Jeri died a week ago after evidently living long and prospering. She worked on a bunch of shows, but she's long been felt as a foundational influence on the tone of Star Trek at its best.

It took me a while to put my finger on the real source of the ruination of Star Trek that has revealed itself ever more clearly for 15 years and counting. When there was no remaining question it had gone terminally wrong, I could only ask myself why. It didn't feel correct to blame the actors. Supplemental features revealed musicians, set designers and props workers whose thinking still seemed to resonate with the spirit that had fallen away from the finished products. The problem, it slowly dawned on me, was even more fundamental. It was the thinking of the people in charge: the writers, directors and conceivers of the series' nature. The stewarding of those rules that are close to home, some of which are articulable, some much less effable. That's why it's crucial to have people in charge who really "get" them. The right people. Jeri Taylor was one of those.

Star Trek's firm trunk and roots were the ideas of Roddenberry, brought to time-tested maturity over the course of The Next Generation. Taylor is credited, along with Michael Piller and Rick Berman (the only one of the trio remaining), as the creator of Voyager, glancing its own directions while recognizably fused with that strong, single organism. I recall hearing Taylor characterize her role as the bringer of a human element. Eulogies identify her with Janeway, which I suppose I can believe, especially considering she also authored the captain's backstory in the standalone book "Mosaic". But a second standalone book, "Pathways", supplies backstories for the series' initial supporting characters (with the exception of the Doctor, though Picardo warmingly quells the absence by narrating it), and I've come to regard those stories as definitively Tayloresque. None is overly dark, dramatic, or epic in scale, yet each plays out some personal challenge that draws empathy as an artful object draws the eye.

But my strongest-felt gratitude to Taylor is for her earlier, bark-strengthening work on TNG. She's credited as having worked on several episodes, including two of my favourites: The Wounded and The Drumhead. One a war story and one a courtroom drama, both are commentative on human tendencies whose virtuousness in moderation disguises their ability to, when unchecked by introspection, subtly grow monstrous. Like the best of the multi-series, the illustrated manifestations of these tendencies within its comfortable, incontestibly desirable future, amount to "wisdom and warning" that remain useful in the real present day.

Just as the disenchanting material from the last 15 years will never erase the original, so will Jeri's recognizable contributions within them live on for others to find, feel, and think about. (And I hope she had a lovely life.)