Nicholas Meyer

He appeared as himself during the 2017 On Cinema spinoff series The Trial, during which he testified about Star Trek and San Francisco.

Meyer was born in New York City to a Jewish family. He is the son of Bernard Constant Meyer (1910–1988), a Manhattan psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and his first wife, concert pianist Elly (died 1960; née Kassman). He has three sisters. Meyer graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in theater and filmmaking, and also wrote film reviews for the campus newspaper.

Meyer first gained public attention for his best-selling 1974 Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a story of Holmes confronting his cocaine addiction with the help of Sigmund Freud. Meyer followed this with six additional Holmes novels: The West End Horror (1976), The Canary Trainer (1993), The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019), The Return of the Pharaoh (2021), The Telegram From Hell (2024), and The Real Thing (2025). Meyer has said that The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols was inspired by Steven Zipperstein's Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

Meyer, along with writer/producer Harve Bennett, is one of two people credited with revitalizing and perhaps saving the Star Trek franchise after the problems of the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, almost caused Paramount Pictures to end the series. Paramount had been unhappy with the creative direction of the first film, as well as the cost overruns and production problems. However, the film was also a great financial success, and they wanted a sequel. Bennett, a reliable television producer, was hired to help. Introduced to Bennett by Paramount executive Karen Moore, Meyer was hired as a potential director for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan despite never having seen the first film. Due to problems with the early drafts of the script, which most readers disliked, Meyer quickly became involved in re-writing the film's screenplay. After meeting with Bennett and other cast members and crew members regarding the script, Meyer impressed Star Trek actors and producers by delivering a superior script draft in only twelve days. The draft had to be completed so quickly that Meyer agreed to forgo negotiating a contract or credit for his writing to begin work on the script immediately. As a result, he is uncredited as a writer on the final film. Meyer made stylistic alterations in his direction, such as adding more of a naval appearance to the production. Meyer and Bennett created an engaging film while also reducing costs and avoiding the production fiascoes of the first Star Trek film. The Wrath of Khan became a financial success, grossing $78 million in the domestic market, and is considered by many to be the best Star Trek film to date. Although he "refuse[d] to specialize" and so vowed to not work on another Star Trek project, Meyer co-wrote the screenplay for the fourth Star Trek film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home with Bennett. For that film, Bennett wrote the first and third acts, which occur in the 23rd century, and Meyer wrote the second act, which occurs in 1986 San Francisco. Meyer has said that one of the most enjoyable aspects of working on this film was getting the chance to re-use elements which he had been forced to discard from his earlier film, Time After Time. Star Trek IV proved to be successful financially, notable for succeeding with general moviegoers as well as science fiction and Star Trek devotees. Meyer worked for the Star Trek franchise again for the sixth film in the series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). He developed the story with Leonard Nimoy and co-wrote the screenplay with long-time friend and assistant Denny Flinn. He directed the picture, which was the final film to feature the entire classic Star Trek cast. Like its predecessors, this film was successful financially, grossing $74 million in the domestic market. Many of Meyer's personal papers from his involvement with the Star Trek franchise are housed at the University of Iowa Libraries. In February 2016 it was announced that Meyer would be returning to Star Trek by joining the writing team for CBS's new TV series Star Trek: Discovery. In November 2018, Meyer announced in an online interview that he was not invited back for Discovery's second season. He also disclosed that he could not identify his precise contributions, as television is such a collaborative medium. In 2020, Meyer wrote a detailed proposal with his producing partner Steven-Charles Jaffe for a new Star Trek project, including a treatment and illustrations. Meyer said the project was not connected to any of the franchise's previous films and was set in a gap in the Star Trek timeline where an original story could be told with new characters. He described the project as a feature film, but said it could also be a television series or a combination of television and film. Meyer and Jaffe presented this proposal to Star Trek television producer Alex Kurtzman, Abrams, and Watts, but had not heard anything back from Paramount by March 2021. At that time, Paramount set Star Trek: Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez to write the script for a new Star Trek film, based on her own original idea, with Abrams's Bad Robot producing. In 2025, Paramount pictures and Secret Hideout released the audio drama Star Trek: Khan in November 2025, a story originally conceived and written by Meyer for possible live action filming as a proposed miniseries and finally relseased as Star Treks first Audio Drama in the same vein as the BBC Big Finish Productions, Doctor Who audio dramas.

Meyer was married to Lauren Taylor Meyer in the late 1980s and they had two daughters. Lauren died of breast cancer in 1993. Meyer's daughter, screenwriter Dylan Meyer, married actress and filmmaker Kristen Stewart on April 21, 2025. In 2023, Meyer won the Future of Life Award, for reducing the risk of nuclear war through the power of storytelling.