Our intrepid reporter Linda Craddock caught up with the very busy Tanveer Naseer, actor, director, co-writer and co-producer of the online audio series “Star Trek Unity” for an exclusive interview about the production’s latest sci-fi adventure starring the talented Kurt Carley in “Disunity – Part II.”
Linda Craddock (SoSF): How long have you and Matt Boardman been working on this particular project?
Tanveer Naseer (TN): Well, Matt actually started early on. He was one of the first people to work on this project. I came in, I think a few months afterwards, originally just as a voice actor. I saw they were looking for help for voice actors. I then started working on their marketing campaign and that slowly evolved to being someone who is involved in the production of it and when we finally decided to get going on our first episode “Disunity”, I asked [that] if anyone wouldn’t mind, I’d like to give it a shot to direct and the team was like “oh, that would be great” and basically took over and got more and more involved (laughter) and now I’m one of the executive producers, along with Matt running the series. It’s been an interesting ride because I just came into the series to do acting and nothing more, and here I am planning out series development scripts and such (laughter).
SoSF: How many are slated for the premiere season?
TN: We already have our first episode out, “Disunity” and we’re expecting to have the next one out this year. We have identified it on our boards that it’s the sequel to the first one. It’s (a two part episode) called “Disunity, Part II”. I am currently working on (& off) the treatment for our third episode and after that there’s one more audio-only episode, after which we’re going into our animated series. That’s our target. Ever since we made the announcement to move from the machinima style of animation to 3D CG animation we realized it’s actually going a lot faster as it is a field of animation [that] Matt’s more comfortable with and it gives him more latitude in terms of creativity and so on.
SoSF: Yes, I was going to ask you about the two techniques and describe the different formats for the fans.
TN: Sure. Machinima is referred to using game engine technology and all you need to do is construct new environments and if you have any ships you include those, then you create your characters but all the movement and associated aspects are kind of taken care of by the engine. A good example is the one I am working on playing the role of Ambassador Spock called “Star Trek: The Way Back;” well, Matt who recently joined with interest from the “Star Trek” from way back, they use a form of machinima. So, when you see the characters move, it looks like one of those role playing games you can play where these characters move in a computer generated motion and it’s not very fluid, it’s more jerky. And, it’s not the fault of the animator (attraction on the animation), it’s the limitation of the software, but the advantage it gives is it saves you so much effort about how to get your characters to move and how to render them and so forth. CG animation, on the other hand, is basically what you would see in movies like “Shrek” and if you’ve ever watched their blooper reels you can see how these people can spend a lot of time designing characters and when they start moving, their head moves but their face stays where they were before so that kind of thing you have to work on within your program to get the design. Since Matt really doesn’t want to use (well, you can buy) pre-made character molds (pre-done) but instead he’d rather make it from scratch so that adds another level of challenge to it but it will give our series a unique look because everything is made within our “little†shop.
SoSF: Are the up coming episodes going to be the same in length?
TN: I’m not sure. I think the next one may be a little shorter. Matt wrote the first one and when I came in and started prepping for directing it, I read the script and it had all these interactions (visions) and so forth that didn’t work and I ended up working with him on the script and that’s why I have co-writing credit on it. This one Matt and I worked from day one on the script treatment. The approach Matt and I always have is we take as long as it takes to tell the story but we don’t want to fill in air time just to make it an hour and we don’t want to cut stuff to make it shorter to get that 45 minute mark. For example, we don’t have commercial breaks. We don’t follow the TV format, even when we go to making our animated series, and that’s nine minutes for the first act and so forth, it’s however long it takes to tell our story, then cut, then go to the next one. When I was looking at the script for “Disunity, Part 2″, and putting an introduction on it, but I believe and, my suspicion is this one might be a little shorter, maybe 10 minutes shorter than the first one just because [for] this one the pacing is a lot faster. Things happen really, really fast. The first one we had a lot to setup with establishing the series episode. We had to introduce all the characters and basically paint this new environment that we’d never seen in “Star Trek”. Now that we’ve done that we can just narrow it down to the characters in a very specific plot.
