Michael Piller (May 30, 1948 – November 1, 2005) was an American TV Screenwriter and Producer.
He was best known for his contributions to the Star Trek franchise during the 1990s. His appointment to the Next Generation's showrunner role in Season Three was crucial to injecting new life and energy into the show and helping it to become the TNG that people remember.
Piller is credited with shifting the show's focus away from aliens/planets of the week into character-driven stories, producing some of TNG's finest hours. Another cornerstone of this success was his then-unorthodox open script submission policy. Through this initiative, Piller almost single-handedly helped discover a roster of then-future prominent Genre TV creators: Ronald D. Moore, René Echevarria, a pre-Buffy Jane Espenson, and Bryan Fuller among others.
Following his success on TNG, Piller went on to co-create Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (with Rick Berman) and Star Trek: Voyager (with Berman and Jeri Taylor).
Piller ultimately exited the franchise at the beginning of Voyager's third Season in late 1996. However, he remained a creative consultant on it and DS9 through the remainder of their respective runs. Piller would also return to Trek for a final swansong as the writer of the third TNG film Insurrection in 1998.
In 2005, Piller passed away from complications related to head and neck cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was 57 years old.
Shows and films written by Michael Piller
- Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989–1994) – 14 episodes
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) – 15 episodes
- Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001) – 9 episodes
- Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Tropes in Michael Piller's work:
- Author Appeal: Piller was an avowed baseball fanatic, hence it being Captain Sisko's favorite sport.
