Volume 3, Issue 5 – October, 2000

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Ascending to Andromeda

If Hercules star Kevin Sorbo came to your door selling civilization, would you buy? Robert Hewitt Wolfe, co-executive producer of Andromeda (the latest TV show based on the work of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry) hopes you will. As for the rest of the universe, well… When your show’s hero combines equal parts Don Quixote and Grail knight, you really want to throw a few windmills and monsters in his path.

Wolfe sees science fiction as modern myth. But as you might expect from a man who started his Roddenberry-related writing career with the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “A Fistful of Datas,” Wolfe prefers his science fiction laced with adventure and humor. At DragonCon 2000, Wolfe talked about how the quest of Andromeda‘s captain will supply both.

Crescent Blues: Could you tell us something about your new television show, Andromeda?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: It’s a syndicated show that will be on about 95 percent clearance nationwide. (I haven’t checked the latest update.) It’s produced byTribune Entertainment — they do Earth: Final Conflict, Beastmaster and a number of other shows — and Fireworks, which is a Canadian company. They do La Femme Nikita.

[Andromeda] is produced in Vancouver, starring Kevin Sorbo as the lead character, Captain Dylan Hunt. It’s a starship-based show, and it’s based on material by Gene Roddenberry.

Was this one of the last projects Roddenberry worked on before his death?

No, actually, it wasn’t. This is a project he was working on in between when Star Trek went off the air and Star Trek: The Next Generation came on the air. Although, as most writers do, he did work on the script continuously, but I’m pretty sure that at least some of the material dates back that far.

What’s the basic storyline?

Kevin Sorbo plays Captain Dylan Hunt, the last surviving captain of the last surviving ship of a great civilization, and he sets out to restore that civilization.

You mentioned something in your panel about the origins of the civilization and a group known as the Veterans.

The Veterans started the civilization of which Kevin Sorbo is a member. They are — hopefully, budget permitting — non-humanoid aliens from the galaxy of Andromeda, and they invented faster-than-light travel, which they used to kick heads in all over the known universe.

How does this faster-than-light travel work?

The faster-than-light travel is called “Slipstream.” It’s based, somewhat, on String Theory. The idea is that if you get to a place where gravity is sufficiently weak and you use an artificial gravity generator, you can rip a hole in space, and you get into the place where the interconnectivity of all things exists, which is String Space. Then you can ride the strings from Point A to Point B, and you’re moving based on the connectivity of them, not based on any physical laws of our universe.

Is this something that could be done by a computer?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Absolutely not, because Slipstream exists in what is essentially a Heisenberg Space, in which it needs an active observer to collapse the probability waves down and make them right or wrong. In our universe, artificial intelligences are really, really bad at this. [Artificial intelligences] are statistically normal in that they guess right 50 percent of the time when presented with a 50/50 guess.

However, an organic observer — for reasons that no one has ever been able to sufficiently explain in our universe…

When you say “our universe,” are you talking about the universe that we — you and me and the people who read this interview — inhabit, or are you talking about the universe of Andromeda?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Well, there are theories in quantum dynamics that an observer changes what’s observed. In Andromeda‘s universe, that really applies in Slipstream, and the fact that an observer really wants to get to a place — if they’re properly in tune with this reality — chooses right about 99 percent of the time. Thus, an organic pilot can get to someplace that a machine cannot.

So that’s how it works in the reality of Andromeda. Do human beings actually operate like that in this reality?

According to most theories of physics, we do. Certainly on a quantum level, we do. It’s very much proven that the act of observing something changes it — the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Schroedinger’s Cat is another excellent example of that.

What Schroedinger said was if you have a cat that’s in a box, on a quantum level there’s a 50 percent chance that the movement of a molecule will trigger the release of a poisonous gas, and there’s a 50 percent chance that it won’t. Because of the nature of quantum reality, until you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive. Mathematically speaking, that cat is both dead and alive.

