It�s a journey, a band of people: what are all those elements that come together that make it so special?

I have to laugh only because � and I don�t mean to sound patronising � it�s because I�ve been asked that question for 35 years and I can pontificate at great length on what I consider the answer is and I do believe it�s more than one. Ultimately � let me cut through or let me touch on what are the obvious reasons first of all and the obvious reasons are imaginative story telling, the ability to transport � no pun intended � the audience and make them feel that they can identify with the situations and with the characters, and this for all of the series.

The writing, the cogent writing, that very frequently had something worthwhile being said.

The more sophisticated it became with special effects when we started making the features, that too became an integral part of the show�s success. But, I think that the reason that, the explanation that can blanket all four series and this disparate feeling of all four series, that they were not the same show reflected over and over again is a sociological reasons and I think it has its roots in the need for people to have something they can identify with, not unlike a sports team.

English football, American baseball, American basketball, you root for a team and you identify with their success. Star Trek had a considerable amount of success. It had a following. People came to associate themselves with that, with that success. This is my institution. This is my team. And just like with any other team, players change, you know they�re... The Los Angeles Dodgers today are probably 80 percent different than they were � the team members are 80 percent different than they were three or four years ago. That notwithstanding, there are people in Los Angeles who will root for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I�ve been rooting for the New York Yankies since 1947. Players come and go. Star Trek casts come and go.

We�re now looking upon a fifth generation of casts, but it�s still Star Trek � you have your figurative banner that you�re waving. People go to ball games and they dress in the colours of their team and they paint their faces red and green and blue. How different is that than people coming to Star Trek conventions and dressing in costume? So I think we have achieved a kind of - I hate to sound so pretentious about it, but almost a mythic kind of � or an epic kind of quality, that we are an institution so broad and so grand that it has an enormous following that will maintain itself generation after generation, decade after decade, just the way sports teams do.