Robert Picardo brought Atlantis to San Francisco, and now he’s across the bridge at Starfleet Academy! Join Dial the Gate in this very special interview as we discuss the latest edition to the Star Trek pantheon.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Greetings, everyone. My ZPM just died. Bob, my ZPM died. I had one ready to rock and roll and it just pooped out on us here. We are not gonna be able to power Atlantis.

Robert Picardo:
I don’t know what to say.

David Read:
Robert Picardo, welcome back to Dial the Gate.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure. Congratulations on your five years of success.

David Read:
390 shows. Thanks so much to fandom.

Robert Picardo:
That’s more Star Trek episodes than I’ve done. 390.

David Read:
You landed in San Francisco Bay. This only occurred to me a couple of days ago. And now you crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and you’re at Starfleet Academy. There’s a certain symmetry to that, don’t you think?

Robert Picardo:
I think so. Obviously, for both franchises, and I’m lucky enough to play regular characters at least one season on Stargate Atlantis and now in Starfleet Academy, San Francisco seems to be the nexus, the hub, and that is pretty cool. It’s an interesting crossover.

David Read:
You know they were supposed to land Atlantis in New York?

Robert Picardo:
Really? I did not know this. When and why did that change?

David Read:
I think the shape of the city… No, the city would’ve fit. I think they just decided at the last minute that they wanted a different landmark. But I think that was rather perfect. What’s it like — And this is a livestream, everyone, so if you’re in the YouTube chat, go ahead and submit questions to Antony and Jeremy. What’s it like to be back in the holographic shoes of my second-favorite fictional character of all time?

Robert Picardo:
I’m not gonna ask you what your first is, but I think you’ll volunteer it at some point. It’s fun. It’s not as weird or different as I thought it would be.

David Read:
Really?

Robert Picardo:
The newer shows are no longer in the Star Trek speak that we did in the Rick Berman era where we never made any contemporary references. It was all sort of mid-galactic speech. And now we talk like kids talk today. As a professor teaching xenobiology, I sometimes reflect the way the kids speak, I guess, to arrest their attention. You’ll see more of that as the show goes on. So, the language is different. Obviously, I’m older. I’m 30 years older, 20 pounds heavier, two and a half inches shorter, so apparently, I took that — What do you call it? — The aging subroutine, the slow aging subroutine very seriously, because I’ve applied it in my personal life as well. Holograms are not supposed to age. I totally get that, and I think it’s a tribute to the real diehard fans that they still accept me in the character still. And I still sound alike. I think I behave quite a bit alike.

David Read:
We’ve known each other for 20 years now. You know how dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie I am. And the fact of the matter is, as Jonathan Glassner would’ve said, I mean, you hang a lantern on a… quite quickly, indicating about 500 years ago you started aging. Which the thing that I’m thinking of is if the Janeway series gets picked up, God, I hope it does, they’re gonna have to CG you younger. That’s a good problem to have.

Robert Picardo:
We have already… The technology definitely exists…

David Read:
It does.

Robert Picardo:
… to do it in real time now. If you ever saw a company called OTOY, O-T-O-Y, they did a video of a goodbye scene between Kirk and Spock that never happened, and they created it digitally after the wonderful Leonard Nimoy had passed away with the permission of his estate and with the permission and cooperation of Bill Shatner. But it’s not Shatner’s performance.

David Read:
Sam Witwer.

Robert Picardo:
Sam Witwer did that.

David Read:
He’s brilliant.

Robert Picardo:
And Sam and I are friends, gosh, at least 15 years. The technology does exist to do what they call the digital facelift in real time now if you have enough data from prior performances of the actor that you wanna do it with. So, it’s quite extraordinary, the technology. And I’m sure that there are other companies doing it as well, but you never know. It could always happen. Why couldn’t Richard Woolsey be made 20 years younger? Except that the new Stargate, I understand, is in the present day.

David Read:
It’s one of Stargate’s advantages to always be right alongside us and utilize contemporary parts of our culture. I’m curious, was the idea floated to age regress you for this part digitally since the technology is there?

Robert Picardo:
I don’t know that it was ever really seriously. It’s one of the first questions I asked, and when they first came to me and talked to me almost three years ago… It was in March of 2023. So, just shy of three years of our premiere, they first spoke to me. And then, of course, everything was slowed down by the actors’ strike. But it’s one of the first questions I asked, and they said, “Don’t worry, it’s 800 years in the future, we’ll explain it away.” And I had bigger things to think about than the odd coincidence that I only looked about 30 years older even though it was 800 years in the future. It’s really… The whole mind-boggling concept of 800 years of digital memory, of perfect clarity and memory, and what that might do to someone. At this stage of life, as an actor, I think a lot about mortality, but my character thinks about infinity, which is a different kind of curse, I guess.

David Read:
Does he ever spend any time offline anymore?

Robert Picardo:
That’s a great question. He must, because there is a reference to that, frankly. Yes, there is a reference to that.

David Read:
He goes into a void. Complete and utter oblivion.

Robert Picardo:
No, I think he remains active and works on things. But he requires… Just a reminder for your audience, holograms require no eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, no sleep. So, it’s a very long day 24 hours straight. And you have to fill your time when the rest of the organics are sound asleep. But there is a… I forgot, there’s actually a little bit of a mention of that coming up. Not a spoiler alert. And also, I have a side of the Doctor, a deeper, richer side, I think, than the audience has ever seen coming up later this season. So, that’ll be interesting to see how the fans react to that.