When you open the box, the probability wave collapses and the cat is either dead or alive, but until you open the box, the cat is both dead and alive. Which is a wacky philosophical thing. One of the things you find out about quantum dynamics and subatomic particles behavior is that the closer you get to them the wackier and more mystical a lot of these things become.

How did you get involved in Andromeda?

I was a writer for five years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They wanted someone with Star Trek experience to help develop this material. They committed to develop two different projects based on Gene’s old material, one of which they were going to fast-track based on which one Kevin Sorbo wanted to star in.

I was working on the one based on a starship. That was the one [Kevin] was attracted to. That’s how we got fast-tracked.

How did Kevin Sorbo get involved in the Star Trek universe?

Kevin was approached by Majel Roddenberry and Tribune to star in a show based on Gene’s material. They already had the rights to the material. He came on to do it as his follow-up to Hercules. So he’s been involved since well before I was involved.

What kind of starship captain do you think he’s going to make?

[Kevin] is going to be an amazing captain. I could not be happier with the kind of performances that Kevin is giving. I think a lot of people, especially people who’ve never seen Hercules, tend to dismiss Kevin as an actor. I don’t think that’s fair. Even if you look at Hercules, you can see that stuff is not easy to do. The stuff that Kevin did on Hercules, he made it look easy, but making things look on television is not the same as the fact that they are easy.

But this show, even more than Hercules, gives [Kevin] the opportunity to show off what he can really do. He’s a very talented actor. But not only that, the character of Dylan Hunt has got a very cool attitude. He knows he is Don Quixote in a way. He is trying to accomplish this impossible thing. He knows what he’s trying to do is impossible.

Exactly what is Dylan Hunt trying to do?

[Dylan Hunt] is trying to rebuild an intergalactic civilization by getting worlds to join. He’s like a door-to-door salesman for civilization.

And this requires a well-developed sense of humor, I would imagine.

Yes, it does. In a way, you couldn’t do something like this and have any chance of success if you did not have a certain amount of a sense of humor. There’s a point at which one of the characters says, “What are we doing? We’re going to these places where nobody cares, and nobody wants the Commonwealth. We’re going on all these impossible missions where we’re risking our lives. What’s the point?”

And what Dylan Hunt, Kevin’s character, says is, “We only need to win one. We could fail 99 times, and that’s not news, because everyone expects us to fail. But when we succeed one time, that’s news. The second time, the third time… It doesn’t matter that it’s difficult. The fact that we succeed at all, the fact that we still try is worth something.”

That’s what I think is really appealing about [Dylan’s] character. Even if you told him he was going to lose — if you walked up to him and said, “Look, I can see the future infallibly, and you are screwed. You will never succeed in this quest.” Dylan Hunt is the kind of captain who says, “That doesn’t matter.”

So Andromeda is a show with a quest theme.

Yes, it is.

With the Holy Grail being the reinstitution of the Commonwealth.

Certainly. The Arthurian myth is a really good myth to look at in terms of this show.

Were you looking at it mythically when you set up the overarching plot?

Science fiction is modern myth. That’s what science fiction is. That’s one of the strengths of science fiction is that it lets you do these kinds of mythic stories. So it’s natural. If you point to a science fiction movie, I can tell you the myth that’s behind it — intentionally or unintentionally.

I’ve done quite a lot of research in comparative mythologies, so for me it’s probably more intentional. Maybe I flatter myself. I’m sure there are a lot of writers out there who are every bit as aware of what they’re doing.

How did you become involved with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? Did you have a science background?

I did one year of electrical engineering at UCLA when I started out. Then I decided I didn’t want to do math for the rest of my life, and I sort of I moved around campus. But I took a lot of physics, a lot of engineering classes, a lot of mathematics and computer science classes. So I have a really good science background. Then as I wandered around UCLA, I finally ended up in the film department.

I understand that the Andromeda team includes a former Naval Surface Warfare analyst who used to work in the Pentagon and an Air Force guy who worked on jet propulsion systems. These are not your usual writers for a syndicated TV show. How did they get involved? Did Majel Roddenberry and Tribune actively seek their input?

