I ended up working on "Chicago Hope" and other things, but always with the idea that, eventually, I would want to take what I'd learned in character drama and try to apply that to the genre that I love, which is science fiction and "The Twilight Zone" type mysteries.

Suddenly, I realized how tough trying to structure a story like this is. It was a lot of work. The one big advantage that we had was that we had eight scripts written before we started shooting, or even started casting. We had a really good opportunity to look at it and figure out where we were going to go and how to do it. Once we got a cast, which I love, then we started doing some revisions to make sure that they fit into it.

I feel confident that it will always keep everybody guessing, and yet not in that weird, maddening way where it's like, "Oh, come on, guys!" I think you will be freaked out by the end. I really do. I don't think you'll see it coming at all.

I feel confident that we will have a beginning, middle and end, in this season, and it was wise of NBC to then call it what it really is, which is a mini-series. "24" is a really good example, in that there was a definitive beginning, middle and end for the first season. They had a slightly different format than we have, but the second season just retained Jack Bauer and a few other players, with the same basic format and idea, but it was a completely different show.

I've always been a sci-fi geek, and I've always loved it. It's my favorite genre of all. The irony of ironies is that, in my early career, I just really never worked in it. "Star Trek" was very interested in me, partially because I did "From the Earth to the Moon," and I was really interested in them, but the timing just never worked out.

Casting is really weird. Honestly, when Alan Ruck's name came up - and I've worked with Alan before - I went, "Yes, he's perfect." He came in and read for us, which was really sweet of him because he didn't have to, and he nailed it in seconds. We knew exactly who we had. That stuff is really good and fun.

When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work.