David Read:
The preview of Starfleet Academy had the scene of you being very Doctor-y. And I don’t know if you know this, but your reference to Aurelian lung maggots is actually something that Ethan Phillips first said in Voyager to a…

Robert Picardo:
I not only…

David Read:
… to an alien in “Fair Trade”.

Robert Picardo:
I not only know that, I gave them that line. Yes, it was filled with…

David Read:
So, it’s a great nod to Ethan.

Robert Picardo:
It was a different creature. There are a couple of Easter eggs right in my very first scene, which I think that hardcore fans will notice, but that’s one of them. It was some sort of a worm, and I corrected them. I think it was written as ringworm. Ringworm…

David Read:
Regular bloodworms, maybe?

Robert Picardo:
… is not a worm. It’s a skin rash, but it has nothing to do with… It’s not a parasitic worm. So, I suggested to them that we could not only correct it and make it a real parasitic worm, but I picked… I suggested Aurelian lung maggots just ’cause I like to say it.

David Read:
I had my… You’re probably wondering what I’m trying to do. I had my mobile emitter ready to go.
And I don’t have it anymore, Bob. Dammit.

Robert Picardo:
I’m sorry.

David Read:
It’s in my closet.

Robert Picardo:
I have several of them, but most of them are at home, not here in Toronto with me.

David Read:
They gotta be on their docks charging somewhere. How much input… I don’t know if you can tell me where you’re at in production at this point, but how much input have you had in the character this go-around as opposed to last time?

Robert Picardo:
They have been great to me about listening to either suggestions or comments. They know that I have a long history with the role and quite a good memory of what, at least, not only my character’s development, but what we did on Voyager with the character. And I remember a lot of moments, lines, scenes. So, if I say to them, “Hey, we have an opportunity here to reference this,” or something, they have been very gracious in listening to me, and often will take the suggestion and shoot it, which is what we did in the pilot. I said to them, the out of the scene was supposed to be the joke line where she has swallowed a comm badge.

Robert Picardo:
Which of course a lot of people have taken issue with a Starfleet cadet swallowing a comm badge.

David Read:
She’s a kid.

Robert Picardo:
It’s basically a joke. But think of it this way: You put your comm badge on your nightstand when you go to bed in your little cadet dorm room, and then in the middle of the night, you reach over to take a melatonin, and you swallow your comm badge. It’s possible, it’s totally possible. The way I look at it is this way. I went to a very prestigious Ivy League college, and there were some legacy students there that were not quite up to snuff with, I think, those of us that really had to fight our way in and get in on scholarship. As an example, there was this guy named George W. Something, he was a famous drinker, belonged to the fraternity of all the screw around guys who… And then he went off and he ended up, I hear, becoming president of some country or other. So, in other words, some of the legacy students where dad and grandpop went to Yale or went to Starfleet Academy, they may take a little while to sort of get it together, to become the… And the thing… If they don’t measure up, they won’t stay there. But I don’t think it’s… I think it’s an opportunity for a certain amount of humor, and everyone should just relax.

David Read:
Look, here’s the thing. You and I both know people, not ourselves of course, who have thrown these things into the toilet completely by accident.

Robert Picardo:
Yes, of course.

David Read:
So, I really don’t–

Robert Picardo:
I’ve done it. I think I may have done it once myself.

David Read:
I have not. I swear to God, I have not. But I’ve come close.

Robert Picardo:
And we would never… Because of that one thing, would we never get into Starfleet Academy?

David Read:
Exactly.

Robert Picardo:
Other than the fact that we’re too old and all that other stuff.

David Read:
Exactly.

Robert Picardo:
I just think that, yes, I do think that intentionally Starfleet Academy is trying to incorporate some of the humor that we saw in Lower Decks. They’re trying to build on all of the earlier iterations of the show. And I think that’s fun. When the chips are down, everybody is going to be smart and do well. But I think for the lighter moments, I am OK with that, that we have moments where we think, “Gee, I don’t know that that cadet’s necessarily gonna make it through the entire program.”

David Read:
They might or might not. Not everyone… Look at Wesley Crusher for crying out loud. Not everyone’s path is Starfleet Academy. I think that one of the things that Ron Moore did so well, it was a very healthy approach, and I don’t think that Gene necessarily would’ve been thrilled with it because Wesley was like his analog, for crying out loud, it was his middle name, but I think that part of… I hope that part of this show will be you truly finding your own way. And not you specifically, but the kids. Starfleet Academy, you’re there, the institution is there to help build you into the person that you’re going to be, and you’re there to also leave something behind with it as well. And it might not always be a diploma that you walk away with. So, it’s a really broad canvas that you can execute. I’ve gotta ask, you’re probably gonna shoot me for asking this, but it’s my one giddy little school girl Star Trek question that I’m hoping that you can yes or no. One of my favorite episodes from all of Voyager, which was up there with TNG in terms of my favorite Star Trek, was “Living Witness”. You say you’ve done… How many seasons have you shot now?

Robert Picardo:
You’re speaking of Starfleet Academy?

David Read:
Starfleet Academy.

Robert Picardo:
We are finishing season two.

