Who's easiest/hardest/most fun to write for; who's your favorite guest creation; any challenges inherent in writing for animatronic characters? Questions from several folks, well, okay, just Angie, Helen, and A.K., but that's good enough for me.

Most fun: A tie between Zhaan and Scorpius; the former because she's both spiritual and kick-ass; the latter because I can use words like "prescient" and know Wayne will make them sound splendid.

Easiest/hardest: Mmmm... that's hard to say. Nobody jumps to mind as being particularly easy or particularly difficult. Depends what they're doing, I suppose. Crichton/Aeryn big relationship scenes are always challenging. Crichton/D'Argo buddy scenes are an entertaining break from the angst.

In a sense, everybody's "easy" to write because they're all terrific characters with clear voices and distinctive attitudes... and everybody's "hard" to write because there's so many of 'em and only 42 minutes in an episode.

Guest creation: Well, I had the honour and the pleasure to be the first to write for Scorpius, but I wouldn't say I created him exactly - DK and Rock had been talking about that character way before I came aboard.

Kyr, the young Tavlek, (in Throne for a Loss) was fun because he worked so well against Zhaan, whether they were fighting each other or flashing each other. Haloth, one of Maldis's incarnations, (That Old Black Magic) spoke entirely in iambic pentameter, and one doesn't get a lot of opportunity to write that in television these days. (I'm developing a series called Shakespeare, P.I. which will change that).

Tauza, Scorpius's "stepmom" (Incubator) was a good old-fashioned no-redeeming-qualities baddie; I hated having to kill her (as opposed to the two dozen characters I enjoyed killing off in... whoops, never mind, you haven't seen that episode yet).

Animatronic characters: The only things different about writing for them are the technical restrictions: for instance, you can't write nine pages of Rygel surfing. Aside from that, they're characters just like the others. When I'm writing Pilot I'm not thinking, "this is an animatronic", I'm just plain writing Pilot.