By the time of Next Generation there was a full time science advisor employed on Star Trek. Was that an indication that science had a serious input into the show?

In the late �80s and early �90s you couldn�t really get away with as much as you could in the original series and Gene felt strongly that the science on the show should be based in something truthful and real. You could extrapolate it from there, but that it had to have some real understanding.

There had been so much science fiction between the original series and Next Generation that you had to go with the times. It had to be smarter, you had to be more sophisticated. Audiences knew what the space show was and they had seen pictures from Mars. When the original series was on we hadn�t even landed on the Moon yet.