Mike Sussman

Michael David "Mike" Sussman, often credited as "Mike Sussman", was a writer and producer of many and  episodes.

By 1975, at the age of eight, Sussman was already a huge Trekkie and had begun writing fan fiction stories set within the Star Trek universe. As a teenager in the early 1980s, he petitioned his local UHF station to resume airing syndicated episodes of the original Star Trek series.

Sussman made his first professional sale to the Star Trek franchise in 1995, when he wrote the story for the acclaimed Star Trek: Voyager episode. He contributed three more episodes as a freelance writer before joining the writing staff as a story editor for Voyager's seventh and final season in. 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. All told, Sussman is credited with writing or co-writing more than thirty episodes of Star Trek.

Sussman showed his affection and knowledge of the original Star Trek series with arguably his most popular episodes, and, canonically tying these episodes in with the Original Series episodes  and. Sussman even made a cameo appearance in Part II, as a dead crewman aboard the USS Defiant (NCC-1764). He followed up his Mirror Universe prequel in printed form in 2015, writing the story for the novella "Age of the Empress".

, written by Sussman, was broadcast on as the "#1 Fan Favorite Episode" of the series, chosen in a Viewer's Choice poll at UPN.com. The readers of chose Sussman's "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. Sussman was credited as a writer on both the 600th live action episode of Star Trek,, as well as the 700th episode of the franchise,.

M. Sussman, a name on the dedication plaque of, was named after him as well as the Vulcan fight technique Suus Mahna in the episode. Together with Phyllis Strong, he recorded audio commentaries for the episodes and  on the ENT Season 2 DVD and, with Tim Gaskill, commentaries for the episodes  and  on the ENT Season 4 DVD. Sussman revisited his Enterprise contributions, speaking at length in an indepth interview, spread over several special features, especially produced by Roger Lay, Jr. for the 2014 Season 3 and Season 4 Blu Ray set releases.

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, Sussman began his television career as a newscast producer for Sarasota's ABC affiliate, WWSB-TV. While there, he produced the station's eleven o'clock news, as well as their 1992 Presidential Election coverage. Soon after relocating to Los Angeles, he began writing 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 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 starting in 2012. The series starred Emmy Award-winner Eric McCormack as a crime-solving neurology professor; it also featured LeVar Burton in a recurring role as 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

 * As Writer
 * (story)
 * (story, teleplay with Kenneth Biller and Bryan Fuller)
 * (story)
 * (story with Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong and Eric Morris)
 * (story with Michael Taylor)
 * (story with Robert Doherty)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong)
 * (with Phyllis Strong)
 * (with Phyllis Strong)
 * (with Phyllis Strong)
 * (with Phyllis Strong)
 * (teleplay with Phyllis Strong and Hans Tobeason)
 * (teleplay)
 * (story with André Bormanis)
 * (with André Bormanis)
 * (teleplay)
 * (teleplay)
 * As Actor
 * as a dead Defiant crewman
 * As Producer
 * Co-producer (season 2 and episodes 3.1-3.10)
 * Producer (episodes 3.11-4.22)
 * As Story Editor/ Executive Story Editor
 * Story editor 2000-2001
 * - Executive Story Editor
 * (teleplay)
 * As Actor
 * as a dead Defiant crewman
 * As Producer
 * Co-producer (season 2 and episodes 3.1-3.10)
 * Producer (episodes 3.11-4.22)
 * As Story Editor/ Executive Story Editor
 * Story editor 2000-2001
 * - Executive Story Editor
 * Story editor 2000-2001
 * - Executive Story Editor
 * - Executive Story Editor

Star Trek interviews

 * Star Trek DVD and Blu-ray special features:
 * ENT Season 3 Blu-ray-special feature, "n a Time of War", 2014
 * ENT Season 4 Blu-ray-special features, "Before Her Time: Decommissioning Enterprise" and "In Conversation – Writing Star Trek: Enterprise", 2014
 * Print publications:
 * "Star Trek: Voyager: The Writers Look Back",, August 2001
 * "Writers for Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise",, March 2002
 * "The Write Stuff", James Swallow,, September 2003
 * "Renaissance Sussman", David Bassom,, November 2005