TV Writer Treks to Harvard

Sandy Fries makes his living by, among other things, imagining what sex will be like in the 24th century.

A script-writer for the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Fries last night told a group of about 30 people at a gathering sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association that his job often entails some difficult creative decision-making.

"What if they go into a telephone booth and dial Paramus, N.J. and that's the future version of having sex?" Fries said.

Other perplexing questions the writer for the new version of the television classic said he must wrestle with include deciding whether characters should fire phaser guns or photon torpedoes.

"Every time someone fires a phaser, it costs $3000," Fries said to the Lamont Forum audience. "Once as a joke, I put in the script: '1000 space monkeys attack the Enterprise with phasers.' I got a phone call very quickly about that."

Despite the show's high-tech special effects, Fries said that "dealing with the human experience" is the most challenging aspect of writing a Star Trek script.

"The gismos and gimmicks and phasers are really just added attractions," said Fries, who has also written scripts for "Fame," "The Tonight Show" and other TV series. "The core of any Star Trek episode has to be a good story."

He said the series' staff writers, who sometimes work more than 100 hours a week, often become so wrapped up in the show they need to be reminded that the Enterprise is, after all, only a model and not a real space ship.

"We've got a saying on the show that it's all just a chunk of plastic on a stick," Fries said.