SoSF: In your commentary you shared your views on what I guess you can call it “Inside Star Trek” where as you wanted to highlight the relationships between Starship personnel and the people who ultimately make what happens on screen work. Do you feel this aspect of the project, which reminds me a little of the “DS9″ and “TNG”, character driven relationships. Is that what you intended?
TN: Yes, that’s exactly our intention(s). We’re actually trying to create a balance (follow a toss) where you can have stand alone episodes (if I were to use other series analogy but we want to) and yet have that kind of character development you saw in “Deep Space Nine”, but and we’re doing it in a way that we have on the one hand (with the exception of) “Disunity Part 1,” which you have to watch in order to understand what’s going on in “Disunity, Part 2″, and yet, the third episode will be one you can just go into without having listened to the first two. Of course, I think the first two minutes of that 3rd episode you’ll probably won’t understand [or] know what they’re talking about but it’s not really an issue because it’s really just like casual water cooler talk if you will, and then the rest of the episode is just about a totally unrelated story. However, some of the things the characters say and do is really kind of building on this little element of the character you saw in the previous story. So there’s lots of character arcs, or acts that we’ve created (where we’re mapping out) but we’re doing it in a way where it’s not the story that keeps carrying over per se, it’s the character – where they were and how they would then react in this set of circumstances. But you’ll still be able to watch certain episodes on their own and you won’t really miss a beat or lose any of the subplot or subtext.
SoSF: You also mentioned sound effect(s) for a particular sequence, an explosion scene in your teaser which required a several hundred sound effects to find the right blend. Talk a little about that process and how long it took to develop.
TN: That took quite a long while. It was a little tricky, knowing this was to be an explosion that was supposed to destroy an entire ship, I knew the explosion had to be severe and I wanted to balance the “Star Trek” portrayal of noise in space where you can hear everything against the reality that basically all you would hear are vibrations and not really sounds. So when I first approached creating that segment, I was trying to make it sound less like an explosion that you’re hearing and more a vibration and that’s why the initial explosion is muffled and after that all that noise you are hearing is going on in the space station itself. It was tricky because the problem is trying to make it discrete enough to make out so that you can actually visualize that there’s this huge dining hall and people all over the place with different things falling in different places. But at the same time make it feel all continuous so it’s not like there’s these pauses or these gaps where suddenly these things are happening out of sequence and so forth. I joked with some people on the Unity team and said that I felt like I was actually composing a score with noise because it really was a matter of marking off where I would have the different sounds happening. I would actually say the shock wave was hitting the center so you should start hearing some sound effects on the left and the right should be even more pronounced because it’s really now shaking like crazy and that’s why it took so many because I used a lot of effects in trying to make it immersive so that people would not feel it’s a two dimensional sound effect but they would feel like they can almost imagine they are in the middle of this scene [with] the stuff way off in the distance occurring.
SoSF: Describe the casting process. What criteria you established for character selection.
TN: We had already in mind, when we first started working on our series, a lot of ideas about who these characters were going to be, what were their strengths, where were their weaknesses and personality traits. One of the reasons we wanted to do a precursor series, a prequel (pre- quote) to the animated series, was to setup some of this character backstory and explain what we’re going to be seeing in the animated series version and it’s interesting that some of the stuff that we’ve been doing in our audio-only episodes actually created these new character arcs that we hadn’t thought of when we started planning the animated series. When we started casting we wanted to look for people who could really show the audience that this person is just that kind of personality through their voice because it’s a challenge. You have to translate just with your voice so many different things. You have to imply physical movement, emotions, and atmosphere so we really had to rely on the people we chose to really convince people that they can see this person in front of them. The great thing is now that we’ve done the first one, with our second episode, we’ve started focusing on what our actors brought to their role. What really worked, what they were able to present in a natural way was emphasized in how we wrote this next episode and in a way we are working with our actors and what they were bringing to the characters to help them feel even more natural.
SoSF: Have you continued with, when we referred to the analogy of previous “Star Trek” series, the integration of alien species among Starfleet personnel?
