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For Star Trek<\/em> writer\/producers Ronald D. Moore <\/strong>and Ira Steven Behr<\/strong>, there was no honeymoon period when it came to writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>.<\/p>\n Both joined the show during its third season and had to hit the ground running.<\/p>\n Moore came on board after his story was found in the slush pile by Michael Piller<\/strong>. “Piller came aboard in the beginning of the third season, and started going through the slush pile, and found my script and bought it,” said Moore. “I got a really lucky break and I had the right script at the right time; he was looking for something like that… that started my whole career, basically.”<\/p>\n Being on staff for Moore meant working hard and working quickly. “Once I was on the staff, here’s the work, and you either did it or you didn’t,” he said. “There was a certain pace that the show went at. I remember very clearly, my first full day on the show. Michael gave me a memo, or a story outline that they couldn’t make work, and he said, ‘Here, go try to make this work.’<\/p>\n I sat down and just wrote up a new version and sent it downstairs; an hour or so later he sent it back up with a bunch of notes on it. Then I wrote up another version and sent it downstairs; the same then happened like twice more. I started putting the time up in the corner; I was literally putting the time of this draft… Michael, at some point, just laughed. ‘You don’t have to do it this fast!’<\/p>\n “I didn’t know what the pace was! I just assumed that when it was given to me, I had to write it as quickly as possible, and fortunately, that was a really important strength to have on a television series, to be able to do it quickly and get it out.”<\/p>\n Behr was hesitant to join The Next Generation<\/em> because “they were cutting off writers’ heads left and right and it was a bloodbath every week,” he said.<\/p>\n “…it sounded like a complete and utter horror show. They were firing writers left and right; the one that killed me was you’re not allowed to go down to the set as a writer\/producer, because it’s not allowed. I said that I’d never heard that anywhere before! And there’s a lawyer who goes around looking through desks at night to find things that they wrote about Gene Roddenberry<\/strong>, because he was Gene’s lawyer, and it was like, “Is this serious?!”<\/p>\n Behr had said “no” to Maurice Hurley<\/strong>, but a year later, Piller convinced him to come on board. He was handed a script for The Hunted<\/em> and told to “rewrite act 3.”<\/p>\n Behr was on his own and he had to quickly brush up on Trek technology. Richard Danus<\/strong>, who was on his way out, “explained what a Jefferies Tube was, and I went back and literally banged out by hand on a yellow pad, Act 3, scared out of my mind,” said Behr. “There was some dialogue obviously in there, but I was just like throwing it up in the air and hoping there was a parachute attached.”<\/p>\n But both men managed to survive their initial experiences and both went on to Deep Space Nine<\/em>.<\/p>\n