Mike Sussman (TV series writer/producer)

Mike Sussman (born June 22, 1967) is an American television writer and producer best known for his work on the Star Trek franchise, having written more than thirty episodes. He was also a writer and an executive producer on Sam Raimi's syndicated adventure series, Legend of the Seeker. He is currently a writer and executive producer of the TNT series Perception, which he co-created with Kenneth Biller.

Early life

Sussman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but as a child he moved with his family first to New Jersey and finally to Sarasota, Florida.^[1] He was a fan of Star Trek from an early age, and was involved in letter writing campaigns to local television stations when they dropped Star Trek: The Original Series from broadcast syndication. He credits David Gerrold's book about the making of the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" as being an influence on his future career.^[2] He wrote his first Star Trek story at the age of eight. Whilst attending Florida State University he took a class in script writing, for which he wrote a script for Star Trek: The Next Generation.^[1][2]

Career

In September 1993, Sussman interviewed for an intern position with the producers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He later said that he "blew it" and was completely unprepared for his meeting with producer Ira Steven Behr.^[2] He went on to become a writer and producer at WWSB-TV. He was also a free-lance writer and wrote spec scripts for television series such as The X-Files, but had a sale to Star Trek: Voyager for the episode "Meld".^[1] Sussman had been asked in by producer Kenneth Biller after he found a The Next Generation script Sussman had previously submitted.^[3] He was partnered with Phyllis Strong after being co-located due to a lack of office room on a low-budget foreign television pilot. The two remained partners and together they were hired as staff writers by Kenneth Biller for the seventh season of Voyager.^[2]

When Voyager ended, the two were asked to be writers on Star Trek: Enterprise. For the majority of the first year this involved re-writes on episodes originally plotted by executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. During the second season, Strong and Sussman were allowed to create episodes from scratch and in the third season, Sussman continued to work with Strong but wrote some episodes on his own.^[2] He later said in an interview that the writers on the series had a competition amongst them to insert references to The Original Series. Amongst Sussman's references were including the Malurians in the Enterprise episode "Civilization" after they were wiped out during the events of The Original Series episode "The Changeling". During season three his "pet project" was the episode "Twilight", an alternative future episode which featured a romance between characters Jonathan Archer and T'Pol.^[2]

He was pleased with the direction that show runner Manny Coto took Enterprise in during its fourth season. Sussman and Coto would bounce ideas off each other with the intention of taking the show more in the direction of The Original Series. He also pressed for Star Trek novelists Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens to be added to the writing team. He was also responsible for suggesting the montage scene at the end of the Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..." which showed all the main ships from the various Star Trek series.^[4] Sussman has been credited with writing over 30 different episodes.^[1] Post-Star Trek, he has worked on television series Threshold and Sam Raimi's Legend of the Seeker. He since produced Perception for TNT alongside Biller.^[3]

References

External links

• Mike Sussman at the Internet Movie Database
• Mike Sussman on Twitter