TN: Well yes, it’s actually interesting because one of the interesting things (I was discussing within the groups was how with our series) about “Star Trek: Unity” is that it is set about 11 years after the founding of the federation. The assumption we all have is it was just created and we have basically the federation we all see in Kirk’s time happening here. One of the things I realize we have as a gift is having our show happening so close after [the Federation’s] formation since we can show it’s not so clear cut. For example, we don’t have a prime directive. We don’t have the non-interference clause. There are a lot of things that our crew doesn’t have to abide by and so we can take advantage of those things and show how their mentality would be that this is fine and we wouldn’t have to do this because they wouldn’t be thinking that far ahead but we can see how down the road it would become policy because of the things that are happening. So there are things that we’re looking at that we would talk about, that kind of xenophobia but use it as an allegory to what’s going on in our current society. We still have not gotten over our own social phobias and I think that to not present that in “Star Trek” is doing a disservice because “Star Trek” was always talking about what we’re going through now. And for me sure, it’s nice to think that in the “Star Trek” of the future everyone gets along, but I think we also need to show in a lot of ways that these people are still like us and they’re not always going to get along and there are always going to be groups of people that we just can’t see eye to eye with, just can’t relate to them and that would make it more realistic.
And that’s one point (if we could relate to it more but the key is what) we are trying to do in our second episode. In “Disunity, Part 2″, we have an antagonist who has been identified in the first part as the Shan Rihannsu Leader, which is the part being played by Kurt Carley, and he’s shown in our poster for our next episode because he’s playing a prominent role in this next one. I wrote his scenes and in writing them, he went from being a guy whom you can certainly (almost) hate to a guy that you can almost relate to if not empathize with and that becomes the question mark of how you define what’s right and what’s wrong. I personally would like that people would walk away and think about it rather than just telling them, well, this is right and that is wrong. I’d rather people look at it and try and figure it out for themselves. Putting them in a morality scenario and say this is what circumstance you’re under, now what would you do? I know the third episode is going to be a grey story. Ther’s no easy way out and there’s no clear cut way of what’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do because that’s really what we go through everyday.
SoSF: I found the storyline fascinating and the Shan Rihannsu (Sharahunsue) — the True Vulcans replacing the high command. It reminded me of some of the “Star Trek: Enterprise” series, some of the lingo and terminology. Will the upcoming episodes continue to focus on the unfortunate explosion and the conspiracy involved?
TN: Yes and no. For us there are certain elements, I’ll say, that we resolve in this next episode. We’re going to tie it up and get it over with. At the same time, there are other elements that have to sort of linger just because life is messy and we’re not going to have the satisfactory, happily ever after that ends in a nice little neat bow. Some stuff and I am trying to be vague here because (laughter) I don’t want to give it away but some stuff might resurface and some stuff will just be left like that. But at the same time we’ve got lots of stories where we’re just trying to do stand alone episodes and a lot of them we’re trying to do in relation to social issues that we’re going through in our society. There’s one episode we have the treatment for which is going to deal with our obsession with youth, but not like it was done in “Insurrection” where there was this whole fountain of youth thing which I thought was just a little bit tired and done too much. If you’re going to do anything about that, it should be more about the perception of youth and happiness and how we’ve inextricably tied the two together. As you can see, (and) that has nothing to do with the storyline you’ve seen in “Disunity” but those are the types of stories we want to do.
Also, you’re going to appreciate why the characters say whatever they do in subtle nuances because of what was presented in prior episodes, but if you were to watch just one episode, you wouldn’t have to worry about all the back stories. It’s like layers of an onion, the more you peel it the more you understand it and still appreciate that it’s an onion by the first layer. It’s a delicate balance, you know, because I don’t want people to feel like they have to commit to every single episode. I would really like it if people would tune in on this episode, maybe miss the next episode, then watch the one after that and they don’t miss a beat. But the ones who stick through it with us, the ones who really want to follow it through are going to get a greater experience because they are going to get a greater canvas that’s being painted on and more revelations of who these characters are.
SoSF: Dr. Sobat stood out in that episode as I listened to it. His voice sounded awfully familiar when I first heard it (laughter) sort of like “Sulu” George Takei from the original but obviously not. There was one scene that really impressed me without giving too much away, and I’d like you to talk about it — the scene with Amara and Ensign Lopez, just before his surgery [and] after his injury. The conversation about the girl from Risa and the music score. It really brought out an emotional connection between the two characters.
