Prior to his first staff job on a scripted drama, Sussman worked in broadcast journalism, serving as a writer and producer for
KCAL-TV's Emmy Award-winning
Prime Nine News. He later shared the award for "Best Newscast" at the New York Festivals Television & Film Awards. A longtime
Star Trek fan, Sussman made his first professional sale to
Voyager Executive Producer
Michael Piller on the final day of his writing internship. That story became the basis for the acclaimed second-season episode "
Meld," which cast Academy Award-nominee
Brad Dourif in a recurring role as sociopathic crewman
Lon Suder. Sussman ultimately sold several freelance stories to
Voyager before partnering with Phyllis Strong, and the pair were hired as story editors by showrunner
Kenneth Biller for the series' seventh and final season. Their partnership continued on the next spin-off,
Star Trek: Enterprise, until the two branched out as solo writers; Sussman was subsequently promoted to producer on the series. In the show's fourth season, Sussman showed his affection for the original
Star Trek series with arguably his most popular script, the two-part episode "
In a Mirror, Darkly". Set in
Star Trek's dark and oppressive
Mirror Universe, the feature-length adventure recreated many of the iconic sets from
The Original Series, and served as both a sequel and a prequel to episodes from Captain Kirk's era
. New York Daily News TV critic
David Bianculli called the two-parter "the best hours of
Enterprise yet." 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" out of the more than seven hundred live-action episodes produced as of that date. After his tenure on
Star Trek, Sussman served as a writer and producer on the
CBS science fiction drama
Threshold, starring
Carla Gugino and
Peter Dinklage; and later on
Sam Raimi's syndicated fantasy series
Legend of the Seeker for
Disney/ABC Studios. Diversifying from his sci-fi background, Sussman went on to co-create and executive produce the one-hour crime procedural
Perception with his former
Trek colleague Kenneth Biller. That series, also from ABC Studios, starred Emmy Award-winner
Eric McCormack as a crime-solving neurologist, and aired for three seasons on
TNT. Following
Perception, Sussman wrote and produced the
SyFy Channel series
12 Monkeys; and
The Last Ship from Executive Producer
Michael Bay and TNT Originals. ==References==