it can
also be very boring for a writer because there's not
a whole lot to do. But I think also because
we had, you know, you guys got to be in
so many episodes, you know, twenty six a year. The
directors were veterans by and large, you often didn't need
our help, quite frankly, and I think that was that

(53:17):
was the prevailing attitude at the time. But again, the
business is very different now, and I'm glad it is.
It's much more of a you know, each episode is
now more of a bespoke little jewel rather than what's
the term, a filler episode, you know, an episode to

(53:39):
just get us to the next my mythological arc that
we might be exploring. But it was it was a
very different time. It's a very different time in TV,
and and it was changing. The world of TV was changing.
I think we as a show were caught up in that.
We really were, did you know it.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Did you feel as at the time in the writer's
room that the stands were shifting. I don't know that
we felt it, you know, actually in production, but did
you kind of see the writing on the wall that
this network thing was you know, going to change dramatically
in the next you know, a few years.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
No, I wish I could say that that we did
again this particular episode, which I guess we're still ostensibly
talking about civilization, Really was that was that line in
this and was that moment where if we weren't sure
that the world was changing and that television had to
adapt with it, that that week, that week we shot

(54:36):
this episode again. Took a little while, took weeks and
months and maybe even years to sink in, but it
shows that we had to change and address what was
going on in the world. Otherwise the show, I think,
you know, in season two and in season two has
some of my favorite episodes of the whole series, quite frankly,
but it started to feel a little bit drift, like

(55:00):
what were we doing? What was the point of what
we were doing? And a lot of that was brought
on by the you know, the really the big things
that were going on in the real world at the
time that we were not addressing. We were choosing not
to address and to make our show very different and
an escape in some ways from you know, the tragedies

(55:23):
of the world. But we ended up having to make
that adjustment. I'm glad we did. I think it was
the very choice to make.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
The directive often came from Rick. I felt that that,
you know, I mean, it was during our show that
Brownan finally got to write his AIDS allegory, which was,
you know, now twenty five years after the event. And
so I guess in some respects the fact that we
did address nine to eleven so in such a focused

(55:54):
way in season three was a real step forward for
mister Berman and you know, show that he might have said,
it ain't broke, so why am I trying to fix it?

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Well, you know, the ratings were not going in a
direction that I think anybody was happy with, for one,
and so upping the stakes, upping the drama was a
valid and understandable response. But creatively it was it was
it was it was challenging, and it was fun, you know,
to be able to you know, find allegories for what

(56:28):
was going on in the world and fictionalize it and
sci fi it up a bit and make it Star
Trek and make it our show and put our characters
through the Ringer. There was a really there was something
really wonderful and just in terms of like creatively to
be able to take these characters who had been kind of,
to a certain extent, a little gung ho and golly
going off into space and then putting them through the ringer,

(56:52):
sending them back to Earth at the end of season
four where they're just like shell shocked, and certainly Tripp
was dealing with some you know, series is trauma. So
it was archer to Paul to a degree. Uh, Dominic,
I think you got into a bar fight in season
four in an episode we did, Yeah, I think I did.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
That's right, you know it's right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
And explore you know, racism on you know, on on
Earth in the Star Trek era. That was like whoa, yeah,
this was this is how it would happen, this is
what it would be like. So it was yeah, it was.
It was quite a journey. It was quite a journey.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Well, pneumonia then the day we shot that bar fight, O, god,
I was so sick.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
I was what keeps a writer in the room, you know,
like you said our first season, there are some writers
of episodes that both Dominic and I are.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Like, I don't remember them? Was that?

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Yeah, Oh you don't remember the writers or you don't
remember there was.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
A Steve The next episode we're going to come to,
which I think cold Front, this is where they decided
to spend some There's a lot of CGI in this
and this is when the Temple Cold War makes its introduction,
written by Steve Beck and Tim Finch. I have no
recollection of these gentlemen at all. Did they only stay

(58:15):
on for season one? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (58:16):
I believe they were only there for season one?

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Have we inherited them from Voyager or no?