No. In the case of Paul Woodmansee, the guy who worked with [the Air Force Jet Propulsion Laboratory], I knew him from college. He’s the one guy who didn’t leave engineering. I wanted him as our science advisor. He’s our science advisor.

You can look him up at Woodmansee.com. He’s got a little column there called “Ask the Rocket Scientist,” where he answers questions about rocket propulsion for school kids. It’s really cool. He’s a really good guy.

The other one, Ashley Edward Miller, I would say, was brought more by the Roddenberry name. Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek have a huge following among real scientists and real military people — a very large following. A lot of these people are attracted to the shows.

This is a guy who, with his partner, wrote speculative episodes of Star Trek and had been on the fringes trying to get in and pitched a Star Trek: Voyager[script]. But they had never sold anything until they sold us a script. This is how people usually get jobs; they sold us a script off a pitch. They wrote the script, and it was good, so we hired them on the staff.

But it wasn’t like [we hired them for their background]. What Ashley used to do is a nice added benefit. If he couldn’t write, he wouldn’t have gotten the job. But it is good to have someone — everyone brings their life experiences to their job.

In the early days of Star Trek, people who were not already in the film industry, amateurs and aspiring writers could pitch story ideas to Gene Roddenberry and other members of his organization. Will the same apply to Andromeda?

I would like it to, but that isn’t as simple as the general perception would have it. What that requires is a large number of lawyers and a large number of professional readers to read the volume of material. We used to get a thousand spec episodes of Deep Space Nine a year, and it’s impossible for the writing staff to read that volume of material. It all had to be screened by readers. We don’t have the resources to do that right now. Whether we will be able to do that or not, it’s impossible to know. It has a lot of benefits, and I think it is a wonderful thing. It also is a difficult thing to do. That’s why no show other than Star Trek ever did it.

Andromeda will be one of the first productions associated with Gene Roddenberry to be shot in Canada —

Well, no. Earth: Final Conflict is shot in Toronto with a different co-production partner. That’s co-produced by Alliance/Atlantis, not by Bioworks. We specifically chose Vancouver, because they have excellent crews in Vancouver. Economically, it makes sense for the show, and it is in the same time zone [as Los Angeles], which makes things so much easier for everyone involved. Shooting it up there is working quite well.

Did you have to relocate?

I commute back and forth. Mostly, I work in Los Angeles, but I spend a lot of time up there.

Could you give us some idea about what people will be seeing when they watch the show — the aliens they’ll be looking at, the crew…

The crew they can see on our official Web site. All our crew is up there in costume. As far as the types of aliens, we’re experimenting a lot with different alien looks and trying to see what works.

Up to a certain extent, aliens on a science fiction show are sort of a trial and error process. You find out the ones that work the best and you use them again. We had some aliens on Deep Space Nine that were wildly successful, and we had some aliens that were like, “Man, we don’t need to see those people again.”

So up to a certain point in the production, we see a lot of alien races. We do have two aliens in the crew. We have Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram), who is an alien of a type…well, she’s not saying, and we’re not going to tell anyone.

Not until you know.

I know. I know. I totally know. I know, she knows, and the writing staff knows. That’s about it.

And Rev Bem (Brent Strait), who is a monk of a religion called Wayism. He’s also a scientist, and he has a bit of a bestial nature that he has to struggle with on a daily basis. Those are the two aliens in our crew. But we have a lot of different alien species. We have the Fan, who are these bug-like. We have the Veterans, who theoretically will be these centauroid aliens. We have Perseids, who are humanoid aliens. We have Nightsiders, who are rat-looking things. So we have a wide variety.

Even the humans are somewhat altered. In your DragonCon panel, you mentioned genetic engineering.

