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"Things were dictated by the times, by it being post-9/11, but I wanted us to hopefully get back to having a little bit more fun on the show and to get out of that whole Xindi thing. That would have been fun. I think we were pointing in that direction. I think the group was ready to go. The cast was ready to get there, and I think we could have had a blast. But we just didn’t get to go there. And I wanted Archer to kind of grow up and lighten up a little bit."

"I'm working on Buffy: Deep Space Nine. It will be dark and badly received."

"The people that really understand and love Star Trek are no longer there. When Gene Roddenbery passed, that really was the end of Star Trek, as we knew it. The series that came on immediately after was Deep Space Nine, which was the polar opposite of Gene’s philosophy and vision of the future, Star Trek lost it’s way then and now the people at Paramount are all new people. Herb Solow who was the executive in charge of Desilu Studios is now a professor in Wales. We became very good friends and we had dinner with him and his wife before they left, and when I was in London last year I saw an article about a Professor Herb Solow! But, basically the people now at the studio have absolutely no connection with Star Trek as we knew it, sadly."

"Were Piller and Berman aware of B5 at any time? No. Of that I am also confident. The only question in my mind is to what degree did the development people steer them? One scenario is that they did not steer them at ALL…but knowing of B5, and knowing how swell it would be if they could co-opt B5, if Piller and Berman came up with a space station on their own, they would likely say nothing, even though they might be viewed as being under a moral obligation to say something. Another scenario is that they gave direction to the creative folks without telling them the origin of that direction. There are several ways of dealing with this. One is to launch a major suit with full powers of discovery. The result is that DS9 gets tied up for months, maybe even years in litigation, and maybe the show doesn’t go forward. It also means hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by Warners and me and others pursuing this…not to mention the sense of ill will that will fly back and forth."

"The truth is that if Gene (Roddenberry) was alive -had been alive- DS9 would have never been made, because he absolutely said “no” to it when it was presented to him. He said ‘Star Trek is about exploring space, it’s not about a hotel in space.’ So, it would never have happened."

"I think Deep Space [Nine] was the show that really took Star Trek as far as you could take it. You have the original series which is a sort of a landmark, it changes everything about the way science fiction is presented on television, at least space-based science fiction. Then you have Next Generation which, for all of its legitimate achievements is still a riff on the original. It's still sort of like, ok, it's another star ship and it's another captain – it's different but it's still a riff on the original. Here comes Deep Space [Nine] and it just runs the table in a different way. It just says ok, you think you know what Star Trek is, let's put it on a space station, and let's make it darker. Let's make it a continuing story, and let's continually challenge your assumptions about what this American icon means. And I think it was the ultimate achievement for the franchise. Personally, I think it's the best of all of them, I think it's an amazing piece of work."

"When Gene died, both Michael Piller and I were involved in creating and writing Deep Space Nine, and we never really got a chance to talk to him about it because he was quite ill at that point. But even with Deep Space Nine and later Voyager, and Enterprise I felt it was important that as long as something had the Star Trek name on it that it stayed true to Gene’s belief of what Star Trek was all about."

"We pitched the concept and characters. We didn't lay-out 7 years of story arcs. It was far too early to know where it was going."

"Contrary to a comment from NY Comic Con, Michael Piller and I pitched our ideas for DS9 to Gene, and he gave us his enthusiastic approval."

"Nicole de Boer – Ezri Dax [Season 7]"

"Michael Dorn – Lieutenant Commander Worf [Seasons 4–7]"

""All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." - John Masefield"

"Terry Farrell – Jadzia Dax [Seasons 1–6]"

"Armin Shimerman – Quark"

"Cirroc Lofton – Jake Sisko"

"René Auberjonois – Constable Odo"

"Colm Meaney – Chief Miles O'Brien"

"Star Trek, like any good story, says that we're all complicated, and we've all got a little bit of Spock and a little bit of Kirk [laughs] and a little bit of Scotty, maybe some Klingon in us, right? But that is what I mean about figuring it out. Part of figuring it out is being able to work across barriers and differences. There's a certain faith in rationality, tempered by some humility. Which is true of the best art and true of the best science. The sense that we possess these incredible minds that we should use, and we're still just scratching the surface, but we shouldn’t get too cocky. We should remind ourselves that there's a lot of stuff we don't know."