TN: Well thank you. One of the first decisions I made when I wanted to do this episodes was to score the music. I’m an amateur [but absolute] musician and for me music is part of the story telling in any type of multimedia presentation whether it’s audio only or filmed product. You need the score to help expose some of the inner character aspects. I personally like it when the characters say little and either the music or their facial reaction speaks for them. It gives such a deeper impact because you can interpret it however you want and that makes it a much more powerful scene. So for me I wanted to have this really moving score for that scene and I remember that was one of the first scenes that I knew when I nailed down (on) the script, that this was the score I wanted to use and I think Dodge Reid who plays Amara did a fantastic job with that scene. I remember when I got her takes. She sent me a few. She said “I just did a few, I didn’t know how far you wanted me to go” so I said “This is the one I want. You’re perfect, you’re raw and that’s what I want you to be, really just raw”. And I’m the one who ended up playing Lopez because I had to recast the role. I remember telling her “well now you’ve upped the bar for me. (laughter) Now I have to make sure I can be as raw if not more so as you so that we can play off one another and get the audience to appreciate it.”
It’s interesting that you brought up Amara as she is one of the characters who we’re going to see in the next episode who has really been affected by this. In “Disunity Part I” we’ve seen that she’s pretty easy going and carefree like, constantly making these bad jokes and so forth. She’s not going to be like that in the next one. To me this is like the build up of her growth. I’ve told this to Dodge many times — I said “Boy you’re going to flip when you see the character arc we have in store for you”. She’s in for quite a ride. Her character is going to be experiencing a lot of stuff in terms of her own insecurities about herself. When I read the script and the bad sense of humor (and that was Matt’s incorporation and), at first I wasn’t so crazy about it but then I realized that if we remove it from the next episode we can kind of present it as her hiding her insecurities. A lot of times when people use humor and it’s not used effectively, it’s really to hide something. I think now when people see her in the next episode, they will appreciate it as maybe she was like that because she was awkward, even in her own skin and with Dodge, that’s one of her strengths, she can do that really well as she showed in that scene and I really think she’s going to have a ride with this character.
I think several of them are going to have some interesting scenes. In the third audio episode, after “Disunity Part 2,” Michelle Chiles who plays Commander Welch is going to have some really strong character scenes (in the third episode) and I think she will do quite well. I’m very excited working on “Disunity Part 2,” but more excited about episode number 3 (laughter) because of this scene I know is coming up. But that’s the thing, you can watch the next episode after “Disunity Parts I & II” and Amara will seem ok, she’s fine, but if you’ve been watching from the beginning, you’ll see this transformation, this growth in her, in her personality, and how she interacts with people.
SoSF: And that’s exactly what I heard in that scene prior to her visit to the hospital. And I was thinking what a golden opportunity for these actors as far as character development to go from where they are in their space to where their experiences take them and their growth.
TN: Exactly!
SoSF: They are going to evolve because of their exposure in their duties.
TN: With Dodge, that was her last scene. I got her to do all the other scenes to get her familiar with who her character is and that way I can pull the carpet from under her and have her falling and say that’s where you are now and she understood because she saw where her character was in the beginning and where she is now. I’ve had a lot of people email me saying “œplease tell me you’re not going to wrap this up in the last 5 minutes of this episode” (laughter) and I’m like “no” and I said there’s no warp core breaches either (more laughter) so you don’t have to worry about that.
SoSF: Well I won’t give anything away but at the end of that particular episode I would think you would have to address what happens to Dr. Sobak…
TN: Oh, yes and what the heck, we are going to deal with it — and it’s going to address the obvious analogy to the war on terrorism. In “Disunity Part I” I always tell people, like with 9/11, people are going about their day and then they get this bomb dropped on them out of nowhere, so yes we have to deal with that. The next episode has to be about what’s the motivation, what’s the drive. I remember doing scenes with Kurt, and he was putting a lot into it and I had to keep pulling him back and he would ask “why are you pulling me back” and I would tell him “I need this for your next part, that’s when we’re going to get into who you are as a person and get into what’s his motivation, his drive”, and it’s a real powerful one which makes him more like, if I were in his shoes, if I felt the way he did, can I honestly say I would not react like he is and that’s the big question mark, can people really be honest with themselves and that’s what I want people to be pondering at the end of this episode. He’s not a guy in a black hat. He looks like that at the start. He’s set up so that people are going to think that but when we start to see his motivations we’re going to realize this guy is really a tragic character and for me personally, it makes him that much more interesting. He’s not just someone you can easily dismiss or hate. You have to kind of deal with him. It’s actually like you want to reach out and save him.