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Phyllis? I think Rick and Brandon wanted to clean house.
I mean, there were a lot of talented writers on
Voyager who did not move on to Enterprise. They wanted
to do something new, and they were looking for writers
who were first and foremost character people, knew how to
write great characters, figuring that the star trek of it,

(58:47):
the sci fi of it, we would take care of.
So there were a bunch of incredibly talented writers, some
of whom I'm still friends with, were brought on in
season one who were sort of virgins to star Trek,
and that ended up being I think a bigger liability
than we had anticipated, because they would often pitch either
episode ideas or character ideas that had been done many, many,

(59:12):
many times in the earlier shows, or were more appropriate
to the earlier shows which were set in a different
you know, future, historical era. And and it was hard.
It was hard watching some of those writers struggling, like
what what you know? What do they want from me?
You could almost you know, they were literally asking that question.

(59:32):
And often, with you know, a writing credit on a
television show, the show runner ultimately is responsible for that script,
and so you may see an episode with a bunch
of names on it, some of those names may have
contributed relatively little to the finished episode that you're watching.
It's it's it's really hard to say. It's it's hard

(59:53):
to also distinguish yourself when you're not the showrunner for
that for that reason, because often the assumption, I think
in the executive suites is the showrunner wrote that episode,
or they made it a good episode, they were there
shepherding it. That newish writer didn't have the chops to
do this. That's sometimes that's true and sometimes it isn't.

(01:00:13):
But yeah, there was there was a real there was
a real cleaning hype of House at the end of
season one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
There was not a lot of.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Not a lot of love for some of the I
mean it was sort of mutual. I think a lot
of those writers had a really frustrating time on season one,
and it was difficult even for the veterans like I
think me and Philis and Andre who had been there,
because you know, these writers, all of us were asking me,
you know, what is this show? Who are these people?
How is this different from the other shows? What is
our you know, how does this episode? How does the

(01:00:44):
series feel compared to the others? And it's also a
you know, a prequel. We're throwing that into the mix.
You know some you know, some of the early scripts,
you know, to Paul sounded very much like Seven of
nine or fell us during one of the during one
of the notes meetings, pointing out to Brannon, how much

(01:01:06):
to Paul sounded in the early scripts like seven of nine,
And he was like kind of taking it back, and
I was like kicking her under the table, like why
why are youizing our boss? But she was absolutely right,
and and they adjusted the script and made her more
vulcan more to Paul. They they needed to find her voice.
And that's the challenge also of doing one of these

(01:01:27):
series right after the other. You know, you know, you
don't necessarily have time to really dig in and find out,
you know, how is how is Tripped different from you know,
Bones or Scottie or or Jeordie or anybody else. You
find that over the course of the show. But you know,
we were lucky in that we had at the beginning anyway,

(01:01:50):
a very supportive you know, network and studio that weren't gonna,
you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater after
a couple of episodes. But again, it's it's still it's
it's really interesting to me that all the shows just
really seemed to have like they really take like a
year or two to find their their footing. With the

(01:02:11):
exception of the original series, which kind of like came
out of the gate just amazingly well done. The subsequent
shows are all living in the shadows of everything that
came before, and they're all kind of tentative, like how
do we how do we step out of that and
do something different? But not too different, right, that's the
challenge I feel.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
I remember Brandon saying at one point he might have
been joking, I don't know, maybe he was serious that
he thought he was making Seinfeld in space, which you
know is ultimately episodes not really about anything.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Yeah, well it's it's interesting, I think you could. It's
very easy to be to say, oh, I want this,
this movie, this episode, I'm writing, this television shoots to
be about something important, and then you infuse it with
what you think of it, and it just comes off
as full of itself and trying too hard and preachy

(01:03:03):
and preachy exactly, that's exactly the word. So you know,
I think there's something to be said for taking a
step back from that and letting you know, the theme
of the episode find find itself. This episode Civilization, I
would say, kind of is a Star Trek's version of
a Seinfeld. I guess it's not really about anything. There

(01:03:25):
was there was There was a line that I often
repeated in the writer's room, to my to my great shame,
where someone would ask, you know, you're you're all your writers,
You're you're just struggling with an idea. You're trying to
is this an episode I don't know? And somebody would
get on their high horse and say what is this
episode about? And I would, you know, say it's about
forty two minutes and then just move on to the

