Michael Piller, best known to television viewers around the world as the executive producer/co-creator of more than 500 hours of Star Trek, lost his long battle with an aggressive form of head & neck cancer on Tuesday, November 1, 2005 at 4:51 a.m. at his home in Los Angeles. He was 57. He is survived by his wife Sandra, daughter Brent and son Shawn.
Michael Piller is the man who truly created modern Star Trek.
Not Gene Rodenberry…who, for all his brilliance at creating Star Trek-The Next Generation, wasn’t exactly its best writer or showrunner.
Certainly not Rick Berman, who’s management skills might have been first rate, but his creative decisions led to Star Trek’s latest hibernation.
It was Michael Piller who arrived with the 3rd season of TNG, and turned it into a show about the human condition, writing and supervising hundreds of hours of some of Star Trek’s most successful episodes.
It was Michael Piller who gave us The Best of Both Worlds.
It was Michael Piller who was the co-creator and driving force behind Deep Space Nine, especially during its first two seasons. There he made decisions that would let DS9 become the most outstanding, most challenging of all the modern Star Trek series.
It was Michael Piller, as TNG showrunner, who greenlighted such groundbreaking stories as Sins of the Father, The Offspring, and Yesterday’s Enterprise. It was Michael Piller who made the decision to go ahead with DS9’s The Die is Cast…his last decision as an Executive Producer on that show, and one which took DS9 down the most remarkable road.
It was Michael Piller who discovered and mentored Ronald D. Moore (Exec Producer and co-creator of the new Battlestar Galactica), and Rene Echevarria (creator of The 4400, and Exec Producer on shows such as Dark Angel and Medium).
It was Michael Piller that provided me, from the ages of 15 to 25, with the most remarkable and worthwhile television I have ever watched. Michael Piller’s influence cemented my belief in the quality of Star Trek…and for that, he deserves all the praise we can give him.
