By popular demand, the story of that time I almost got to write for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

On 28 September 1987 I, along with everybody else, was parked in front of a television watching the pilot episode. I was a third year student at the University of Arizona whose enjoyment of the original series in re-run had instilled my ideal of sci-fi television grounded in the work of Harlan Ellison, Charles Beaumont and Norman Spinrad – science fiction greats who had turned their hands to writing STAR TREK scripts which justly became some of the most influential episodes in television history. What excited me about the original TREK was its willingness to discuss Big Ideas™ on the small screen. And, having been bitten by the writing bug, what excited me about THE NEXT GENERATION was the possibility of contributing to that cultural conversation. I was twenty-one.

Three…