Michael Piller
American television scriptwriterWikipedia
39
MENTIONS
24
EPISODES
19
PODCASTS
Search complete. 39 mentions across 24 episodes found for "Michael Piller".
Sep 26, 2026
Ben VerthHOST
I mean, Leonard Nimoy was approached to be the director for Star Trek Generations, but didn't want to do it because he would essentially just be a hired director rather than have any input into script or the casting process, which is what he was used to with the other films.
Ben VerthHOST
But after that, Star Trek becomes very much a Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jerry Taylor production across anything that you would watch it on the big screen or the little screen.
Ben VerthHOST
Yeah.
Richie MorganGUEST
Also, Leonard Nimoy approached to do Doctor Who, wasn't he? Yes, he was, yeah.
MarvinHOST
I think that is how he, he has gone so far in his career.
MarvinHOST
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.
MarvinHOST
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.
MarvinHOST
I can see the energy of him trying to convince people that his vision is the right thing to do.
21 MINS LATER
Marc Scott ZicreeGUEST
... opportunity to tell a story that no one had ever seen, that was from your heart, that was meaningful, and you, you wasted it." And that story had enormous profound meaning for me.
Marc Scott ZicreeGUEST
And so every time I would pitch to, to Star Trek, to any of the iterations of Star Trek, I would always say, "Okay." What haven't I seen? I'd spend two full weeks just generating ideas, and then boiling them down and combining them and seeing what had juice, you know?
MarvinHOST
I remember there's a quote from Ira Steven Behr when you were pitching for Michael Piller at, on TNG.
MarvinHOST
He's like, it said, "This guy's an idea machine.
Hoai-Tran BuiHOST
Yeah, let's do it.
Jacob HallHOST
All right, this is Forsaken from Star Trek Deep Space Nine Season 1, originally aired May 24th, 1993, teleplay by Don Carlos Dunaway and Michael Piller, directed by Les Landau.
Jacob HallHOST
In this episode, a group of Federation ambassadors visit Deep Space Nine, including Loksana Troi, who immediately makes her attraction to Odo known.
Jacob HallHOST
When Odo and Loksana are trapped in an elevator together after an alien computer program wreaks havoc with the station's computer systems, the security chief must face his greatest fears.
Jacob HallHOST
He must reveal his inner feelings to another person.
Jacob HallHOST
So this episode had some growing pains.
Jacob HallHOST
Michael Piller, head writer of the show, had to eventually take over and rewrite large chunks of it.
Jacob HallHOST
And we have a quote from here about how he developed it.
Chris LockhartHOST
I really think that is bottom line, you know, the things we do for love, you know, like I think he had, had he had a Maquis girlfriend, maybe it would have been a little bit different, but I don't, I honestly don't think so.
Chris LockhartHOST
Um, I just think this, this film was just poorly written and it's a shame because it was written by one of the writers was Michael Piller, um, who wrote one of the best, the best of both worlds.
Chris LockhartHOST
You know, the one where Picard, Picard gets turned into a Borg, the season three finale, arguably one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever written was written by that man.
Chris LockhartHOST
And then they, they got him to write this movie and it just, yeah, just sucked.
Mark O'NeillHOST
It was then supposed to be done in the third season, and that didn't happen.
Mark O'NeillHOST
And eventually, Michael Piller, I believe, was just like, fuck it, we need to make this, it sounds fun.
Mark O'NeillHOST
So they just gave it to Melinda Snodgrass to just pop off and write it in between the third and fourth seasons.
Eddie EdwardsHOST
Yeah, it's great.
Mark O'NeillHOST
So according to Memory Alpha, quote, While the Borg had proven popular after their introduction in QHU, the writers had struggled to bring them back, noting the problem of writing for a race with no personality.
Mark O'NeillHOST
Michael Piller who's one of the head guys at the moment he said to me there was something special and frightening about the Borg that the lack of character brought for a show that dwells and specialises in character to be challenged and possibly destroyed by a characterless villain seemed to me to be a special kind of threat But when we started talking about the cliffhanger and the Borg, we really did talk about who was going to be the quote-unquote Queen Bee.
Eddie EdwardsHOST
Right, yes.
Eddie EdwardsHOST
And that's when they decided it was going to
Jacob HallHOST
Yes, please hit that sound effect button.
Jacob HallHOST
All right, the Star Trek Deep Space Nine season one, If Wishes Were Horses, originally aired May 17th, 1993, telephoned by Neil McCrew Crawford, William L. Crawford, and Michael Piller, and directed by Robert Legato.
Jacob HallHOST
In this episode, DSpace9 crew finds figments of the literal imagination coming to life, including an ancient baseball player, a horny version of Jadzia, and the storybook character Rebel Stiltskin.
Jacob HallHOST
As they work to find the causes of these strange characters, the station is faced with a much larger threat to destroy everyone and everything on board.
Jacob HallHOST
And...
Jacob HallHOST
This episode originally had to be modified a bit from its original submitted version.
Jacob HallHOST
I'm going to quote Michael Piller here.
Jacob HallHOST
It was very hard concept to make work.
Mark O'NeillHOST
That's a great one.
Mark O'NeillHOST
2D's trying to teach Michael about the trolley problem.
Mark O'NeillHOST
And Michael is kind of like, well, the thing about the trolley problem is that it's theoretical.
Mark O'NeillHOST
There's no stakes.
Mark O'NeillHOST
So we're going to just do it for real.
7 MINS LATER
Mark O'NeillHOST
it's
Eddie EdwardsHOST
fine
Mark O'NeillHOST
yeah exactly but this one in particular it seems like it had a really long history because it was it was submitted as a spec script it was then read by a few of the producers who were obviously like oh this is pretty good Michael Piller then requested a deal to purchase the story, which is why there's a story buy.
KayHOST
It's kind of interesting because it wasn't started off as a comedy when they started writing the script.
KayHOST
Michael Piller mentioned at some point, our first take was only that the Q lost his power, came on board and we developed a whole story about how we were about to come into a war with the Klingons.
KayHOST
It turns out that Q didn't really use his powers after all.
KayHOST
He was just playing with them and pulling our strings just so that he could make himself a hero, becoming an officer and prove his value.
Owen O'DonnellGUEST
Mm-hmm.
Owen O'DonnellGUEST
But I think like, would it be Michael Piller? Was he on? Anyway, I, I did read that, uh, that "Deep Space Nine" writers were like quite enjoyed that episode enough to think that they wanted to bring Terry O'Quinn's character over for a "DS9" episode.
Richie MorganHOST
Yeah.
Richie MorganHOST
Yeah, they did, yeah.
14 more episodes mention Michael Piller.
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