"Jeffrey Hunter – Captain Christopher Pike ("The_Menagerie" & "The Cage")"

"Majel Barrett – Nurse Christine Chapel/Ship Computer"

"Walter Koenig – Pavel Chekov"

"Nichelle Nichols – Uhura"

"George Takei – Hikaru Sulu"

"James Doohan – Montgomery "Scotty" Scott"

"DeForest Kelley – Doctor Leonard McCoy"

"Leonard Nimoy – Commander Spock"

"William Shatner – Captain James T. Kirk"

"It is not my intention here to recount the history of the series or of the fan phenomenon, as these have been fruitfull explored in a number of popular and scholarly sources. Rather, I want to devote more attention to what I believe to be one of the least discussed aspects of the Star Trek phenomenon-the relationship of the series to the Cold War subtext of the post-war science fiction genre, especially in the context of the show’s original broadcasts during the period of the greatest scalation of the Vietnam War, 1966-1969. The meaning or appeal of any widely popular and enduring classic such as Star Trek is not reducible to any single reading or interpretation However, if we are to understand Star Trek in historical context, its mediation of Cold War themes would seem to be an important underlying element of the series and one worthy of further investigation."

"Since its official beginning in New York city in the summer of 1972 with the first fan-organized convention, Star Trek has become a genuine popular phenomenon. So great has been the enthusiasm generated by viewers of the original 1960s series that in fall 1986, twenty years after its first telecast, Star Trek was syndicated in 145 national markets and numerous foreign markets."

"The Enterprise was the first ever [spaceship represented in storytelling that was not designed to go from one place to another; [it was] only designed to explore. It was revolutionary in terms of what we would think space would, and should, be about."

"What matters is not what they look like now, but what they looked to others at the time that they prevailed... There is only one spaceship that's earlier than [the original Enterprise], and that's the flying saucer from The Day the Earth Stood Still. So, what matters here is, what did [the Enterprise] look like at the time it came out (1966) compared with anything that had been imagined before? And when you consider that, that is the most astonishing machine that has ever graced the screen."

"Captain Kirk was captain of everybody'sfate. He was a dictator."

"Star Trek was again a very inconsistent show which at times sparkled with true ingenuity and pure science fiction approaches. At other times it was more carnival-like, and very much more the creature of television than the creature of a legitimate literary form."

"The time is somewhere in the future. It could be 1995 or maybe 2995."

"Star Trek offers an almost infinite number of exciting Science Fiction stories, thoroughly practical for television? How? Astronomers put it this way: Ff^2 (MgE) - C^1R1^1 x M = L/So Or to put it in simpler terms, by multiplying the 400,000,000,000 galaxies (star clusters) in the heavens by an estimation of average stars per galaxy (7,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), we have the approximate number of stars in the universe, as we understand it now. And so… …if only one in a billion of these stars is a "sun" with a planet...<br /[A]nd only one in a billion of these is of earth size and composition... [T]here would still be something near 2,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 worlds with a potential of oxygen-carbon life... [O]r...(by the most conservative estimates of chemical and organic probability), something like three million worlds with a chance of intelligent life and social evolution similar to our own."

"Bill [Shatner] was very upset when Leonard came on particularly strong at the beginning [of the series] because he said, "Am I not the Captain? How come [the writers] don't appreciate that?" It was a very natural reaction. I said to Shatner, "If we had an Eskimo as a second character, you could be sure the Eskimo would get the most delightful lines because of what he is." I advised him not to worry about Spock because all that reflected on Shatner, particularly if Shatner continued to treat Spock properly in the show. I suggested they should show each other a lot of friendship in the show and it would eventually right itself. And, indeed, it did eventually right itself."

"In spirit, the original Star Trek was opposed to war and nuclear weapons. However, it could not help sketching a universe in which opposing alliances resorted to espionage, gunboat diplomacy and covert operations. That Cold War influence came across in a different way 25 years after the series debut in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last Star Trek movie featuring the full original crew. An exploding moon-based power station — shades of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster — leads to an economic and environmental crisis in the Klingon Empire."

