Star Trek veteran Rick Berman reaches a personal milestone this week as Wednesday's season finale of Star Trek: Voyager, "Unimatrix Zero," marks the producer's 500th episode of the successful television franchise.

Berman has been executive producer of each Star Trek series since 1987 when he was selected by Gene Roddenberry to join him in creating Star Trek: The Next Generation. That award-winning series produced 178 episodes in seven years. Starting in 1993, Berman executive produced 176 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and since 1995 he has executive produced Star Trek: Voyager, completing 146 episodes to date including this week's.

Berman was honored in the Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety with a full-page ad from Paramount Pictures saluting Berman for "consistently bringing quality, vision and extraordinary creativity to his 500 episodes of Star Trek." That ad appeared in the Wednesday, May 24th issue. In addition, The Hollywood Reporter noted that with this season finale, Berman "will boldly go where no other 'Star Trek' producer has gone before."

Under Berman's guidance, Star Trek: The Next Generation became the first syndicated series in television history to be nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama. During its seven-year run, ST:TNG received 55 Emmy nominations and won 16 of the statues, and it remains one of the most-nominated dramatic series of all time. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which Berman co-created with Michael Pillar, got nominated 31 times for an Emmy and took home four of the awards during its seven-year run. Since its debut as UPN's flagship series in 1995, the multiple Emmy Award-winning Star Trek: Voyager, created by Berman, Piller and Jeri Taylor, continues to be the top-rated UPN series among adults and households. Currently, Berman is creating his fourth Star Trek series with Brannon Braga.

In addition to the 500 television episodes, Berman was also producer and co-story writer on three Star Trek feature films, including "Star Trek Generations" (1994), "Star Trek: First Contact" (1996) and "Star Trek: Insurrection" (1998). Berman is currently in development on his fourth big-screen Star Trek adventure.

The cliffhanger episode "Unimatrix Zero" is scheduled to air Wednesday, May 24, and will conclude this fall as Star Trek: Voyager begins its seventh and final season.