David Read:
I did not want to be the one to say it. Do you know the fate of the EMH backup module?

Robert Picardo:
There’s been a lot of questions about that. And I can confidently say that it’s been talked about, but we will not know the fate as of now. But I think it’s a very interesting question. The fans remember clearly that they launched a backup program of the Doctor into the same timeline that Starfleet Academy takes place in. So, I’ve gotten an awful lot of questions about it. So, I will simply say that I am thinking about it, but we have not addressed that as of this point, which is why we need to run a full five years.

David Read:
Five years, absolutely.

Robert Picardo:
So, we have the opportunity to answer all of those very important questions.

David Read:
I think it’s awfully interesting that fans hang so strongly onto that version of the character. At that point in Trek canon, that was the farthest ahead we had ever been. So, I think that that’s…

Robert Picardo:
And now it’s become a regular temporal address in Star Trek, whereas it was just this sort of outlier. I completely agree, and Tim Russ, my wonderful castmate, directed that episode. I think it’s really one of our best.

David Read:
Yes.

Robert Picardo:
The whole topic of revisionist history I remember at the time there was a lot in the news, there still is about Holocaust denialism. So, it really was a very interesting theme, the idea of rewriting history, to pursue a political agenda. What was interesting about “Living Witness” is that it was impossible that there was an organic survivor of that time period that has been rewritten. It had to have been a technological survivor 700 years on or however many hundred years from the event of the genocide and that that the Voyager captain and crew have been blamed with falsely. Now, we see history being denied when we have the video and history happened yesterday. So, it’s a very complicated issue, I think, and one that’s going to continue to plague us.

David Read:
I love the theme in that episode though, which reminds all of us… And the doctor is at the end of it, he’s resolved to say, “You know what? This is just what I saw, but I don’t wanna be responsible for all of this death that’s about to happen.” And then his companion says, “Look, history has been abused. If you don’t help us now, it’ll be another 700 years.” The truth is important. What actually happened is important. Trust yourself to stand up tall and face it with boldness. And I think that that’s one of the better shows. The Trek pantheon is full of… big ideas. And there’s always a Star Trek, Star Wars push-pull continuum. Alex Kurtzman is a huge Star Wars fan. He’s now really getting his feet wet with Star Trek. What big ideas do we have to look forward to that you can give us a taste of in the two seasons that you have worked on Starfleet Academy?

Robert Picardo:
I can’t answer that really because I’m not allowed to give away things. But the biggest idea really is the core values of Star Trek, of diversity and inclusion, are — We’re in a political moment where those are being questioned, rolled back. People are arguing over what that means and how much is enough and how much is too much and all that. Star Trek is 60 years old, and so much has changed in the 60 years since Star Trek premiered. Why wouldn’t our concept and understanding of diversity have changed and grown as well? We can’t expect a 1966 idea of what diversity means in a 2026 Star Trek show. So, there has been a lot of discussion and some backlash, I would say, in the hardcore fan community over that, over too much diversity and how many… Remember, we had one interracial kiss in three years in the ’60s. Now, we’ve got other stuff, other things. We have more Black and Brown characters. We have a lesbian relationship in the show. These are all things that reflect changes in our culture in the last 60 years. So, even though there’s an awful lot of discussion about how much is enough and how much is too much, I stand by the importance of Star Trek maintaining, not only maintaining its values, but that the values grow and change in the same way that the communicators have changed in 60 years. And all of the, all of the toys that you see on screen that used to look impossibly futuristic in the ’60s and now look so silly. The medical tricorder on the little strap and waving things around now. And here’s, I guess, my greatest point. I recall with Voyager, and I think pretty much every iteration of Star Trek after the original, and certainly the original had its own battles to fight, has been questioned or criticized. We got a lot of blowback on Voyager because we had the first female captain leading a Star Trek series. And in the rosy rear-view mirror, all of… There’s great affection for all of these shows. But I remember while we were making them, there was a lot of discussion that, “Oh, we didn’t really hit our stride till season three,” and all that. And now it’s all about the attention you get. You’re put under a microscope immediately. We got glorious reviews in major publications for Starfleet Academy, but 30 years ago, if I say we got better reviews in my recollection than Voyager got 30 years ago, back then, reviews in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, all of that meant something. Now, it seems that there’s just so many voices in social media now that can overshadow what used to be a critical success out of the gate. So, we’ll see. I hope this show is given a chance to breathe and grow, which is what all new Star Trek shows do, and that we don’t kill the baby in the cradle. That’s all.

David Read:
Who among the new cast has surprised you the most to work alongside?

Robert Picardo:
Surprised me the most? Well–

David Read:
As a performer, you’ve watched these people now for a while.

Robert Picardo:
Holly Hunter is an actress I have admired for decades. “Broadcast News”, which predicted so much of what’s changed in the function of news in our culture, is a great movie. She’s given really major performances in so many movies that I was excited to work with her. She is unique in her take on her character. She is deeply, deeply committed. She has a tremendous work ethic. I would say, along with Kate Mulgrew, who I’ve now served with two female captains, they are both not only brilliant actresses, but two of the hardest working people that I’ve ever worked with, immaculately prepared. So, I can’t say that any of that surprised me. I expected that from her. But it’s been wonderful to see her really grow in this new world because she would ask me a lot of questions early on about Star Trek and–

David Read:
Good. She wanted to get it right.

