What�s the most difficult set you had to create?

I would say the Borg presented us with a great deal of imagination. You have to rely on trying to be creative in a short amount of time. When we started out with the Borg, we certainly never did expect them to be such a recurring theme. Given that factor, we might have done some things a little bit different. The Borg were always very time consuming, whatever episode they might be in, they were always difficult.

So if you�d known how often they would reappear, it would have made your life easier?

I don�t know. The sets were actually pretty flexible over a period of time.

What became difficult was what I had in mind when I flashed on the idea of the Borg being a collective, and thinking as one. So they didn�t need to have monitors. Because their thoughts are all their thoughts they�re not spelt out somewhere on a screen. That became a problem in the sense that I had to introduce Borg consoles later on, because they did need to have communication with other species.

With the Queen, when she�s communicating with Janeway and so forth, the audience needed to see what she sees, and what she�s thinking. So we did her screen. Because of the sets being organic as much as possible we tried to make the consoles for the Borg appear more organic and very, very different than what you normally would see as a console. So that was an element that was always a challenge.