(01:03:48):
next question. But it's a way ten. It's a very
valid question.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
What do we.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
You know, even if we're not saying anything important or
super original, what is it that is affecting the people
on the story, even if it's a guest character. You know,
even if it's a guest character, we can you can
do that every now and then. It doesn't necessarily have
to be always about our people, but it is about
those relationships, those relationships, the relationships that the relationship that

(01:04:17):
you know, Trip and Reed had was one of the
most fun for.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Me to, right, thank you, We yeah we really, you know,
we gravitated to that enormously.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
And yeah, I mean it's not surprised that you know,
all this time later, you guys are hanging out and
have a great you know, real life bandar because you
had it on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
You really did.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
And I think the longer a show goes on, the
more the characters become like the cast. And that's that's
that's a blessing. I mean you want that to happen
and the.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Actor becomes more comfortable just with that other actor or
the other actors are more comfortable on set and more
prepared to as it were, you know, to use the
adage to throw it away, yeah, rather than every thing
you say as the highest importance. And that's yeah, you know,

(01:05:05):
it's it's still you know, you do the ten thousand
hours to learn something, to become an expert, and then
put it all down and let let it, let the
let the water flow, and that's when it works best.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
I don't think we were Seinfeld. I think we were
The Office, you know, yeah, right, I think really are
shows about a space going office and the people who
work there, right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
You know, yeah, like that, this is it. It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
It's great to get this sort of insight, you know.
I mean we've at Dime, we had well, we had Brannon,
we had.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
Rig but not a writer per se. We had David
Livingston on to talk us through the direction of one.
But no, we've had you know, behind the scenes people
that Herman and Doug Drexler and yeah, we did have
Brian Fuller, yeah yeah, And but Mike, if you want

(01:06:03):
to come back and talk about future episodes that you
were penned. We'd love to have you if you've got
the time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
That sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Are you busy as hell doing some other stuff at
the moment. What's what's going on in your life?

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Working on a couple of projects at the moment, Nothing
that I can chat about. But perhaps next time I'm
on in a couple of months, I'll be able to.
But you know, always writing, always writing in if you're
not being paid for it. That's that's that's the business to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Be able to do, isn't it. I envy musicians. You
can pick up the instrument and you guys that consider
the desk, and you know, I just wander out to
Hollywood Boulevard and start spouting Shakespeare.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Well, you've got the outfit for it because of this, Yeah, exactly, exactly, Well,
thank you, pal.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
It was really Yeah. A good joke that I loved
was the alien abduction apparently and your there was a
time in your era that was a thing I did.
I'd laughed uproariously at that one.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
It was very clever. It's funny. I remember like the
good lines and the good moments, But that was a
Brandon line that was a brand and I wish we'd
done more of that in this particular episode. I think
it would would be a little more self aware, right,
I think the audience would have would have been fine
with that. But we were still figuring out what we
were doing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
We weren't even halfway through the first season. And I
get a sense that the next episode they really went
all out to try and you know, cement an audience
make the show look as you know, bejeweled as possible, bedazzled.
There's so much c g I in there with the
temporal you know stuff, and Daniels arrives and yeah, they

(01:07:51):
spend a lot of money, that's for sure, not as
much as they spend today. But no, the show, I
mean that in His New Worlds is just it's extraordinary.
The production value, it's it's quite amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
Yeah, beautiful working shows.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
It is really well, it's been lovely seeing you again, man.
You look great. You've barely ate the day. Really, we've
all been a bit older, one more grizzled. YEA. Yeah,
for the weekend, what's going on? I think this isthing
else for the weekends. So this is it quite frankly

(01:08:27):
this is it, This is the high point. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
I do have some rewriting to do, but aside from that, yeah, no,
it's it's it's thrills to you guys and chat with you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Well. I love to you many. Thank you, see you guys,
seeing it all the best of you. Tak It's almost

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
It's almost

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Watch Party S1 E9 | Ep. 33

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Watch Party S1 E9 | Ep. 33