Reeves-Stevenses On Shatner, Vulcans and Hard Work

Describing Star Trek as an "amazing franchise", new Enterprise writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens discussed the differences between writing books and television episodes and talked about working on Kirk novels with William Shatner.

In the second half of an interview with StarTrek.com (see previous story), the writers explained that the only limitations they perceive writing for Enterprise are the limited number of episodes per season. "It's really only trying to decide which stories...it's a really interesting period. What we have is this undeveloped country," said Judith Reeves-Stevens. "Star Trek has the hundreds of scripts that have gone before, plus the books, the movies and the television series that inform your characters. Everything they do has much greater resonance, every word you put down can have ripples for everyone."

The pair has written science books, most recently Going to Mars with the chief engineer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brian Muirhead, which led them to "trying to figure out what was it that brought [people] in to space exploration," in the words of Gar Reeves-Stevens, who noted that nearly all of them were inspired by science fiction. "Because we've had three seasons of Enterprise, we know how the Star Trek story began," he added. "There are still mysteries to be solved and [executive producer] Manny [Coto]'s got us hard at work thinking of ways to solve them."

The Reeves-Stevenses explained that a phone call from Pocket Books editor Kevin Ryan put them in touch with Shatner, with whom they "hit it right off", leading to nine books thus far, plus a series about Kirk's Starfleet Academy days in the works for the future. The pair explained that during a year in Australia working on The Lost World, they visited the Great Barrier Reef, which figured in one of the Kirk novels, Captain's Peril. "We always thought that this was one of the nicest parts of growing up to become writers, that the research would take you to places that you always wanted to see anyways," said Judith Reeves-Stevens.

The two explained that they rarely take a weekend or a holiday, but they enjoy being part of "a big, major piece of Enterprise, and of Star Trek", in writing for the current Vulcan arc. "The excitement that's in the room, the enthusiasm in the room when Manny leads us through these story breaking sessions is really wonderful," concluded Gar Reeves-Stevens.

For more, including some background on the Reeves-Stevenses' other projects, see the article at StarTrek.com.

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