Robert Picardo:
She wanted to talk about things and ask about it. Sometimes it was the whole saga of Star Trek, sometimes it was specific questions about Star Trek technology, our — It could be a very tiny question or it could be sort of a big philosophical question about Star Trek. So, yes, she definitely wants to do her own thing but she also, I think, has embraced the dual aspect of her role. She’s not only a captain, she’s not only an administrator at a school, she is both. And that is why her style, her way of relating to the students is very much, “I want…” The slang term would be touchy-feely. She’s a more touchy-feely kind of a commander than we’re used to seeing. And I think that is as much because she is shaping the future of basically still very young minds. The characters are all supposed to be 18, 19, 20, 21. And also, she has a history in Starfleet as a commander. So, she knows she’s balancing both things. Remember she left Starfleet and was teaching kindergarten for 13 years. So, she’s got a lot of different influences in her, in the way she chooses to lead. And I really like all that because to me, it’s just boring to do the same things over and over again. It’s a new show. It’s on the shoulders of recent… Who would have ever thought that Lower Decks would ever succeed? When I first heard, “They’re making a comedy, a cartoon of Star Trek?” I thought, “Really? That doesn’t sound like…” And then you’re surprised if you just… And Prodigy also was a delightful surprise.

David Read:
If I may insert, and I know exactly the trail of thought that I wanna come back to because there’s a little bit of good cop, bad cop going on with her lieutenant, so to speak. I never expected the modern era of Star Trek to provide me with my favorite iteration of modern Trek on Nickelodeon. If you said that to me 20 years ago, I might’ve laughed in your face. And it’s true. That show was magic. And the fact that it didn’t get a third season, the second season finishes… It’s a great… If it is ending, it’s a great one, but it’s criminal that they didn’t give it a third one.

Robert Picardo:
I think everyone was surprised, perhaps Kate most of all. I think Kate really enjoyed doing that and was deeply proud of it. And the response was so good, great. And it seemed ostensibly a show to introduce obviously the youngest new viewers of Star Trek and bring them into the saga. But I’m surprised with how many adults not only watched it with their children, but adults who either have grown children or don’t have children sat down and loved that show. So, it had a really broad appeal. And also, the animation was just such a wonderful world. It was creating — really well done — movie, feature film quality as we say. So, yeah, and I’m proud to have been in that. And frankly, at least according to Alex Kurtzman, that helped give them the idea, I think, to make me a teacher. He said, when we were in Vegas and I called him on the phone in front of 6,000 fans during a panel, he said, “It seemed natural that the doctor who would teach, who had taught young cadets in Prodigy would still be teaching at Starfleet Academy further on down the line, time-wise.” So, that, I think, actually helped establish the idea. And then another weird thing that kind of got me ready in an odd way for the show was the COVID pandemic. During the pandemic when none of us had anything to do, and we couldn’t act with anyone else because we had to isolate and all that, I started doing these little videos online where I would take a well-known speech of my character and redo it in some beautiful setting around the world, and I called them ‘Technobabble al fresco’. I had revisited 30 or 40 episodes of Star Trek where I would pick a famous exchange I’d had, and I would relearn the lines and do it again. In a funny way, doing that to entertain myself and to entertain fans who followed me online during the pandemic, it was a way of reintroducing the character and his voice into my present-day brain, which I hadn’t thought about for a while. It was an odd… had the corollary effect of warming me up, I guess, to come back and play the character and really devote myself to having him sound the same and have the same pace and energy that he had. I really wanted to still be able to blast through the dialogue as quickly as possible. I’m a big fan of science fiction spoken quickly. I always say that. Especially the exposition, get it over with, get it over with. Take the moments, if there’s an emotional moment happening, take the moment.

David Read:
Also, he wants to get back to singing to himself. These are the things that make the character happen. Do you get any input on anything that he hums to himself or anything that he gets to sing?

Robert Picardo:
Well yeah, because I knew that I was gonna… In the pilot, you hear me singing, humming a little bit of Mozart because in the very next episode, I knew I was gonna be singing the Papageno-Papagena duet from The Magic Flute. I was happy they picked that. I kind of knew that one. The other piece of opera I sang in the second episode, which is from Fidelio, which is Beethoven’s only opera. And Beethoven, a genius, but maybe the reason he only wrote one opera was it wasn’t his forte. It was very, very difficult for someone like me who doesn’t read music to learn. And I worked it very hard. I do regret that they didn’t show a little more of the interaction I had with that wonderful Canadian opera singer who was in the makeup, that beautiful face of hers in that ridiculous alien makeup ’cause we had staged both pieces completely and you don’t see any of it. It was really… I was disappointed only ’cause we really worked on the whole… I understood that we’re the entertainment in a very important diplomatic scene, which is really the plot of the show. But I had hoped they would cut a little bit more, so we saw flashes of our unique staging. But who knows? Maybe in the future, we’ll be singing again.

David Read:
Absolutely. Did they bring in a vocal coach for you to, to make sure you nailed some things?

