Maurice Hurley

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference

Maurice Hurley was a producer and writer of many Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.

He became Co-Executive Producer of the series at the end of its first season but left at the end of the second season, apparently after difficulties with Gene Roddenberry. His position as head writer was eventually assumed by his friend, Michael Piller. Nonetheless, Hurley would return to the series to write two more episodes, "Galaxy's Child" for season four and "Power Play" for season five.

As the writer of the episode "Q Who", Hurley was the creator of the Borg. Alongside Rob Bowman and Bowman's assistant he also provided the Voice of the Borg for this episode. He was also partly responsible for the introduction of Lore (having co-written the story for "Datalore") and the introduction of the Romulans in the Next Generation era (he wrote the teleplay for "The Neutral Zone").

The late Herbert J. Wright cited Hurley as one of the reasons he left TNG. In Captain's Logs, he described Hurley as "basically playing drinking buddies with Gene."

According to Rick Berman, Hurley was the reason behind Gates McFadden's departure from The Next Generation in its second season, as he disliked her acting and "had a bone to pick with her." After he left the show in the third season, McFadden was invited back by Berman. [1] However, this account was later discounted by McFadden herself, as well as by Tracy Torme, who revealed that Hurley had been sexually harassing McFadden. With Paramount and the show's producers unwilling to help her, McFadden quit, returning only when Hurley was eventually fired for not getting along with the cast and crew.

Tracy Torme would later create a character in his series 'Sliders', 'Michael Hurley', who is characteristically a jerk and referred to by characters as 'a putz on every (parallel) world'. Torme has claimed the character is based on Maurice Hurley.

[edit] Other Works

Before his time on TNG, Hurley co-wrote a Canadian science fiction film called Firebird 2015 AD in 1981. He then became a co-producer on The Equalizer, a series which starred Robert Lansing and Keith Szarabajka. Hurley also wrote at least one episode of this series.

After leaving TNG, Hurley wrote a number of episodes for Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and became a writer and executive producer on the short-lived series Pointman. From 1996 through 1997, he served as executive producer for Baywatch Nights and wrote several episodes of that series, as well. He moved on to become a writer and co-executive producer on Baywatch from 1999 through 2000.

Hurley wrote the screenplay for the 2002 film Groom Lake from a story by William Shatner, who also directed and starred in the film (with Dan Gauthier). In addition, Hurley wrote a 2001 film called The Proposal and two episodes of the hit series 24 – one for the first season and another for the second. Trek performers who appeared in the 24 episodes which Hurley wrote include Jude Ciccolella, Michelle Forbes, Penny Johnson, Daniel Dae Kim, and Harris Yulin, all of whom were either regular or recurring players at the time.

[edit] Writing Credits

[edit] External link

• Maurice Hurley at the Internet Movie Database