When he heard about The Animated Series, Gerrold wanted in on the action. “I’d heard about The Animated Series and I’d dropped notes to Gene [Roddenberry] and Dorothy [Fontana] that said, ‘I’m available if you need me. I’d love to do one.’ Dorothy called me and said, ‘Well, of course you’re going to do the Tribble episode that we didn’t get to do during Star Trek’s third season.’ So I went in and we blocked something out that we thought would work and we had a lot of fun with it.”

Both the Tribble sequel and BEM were intended for the third season of the original series but were never used because Freddy Freiberger didn’t like them. “Freddy’s first words to me were, ‘I screened the Tribbles episode this morning. I didn’t like it. Star Trek is not a comedy,’” said Gerrold. “I went, ‘Oh, all right. Well, then I’ll do something else.’ So he killed the second Tribble episode for the third season and I had the idea for BEM, but he said, ‘I don’t like that, either.’ So that’s when I came in with The Cloud Minders, which I called Castles in the Sky.”

In BEM, James Kirk became James Tiberius Kirk. “I’ll tell you how that happened,” said Gerrold. “I got the name from a book I’d read about the history of torture. So, Dorothy and I were at a Star Trek convention in 1973 and somebody asked ‘What does the T in James T. Kirk stand for?’ And without really thinking, I said ‘Tiberius.’ It got a big laugh and it became a running gag. Then, when I was writing that episode I decided to put it in. Dorothy ran it by Gene Roddenberry, and he said, ‘Sure, let’s go ahead.’ Then I recapped it in a Star Trek novel I wrote a year or so later, and I showed where the name Tiberius came from.”

In addition to writing two episodes, Gerrold also voiced a character for an episode of The Animated Series. “I did Em/3/Green for an episode called The Jihad,” said Gerrold. “I know a lot of people think I did Korax for More Tribbles, but I didn’t. Jimmy Doohan did that. But it was my idea to do a voice. I asked Hal Sutherland. I said, ‘You know, I need my SAG card. Please let me do a voice.’ He said, ‘We don’t really have it in the budget to do guest stars, but come on, you brought in Stanley Adams for Tribbles and Roger Carmel for Mudd. We’ve got enough in the budget for one little voiceover.’ It was like $75, but it was enough to get me my SAG card. And Em/3/Green was the only one I ever did.”

Duane mentioned wanting to be a writer to Gerrold when she was working with him as an assistant and his response made her see red. “He rolled his eyes and said, ‘Oy, another one,” said Duane. “I got absolutely furious and went off thinking, ‘You just wait, you SOB: I’m going to show you I’m not just some wannabe.’”

The “inspiration” from Gerrold worked. “…after he read my first novel he sent it off to his publisher, and they bought it about two weeks later,” said Duane. “That was the book that got me nominated two years running for the Campbell Award. And about two months later an agent came looking for me – Donald Maass, still my agent after thirty years: both a very gifted writer and a great powerhouse on the agenting and teaching side of our field.”

Gerrold taught Duane other things about the craft of writing. “[I learned] mostly not to be scared of writing as a business and a daily avocation,” said Duane. “If I had any illusions about airy-fairy notions like ‘wooing the muse’ and moping around waiting for creativity to strike, having a chance to watch David work dispensed with those in short order. He just made coffee or got himself a Coke, and then sat down and wrote, and that was the size of it. His straightforward professionalism and no-nonsense attitude were, as we’d say now, very grounding. I watched him and thought, ‘I can do that. I will do that.’”

She has written quite a few Trek books, but one stands out as Duane’s favorite. “Spock’s World is probably my favorite, for all kinds of reasons,” she said. “Yes, it spent eight weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, which admittedly was a trip. But there are other reasons more private. That book scratched a creative itch I’d wanted to deal with for a long time, for I was always a big Spock fan. But also, sometimes it’s the work that gives you the most trouble that you love the best. I lost what should have been the final draft of that book to a disk crash, my backups turned out to be corrupt, and I had to reconstruct the entire book in about two weeks to hit my deadline. This may have been one of those blessing-in-disguise things, in that I think the rewrite/reconstruction was better than the original.”

Duane is currently working on several book projects, including Omnitopia: East Wind and along with husband Peter has a pitch out for a historical drama series.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation began filming, Gerrold was on board, staying through the first season. He shared some of his contributions to the show. “I think one thing was the idea of creating a bigger ensemble and splitting the hero-ing between a captain who is older and more thoughtful and experienced and also a first officer who actually leads the mission teams,” he said. “I felt that was the most sensible way to set up a Star Trek show. It was a suggestion I made way back when I wrote those books. I think that was probably one of the best things I added to TNG. Gene liked that idea a lot.”

