That's one of the reasons, then, that you're working with an all-new ship and crew -- partly to free yourself from established continuity, and partly to do that.
Exactly. One of the reasons that we're working with an all-new ship and crew is because none of them are dependent on the characters in the show to have anything happen. So people can just sort of say, "I like Paul Edwards, because he's done this, this, and this" -- they don't like Paul Edwards because he's the brother of Jean-Luc Picard or something.
Because that's too easy. We don't want to rely on someone else's writing, whether it's [Next Generation story editor] Ronald Moore's or whatever. What we want to borrow is the universe. We want to borrow the stage, and bring our own props.
But you're positioned a few years before NextGen, so you could have a walk-on from someone who's going to become relevant in that continuity.
Oh yeah. It'd be great, for example, to have Jonathan Frakes or Patrick Stewart or somebody like that who is younger, like meeting Lt. Commander Riker or something, and have him be this guy on this other ship and have him guest star -- that would be perfect. I couldn't imagine anything better happening for the show.
One of the virues of doing audio is it's a lot simpler to accomplish something like that.
Yeah, you might think so. It really isn't simple in any way. The word "simple" does not apply to this project at any level -- other than, it was simple to say, "Yes." [laughs]
The pilot episode, "Ghost Ship," is pretty rock-em sock-em, but episode 2 is called "Integration" -- I assume we're going to see more introspection in that one, and a balance between those kinds of things in the stories.
Exactly. The way that we're doing it is, "Ghost Ship" deals with them being dragged into the 24th century kicking and screaming, you might say. And now when we get to the 24th century, it's, "Sit in the corner and be quiet while we figure out why you're here." Because of the way the Klingons are accusing Edwards of doing something and they counterattack the Starbase -- that's what happens in "Integration" -- he has to sort of put his little, old starship between the Starbase and the Klingons with all his guile, and he's, "I will put myself in this position, because I know I'm right." And that's a very Kirk thing to do.
There's a Kirk-like moment in the pilot where Edwards apologizes to the crew over the speakers for having to take away their shore leave. How much of a debt does Edwards and TCM owe to the tone of early Kirk episodes?
It's interesting that you notice that, because it wasn't actually from early Trek at all. If you listen to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk walks onto the bridge, says "Put me on speakers," and says, "An emergency situation has arisen. I have to take command of the Enterprise and go and save Regula One." That's what basically Edwards is doing. We made it standard procedure: "Put me on speakers," "We have to go rescue this Starbase." It's very similar. And it's a great way to do it. He has to tell the entire crew and there's very few ways you can do it without saying, "Put me on speakers."
The influence is very interesting because, at the beginning of the pilot, it comes to feel like you're in the Wrath of Khan kind of era -- the tricorders and phasers are all the same sounds, and the other stuff is like Saavik's interaction with Kirk with [Science Officer] Numi [Natukov] and the captain, like Scott Bakula with [linguist Hoshi Sato] on Enterprise.
The deal is, we borrowed conventions from all of the characters for ours. What we said at the beginning was, "We're going to take everything we like from all of Star Trek and put it into one." So we liked Picard's diplomacy -- we'll put that in Edwards. We like Kirk's guile and battle skill -- we'll put that into Edwards. And we make a nice cookie from all these wonderful ingredients.
What took me most back to the original series was the bridge ambient sound.
-- Which changes in the second episode to the TNG sound. They get refitted. That's what it refers to, you see. Edwards walks onto the bridge -- this is straight out of the script -- he looks at his new captain's chair, and says, "Who authorized that?" And they're all, "You should see these new displays, they've got multi-spectral typeset displays" or whatever, and he's "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Edwards doesn't care, but the crew are really excited because the ship is being refitted into something more like TNG.
Your description of Edwards on the web site says he's "commanding, strong, and unwavering even when he isn't sure what to do."
He's intrinsically flawed. He makes bad choices.
That reminded me first, maybe unfairly, of Jellico from "Chain of Command," who seems sure of himself but isn't, according to Troi.
It's interesting that you mention that because we modeled his character on him. It's not quite like that, because Jellico wound everyone up so tight that they didn't enjoy their job. Edwards -- he's wound up. He doesn't wind everyone else up.
What do you think makes him tick?
I don't know -- we'll have to find out! [laughs]
Is each episode going to be pretty self-contained, or are you looking to tell a longer story over the course of the first season?
Oh, there's not one episode that's going to be self-contained. That's following the growing thing of Star Trek to not just tell one-episode stories. Every other television show makes a serialized program. It's time to get with the times.
Particularly the new Battlestar Galactica.
Exactly. Which both Andy and I are huge fans of. It was awesome to be quoted alongside Ronald C. Moore [in the CNN story on Continuing Mission], because he's one of my favorite people in this industry.
