How did you you start working on the Next Generation?

At first I hesitated - I wasn't used to having a steady job, I was used to going from film to film and living in motels around and hotels around the world. I talked with my wife for a minute and we decided that it'd be great. At least if the show went for a year I could stay home for a year, and, of course, that's fifteen years ago.

In the very beginning, the only two characters we had to deal with was Worf, who going to be the Klingon, and Data, who was an android. So we did many film tests with Brent Spin basically for colour. Pencilling in his hair line to give him a patent leather look through his hair. It finally got down to three colours, it got down to a yellow-gold, a battleship grey and bubblegum pink. And actually Gene Roddenberry kind of liked the pink. Then they kind of liked the grey, it's like yellow was the afterthought. Data's make-up is literally the only make-up that hasn't changed one iota since the original application, still the same steps. Everybody else had tweaking to it.

Michael Dorn, at that time, was willing to shave his head, they thought it might save time if we had a bald Klingon that we could just glue spines across his head. It wasn't - it was going to take more time doing that than it would have been to build a new rubber forehead. What I wanted to do for television was to create the ridges heavier than they've ever been before.

All the Klingons since that time have had very gnarly dentures and the ridges and bones come down into the face with a stylised nose.

The Ferengis, the original look, they had big bat-like ears and long chins. [We] took off the bat-like ears 'cos they looked like large Vulcans, and rounded the ears off. We did away with the chin, as a time saver. Although, later on, we did add cheek bones, because we found that it justgave them a better look, taking away from the human look, by having the head, the cheek bones, and the nasty little teeth.