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Michael Sussman

Michael Sussman

Mike Sussman (born 22 June) is a writer, producer and creator who wrote many Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise episodes.

At the age of eight, Sussman was already a huge Trekkie and had begun writing fan fiction stories set within the Star Trek universe. He made his first professional sale to the Star Trek franchise in 1995, when he wrote the story for the acclaimed Star Trek: Voyager episode "Meld". He contributed three more episodes as a freelance writer before joining the writing staff as a story editor for Voyager's seventh season in 2000. When Voyager wrapped the following year, Sussman was hired as a writer and Executive Story Editor on Enterprise, and was eventually promoted to Co-Producer. During that show's third season, Sussman was promoted to Producer, a position he held until the series was canceled in 2005. All told, Sussman is credited with writing or co-writing more than thirty episodes of Star Trek.

Sussman showed his affection and knowledge of Star Trek: The Original Series with arguably his most popular episodes, "In a Mirror, Darkly" and "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II", which served both as a prequel to the Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror", and a sequel to "The Tholian Web". Sussman even made a cameo appearance in Part II, as a dead redshirt aboard the USS Defiant. He followed up his mirror universe installments in printed form in 2007, writing the story for the novella "Age of the Empress".

The readers of Star Trek Magazine chose "In a Mirror, Darkly" as the best episode of Enterprise in their 40th anniversary reader poll, published in January 2006. In 2016, Star Trek fans at the 50th anniversary convention in Las Vegas chose "In a Mirror, Darkly" as one of the "10 Best Star Trek episodes" of all time, out of more than 700 live-action episodes spanning five decades.[1]

Another popular installment written by Sussman was third season's "Twilight", which was rebroadcast on 8 April 2005 as the "#1 Fan Favorite Episode" of the series, chosen in a Viewer's Choice poll at UPN.com. Sussman was also credited as a writer on both the 600th live action episode of Star Trek, VOY: "Author, Author", as well as the 700th, ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly".

A Starfleet Command representative, M. Sussman, inscribed on the dedication plaque of the Enterprise NX-01, was named after him; as was the Vulcan fight technique Suus Mahna seen in the episode "Marauders".

Together with Phyllis Strong, he recorded audio commentaries for the episodes "Dead Stop" and "Regeneration" on the ENT Season 2 DVD and, with Tim Gaskill, commentaries for the episodes "In a Mirror, Darkly" and "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" on the ENT Season 4 DVD. Sussman revisited his Enterprise contributions, speaking at length in an in-depth interview, spread over several special features, produced by Roger Lay, Jr. for the 2014 Season 3 and Season 4 Blu Ray set releases. He's also revisited his many Enterprise and Voyager episodes in podcast form as a recurring guest on Inglorious Treksperts[2] and Treksperts Briefing Room. [3]

Memory Alpha's "Real World Article - Written from a Production Point of View" banner (seen at the top of this and many other pages) uses a photo of the recreated Original Series bridge taken by Sussman on Paramount's Stage 9 during the production of "In a Mirror, Darkly."

Career outside Star Trek

Mike Sussman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but spent most of his youth in the Gulf Coast resort town of Sarasota, Florida. After studying film and screenwriting at Florida State University, he relocated to Los Angeles and served as a writer and producer for KCAL-TV's Emmy Award-winning Prime 9 News.

After Enterprise, Sussman was hired as a writer and Supervising Producer on Brannon Braga's short-lived CBS alien-invasion drama series Threshold. Among the regular actors on this series was Star Trek: The Next Generation star Brent Spiner. Sussman wrote two of the episodes of this series, "Pulse" (episode six) and "Vigilante" (episode twelve, guest-starring Jacqueline Kim) before the series was pulled from the CBS schedule.

He was also a writer and Co-Executive Producer on Sam Raimi's Legend of the Seeker, a syndicated fantasy/adventure series from Disney-ABC Domestic Television and ABC Studios, based on Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth series of novels. This series was executive produced by Kenneth Biller.

Sussman was a Creator and Executive Producer of Perception, a one-hour drama from ABC Studios that aired on TNT for three seasons from 2012-2015. The series starred Emmy Award-winner Eric McCormack as a crime-solving neurology professor; it also featured LeVar Burton in a recurring role as Dean Paul Haley, McCormack's supervisor at the fictional Chicago-Lake Michigan University. After Perception went off the air, Sussman went on to write and produce the SyFy Channel series 12 Monkeys from Universal Cable Productions; and the TNT action-drama series The Last Ship from Executive Producer Michael Bay and TNT Originals.

Star Trek credits

Star Trek interviews

See also

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