Robert Picardo:
No, what I did, which turned out to be smart, there was a very short lead time to learn both pieces of music. They pre-recorded the woman, and then they hired a real opera singer to pre-record it. And I learned it and sang it along with him. And then I sang it myself in post-production. That was very wise because if I’d given myself too much to focus on, obviously you’re always gonna sing to playback on the stage ’cause it’s gonna sound better. But if I’d forced myself to be ready to record it on that narrow timeframe, I don’t think I would have done as well as I ended up doing, and with the additional time to work on it, and Jeff Russo, who is our wonderful composer, musical director, conductor, everything on the show, worked with me and we, in one recording session, we knocked it all out. Something that a professional opera singer could have done in 15 minutes took me four hours, but I did it.

David Read:
There is a baby hologram in this show. And she is a charming character. Is there going to be, is she and your characters a point of focus at all in the series in terms of seeing things similarly?

Robert Picardo:
I would say that there is some really wonderful interaction between our two characters coming up that was great fun. First of all, she’s just a delightful human being. Kerrice is just one of those unique talents that the light of her personality shines through her. It just bursts out of her. There’s something about her that is not, it’s beyond just acting skill. She emanates light. So, people seem to be, a lot of people really love what she’s doing out of the gate. And yes, we have a very unique, because we’re both holograms, you saw the beginning of that, you see in the pilot that I’m holding her at arm’s length, and we’ll see more of the struggle of her to get to know me better. And that is the key to some very wonderful moments, I think, that I really enjoyed playing later in the season. So, yes, you will see more of the two of us together.

David Read:
The newcomer that surprised me the most, frankly, please name check me here. Gina Yashere?

Robert Picardo:
Yashere.

David Read:
Lura Thawke. I adore this character because you have to… I was looking forward to an Admiral Brand type from “First Duty”, and that’s not who Holly Hunter is. And then you bring this woman in and it’s like, “God damn, here we go,” ’cause that’s the house that I was raised in. That’s what I respond to. “Yes, sir.” Whatever you need. And she delivers.

Robert Picardo:
She is, first of all, I don’t know whether you know this. She is a very accomplished stand-up comedian and actress and writer and producer. She had a Chuck Lorre-produced show called Bob Hearts Abishola. So, she created, co-created that show, wrote a character for herself. So, she is a writer, producer, comedian, and wonderful on stage when she does her own stuff. So, she’s this bundle of energy and humor. And when you play a character that’s buried in makeup, it’s fun how she pops through it. There’s been a lot of really great feedback to… Of course, all the fans were like, “Oh, she’s half Jem’Hadar. They all have to be male.” It’s like, well, first of all, we did make up the Jem’Hadar, so we can make up how another 800 years in the future, since they were genetically created, we could genetically alter them. This whole tenacious thing about, “I know the canon, I know the canon. Don’t mess with my canon,” it’s like, “Remember, guys, can fire off the canon.”

David Read:
As long as it’s acknowledged, and you acknowledge it and now we move on. You’ve got folks there who know the canon.

Robert Picardo:
No, I get it. I get that they do. But remember, and the great thing is, when you do something different, there will eventually be a backstory that explains, that makes it, not only makes it OK that you changed the canon, it actually makes it more interesting that you did it. And again, I’m not speaking specifically what we’re… because we haven’t dug, frankly, that far back in her past yet. But if, in future seasons of the show, those are the kind of things that people, when you love a character, you wanna know how she came to be. So, those are the characters that are most interesting to have origin story flashbacks and whatnot, so.

David Read:
For sure. I got some–

Robert Picardo:
But she is… I think she’s great, and she is a breath of, of energy and authority.

David Read:
And you need that opposite the Ake type of character to really enforce that with these kids.

Robert Picardo:
Yeah, and she’s not sold. She, you’ll see her looking askance at her captain on a… It takes a while. Everybody has to earn the trust and respect, especially when they seem different than you expect them to be.

David Read:
Sure. I got some fan questions for you from the audience. Yviecahill wanted to know, “In Innerspace, when Martin Short’s character transforms into yours, you play his nervous energy through the cowboy’s swagger. How did the two of you pull that off? And what do you remember about filming Innerspace?”

Robert Picardo:
Joe Dante is a wonderful guy to work with. I worked with him before. He has said in other interviews that when he did not know how to cast a character, he would simply give it to me. I think the cowboy is an example of that. I did have to read, on video, for Spielberg. I remember Joe saying, “Steven thinks he should be scary, and I want him to be funny, so here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna shoot a scary audition for Steven, and then once you get the part, we’ll do what we want.” So, we shot a scary kind of Sergio Leone audition. But it was still silly ’cause the character was described… He didn’t know where he was from, and I wanted to do some Middle Eastern kind of accent. It was basically, I got language tapes from the Farsi Language Institute, not to speak in Farsi, but to hear the man saying, “And now say it like this,” and I wanted to do this cut. All I know is he’s completely made up. There were like six or eight lines in the script, so I ad-libbed a lot of what I said. And when we had to do the gag that your questioner has asked about, I asked if Martin Short would be willing to, on video, do the scenes that I had to impersonate him on, and then I would borrow from his choices and that’s what we did. And then, a few years later, when we were shooting “Body and Soul”, where Seven of Nine had to be inside, the Doctor program had to be inside Seven, we did the same thing. I told Robbie McNeill, our castmate who was directing, I said, “We did this on Innerspace. It worked great. Let me shoot the scenes that Jeri has to play me in so she can watch them.” And she just killed it, knocked it out of the park.

