Was it a lazy approach to getting out of a bit of a hole?

Sometimes, yeah. If we couldn't figure out how is the crew going to get out of this particular situation, sometimes we would just use technobabble to get them out and, still do, to some degree.

Another challenge we're facing is, ten years ago, on The Next Generation, we were utilising science based concepts that were relatively new to audiences, particularly in the realm of quantum physics, things like alternative universes and time loops. That's old hat now.

The audience has grown more sophisticated in the past decade. There have been several films made about repeating loops of time now. There have been a couple of films made about alternative realities, including Sliding Doors. So, we're exhausting existing scientific theories and are having to start looking elsewhere, and I don't know where that's going to be, that's what scares me.

We need a whole new branch of science to open up to generate story ideas now. Star Trek's done over six hundred hours of television.