My actors get reams of notes from me just because I want them to understand their character, even the sub characters get these character notes and a lot of that doesn’t end up on the screen… how they really portray it but I really do like people to understand this is how much we’re putting into this. In the next episode, every word in the script serves a purpose in driving the story or setting up something for future episodes. I had people listen to “Disunity” and some people thought of it as one of those “whodunits” and other people thought it reminded them of the U.N and I think that’s great because people are interpreting and putting their own ideas into it and I know I’ve accomplished something, I did my job.
SoSF: The sound effects sound a lot like “Star Trek”.
TN: That was a challenge that most people don’t realize. I had the “Star Trek” stock sound effects, but I couldn’t use those. They sounded like it though, right? However, if you listen, for example, to the sick bay scene with the little heartbeat monitor and scanner and watch a similar scene from TOS, you’ll hear that (If you’ve watched scenes with McCoy) it’s not the same thing. It sounds like it, but I had to change it because it has to sound like something that came before it. We’re about 100 odd years or so away from Kirk’s time so there has to be anticipation of a change in technology even in terms of designing our ship. We’re not even using Kirk’s Enterprise, we’re using Pike’s because Pike was the one to follow our series’ [timeline]. A lot of the elements you’re going to see in the design work are a blend of “Enterprise” and Pike’s TOS style, and I can’t wait to see the animated episodes just to see these novel designs by our set designer Jamie Avalos come to life. That’s one of the reasons why we had a lot of the audio episodes [planned]. We’ve shelved alot of them just because we want to get into the animation with the designs we’ve got going and we’re just getting a little anxious to get started on those (laughter). We now have to wrap up some stories that we’ve created for our prequel audio-only series to segue to our animated show.
SoSF: One particular sound effect that rings true are the doors, where I saw a behind the scenes segment where they describe the method in which they use to open and close doors on the ship, with someone standing in the background on each door and they pull to open, push to close simultaneously.
TN: That was one of those sound effects where I wasn’t sure what I should do. If I were in my office and every time someone came into my office and I hear this swishing sound, (laughter) I’d go nuts. But it’s “Star Trek” and as soon as you hear that and if you were watching some other science fiction show and hear that, we all know it’s a nod to “Star Trek.” It’s so evocative I knew I had to include it, but because I’m so motivated to go for realism it wasn’t a sure thing. Another example of trying to make this sound realistic is whenever you hear the computer(s) sounds of someone operating a terminal. Oh I hated those (laughter) because I had to sit there tapping on my desk, making note of how many taps I’m doing, scribbling it on paper, and then go and create these different beep, bop, click, sounds otherwise it wouldn’t sound like someone’s working there. It shouldn’t sound like random noise but it should sound like someone working a futuristic interface (gibberish, when I type on the keyboard but click, click, click, with those little half second pauses but the thing that works is) and what was great was that nobody noticed any of that and it just enhanced what the actors were doing. Some of the actors didn’t know why I wanted them to say their lines a certain way and they were asking “Why are you asking me to pause so much”, and I would say “Don’t worry about it, you’ll see” (laughter).
When we had our online cast party before we aired it to the public they were flippin’ out “Oh, my God, I didn’t even think that was what it was going to sound like, didn’t realize that’s what was going on. This is hilarious. I really feel like I’m working on a computer when all I was doing was sitting there recording these lines (laughter). Here I am plugging away at that computer and oh, look what’s on this monitor here (laughter)”. That, to me, was one of the most rewarding compliments, when the cast was doing this online cheer with “oh, my God, I didn’t expect this”.
SoSF: I enjoyed it, really.
TN: Oh, I’m glad you did.
SoSF: And I appreciate the opportunity to not only listen to it, and read all the caption and information, but more so to do this interview with you and bring it to the public make the fans aware.