David Read:
My regards to the chef.

Robert Picardo:
It’s the same gag. And I’ll tell you, we stole that… The thing with the cheesecake was my suggestion. It’s stolen from Randy Quaid in National Lampoon’s Vacation movie. When his brother-in-law, Chevy Chase, shows up, he’s drinking a beer and he goes, “What, you want a cool one? You want a cold one?” And Chevy goes, “Sure.” And then he hands him the one he’s drinking and gets a new one for himself. I think it’s the best laugh. It’s the best laugh in the movie. I did say to Robbie and to Jeri…

David Read:
I’ll take this one.

Robert Picardo:
…I said, “I think we should do that with the cheesecake,” and I do think that’s one of the best laughs.

David Read:
Bob?

Robert Picardo:
“You want a piece? Here, take the one I’ve had bitten.”

David Read:
“You resume this one.” My waistline, because of that episode, probably increased several centimeters. I had never touched a cheesecake in my life. It is one of my favorite desserts, and I’m not a sweet eater. It is one of my favorite desserts now, is a good New York cheesecake. And that episode, that’s your fault.

Robert Picardo:
And Jeri Ryan, with that amazing physiology she has, could actually eat cheesecake. She would pack food away like a football player and still had that perfect physique. And she’s still the same way. Every time you have dinner with her, she eats with gusto and enthusiasm. And so, she has, I would say, a miraculous physiology.

David Read:
Conflictserum wanted to know, did Woolsey… At any point, did that character make you examine yourself at all? We’ve talked a little bit about where you were at that time in your life, when a lot of men think that they are beginning to phase out of their purpose and what they have. Did you — and Mallozzi and Mullie producing that show beautifully — reassess anything about yourself in looking back on that character?

Robert Picardo:
I would say, without being too redundant from the earlier conversation we had, it was a man well into middle age and late middle age who was trying to redefine himself. And as I said in our last discussion, it happened to be we were doing that at a moment in time when there’d been a financial crisis and a lot of people my age and older had lost their retirements, and they had to go back in the workplace. So, there was all sorts of analogies in the contemporary world that were happening. But for me, after being on another science fiction series playing a very specific artificial intelligence character with kind of a mannered way of speaking, to play Woolsey who was… He was introduced as a relentlessly unfunny character. I mean, he had no humor at all.

David Read:
Just rigid. You played rigid through the whole thing.

Robert Picardo:
Rigid. What was so wonderful about Joe and Paul, once they decided they liked me and started to bring the character back, they kept introducing glimmerings of humanity, glimmerings of self-doubt, glimmerings of just other things to play. If you’re gonna play a character who’s, let’s face it, an asshole, you really want the audience to wonder why he is the asshole he is. How did he become that way? How does he feel about… I mean, if you’re just playing an asshole who has no self-awareness, that is only interesting for so much time. And what became fun about Woolsey is that he started to self-examine and say, “I don’t wanna be the way I am anymore.” So, that… I can’t say that it… It was a fun acting challenge. I don’t know that it necessarily changed me, Bob, and say “I don’t wanna be the way I am anymore”. I do know that I wanted very consciously in this other major science fiction franchise to be different than I had been in the other one. I wanted the characters, even though I looked the same, it’s the same bald head. We put glasses on me in a different space jumpsuit, but still I wanted to be a different entity. That was the biggest challenge, was to slowly show glimmerings of humanity. And then the audience ultimately embraced him, and he ultimately became a leader, and he had no… Remember, he was only there to evaluate other people’s leadership skills. He didn’t have any of his own. He just told, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

David Read:
That’s it.

Robert Picardo:
He’s the living picture of that. He had no ability to lead himself, and he had to teach himself. It really was fun. It was great to be in, at that moment, a science fiction franchise where we could be in the present day. We didn’t have to… where the language wasn’t as carefully controlled as Star Trek was. And now, ironically, that I’m in the new versions of Star Trek, I remember the way we speak now feels a lot like Stargate felt. The language being more contemporary and idiomatic. So, that is one thing about coming back to Star Trek with the freer language, it reminds me of my Stargate days rather than the old Star Trek days. In any case, I think that Woolsey ended up being, from very humble beginnings and unpleasant character beginnings, ended up being a really wonderful ride to have as an actor.

David Read:
I don’t know how much… I’m trying to recall. I think we may have discussed it a little bit, but certainly not on Dial the Gate. My favorite Woolsey moment is one that Brad Wright wrote in a very personal story for him called “The Shrine”. And it’s a scene that’s in your office. And I think it’s–

Robert Picardo:
With Jason?

David Read:
Yeah. I think it is the most touching the character gets when he lowers his guard and explains the Alzheimer’s story about his dad. It is one of the finest scenes in Stargate, where he puts his guard down.

Robert Picardo:
I remember the lines or the moment, and it was… Wasn’t it with Jason Momoa’s character? I thought it was a character I don’t normally–

David Read:
Yes. I think he’s trying to explain that this is probably what happened to you. And Jason’s like, “I, I owe him this. We’re going to do this.” And Woolsey lets them go. But it’s a beautiful moment, just relating that his dad had a moment of clarity. He said, “Richard, what are you doing here?” He said, “Dad, I’m here to see you.” He says, “Isn’t that nice?” And then he was gone again. And I will be experiencing something very similar very soon. Brad certainly had. And it’s moments like that where you have a chance with your character to connect to an audience who is either many of whom have experienced something like that or will at some point one day. And they have that to think back on and to hold onto when they do deal with life. And I think that that’s the thing that science fiction and entertainment in general, but really science fiction, really does the best.

