Michael Piller

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Michael Piller (born May 30, 1948 in New York, died November 1, 2005) was a television scriptwriter and producer who was most famous for his contributions to the Star Trek series.

With parents who were both involved in writing, his father as a Hollywood screenwriter and his mother as a songwriter, Michael planned to be a scriptwriter from an early age. However a college lecturer discouraged him and Michael started out in television working as an Emmy Award-winning journalist for CBS News in New York, WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina and WBBM-TV in Chicago, Illinois. However he then moved to Los Angeles, California and the entertainment side of television in the late 1970s, working as a censor and then a programming executive for CBS. He began writing scripts for television and after selling a script to Cagney & Lacey and another to Simon & Simon, he was offered a staff writing positon on Simon & Simon, where he stayed for three years becoming a producer.

In 1989 a call to Maurice Hurley, a friend who had lead the writing staff of Star Trek: The Next Generation through its second year, lead to Michael co-writing an episode with Michael Wagner called Evolution. After Wagner dropped out of leading the writing staff for the show's third year, Michael was invited to assume the lead position from the fifth episode of the third season, The Bonding. During the first two years of the series, the writing staff had been plagued with conflicts, with the staff continually changing as different writers came and went. Within a year, Michael had managed to form a strong writing team, something that had eluded previous executives. Michael also moved the direction of stories away from "alien of the week" or "situation of the week" to stories about the characters, which many point to as the turning point for the series. He also implemented an open door policy for scripts, that let anyone submit their story ideas and led to some of the most popular episodes including Yesterday's Enterprise. The Next Generation ran for seven years, receiving a number of awards including an Emmy Award nomination in its final year for Outstanding Drama Series. Michael received credit for a number of popular episodes including the The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 & 2 which are frequently identified as the best episodes of The Next Generation and the two-part fifth season Unification, which saw the appearance of Spock.

In late 1991 when The Next Generation executive producer Rick Berman was asked by Paramount Pictures to create a new Star Trek series, he turned to Michael to help him create the new show. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine debuted in January 1993 with a script written by Michael, Emissary, to the highest ever ratings for a syndicated series premiere and like The Next Generation ran for seven years. Again in 1994, Berman was asked to create another new Star Trek series for Paramount's new UPN television network and approached Michael to work with him in developing Star Trek: Voyager.

At the same time, Michael developed another series for UPN called Legend. However the series was cancelled after only 12 episodes. At the time though Michael continued as a creative consultant on Deep Space Nine and Voyager, sending in notes on scripts as they were being prepared for production.

In 1996, Piller sold his first feature film script called Oversight. The script set in a Congresional sub-comittee, is about "the passing of control … from one generation to the next set", inspired by Piller's relationship with his son Shawn who had contributed scripts to The Next Generation and Voyager. As of 2005 the script has yet to be produced.

In 1993, Piller had been approached to write one of two prospective scripts for the first Next Generation feature film, with the other written by The Next Generation staff writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga. He declined. In 1997 he was approached again to write a Next Generation feature film, collaborating with Rick Berman to write Star Trek: Insurrection.

Michael formed a production company with his son Shawn in 2000 called Piller2. Together they developed a pilot in 2000 for the WB Television Network called Day One. However the series was not picked up.

In 2001, Michael was approached by Paramount to develop a television series from Stephen King's novel The Dead Zone. The series The Dead Zone, co-developed with his son Shawn and starring Anthony Michael Hall, debuted June 16, 2002 on the USA Network. As of 2005 the fifth series of Dead Zone is currently in production.

In 2005 Wildfire debuted on the ABC Family channel, starring Deep Space Nine's Nana Visitor, another series that Michael developed with his son. As of 2005 the second series of Wildfire is currently in production.

On November 2, 2005, StarTrek.com announced that Michael had succumbed to head and neck cancer and passed away at his home. [1]

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References

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External links

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