Did you see the first Star Trek movie and what did you think of it?

I�m a big Robert Wise fan, but I�m not a particularly big fan of the first film. I thought it was too sterile, and didn�t really explore the emotions of the Star Trek world, or have the energy that the original series had. Roddenberry wasn�t quite as involved with the first film as he should have been, to be honest. I think it was more a studio project.

I think everybody was nervous. They knew that Star Trek had a big following, but they didn�t know exactly what that would translate to. They didn�t know exactly how to modernise Star Trek, they didn�t want it to be like the TV show.

That�s why I think the Nick Meyer film, the second one, which was done under the auspices of the Premier Television Division, was the one that really broke out. It was a sigh of relief. They made it for not a huge amount of money and it was done in a TV production way. Everybody could just be creative and have fun with it. There was a lot of character to it, a lot of background to the characters, enriching what we knew of them from the original series. That, to me, was key because it was doing exactly what you were hoping a feature film would do.

One of things that�s difficult to do is a film in the midst of production of the television series. There�s been talk since the first year of Farscape of doing a feature film. But we don�t know where to place it in the time frame of the series. X-Files did it in the midst of the series production, but specifically created it to fit during the summer between two seasons, arcing the story line that had been created for that. It�s hard to do. It also gives the film a short shelf life.

So what Star Trek has been able to do is let the series run its course, get the audience interested and excited, and then create the feature film afterwards. What I found very interesting is that they were making feature films based on the original series, with the original cast, at the same time, The Next Generation was on the air. The fact that the franchise could support both a very successful feature film franchise and a television series as well as it did, just speaks to the incredible strength of the original premise.