Interfacing with the overall arc is one problem, to be sure; but
even the independent episodes (and we'll have a number of them) will have
new characters and situations to deal with. Who is the new commanding
officer? Who's this new character introduced over here? The status of
this other character has changed, how does that manifest itself? It
becomes very dicey.

If the show and the characters didn't change, remained static, it'd
be easy. But they don't, not here. (Also, it's worth noting that ST has
kind of given people a false image of how TV works. Ninety-nine percent
of TV shows do not take ANY spec submissions. ST did because -- and this
isn't a slam, this is by their own admission -- they ran out of ideas. We
don't have this problem, and we tend to operate more like a regular TV
series.)

jms