"I told him I’d seen a couple of episodes of Star Trek, the original series," Berman recalls of a first lunch with Roddenberry in excerpts available at Sci-Fi Pulse. "He was fascinated by that. He has hired a few people - Eddie Milkis, Bon Justman and Dorothy Fontana - for this new series, which he hadn't written yet. They were all from back in the 1960s and he'd worked with them before. I was in my 30s and I was somebody who knew nothing about Trek and he liked that. I traveled a great deal, and he had too, and that's what we talked about."

The exec says ST:TNG was a risky project he couldn't turn down.

"It was a very interesting thing because there were three strikes against this project already," he says. "It was a sequel and there was no such thing as a successful syndicated drama in the history of TV... Thirdly, it was Sci-Fi. If you take a look at 1986-87, Sci-Fi didn't exist on TV. So here was a Sci-Fi syndicated sequel, but it was a chance to get out of being an executive. I jumped at it. I said yes and they went to the people at the studio and they let me out of my contract."

Many fans name TNG's third season as when the show really came into its own; that was also about the time that Roddenberry took less of a creative role in the series.

"Gene stepped way more out of his illness than anything else. People love to say the show hit its stride when Michael Piller arrived," Berman says. "He arrived in season three, but he also arrived because he loved the show. If he loves the show, what does he love? He loved it because he saw seasons one and two. Some of the episodes that season were written or overseen by Maurice Hurley, and they were classic episodes, wonderful episodes. Hurley created the Borg. He ended up leaving for a whole series of reasons - we remain good friends. Michael brought a certain degree of calmness to the writing staff, but I also think the show leveled off in season three. I think there was great stuff in seasons one, two and three."

For more from Rick Berman, including discussion of the darkness of DEEP SPACE NINE, his surprise at VOYAGER's reputation among fans, and his elation surrounding the current series, ENTERPRISE, visit this page.