I do what I do in my mother's name because I couldn't help her then. Now I can.

I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

I began directing episodes, which was a great light every couple of months. We never short-changed our audience, but it became something that you had to work at rather than something that was a pleasure.

Roddenberry had created quite a complex and at times mysterious character. Guarded, cautious, careful in showing his feelings in expressing his ideas about many things - I found that very interesting.

I came to feel very, very sentimental about those sets, which is ludicrous, because they represent everything which is transitory and insubstantial. It's absurd that one should feel sentimental about timber and canvas.

I know it feels like two steps forward and one step back, but we are making progress. In my lifetime, I have lived through one World War, I have lived through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I have experienced what I never thought I would have experienced, which is a pretty workable peace in Northern Ireland, and I experienced a unified Europe - until the Conservative government got its hands on the idea that in order to appease a few back-benchers they would hold a referendum, what a disastrous idea.

As the captain, I was going to be having the dominant role in most of the episodes, and that was appealing. I wasn't interested in coming to Hollywood to sit around.