Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.

It still frightens me a little bit to think that so much of my life was totally devoted to Star Trek and almost nothing else.

I was just excited by the whole prospect of working in a television series in Hollywood. I had never anticipated that as an actor I would ever end up here. It may be some sort of fantasy I'd thought about from time to time, but it was completely unrealistic.

I've been a witness to unfairness in society all my life. To the conditions under which my mother worked all her life, working in an industrial weaving shed in the north of England. And it has been this feature of unfairness that has motivated me in all of my political thinking.

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 always have been optimistic about humanity's future. Always. Even at the most dismaying of times.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.