I got into writing to become a "Star Trek" writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to. So it was really...if back then, you told me 'you're gonna write for "Star Trek" for twenty years,' I couldn't have imagined a happier career. But after writing for "Star Trek" for four years and bumping up against the parameters of the storytelling, which sometimes were very restrictive because there was always that magical reset button and you could never carry story arcs over the episodes because they were so heavily syndicated that it simply wasn't allowed, I began to get itchy and wanting to tell stories with a little more emotional depth, because one of the things about the "Star Trek" universe, especially "Next Generation," and "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager" were that the characters were so much more evolved than we were that they wouldn't be terrified when they're looking at a giant Borg cube about to assimilate them. They would handle their jobs and they would behave responsibly and calmly, and I just had a hard time relating to that after a certain point.
