I like things that are funny - in everyday conversation, in incidents that you see, in watching TV or watching film. Comedy has always had an impact on my life.

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

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.

I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, 'She must have provoked him,' or, 'Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.' They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.

One day, out of irritation, I said, you know all of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all those years of playing kings and princes and speaking black verse, and bestriding the landscape of England was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise.

There's no such thing as "just a domestic".

So far as education is concerned, it has had a significant impact on a lot of young people who turn to science as a much more exciting and interesting study than they otherwise might have found, entirely as a result of becoming involved with Star Trek.