Garoo

Ronald D. Moore interviewed in Salon [via]:

One of the central ideas of “Star Trek” is that the people on the Enterprise and in Star Fleet were the best of the best. They were better than you and I, a better breed of human beings who were not torn with petty differences, jealousies and all the things that make people human. That stuff was almost bred out of them at Star Fleet, and that made the drama hard to convey. […]

We have long conversations with the network about the extent of the serialized nature of the show. It’s certainly not something they’re in love with. We the writers are always pushing to make it more serialized because it makes for better storytelling. We’ve done a few stand-alone episodes here and there, and they’re almost never very successful for our particular series. They’re not what the audience tunes in for. But the network’s legitimate concern is just what you were saying: The audience tends to attenuate over time. It’s hard to bring new people on board. There’s the hurdle of them having to catch up on all the old episodes.