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FRAKES: Each year, Star Trek's production offices are inundated with a galaxy of
potential stories for our characters. Only a small number of these stories ever make it to
the screen, and an even fewer number of writers are asked to join the writing staff.
RON MOORE: I was living in Los Angeles, trying to be a writer,
I took a series of odd jobs. I was a messenger, I did personnel, and
I worked at an animal hospital. Basically, I started dating this girl, who had a connection
to Next Generation, because she had gone to work on the pilot. She found that I was a Star Trek
fan because I had this big Captain Kirk poster in my apartment, and she said,
"You know, I know people who work on Next Generation, and I can probably get you a tour of the sets." I was like, "Oh my god, please!"
"Could you make a call?" She said, "Okay!" So she made a call, and they used to have a regular set tour
in those days, and she set it up; it was going to be in about six weeks.
I just sort of thought, "I'm going to take a shot and write an episode."
I really wasn't 'that guy', I wasn't the guy who always had a script, knocking on doors
I was always starting and stopping scripts without a lot of discipline to it at all.
Somehow, this time, I saw it as an opportunity, and I just decided "I'm gonna do this!"
And I wrote the script and brought it with me. Richard Arnold was giving the set tour, and I basically
talking him into reading it - and he read it, he liked it, and he gave it to
the woman that became my first agent. She submitted it to the show, and it sat in the slush pile for about
seven months. Michael Piller came aboard in the beginning of the third season, and started going
through the slush pile, and found my script and bought it. I got a really lucky break
and I had the right script at the right time; he was looking for something like that... that
started my whole career, basically. TREKCORE: You say you started
and stopped things... how then do you then find transition into all of a sudden
having to twenty-six episodes to do, and there being so much pressure to get finished?
MOORE: Well, I didn't really have any choice. Once I was on the staff, here's the work, and you either did it or you didn't.
There was a certain pace that the show went at.
I remember very clearly, my first full day on the show. Michael gave me
a memo, or a story outline that they couldn't make work,
and he said, "Here, go try to make this work." I sat down and just wrote up a new version and
sent it downstairs; an hour or so later he sent it back up with a bunch of notes on it.
Then I wrote up another version and sent it downstairs; the same then happened like twice more.
I started putting the time up in the corner, I was literally putting the time
of this draft... Michael, at some point, just laughed. "You don't have to do it THIS fast!"
I didn't know what the pace was! I just assumed that when it was given to me, I had to write it
as quickly as possible, and fortunately, that was a really important
strength to have on a television series, to be able to do it quickly and get it out.
TREKCORE: Ira, how did you get onto Star Trek: The Next Generation?
IRA STEVEN BEHR: I had done an outline for a science fiction series
for Showtime, that I believe
may have been something that I had worked on for Terry Nation,
because I'd met Terry, he had a job with 20th Century Fox
and even though I hadn't seen much Doctor Who, he was the guy who created the Daleks, I knew that.
He used to let me hang out in his office while he drank
red wine and smoked cigarette after cigarette, which shows you how long ago becuase
you could smoke in your office back then. So, it was some outline; I had forgotten all about it.
Somehow, that outline got to someone at Paramount - don't ask me how,
I have no clue - and I got a call saying, "Would you like to go onto
Season Two of The Next Generation?"
which I had not really watched. It was still Star Trek,
so I said that I'd go in and take a meeting. Little did I know that they were asking me because
they were cutting off writers' heads left and right, and it was a bloodbath every week.
So I went to the Paramount commissary, and I met with Maurice Hurley, who was the
showrunner at the time. We had a very pleasant conversation,
and I basically let him talk; I had nothing to say, really. He was telling me about the show,
and by the time he was done, I said, "Thank you, but no thank you." Because
it sounded like a complete and utter horror show.
They were firing writers left and right; the one that killed me was
you're not allowed to go down to the set as a writer/producer, because
it's not allowed. I said that I'd hever heard that anywhere before! And there's
a lawyer who goes around looking through desks at night
to find things that they wrote about Gene Roddenberry, because he was Gene's
lawyer, and it was like, "Is this serious?!" He said, "Yeah, but it's a really good job!"
I said okay, and he seemed like a sweet guy, but there was just no way.
I mean, you can't go down to the set? Why am I in the business? I've got to have SOME fun!
So, I said no, and I thought that was the end of it. The next year,
minding my own business, I get a call
Michael Piller, who I knew for almost at that point a decade,
was doing the show, that he was now on TNG.
And Hans Beimler and Ricky Manning,
who had worked for me on Fame,
were now also there, and they asked me again to come on, and I knew that
it was still kind of a bloodbath, and I knew that they were behind already and it was a mess, but I knew the players
so I said yes. The funny thing,
not unlike what Ron was saying - the first day I got there,
I thought, "Man, I've got to brush up on my Shakespeare here, gotta learn what this show is."
I'm barely there, Michael calls me into his office, gives me
a script called "The Hunted", and says, "Rewrite Act 3."
TREKCORE: Wow. BEHR: "Can I read what it is?" He says,
"Well, yeah, read it, but it's basically a chase. The whole act is kind of a long chase.
So, you know, put him in the Jefferies Tubes
and stuff like that." So I walk outside and I go to my buddies
Beimler and Manning. I ask them to help, and it's like, "Oh, we're
in our own hell, get out of here!" So then I go to
a guy I don't even know, this guy Richard Danis, who is literally a dead man walking.
The first thing he says to me is, "I'm on a ten week contract; they're not picking up my contract; I'm
gone in like two weeks. I've never met Rick Berman, I've never met Gene Roddenberry,
don't talk to me, I'm dead." I said, "What's a Jefferies Tube?"
So he explained what a Jefferies Tube was,
and I went back and literally banged out
by hand on a yellow pad,
Act 3, scared out of my mind. There was some dialogue
obviously in there, but I was just like
throwing it up in the air and hoping there was a parachute attached.
I gave it to Danis to read,
and I said, "Is it English? Does it make sense? Does it have anything to do with the show?"
And he said, "You're a writer!"
He goes, "There's no doubt. I read it. You're a writer."
I said, "Well, I think I knew that, but that's good!" I gave it to Mike,
and I walked out of his office, and I just sat
in my office alone, thinking, "Oh my god, am I off this show
day one? Is he going to be SO disappointed?"
And he just, after whatever it was, twenty minutes or a half hour, he just strolled in,
and said, "Great, perfect. I made a couple of changes, terrific."
And that was it.