Robert Picardo:
It’s exciting that in this moment as we are speaking, they are working on the new Stargate. I don’t know any details at all, but I know some of the people involved. And we all got this sort of beautiful email when it was about to be announced from Martin Gero, who is just a great guy. I worked with him not only back in the day, but on his reboot of Quantum Leap. And he’s just one of those really… It’s not unlike Brad and Joe Mallozzi and Paul. They’re certain kinds of showrunners that are so easy to talk to. They bear their responsibility and the weight of responsibility running the show very lightly on their shoulders. They never make you feel like they’re the boss. And I’ve said many times that Stargate was the easiest show I ever worked on. Everybody was so nice. I didn’t have to audition for it. I’d say, “Hey, can I try another line?” “Yeah, sure.” And then if they liked it, they thanked you after. It was… Star Trek was hard work. It was hard work. And there was a lot of feeling that we’re very tightly controlled. But Stargate had this great feeling of, hey, we’re in the playground and we get to have a good time. And that… I really appreciated that at that time in my career. The point is, I know that they’re all in a room somewhere right now.

David Read:
Right now, they sure are. And if you get tapped on the shoulder, will you come back? Schedule permitting?

Robert Picardo:
They know I loved working with them. And my expectation is that it would be in a small capacity if they were to have Mr. Woolsey back. But I would absolutely love to return to that character and to show up again in their new show. Stargate has a… I don’t know if it… There was always a wink and a nod to the audience that Star Trek takes itself pretty seriously, especially the older shows. But Stargate, and I think it’s really from Richard Dean Anderson, ’cause he had that capacity to share with the audience, “Look, we’re gonna save the world in 43 minutes. Watch.” He had that kind of impish sort of thing going on that kind of colored the whole show. “We know we’re in a show, we know it’s impossible, we’re gonna beat impossible odds. Watch us.” And that was a different kind of sort of breaking the fourth wall thing that was a lot of fun.

David Read:
He did it all the time. One of my favorite lines is someone points to Christopher Judge and says, “He is Jaffa,” and Rick goes, “No, but he plays one on TV.” Damn, you guys. That’s awesome.

Robert Picardo:
No, there’s no one like him. Really.

David Read:
Raj Luthra, “What’s going on at the Planetary Society?” We had Bill Nye on last month.

Robert Picardo:
Oh my God.

David Read:
It was great to see him. You said you just spent the night at his place.

Robert Picardo:
Yeah, we are …

David Read:
For a board meeting or something.

Robert Picardo:
We are great. He stays at my place sometimes, even when we’re not there. You know what I mean? Our homes are open to each other.

David Read:
Here’s the key.

Robert Picardo:
And I officiated his wedding. I hope he told you that.

David Read:
Ah, yes, he did. Yes, he did.

Robert Picardo:
So, we’re friends. We have a common passion, which is known as space. Bill has been leading for the last 15 years. And as of just now, they’ve announced his succession. He has been leading our organization, the Planetary Society, which is the world’s leading space advocacy group founded by Carl Sagan and two others in 1980. This is our 46th year? Carl Sagan felt that in the early ’80s that the public engagement with the space program was waning, their interest, their awareness of what was going on after the nation was on fire with the march to the moon in the ’60s. But by the time we got to the early ’80s, he knew that ongoing funding for NASA was critical on the public’s interest and engagement in what we were doing. And we are the leading authority on what’s happening in space now. We have marshaled our forces and all of our members to fight the proposed budget cuts to NASA space science and other science programs. And it was just recently announced last week that all of those proposed cutbacks have been eliminated. We fought that battle. And we had, I think 140 of our members came to DC earlier this year. It was during the government shutdown. But we had an event there. We got a lot of attention. I have a picture of me in Chuck Schumer’s office where we’re both going like this. And he’s pretty good at it.

David Read:
Yeah, it’s not easy to do.

Robert Picardo:
Not easy at all, especially with both hands if you’re ambi[dexterous]. So, I urge anyone listening that if you have never heard of The Planetary Society, punch in your search box www.planetary.org and there’s, it’s a great source of information. It’ll tell you how you can get involved if you want to ensure a bright future for NASA and our space program. If we have people that keep very close tabs on what programs our missions may be cut. First of all, all of that investment we’ve already made, if they stop monitoring the data that’s coming back, all of these programs that were active, one of the budget cuts to space science would have meant that we would have been junking billions of dollars of investment. We would no longer be benefiting from the data coming back because we just pulled the plug on them. Long story short, it just helps you if you’re a science fiction fan, you really love science, and if you don’t know that, then visit The Planetary Society website and see how cool it is, what we’re actually doing, not just what we’re pretending to do in Star Trek.

