Life Is Full Of Little Surprises. Time

Who Are We? And To Me That's The Essential Question That's Always Been In Science Fiction. A Lot Of Science Fiction Stories Are - At Their Very Best - Evocations Of That Question. When We Look Up At The Night Sky And Wonder, "is There Anyone Else Out There?" We're Also Asking Who We Are We In Relation To Them.

You Can Tell A Lot About A Civilization By The Quality Of The People Found In Its Jails.

In The 20th Century, We Had A Century Where At The Beginning Of The Century, Most Of The World Was Agricultural And Industry Was Very Primitive. At The End Of That Century, We Had Men In Orbit, We Had Been To The Moon, We Had People With Cell Phones And Colour Televisions And The Internet And Amazing Medical Technology Of All Kinds.

My Approach To 'star Trek' Was, 'i Know Science Fiction, And I Know Screen Writing.' That Was Very Arrogant Of Me, But You Really Need To Be A Little Bit Arrogant To Think That What You Have To Say Is Good Enough To Justify The Expense Of Hundreds Of Thousands - Now Millions Of Dollars - To Make An Episode Of The Tv Show.

Notice How Every Science Fiction Movie Or Television Show Starts With A Shot Of The Location Where The Story Is About To Occur. Movies That Take Place In Outer Space Always Start With A Shot Of Stars And A Starship. Movies That Take Place On Another World Always Start With A Shot Of That Planet. This Is To Let You Know Where You Are. Novels And Stories Start The Same Way. You Have To Give The Reader A Sense Of Where He Is And What's Happening As Quickly As Possible. You Don't Want To Start The Story By Confusing The Reader.