A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.

In fact, we've entered a world which is arguably much more dangerous than [being] eyeball to eyeball with the USSR.

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

Roddenberry had his own utopian vision about he perfectibility of man, and I never really believed that. And I don’t think the show demonstrates that. I think it is about gunboat diplomacy. In the final analysis, the Enterprise fires. They’re always shooting and bringing civilization, and coming to worlds where they don’t approve of tyrannical enterprises – no pun intended – and they substitute their own quote unquote enlightened version of how society is supposed to work, which is essentially American.