TN: My goal is I want everyone in the cast and crew to be able to look back 10 years from now and say “you know we did that… I know whenever I’ve talked to people and I guess it’s the infectious nature in which I talk about it, [with all] the enthusiasm, but I’ve had people say to me “You know if you ever need help with it, let me know†and from a few actors how they would love to do a role in our series. We’ve even had a few “Star Trek” professionals compliment us and that was incredibly flattering. I was expecting that “Ok, it’s really good, but– and get the little shopping list but she was blown away and couldn’t believe this was our first blow out asking “when are you going to bring out the next one, can’t wait. Let’s go”. I shared it with the cast and they are all now even more engaged and anxious to get going on the next episode (laughter) which is always a wonderful thing and I just can’t wait to get this next episode out. It’s going to be darker though and there’s going to be a score throughout. In fact, (and now to up the anti) I’m planning on scoring a fair amount of it myself. I’ve already done the score for the opening teaser and I realize it’s actually good because it will give people the option, “Ok, do I want to keep listening (laughter), I’ll just make sure all the lights are on.”
We have a few surprises we’re planning on putting out there. When Matt announced the CGI move, I put together a little fun piece to demonstrate what this news means for our project and (some test lists for him) he flipped when he saw it and I said “Dude, this is what we’re going to put out, let’s say in June. I have to work on this episode but this will really get people excited about the work you’re going to be putting together for the show”. I think that’s what going to get a lot of people excited that we’re doing this as a CG animated series. Doing this audio part, technically is as important for us because this is half the work load because Matt or any visual artist can make these things look as beautiful as they want to, but if the acting or the audio doesn’t match up to it, it will look beautiful, but… So, all of this is serving a very good purpose for our series because it allows our actors to grow into their roles and allows us technically to improve our skill set with the audio production. Anyways, I’m really excited about the score for “Disunity Part 2″. In fact, we’re planning on putting out a sound track of this upcoming episode. In “Disunity Part I” the opening score is ours, written by Brendan Tanner but also in the scene with Sobak, and that Mysterious Operative, another one of the characters I played. In that scene in Act 3 there’s this music that’s playing in the background, sort of ominous to accentuate the fact that we’re not too sure who this guy is. I had to write that score because I couldn’t find anything that matched that feeling or mood. So those two songs can be included in this episode soundtrack.
When people found out they said it was their favorite song in the whole thing so I thought I have to release it and planning to score a good chunk of the next one so that we can put together a CD that we can release as a sound track to go along with the episodes. Our wives are so upset with us that we have so much going on (laughter). I was on the phone with Matt last night and I was scoring and I told him you have to listen to this. I sent him the score for the teaser and I warned him “dude do not listen to this in the dark or a secluded part of your house (laugher) because if you’re a guy who could get unnerved by music, this will freak you out.” He was in his basement and he was painting and didn’t have any lights around him, I only have this little lamp and he was like how bad could it be and when he played it, he was like “man you freaked me out” and he’s listening and I’m like ‘hello’ and he said “man, I can’t believe you’re doing the rest of the episode. This is going to be awesome.” He said it sounds so orchestral, like you went to some concert hall to do this. Well, with the right hardware and software and the right ear, you can really create some awesome stuff. He and I talked for hours. I had a treatment for the forth episode which I told him in light of what we’ve written for the second episode, there is some stuff that I don’t particularly like and we came up with this whole other issue which I won’t discuss until the time comes for that storyline but it’s going to be an Anderson centric episode.
As you can see, we put a lot of planning and thought into all the different parts of our series, including such things as our episode posters. When I created the posters for “Disunity Part I & II,” I relied on the the scripts to inspire me in terms of what the visuals should be. I don’t want people to look at the poster then say they don’t see the relation to the episode. So when they see that poster I made for “Disunity Part 2″ with these two guys starring at each other and this line that says “How far would you go to stop the enemy?” there’s a hint [in it] for the audience. They might not understand what it is right now, but once they finish the episode they’ll go “oh, I love that” because it’s not so clear cut.” I think that’s important because right now, in our day and age, things are not that clear cut and in “Star Trek” they never played it safe. They talked about the Vietnam War, they talked about segregation in the ’60’s and the only reason they got away with it because people thought it was fairy dust and who cares. No one is taking this seriously. Everyone keeps saying it’s because it was set in the future but I think the networks thought no one would take it seriously and because that it doesn’t matter what they do….so.
