Dave Rossi has spent virtually his entire Hollywood working life on Star Trek at Paramount. He joined the show 14 years ago, which began an association with a television franchise that he had loved his whole life. We sat down with Dave on his penultimate day at the studio where he talked fondly of his many years working on Star Trek.

Can you describe your various jobs working on Star Trek over the last 14 years?

Well, it was 14 years to the day. I started on the fifth season of The Next Generation as a PA. For the sixth and seventh seasons of TNG and then the beginning of Voyager, I was Merri Howard's assistant. I then became Rick Berman's assistant and he also created the position of supervisor, Star Trek projects. I've been doing that ever since, but when Enterprise came out I got the title of associate producer, working mainly on second unit.

Second unit work is all the little snippets that you don't shoot while you are filming an episode. For instance, you need a close-up of someone pressing a button on a panel. It's very show specific, the audience needs to know they are pressing that button. When the entire cast is there and they are filming, they can't always take the time to adjust the lights, sounds and all those things just for that one little snippet. So they'll save all those and the editors will put in a Chyron (words over a black screen) in the episode. Then, when we screen the episode in post production, we gather up all those little snippets for anywhere from one to three episodes, depending on how difficult they are, and we shoot them on one day. We then have a second unit meeting and basically I would go into the meeting with the tapes and run the meeting, let people know what we needed and let the other departments know what we needed, then I would generate a memo and Merri Howard's office would then put together the shoot. Then I would go down on the shoot day and just work with the director, who 99 times out of 100, was Dan Curry.

It would often be just little things. You need to see someone pull a gun out of their holster, footsteps moving, little things like that. Over a shoulder, to a viewscreen — we did a lot of those where we needed an actor to just walk into camera or shoot over their shoulder to the viewscreen, with a green screen.

What brought you to Los Angeles in the first place?

I got out of the Air Force in 1988 and went back home to Buffalo, New York. I then got a job as a repo man, which I did for a year. It was not enjoyable. Around this time my dad received a letter from a man out here in California (my dad was in his late 50s) and the letter said "Hey, I was on your 8th grade baseball team way back when and I want to get a reunion together." And so he had my dad assemble all these people. Out of this entire crew there were about two people who had died in World War II. Wherever they were, my dad located them, flew them in to Buffalo, and had this huge party with all these old men wearing name tags because none of them recognized each other. They even had one of their old teachers there, who was 140,000 year's old! But they needed someone there to videotape the party, so I videotaped it for them.

My dad had mentioned to this guy from California that I was looking for work, that I was a repo man but didn't like the job. The man was a vice president of a construction company out here in California, so I moved here in September of '89. I did that for about eight months, but I hadn't been to Los Angeles yet. I was living in Palmdale and Lancaster, which is desert, and I was just doing housing construction, digging ditches, customer service, and all kinds of little gigs at this construction site. And I still hadn't seen LA yet, so I drove near to the airport where they were having a convention, it was right after "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I" had aired, and it was a big Next Generation convention. I ended up meeting Trent Ganino and Eric Stillwell, who were the two guys who came up with the idea for "Yesterday's Enterprise." We talked for awhile and went had some drinks. I told them I was a big fan of the show, and that episode in particular. They said to me if I ever wanted a tour of Paramount, just give them a call. The very next day the company I was working for went bankrupt, so I didn't know anyone in California who wasn't also out of work! I called Eric Stillwell and said "Hey, can you do anything for me?" And they got me an interview with the page (tour guide) staff and I got the job. I was a tour guide for about 10 months, working in the company store selling cigarettes and gum. Then an opening for a production assistant happened on Star Trek: The Next Generation; I got that position and slowly worked my way up.

Were you a fan of Star Trek?

I am a huge fan. Captain Kirk's serial number? SC 937-0176 CEC! Yes, I have pictures of me when I was 8 years old dressed as Captain Kirk. So yes, I was a big fan. I was told when you go into the interview, don't tell them that. They don't want to hire Star Trek fans because they are afraid you are going to go down to the set and be stuck there in awe and not do your job. So when they asked me if I was a Star Trek fan I said, well, you know I've seen the show. I interviewed with Merri Howard and started May 13, 14 years ago tomorrow, which is very ironic and weird.

Would you say that your knowledge of Star Trek helped you in your job?

Not at first. Being a production assistant you're really a gopher. When I became Merri Howard's assistant, then that knowledge really started to kick in. Of course Rick put me in charge of these Star Trek projects which meant working with people like [STARTREK.COM], licensing and all these different aspects. When Paramount Parks did Star Trek: The Experience, that was a big one. My knowledge became a lot more important as I began dealing with studio people because a lot of them who are dealing with Star Trek are not necessarily fans. So I was there to guide them; I would tell them no, this shouldn't look like that or this character wouldn't say that, those types of things.

What Star Trek show did you most enjoy working on the most?

Once I became Rick Berman's assistant the job wasn't show specific. I was working on Next Generation movies, Voyager, Deep Space Nine. I was working all over the place. But The Next Generation was my first show, first in Hollywood. So I have very fond memories. That's the cast that I'm closest to. And that was the height of Star Trek's popularity as well.

What was your first day like, if you can remember?

My first day on the job, the show had already wrapped for the fourth season of Next Generation. But there was, oddly enough, second unit to be done and there was no stage space available at Paramount so they rented out a stage at Raleigh Studios which is across the street. They were doing a visual effects shot for "In Theory" and they had a cardboard cutout of this woman, a crewman, who was going to be phased into the floor. They had a cardboard cutout of half a woman stuck on this piece of corridor they had built and it was my first experience with production ever, and it was really interesting to watch that side of it. That was my first day. After that was done, the show was done for the next month and half so I just sat there, reading things to catch up on the show and try to understand production reports and call sheets. Then, when the show kicked back into production, it was like a whirlwind.

What are some of your favorite episodes, and why?

"The Measure of a Man" and Data episodes like "A Fistful of Datas." But my favorite episode is "The Defector." That got me in the end — when the Klingon ships decloak around the Romulan ships, they had me! But when you go back and look at the episode, you notice that Worf says to Picard on two occasions that he's receiving messages from some Klingon ship or captain. And Picard just says, Mr. Worf, will you go handle that for me. So they slip it in, and you don't even realize what's going on 'til the end. I just thought it was a sad but brilliant story about this poor man who'd been totally raked over the coals by his government, but he was willing to give up his entire family. I just thought it was a wonderful story. I think that Ron Moore is one of the best character writers we ever had on the show.

Did working on Star Trek ruin your enjoyment of the show at all?

Ruin is not the word I would use. It changes it a little. I remember the first couple days of shooting — I'd been on the show two months at that point — but nothing was done because the sets were dark. When we first started filming I remember the first set I saw lit was Engineering and everyone else was in Sickbay shooting; they were getting ready to move into Engineering. So I was there in Engineering, all alone holding a stack of call sheets, I was just stunned. I remember thinking, Oh my God, I'm here in Engineering! It was freakish. And then the Bridge, of course. Captain Picard's chair was there, the set was all lit and I thought, am I allowed to sit in the chair? Nobody was there so I sat in the chair and as I sat there, outside the viewscreen which was just the stage, some grip walks by smoking a cigarette and says "Hey, how you doin'?" And I was like, Ohhhh! it's not really the Bridge. It's a different feeling, because you know all the ins and outs and you know the people, versus the actors. So it does change it, certainly. Frankly, it's not that I'm not a fan, but I am looking forward to being a fan again, the way I was before and looking forward to whatever comes out next. There's a certain excitement, but it's also mixed with a lot of sadness from not being here anymore.