David Read:
Nine minutes to the top of the hour. The last note for you. 40 years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Robert Picardo:
No, I can. I remember, I’m sure everyone… I remember exactly what I was doing. I was putting a lighting fixture in the first house I managed to buy. In the hallway, I’m up on a ladder and I’m listening, and it’s right around the corner, the television’s on for the launch. I listened to a wonderful podcast on The Daily … the New York Times show just a couple of days ago, commemorating that, about the whole O-ring story and the whole investigation into it and how the push for the launch on that very cold day was ill-advised. How they knew that the O-rings under very cold circumstances would become more rigid and that fuel could escape laterally. And there was a great push at the time because NASA wanted… There was a lot of attention on it…

David Read:
Lots of tripe [unclear] [57:35].

Robert Picardo:
… for a student teacher, Christa McAuliffe in space. It’s one of those things where the enthusiasm outran the safety considerations through… And I’m not pointing fingers…

David Read:
No, of course not.

Robert Picardo:
… at anyone. But it was, of course, a great lesson and a lot of changes were instituted at NASA after that. It’s just one of the great tragedies. And NASA is really, in my opinion and Bill Nye’s opinion, one of our greatest, if not our greatest name brand as a nation. So, many extraordinary accomplishments, but there are those moments, those two shuttle tragedies.

David Read:
Columbia.

Robert Picardo:
And that reminds us that going into space is a very dangerous thing. And even though the space shuttle made it routine, there were so many successful missions, the danger remains and there are so many variables that it takes constant vigilance and constant redundancies in the safety measures. It’s a very sad… It’s a sad anniversary. And the tragedy also of all of those young people watching because of the student teacher. It was not only a tragedy that it happened, but the eyes of the world were on it. And so yeah, it’s just a reminder that space is difficult. And you can’t make big, you can’t say, “Oh, I wanna go to Mars, but I don’t wanna do space science.” You can’t cut out all of the necessary steps and all of the learning steps to build your trip of humans to Mars. You can’t just go and cut all of the underpinnings out. It’s all part of one picture, our future in space. So, you must continue to fund the science as well as the… You can’t do the human missions, the ambitious human missions without doing all of the science that leads up to making it safe so we do not ever, ever, ever have that kind of a tragedy again.

David Read:
Robert Picardo, thank you.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. A pleasure.

David Read:
I appreciate you, sir. I’m gonna wrap up the show on this end. You can go ahead and log out and…

Robert Picardo:
All right, I will say …

David Read:
… looking forward to seeing you.

Robert Picardo:
… EMH out.

David Read:
Be well, sir.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you.

David Read:
Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you.

David Read:
Robert Picardo, everyone. That is Richard Woolsey in Stargate Atlantis and the EMH doctor on Starfleet Academy. I had my concerns about that show. A lot of people whom I trust in terms of their opinions and for their reviews were not thrilled with it. I turned it on. I watched it. I had a good time. Not every show has to be exactly the same formula. It has to present us with good ideas. If it does that, if it makes me think, if it makes me lean back and shut my brain off, I’m not gonna watch it. And Alex Kurtzman, in my opinion, has done a lot of damage to this brand, but he’s also swung for the fences a couple of times as well, and I think that he can with this, especially with folks like Robert Picardo on that cast as well. The Doctor is my second favorite fictional character of all time, right behind Ebenezer Scrooge, and I think that it has a reasonable shot, but it has to be given a chance. So, my profound thanks to Bob Picardo for coming on and telling us about that production. Space Shuttle Challenger consisted of seven members who tragically died 73 seconds after lift-off on January the 28th, 1986, due to a structural failure caused by O-ring seal damage and cold temperatures. The crew included Commander Francis Scobee, Pilot Michael Smith, Specialists Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Teacher Christa McAuliffe. We remember them on this day. My name is David Read, you’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project in this super-extended Season Five episode. No, we are not starting off with Season Six just yet. That is going to be February the 7th with Joe Flanigan. The complete list of shows, there is nearly 20 of them, are all located at dialthegate.com right now. I’m not going to go through them one by one, but I do want to mention a few people who are making this season happen. Tilemachos Kopanos, who is joining us as a video editor. I am thrilled to have him, and he is Greek, and he has been helping me with some new software to figure things out. Ian Bernardo, our software designer. He’s an extraordinary computer scientist, and Martin McClean as well. The two of them are cooking up something very special. Brice Ors created a main title sequence for this episode, but we’re actually going to be moving it to the introduction for Season Six with Joe Flanigan because one of my other graphics designers is not actually going to be able to make the shot in time. So, we’re going to… He’s got a beautiful shot that we’re gonna share with you, flying over the city. So, that’s going to be the introduction of Season Six when we have Flanigan on. Jakub Olejarz, he’s running my transcriber team. If you want to use this software tool that we’ve developed to transcribe, about 50… 42-43% of our backlog of archived transcripts need processed, you are more than welcome to join us. Just email me at [email protected] and we’ll get you set up with that. There are so many folks that are helping to bring this season along. My tremendous thanks to my moderators for this episode, my mod captain Antony and Jeremy who assisted in pulling this off. I had a number of them involved in this as well. Really appreciate you guys. Frederick Marcoux over at dialthegate.com, he’s helping keep… create a new version of the site that I’m hoping to have ready by the time that we have Flanigan. There’s a lot of stuff coming, and Stargate is hot to trot. It may be a beat or two before it comes back, but we’re going to be really ready for it. I think that that’s all that I have. I wanna double-check here. I think that we’re good. That’s it. Appreciate y’all tuning in. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, and I will see you guys on the other side very soon.