For Matt and I, a lot of these stories have to resonate with our current reality and what’s going on in our world [today] because we have to be able to relate to these characters and maybe agree or disagree with what they do, and say either (you know) “I wouldn’t do that” or “I don’t think that’s the right thing to do” or “oh, my God, it’s about time somebody said that’s what should be done” and that hopefully will foster a discussion of the issue(s). My hope with “Disunity Part 2″ is that I’ve given everyone a mild mind-frak, with people thinking “I don’t know if I’m supposed to hate this guy (laughter) or like him or feel bad for him, I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel for this guy.”
Just don’t take your automatic visual reaction and decide what is the right response so that’s the kind of stuff we’re trying to do. With this next script, I’ve advised people that we’re going to put a PG-13 on it. My daughter’s have listened to “Disunity.” The oldest is 9 and she loves listening to it, but I won’t let her listen to this next episode (laughter) because she’s going to have nightmares, even though it’s audio only, it still captures the imagination, especially when you’re young and with her imagination, she can paint it in her mind and in this one particular scene, it’ll keep her up at night. It’s a scene that’s important and it’s not there to be gratuitous, it’s there to not only further the plot, but the character. It’s peeling a layer back even though we don’t want to look at that layer, you’re going to have to look at this and deal with it because this is really what’s going on here. In the next act we peel another layer and all of a sudden whatever you thought, at the end of this act, you start to second guess it. Matt says “you’re really gonna screw around with people,” and I’m like “But that’s what we’re supposed to do.” We shouldn’t do things just for the sake of. We should do stuff that people have never seen before. If “Star Trek” is a vehicle for social commentary then there are things that are going on in the world now that weren’t there ten years ago, and we should be doing that rather than trying to talk about 1970’s style stories. We should be doing stories based in this century [not the last one].
I’m a big fan of {Ronald Moore’s version of] “Battlestar Galactica.” I really love it and I know with this script, and in particular the first two seasons, I was inspired by it in the cutting out any explanations of technology and focus more on character motivations. On “BSG”, they never explain how the FDL drives work. We just accept that these things are actual devices and that’s why in “Disunity Part 2″ there’s a plot device that we had and we were thinking how are we going to explain this to the audience, then I said to Matt “Why do we have to?” Sure, it’s important, but it’s not how they go from “A” to “B” that’s the matters, it’s not where they ended up, it’s the consequences, it’s what’s the conversation these characters have that’s the real point of the story, the shock moment. There are these little gaps because we realized if we explain [away] all [of] that [technical stuff], it’s going to take out the mystery. There are little lines I put in and someone could say “Well, what does she mean by that?” and my response would be “What do you think she meant by that?” To have the audience be able to interact with the story and gain something from it is my goal. I don’t want it be something where you’re watching TV with your brain turned off.
The other thing is that we’re actually writing our series backwards in a way and a lot of stuff that you’re hearing [& seeing] revolves on what’s to come and there is actually a hint in the first episode that no one should get until we get to the first animated episode about one of those elements. Once people watch the first animated episode, then go back to the first part of “Disunity” it’s all going to make sense and that was really complicated to do (laughter). You have to work as if this is the present, but for us it’s really the past, but your audience shouldn’t feel that. When the animated episodes come out, it will be the past and if they want to go back and listen to these audio episodes again, then re-watch the animated episode, they are going to be amazed that there were aspects of the show they didn’t pick up on, but you weren’t supposed to [until now] (laughter).
