J.D. Payne

John D. Payne is a screenwriter. He co-wrote the first draft of with his writing partner Patrick McKay and co-producer Roberto Orci. However, their work was scrapped by the studio, and a completely new story, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung was chosen to be developed instead. At one point, Payne was also considered to return to co-write the proposed  film project.

Payne named the first episode of Star Trek he watched as. After becoming hooked on the series via reruns on UPN, he recorded episodes and edited out commercial breaks to create his own archive. He bought Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion to list the episodes he had not seen yet.

Payne also watched and, but only a few episodes of  because he was at college while it was airing.

Before being assigned to Star Trek XIII, Payne and McKay scripted an adaptation of the graphic novel Boilerplate for Bad Robot. They also scripted the Biblical epic Goliath and a film adaptation of the Spike TV series Deadliest Warrior. All three of these films are still in the development stages.