What happened before Andre joined The Next Generation?

On The Next Generation, we had a number of science advisors. There was so much excitement about the show when it first went on the air that we had the benefit of a number of people, from NASA and the JPL - the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, which is very close by.We had people who were friends of Gene Roddenberry, people who were fans of the show, and people who gave us a tremendous amount of support, ideas and conversations. I remember once being at an event in Washington DC, and there was a very famous MIT professor in robotics � I believe his name was Minsky, Marvin Minsky. I was with Brent Spiner at the Watergate Hotel, and this guy came up to Brent and he reached out and he touched his face. Now, Brent's an actor, he was acting, you know, but Minsky was so fascinated because this was Data and this was the culmination of what his whole field of science was about.

When Gene was alive, we had a tremendous amount of contact with people like Buzz Aldrin and many, many astronauts; people from JPL and the head of NASA, Dan Goldin. There were a lot of places we could turn to get scientific ideas and also confirmation of things that were being done. And this has continued through the life of Deep Space 9 and Voyager as well, to varying degrees.