People are trying to find out who’s that character I play at the end, that’s my main character. There were some characters I had to play, like Lopez I was not supposed to play. There was someone else cast to play the role, but I ended up having to recast the part, but didn’t want to have to go through the whole casting process for such a minor role so I decided to do it myself but I forgot there was this big third act scene coming up where I’d have to do this act, and obviously you see it’s not my voice and try to act in that voice. The other character I played, the Sharahunsue who delivers the message, he figures prominently in the next episode because I realized we should have some continuity of who that guy was and that was another character where I had to change my voice, and I did a lot of my lines at the end, because I wanted to focus on my actors, and so Kurt had already done his lines and I had already worked on them so I tried to use Kurt as my inspiration because he’s the leader so I figured everyone’s going to want to be like this guy so I tried to match my inflections and delivery style to match him and it’s was funny during our casting party, people didn’t know I was playing that part and they said “oh, that must be Kurt” and I said ‘no, that’s me’ (laughter) and they were like “really?” because they get reference lines from me so they already knew what I sounded like and I was trying to make sure that when you hear Shanranhunsue, you can tell there was a Shanranhunsue and that character I have to reprise as he and Kurt are going to be right there in the teaser. Initially Kurt wasn’t going to show up until I think act 2, and when I read it, I told Matt, that we had to have Kurt right off the bat. Kurt’s the star draw and this first episode, people are going to want to know why I wanted Kurt to play this part because it’s a very, very intense character and you really need someone who can walk that line of being someone that you feel you can like, then suddenly switch and become this very dark person and Kurt has shown that in some of his roles that he’s really capable of doing that.
A lot of people were trying to figure out who this guy was at the end and we’re going to give a little hint of who he is in a way in this next part. While I was expecting this [Starfleet Intel]Section 31 comment, which he’s not, but some people thought he was the guy from the future in “Enterprise” and I never even thought of that. Then I just realized I know who you are, you’re the guy in “Enterprise” from the future, you know the Black guy, from, I don’t know what that group was called, and it was like “oh my God, I never really thought of that” and I realized it actually works that people could think I’m this guy, but, it’s not him either, it’s an original character, it’s not someone we’ve seen before. I prefer that because for me you can’t really anticipate and although I’m playing him, I don’t know if people should really trust him is the way I would peg him. I don’t think he’s someone that people should automatically assume he’s someone that you should trust and I think that’s something that’s going to come across. He’s in there for a brief bit because we have to kind of tie that thread up and he appears out of nowhere at the end of this episode before everything falls apart so we have to resolve that and identify it a bit who this person is but he doesn’t leave the shadows too much. There’s [a] really wild sequence and I’m hoping we can get people to go “oh no” hoping to get that type of reaction. It’s like a five second bit and I remember telling Matt maybe we should this or that and he’s like “oh, that’s awesome, I love it” so it’s really going to be a tease, you know and that’s why Matt loves working with me because I am always coming up with “you know what would really be coo?l†(laughter), “A real mind frak.” Our first episode I wrote out a treatment for the animated show and sent it to Matt and said this is a complete mind frak and people are going to go “Oh, my God dude, I can’t believe you did this!” (laughter)
That’s what we’re aiming to create with “Star Trek: Unity” – we want it to be something that you’ve never seen before but it’s still “Star Trek” and I think showing that “Star Trek” has this elasticity to it and isn’t so rigid will prove to people why it has such longevity. I really think there’s the potential for adult level story telling instead of relying on formulas created decades ago. For me, I love “Battlestar Galactica,” I love “The X Files.” Those types of shows where they don’t reveal everything because it’s more interesting that way and it’s always done in an intelligent way where you have to interpret things yourself and you’re not exactly sure who’s in the right. In “Battlestar Galactica” a character will do something you’re sure is the right thing to do, then the next episode they will do something else which is completely unacceptable from your sense of moral code and personal ethics and that kind of dramatic conflict is something that we also want to create in our show. You’re not going to have this consensus going across the board, with everyone agreeing and so forth. Some characters in our series are going to do things that are not desirable and it’s not necessarily that they wanted to do it, but it’s something that needed to be done and that’s a bit of what we’re going to see in this upcoming episode.
We’ve been working on the script since the beginning of January and I can’t wait to get it out there, but for me it’s the establishing episode so we had to put in a lot of stuff to paint that canvas so that people would understand who these characters are and [what] their connection to one another was. Then we can get into this nice meaty juicy part of understanding who they are, hopefully sometime this year for the next episode. There are new sound effects that have to be created for the new environment in this episode that we have never seen. I don’t think we can wait and that’s why the poster reads 2008, but we have a much smaller cast and that in and of itself makes it quicker because I don’t have as many people to coach.
SoSF: I look forward to the next episode, and the next (laughter). Keep us posted. I would love to talk to you again to chat about what we’ve discussed, storyline, changes, and character development as the series progresses. I would also enjoy talking to members of the cast and crew as well.
TN: Oh, I certainly will. Anytime you want to talk, I’m game for it.
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