Well, as we know, humans are really good at genetic engineering today, and Gene Roddenberry was one of the first people to examine what the consequences of that might be. One of our main characters is completely genetically engineered. Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb) belongs to a subspecies of humanity called “Neitzscheans” or “Homo Sapiens Invictus.” They are genetically engineered to be the ultimate survival machines. By that I don’t mean this big guy that yells and screams and whacks people over the head. That’s not really that good a survival strategy. A Neitzschean’s survival strategy is to sneak up on your enemy, cut his throat, then go home and have lots of kids.

How do they compare with the Klingons?

OK, this is the Klingon’s best day. He wakes up and kisses his wife good-bye. He goes to the field of battle, where he does honorable combat with his greatest enemy. They fight for six hours in intense hand-to-hand combat, exchanging massive wounds, at the end of which, the Klingon whose day it is leaps up, stabs his enemy through the heart with his last dying breath. They both die, but he got the guy, and they’ll sing songs about that for a thousand years.

A Neitzschean hears that song and says, “That’s so stupid! What a bunch of morons.” Here’s the Neitzschean’s version of the same story. The Neitzschean wakes up in the morning, has sex with his wife, goes over to the house of his greatest enemy who thinks that he’s the Neitzschean’s best friend, slips some neurotoxin in the enemy’s wine. The greatest enemy dies of a heart attack, which appears to be natural causes.

Our hero goes home, has sex with his wife again. She gets pregnant. They have many, many children. Seventy years later as he’s dying of natural causes, on his death bed, the Neitzschean thinks back on how he killed his greatest enemy with poison, and the Neitzschean still doesn’t tell anybody. He won. That’s all that matters.

The way you win if you’re a Neitzschean is that you have more children than anybody else. And more grandchildren. And more wives if you’re a male. And if you’re a female, you attract the very best husband. And he does whatever you tell him to, because if you don’t listen to your wife, you don’t get no nookie, and if you don’t get no nookie and you’re a Neitzschean, what’s the frigging point?

Absolutely. How does that concept, that outlook on the world coincide with a quixotic quest?

It doesn’t, not very easily.

So how did Tyr Anasazi wind up in the crew of the Andromeda Ascendant?

In a complicated way. You’ll see it in the first two episodes.

I understand Andromeda is rather unusual in that you’ve already sold two years of the show.

That’s one of the benefits of syndication. One of the down sides is that I can’t tell what station or what day or time it will be on, because it will be different in every single market. But the up side is that we’ve already sold two years. We’re committed for 44 episodes.

And frankly, there’s not a single person on the show who’s aiming for two years. We’re all after five, six, seven years. We want this show to last.

You’ve got a story arc in your head that’s about five years long.

Well…I know how it ends and some of the way we’ll get there. I know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I basically know what the end is. But I’m as eager as anyone else is to find out how we’re going to get there.

Writing television is like herding cats. It’s wildly unpredictable. Maybe there are people who can say, “I know every beat of this entire show today. And it will not change.” I’m not one of those people.

How is this different or similar to working on Deep Space Nine?

It’s different ’cause I’m the boss. [Laughs.] No, it’s very similar. We run the show almost exactly the same way — structurally, as far as the way the writers interact, the way we do the stories, the way we break them down. Obviously, it’s a different show, and the characters are different, and the situations are different, and everything we encounter is different. The universe is very different. The technology is very different.

However, as far as the actual approach to creating the show, it’s very similar. It’s a very disciplined type of writing. We break everything down by beats. We work very hard on the story. The craftsmanship level is as high as we can make it.

All the guys who were on Deep Space Nine have gone on and are working in shows in higher positions than they occupied in Deep Space Nine. I think that’s a testimony to the level of craftsmanship on that show. I certainly would want to…aspire to do that well.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Watch our show. Watch our show. I think it will be cool.

One other thing I think people will ask is: “What will make this show worth watching?” I’ll say this: the show will be fun. You will not be bored. You will have a good time. You will dig these characters. It’s fast. It’s funny but not goofy. And as far as tone, we’re aiming for really good adventure movie — The Great Escape, Magnificent Seven movies with a lot of action, cool characters, good humor. And we’ll see if we can pull it off. I like to think that we can.

Jean Marie Ward

In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006..