Can you tell us about your work on unsolicited scripts sent to Star Trek?

Star Trek was the only show in Hollywood, to date, that accepted unsolicited scripts. Anybody could send in a script from anywhere in the world to us, and we would read it, provided they followed the guidelines. Other shows in Hollywood will accept scripts, but they have to be from agents.

Over the time that I was there as script co-ordinator, we received over ten thousand unsolicited scripts, for TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. They no longer have that unsolicited script option for Enterprise, and I can understand why, it's an overwhelming amount of work.

But, especially for the first few years that we did it, it really paid off. Michael Piller, (Executive Producer on The Next Generation and co-creator of Deep Space Nine and Voyager), when he first came to The Next Generation as head writer, didn't know that much about Star Trek. What he did realise was, "Wow, this is a thing that has really a very long built-in history to it. It needs to have the continuity kept together. So where do we turn for ideas? Who better than the fans?"

In the long run it really helped a lot of writers break into the business. Some of them ended up working on Star Trek and became Executive Producers themselves. Others have gone on to write or produce other shows - it opened a huge door for them. And we used many many stories from those scripts. It paid off for everybody for a long time.

How many scripts ended up being produced?

I would say maybe one in fifty. But when you get that many scripts and we can only keep up on so many a week or month [that's to be expected].

Ronald D Moore, Brannon Braga and myself [organised] a writers' workshop that we took all over the States and actually brought here to England, many years ago. They couldn't teach people to write, just as I can't teach people to act, but you can help them hone their skills.

Since the writing staff and myself were the ones who were going to have to look through these scripts, that it could only help us if we could get the information to the fans on how to at least make them presentable and professional. And Jane Espenson [of Buffy] did that course, and interned for us, and the rest is history. She's on a very popular show.

We've had a lot of successes like that. As a matter of fact, Ron Moore, who was on the show for years, and wrote Generations and First Contact, with Brannon, came from a spec script. He sent in a spec script called The Bonding, and that got him his first [break]. It was a good way to get your feet wet, that's for sure.