"Star Trek evoked this sense of technological insecurity when it introduced the Romulan Empire in the gripping "Balance of Terror." Unlike the expansionist Klingons, the Romulans are xenophobic and insular, destroying anyone who violates the Neutral Zone. Thus, the Romulan Empire resembled Mao's isolationist China, then in the grips of the Cultural Revolution — a closed society perceived as a potential threat that might at any moment pour across neighboring borders. The Romulan Neutral Zone also references the Demilitarized Zone separating the divided northern and southern halves of Korea and (at the time) Vietnam."

"In a time when social divisions seemed unbridgeable and nuclear war appeared imminent, Star Trek offered a positive vision of the future where a united and peaceful humanity explored the stars on behalf of a Federation in which poverty, disease and violent conflict were mostly things of the past."

"I was a sucker for Star Trek when I was a kid. They were always fun to watch. What made the show lasting was it wasn't actually about technology. It was about values and relationships. Which is why it didn't matter that the special effects were kind of cheesy and bad, right? They'd land on a planet and there are all these papier-mâché boulders. [Laughs.] But it didn't matter because it was really talking about a notion of a common humanity and a confidence in our ability to solve problems. A recent movie captured the same spirit—The Martian. Not because it had a hugely complicated plot, but because it showed a bunch of different people trying to solve a problem. And employing creativity and grit and hard work, and having confidence that if it’s out there, we can figure it out. That is what I love most about America and why it continues to attract people from all around the world for all of the challenges that we face, that spirit of "Oh, we can figure this out." And what I value most about science is this notion that we can figure this out. Well, we're gonna try this—if it doesn't work, we're gonna figure out why it didn't work and then we're gonna try something else. And we will revel in our mistakes, because that is gonna teach us how to ultimately crack the code on the thing that we're trying to solve. And if we ever lose that spirit, then we're gonna lose what is essential about America and what I think is essential about being human."

"A major area of conflict was Bill's concern that Spock was getting ahead of Kirk in terms of problem solving. Bill was worried that Kirk would seem unintelligent by contrast. And so lines of dialogue that had logically been Spock's soon became Kirk's."

"He (Martin Luther King Jr.) felt it was important that children of all races see an African American female appearing on television as an equal."

"I thought she (Uhura) was a glorified telephone operator in space."

"One of the keys to Star Treks success is the fact that almost every aspect of the show is grounded one way or another in real-world concepts. Starfleet, the organization unifying humanity and aliens in the exploration of the galaxy, is one such concept and was undoubtedly influenced by Roddenberry's time as a pilot during World War II."

"Fifty years on, as racism, sexism and dying migrants make headlines, it's easy to see how radical Roddenberry’s ideas remain."

"In a world preoccupied by the Space Race and the Cold War, the Enterprise looked into the future and saw the Russians as allies, not bushy-browed villains. Young ensign Pavel Chekov was loyal to the crew even as he displayed his love for Russia."

"In Roddenberry's 23rd-century universe, mankind had conquered conflict and catapulted into space as a unified species – men, women, Chinese, Russians, Africans. And it seemed to work. Women weren't intergalactic secretaries, they were full officers. Communications officer Uhura, a woman and black, is fourth in command of the Enterprise."

"The show, released in the decade of the Vietnam War, American Civil Rights protests, the second wave of the feminist movement and the threat of nuclear war, dared to imagine what peace might look like."

"Again and again on the series, we see that communication is the solution to problems, and that understanding your enemy (if they even are an enemy) is the only way to resolve a dangerous situation. It's a concept that seems to belie every piece of Cold War doctrine foisted on the American public. The Red Menace was a danger so insidious, so malignant, that even trying to understand its beliefs and systems meant a form of surrender. This wasn't just a physical force, but a kind of philosophical brain snatcher whose tendrils, if left unchecked, would lay waste to the free world. That kind of paranoid faith in the untouchable—the assumption that some beliefs must be walled away in silence and fear—was something that Star Trek stood against in stark opposition."

"The original Trek was never consistent; to modern eyes, its frequently ham-fisted writing, sexism, sluggish pacing, and lack of continuity between episodes can take some adjustments to accept. But at the show's peak, those flaws could never obscure the raw energy that drove the adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise, nor the way that energy so often coalesced behind a fundamentally optimistic view of the universe."