First Contact

What a delight.

I'm your host, Lynelle Narduzzi, and we're looking at season four, episode 15, First Contact.

First, can I say what-

Got a great panel.

Uh, welcome back-

Yeah

... to First Contact.

So this, their sick bay looks so much like the Enterprise, I j- I'm just kind of realizing.

I bought that book in the 80s.

I let Mark know I beat the hell out of it because it was such a great reference to of all the episodes and fantastic interviews and photographs he actually he's updated the book and he mentions that in this conversation but he's here because he's also a great writer who contributed to star trek over the years he wrote the next generation episode first contact and the deep space nine episode far beyond the store stars These were story submissions by Mark.

He talks about the process, which back in the day when Star Trek was the only TV show out there that would give open submissions.

But that's just the start of his amazing television career.

I don't blame the actors at all.

I think my problems with it are up top.

But that said, during the glory days of the Berman era, two great episodes that you wrote the stories for, Next Generation, First Contact, not to be confused with the movie...

Right.

Uh, so, you know, I don't wanna step on their toes, mess up SEO and whatnot.

So it's Ask a Trek Expert, but this week it's just me for the interview because we are interviewing Mark Scott Zicree, who is the story writer for TNG episode First Contact, as well as DS9 episode Far Beyond the Stars, as you probably have already realized because we haven't gone anywhere close to Far Beyond the Stars yet in our DS9 watch.

Uh, it would be massive spoilers if we talked about that far before that.

But you know, Mark Zicree has worked on many other things as well.

He ends up covering a lot of the questions our Discord had anyway, but also I get the sense that he very much is a strong pitch guy.

I think that is how he, he has gone so far in his career.

There is a story he talks about in the interview, which I had read about earlier, which was the way he pitched First Contact to the TNG writers' room with Michael Piller and everyone else in the room, and he had to pitch to them for over an hour, uh, probably close to a dozen different story concepts for an hour, standing up, until they finally decided to give First Contact a try.

And I get the feeling that the way he talks a mile a minute in this interview is very much the way he talks in his pitches.