But Gene Roddenberry‘s lawyer made it impossible for Gerrold to continue working on the show. “Part of the problem on TNG was Gene’s lawyer (Leonard Maizlish) was making it impossible for anybody to do any real work,” said Gerrold. “He was rewriting scripts. He was committing Guild violations. People were very unhappy. It was one of the worst working environments I’d ever been in. So when my contract came up for renewal, I asked Gene not to (renew it).”

Maizlish’s antics included saying nasty things about Gerrold to others. “Later, I found out that Maizlish was telling people what a troublemaker I was, that I’d been fired because I was mentally ill, that I never did anything useful for the show, real character assassination of the worst sort,” said Gerrold. “So my lawyer called him up and said, ‘You keep talking and we’re going to own your car, your house, your dog, etc.,’ and that shut him up real fast. Maizlish was a disgraceful man. Fortunately, my lawyer was a Hollywood heavyweight, and when he said, ‘Hmmm,’ that was a very expensive ‘Hmmm,’ especially to the target.”

Gerrold also had an issue with Rick Berman when it came to the Trials and Tribble-ations episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. “I kept calling them and saying, ‘Hey, I hear you’re doing a Tribble thing.’ Rick Berman kept saying, ‘No. No, we’re not. If we do, we’ll call you.’ All right. No big deal. One day I called again and he said, ‘No, David, if we do something, we’ll let you know.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay.  What should I say to the New York Times reporter who’s going to call me back in a half hour? He’s preparing a big story about the thirtieth anniversary of Trek and the DS9 Tribble episode.’ There’s this long, uncomfortable pause and finally he says, ‘OK, what do you want?’”

Gerrold wanted to be in the episode. “I said, ‘Well, it might be very good press to acknowledge the guy who actually created the Tribbles,’” said Gerrold. “‘I think it’d be fun to be an extra.’ So I came in and I was an extra for a day or so, and it was great fun. The episode was brilliantly written and even more brilliantly produced. The production values were stunning. And the director, Jonathan West, was just a remarkably friendly guy.”

Although he wasn’t involved in Star Trek XI, Gerrold’s creation made a cameo appearance in the movie. “I actually didn’t see it the first time through,” said Gerrold. “Somebody had to point it out, where it was. But I knew it was there, because J.J. (Abrams) told me when I visited the set, ‘We snuck a Tribble in.’ And I was delighted. Harve Bennett did the same thing with one of the TOS movies. I think it’s always fun when one of the shows or movies sneaks a Tribble in. It’s a shout-out, a friendly acknowledgement that Tribbles are a permanent part of the Trek universe.”

At first, Gerrold called the fertile Klingon-hating furballs “Fuzzies” before changing the name to “Tribbles.” “I made the name change, and in retrospect Tribbles is a much better name because Fuzzies is too cute,” he explained. “I don’t think Fuzzies would have developed the same kind of cultural recognition. You wouldn’t have had people referring to Fuzzies the same way they refer to Tribbles. And I think because Tribbles was a neutral word – ‘Here’s this nice little creature and it’s called a ‘Tribble’ – we added a word to the English language. I made a list of silly-sounding words you could call such a creature and cross off all the ones that were too silly. I wanted people to take them seriously.”

Had Gerrold had his way, he would have penned a sequel to the popular episode. “I wanted to do a sequel where, in order to control the Tribbles we bring in a predator from their homeworld,” he said. “And the next thing that happens is that crewmen start disappearing because we have swarms of predators on the ship. But we never got around to doing that.”

Gerrold wrote The Cloud Minders, but was not happy with how the story ended, preferring a more realistic ending. “I came in with what I thought was a near-perfect Star Trek story, which is we find a culture that isn’t working for everybody and fix it,” he said. “But my original ending was that, as they’re flying off, Kirk says, ‘Well, we solved another one.’ Spock says, ‘Well, actually, it’ll take years and years and years for all of these changes to be put in place.’ And McCoy says, ‘I wonder how many children are going to die in the meantime.’ So the idea was, ‘Let’s get gritty. We’re not going to change things overnight, but we can put changes in place that will have long-term effects.’ There was also more to the story that was about the social issue, and there was no magical zenite gas that was causing the problem.”

