Mark O’Connell got his start in television writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation (“Timescape”) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (“Second Sight,” “Meridian,” “For the Cause,” and fan favorite “Who Mourns for Morn?”).

Since then, he has had feature screenplays optioned and placed in development at Ruddy-Morgan Productions, DreamWorks Animation, and Disney. His comedy screenplay Doug and Dave was in development at Disney with the late Bill Paxton attached to direct.

Mark’s first book is The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOS, a biography of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, famed UFO researcher and inspiration behind Steven Spielberg’s epic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Close Encounters Man was published by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Mark is currently Co-Executive Producer and on-camera expert on the TV series UFO Witness and has recently appeared as an on-camera expert in UFOs: Investigating the Unknown on National Geographic TV.