When Star Trek: The Next Generation began preproduction in 1987, series creator Gene Roddenberry made some changes to the ship's bridge. He renamed the two workstations in front of the captain's chair. In The Original Series, they were helm and navigation, both responsible for piloting the ship. For the Enterprise-D, Roddenberry changed them to Conn and Ops, the flight controller and the ship's operations manager. He described them as the two most important stations on the bridge.