"I'm a doctor, not a nightlight."
Robert Picardo, Voyager audition
Day Two of Planetfest '21 starts later, and I only attended two of the sessions being offered, although they turned out to be two of the most interesting talks from the two-day event.
A Conversation: Behind the Scenes of Space TV is exactly what the title says it is: a wide-ranging and entertaining conversation between longtime Planetary Society supporter and member Robert Picardo, who played the Doctor* on Star Trek: Voyager for seven seasons, and Hugo-award winning writer, director and producer Brannon Braga, who began his career as an intern on Star Trek: The Next Generation and eventually became one of the show's co-producers. He continued producing and writing for Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, and co-wrote the scripts for Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact.
The chat begins with the degree to which Star Trek has found its inspiration in science. Braga's goal as a writer was to avoid a formulaic approach to writing for Star Trek, leading him into an ongoing search for high concept science fiction ideas and themes for the scripts.
He cites the Tuvix episode from Voyager, in which the characters of Tuvok the Vulcan science officer and Neelix the Talaxian are fused in a transporter accident, and how it "started as a ludicrous concept and became something quite profound, and quite controversial."
Braga views Voyager as almost being an anthology show with an ongoing cast of characters: "Each story had its own rhythm - some stories were told backward, some were told in circles." He prefers this approach, and likes the idea of "one story well told" - for example, the journey of the Doctor's character throughout the seven seasons of Voyager.**
An audience member raises the question of Star Trek's future being "an unrealistic utopian dream", but both Picardo and Braga disagree with this characterization.
Braga acknowledges that the show never looks at how its vision of the future was achieved, but doesn't consider Star Trek to be utopian. "But it does depict a future without war, crime or starvation or any of the other earthbound issues that we deal with. I hope that we can vanquish those problems and get to a future where diversity is a strength, not a divisive issue."
Picardo agrees, describing Star Trek as "a positive future", which Braga echoes by calling it, "Optimistic! It’s a future that we can achieve!", and points out that there was an essential optimism to the program across all the versions of the franchise.
That hopeful view of the future may have played a part in the degree to which Star Trek has inspired people to become scientists - as with the Star Trek convention attendee who thanked Braga for her childhood, and then explained how she had been inspired by Star Trek to become a biologist, particularly by Voyager - "that was her Star Trek".
Picardo adds that, "I've had the same experience. A number of people who have gone into medicine over the years have told me that they were inspired by my character."
Picardo was invited to join the Planetary Society in the late 90s after attending an event celebrating Ray Bradbury's 70th birthday, at which a number of actors did readings from Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Picardo was asked to become an advisor, and was asked to spearhead some of their educational challenges for young people. He became involved in the innovative Red Rover project, where schools exchanged rovers that they had constructed out of Lego™, which would then explore the other school's version of Mars and vice versa.
He also helped to promote NASA's 1999 Mars Millennium program, a challenge for students to create a 2030 Martian village for one hundred inhabitants, and managed to convince Rick Berman, Voyager's Executive Producer, to allow him to do a PSA from the Voyager set. Years later, he received a thank-you letter through the Planetary Society from a PhD. at JPL who had originally become interested in space exploration because of that announcement and her subsequent work on the project, finally ending up working on the Curiousity mission. "And that makes me as proud of my relationship with Star Trek as anything else."
An audience member follows with a question as whether either of the speakers had been fans of space and science fiction before their involvement with Star Trek.
Braga was already a science fiction reader more than a Star Trek person before he started working on Star Trek, and has been a huge science fiction reader his entire life. "I love science fiction!"
Picardo characterizes himself as having read "quite a bit" of science fiction as a young man, but wasn't a Star Trek fan originally. He was first asked about being a Star Trek fan before his work on Voyager at a Star Trek convention, and after a "deer in the headlights" moment, decided that "If I lie now, I'll have to lie forever."Braga interjects, "Star Trek fans were nerds. We were the horror people, they thought we were nerds. Dungeons & Dragons players thought we were both nerds, they were the REAL nerds.
"But the thing is, once you work on Star Trek, you become a fan for life. It's in your DNA forever. It really changes you."
Picardo agrees, and mentions watching Lost in Space and having a crush on Angela Cartwright: "Star Trek, I guess the women seemed too old for me at 14. But I missed all of Star Trek the first time around. I remember ridiculing friends of mine from Yale who'd sit down and watch Star Trek reruns in the afternoon - they got the last laugh on me."
After being cast in Voyager, Picardo was sent a package of ten Next Generation episodes to watch . "I was stunned by the quality of the storytelling, the variety in the stories, and I got really jazzed to start the job, and I felt very lucky to get it.
"The longer you work on it from the inside and you meet the people that love it, that it's influenced their lives, either as great entertainment and high ethical standards, or, it's inspired them to pursue careers in science and technology and engineering, and that's very gratifying."
Braga adds that "Science fiction and science have a symbiotic relationship," mentioning Leo Szilard, who conceived the idea of nuclear chain reaction and the concept of the atomic bomb based on an idea from The World Set Free, a novel by H. G. Wells.
Braga's most famous Star Trek episodes came from his interest in quantum physics, ideas that were new in the 90s and seemed radical at the time, that he used in episodes. Picardo observes that, "the people that love Star Trek, and are very sciency people themselves, are very complimentary that Star Trek is based in real science and extends it to an incredible degree."
He then cites a comment by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who, when asked if he preferred the science in Star Trek or the science in Star Wars, replied, "Star Wars - what science?"
Braga explains that the shows always had a science consultant, but admits that he would always try to "tell the story first and then fit the science in, could this be plausible? But we were very studious about making sure the science was good."
The session ends with a series of audience questions. Braga answers a question about science fiction authors by saying that he's "a huge fan of H. G. Wells, who invented time travel stories, invisibility stories, alien invasion stories, the guy invented every science fiction genre.***
"And his books are amazing, and beautifully written."
Another attendee asks how Voyager has affected their relationship with other people. Picardo talks about the blessing and the curse of his children being associated with such a distinctive last name, and about introducing his Star Trek character to his children, and having to explain what acting was and why Voyager couldn't come and pick him up to go to work. (Interestingly, both of his children have ended up in post production, one in VFX after being mentored by Voyager episode director John Bruno.)
Braga ends the session with a simple statement: "In thinking about it for the question, it just hit me that my three best friends are people I met because of my work on Star Trek."
* Not the British one with the blue time travel box, the other Doctor, the emergency hologram one. Ironically, Picardo originally planned a medical career in real life, and attended classes at Yale - acting was just a sideline.
** You could easily make a case that there's no journey for the characters in the original Star Trek, but I think that those characters were never intended to have a journey - their strength comes from their archetypal nature.
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