Michael Taylor(XII)

Michael Taylor - Writer/Executive Producer Michael Taylor began his television career as a freelance writer for the Star Trek series Deep Space Nine, where he wrote one of the franchise's classic episodes, "The Visitor," while living in New York, where he was a guitarist and singer in in a rock band. He moved to Los Angeles to join the staff of Star Trek: Voyager during its final three seasons, writing many other memorable episodes, including "Shattered," which he recently was tickled to learn was the favorite of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Leaving the Trek world, he became a writer/producer on the USA series The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King novel. After five seasons on The Dead Zone, Taylor joined the Syfy channel's Battlestar Galactica as a co-executive producer and wrote the Battlestar TV movie Razor. When Battlestar ended its four-season run, he became a writer/co-executive producer on its spin-off, Caprica, as well as a writer/executive producer of the FOX pilot/TV movie Virtuality, co-created with Ron Moore. Taylor subsequently co-created the Syfy series Defiance, and wrote and produced the Battlestar prequel web series and TV movie Blood & Chrome, before "turning" to historical fiction as a writer/executive producer on the acclaimed AMC series TURN: Washington's Spies. But sci-fi is clearly in his blood, as he went on to work as a writer and executive producer on two more AMC series: the gonzo, post-apocalyptic martial arts show, Into the Badlands, and Pantheon, an equally ground-breaking new animated sci-fi series expected to air in 2022. Taylor's work has been nominated multiple times for both Hugo and Nebula Awards. He won a Peabody Award as part of the writing staff of Battlestar Galactica, and a webisode series he wrote, Battlestar Galactica: Razor Flashbacks, garnered an Emmy® Award for Best Short Format Live-Action Entertainment Program. A Yale graduate and native New Yorker, Taylor had a varied career prior to writing for television, including working as a newspaper and magazine reporter, as well as a musician. In his spare time, he continues to rock with a cover band of fellow writers, the aptly named "Trainwreck."