What�s your thoughts on the special effects used on Star Trek?

Special effects on television have come a tremendous distance from the original series, which was done with models and optical effects available at the time.

The new Star Trek, starting with Next Generation, benefited, from CGI, Computer Generated Imaging.

It�s something that we worked with on Seaquest, a series I created for Steven Spielberg, back in the early 90s. It was about a futuristic submarine, and with models and water it was going to be very difficult and expensive.

Steven was prepping Jurassic Park at the time, and I remember him running into my office, grabbing me by the lapel and saying, "Come with me." He took me down to show me some of the stuff that they were doing with the dinosaurs.

So it was the first series to use CGI exclusively for the exteriors of our ship. That was something that Next Generation was using moderately at the time and now it�s just become de rigeur. Every shot outside of our ship is CGI, and I�m sure it�s the same with Star Trek.

It�s opened up the world tremendously. We can do set extensions and all sorts of things that give our series the scale that we�ve come to expect in feature films. It�s something that The Next Generation really began and it evolved through the Next Generation into Deep Space 9 and into Voyager. To the point now where Voyager can have that same kind of scale that we really came to associate with films like Star Wars and never really expected to see on television.