But Gerrold had resistance from above when it came to the ending. “Freddy Freiberger and Margaret Armen came in and changed it to a ‘Let’s solve it all in the last five minutes with gas masks’ (ending). And I thought, ‘That’s really not a very good story. It doesn’t do what Gene Roddenberry or Gene L. Coon would have been willing to do.’ So I was disappointed.”

Gerrold also contributed to I, Mudd, but didn’t take a screen credit for it. “Gene L. Coon said to me, ‘Would you like us to put this in for a script arbitration, so you can get credit and get residuals?” I said, ‘No. Stephen Kandel created Harry Mudd. He wrote both of these episodes and I don’t want to steal from another member of the Writers Guild. I don’t want to jump his credit. I’m a beginner. I’m learning a lot, but I’m not so greedy as to steal another writer’s residual.’ Gene L. Coon again looked at me surprised. I wish more writers thought like that. In recent decades there’s been a lot less honor among writers, but that’s a whole other conversation. But I refused to take away screen credit from Stephen Kandel, whom I’ve never met. All these great writers were working for Star Trek and it was just a great honor for me to be included among that fraternity.”

Star Trek XI told the origins story of the Enterprise crew, now Phase II will take a turn at exploring the early career of James T. Kirk, including the first meeting of Kirk and his logical future First Officer Mr. Spock.

Star Trek: Phase II‘s Executive Producer James Cawley explained that there is a reason that this story seems similar to Star Trek XI. Cawley, who had a bit role in the Abrams prequel, wants to tell the story of how Kirk met Spock from the Phase II perspective. “We are honoring the J.J. Abrams movie,” said Cawley, “but this is a different look at what could have been. This is the prime timeline.” Star Trek XI was set in an alternate timeline, courtesy of Nero’s actions.

Origins, written by David Gerrold (The Trouble With Tribbles) will feature elements that fans of the original series will recognize: Kirk’s Starfleet Academy classmate Finnegan (Shore Leave), as well as his friendship with Gary Mitchell (Where No Man Has Gone Before). But Cawley cautions fans that the story is “not just what people expect” and will not include time-travel. Elements from Star Trek XI will also be referenced in Origins.

Origins begins shooting this summer, with an expected 2011 release.

The second part of Blood and Fire was released, as promised, yesterday, and can be found here, where fans can download all six parts (teaser, four acts and epilogue.)

According to the official website, Blood and Fire Part Two is “the stunning conclusion to Blood and Fire. Pursued and damaged by repeated Klingon attacks, the Enterprise crew must respond to a distress call from a Federation research ship. In a matter of hours the ship and crew will be consumed by a nearby star and the crew of the Enterprise will be consumed by an mysterious horror that threatens both ships as the Klingons watch and wait. Guest starring Evan Fowler and introducing Bobby Rice as Ensign Peter Kirk, nephew of the Captain. Written and directed by David Gerrold. Teleplay by Carlos Pedraza.”

It should be noted that Acts Three, Four and the Epilogue have temporary soundtracks as they were not ready in time for the promised release date. The updated versions will be released in a few days.

A review of Part Two can be seen over at TrekMovie.

The Trouble With Tribbles was meant as a way to show that a starship captain might have to deal with petty annoyances as well as things that might threaten a whole planet, system or galaxy. “My original intention for The Trouble With Tribbles was to demonstrate that not every problem a starship captain might have to deal with would be a big problem, threatening the safety of the galaxy,” said Gerrold. “Once in a while, the little problems could be just as annoying.”

Gerrold didn’t initially envision the episode as a broad comedy. “At the beginning, I had no idea that The Trouble With Tribbles was a laugh-out-loud comedy,” he said. “I thought we were doing quiet whimsy, but moment by moment the comedic opportunities started piling up.”

William Shatner proved to be a pleasant surprise when it came a certain well-known scene from The Trouble With Tribbles. “Prior to this episode, we’d seen only hints that William Shatner could be a great comic actor,” said Gerrold. “The giveaway moment was the storage compartment scene. I had written in the outline and the script that the tribbles fall on Kirk’s head. I had always assumed that at some point, Shatner would say, ‘This makes my character look too silly,’ and I was prepared to have him step aside just before the tribbles fell. But William Shatner has always been the consummate professional and I believe he was eager to show off his comic abilities as well. The moment when he is up to his neck in tribbles, when he gives Dr. McCoy a very annoyed look, that’s equal to any expression that Oliver Hardy ever gave to Stan Laurel at his most exasperated.”

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As reported by CBS and Paramount Home Entertainment, the seven-disc set features all twenty-six episodes of the second season of the original series as well as one disc devoted to The Trouble With Tribbles.