Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Farewell to Star Trek Enterprise

Episode Date: May 9, 2005

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The end of a Star Trek generation, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome aboard Public Radio's travel show that boldly goes to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. boldly goes to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. These are the last days of Enterprise, the fifth primetime television series in the Star Trek universe. We'll mark its passing and talk with series co-producer Andre Bormannis about the lasting contribution Trek has made to science and culture.

Later, we'll beam up to Bruce Betts for another What's Up review of the night sky and his latest space trivia contest. Before we get to our review of the headlines, here's some news of our own. The wait is over. Planetary Radio is now available as a podcast. Get the details at planetary.org slash radio. We hope this will make it even easier for many of our online listeners to download the show and carry it with them. Now here's our Warp 9 review of the galaxy's top stories. It's a case of dueling telescopes. Two teams now claim to have gotten the first actual picture of an extrasolar planet.

We mentioned one of these just a couple of weeks ago. But are either of these snapshots really planetary portraits? Not all astronomers are convinced. You can see the pictures and read about the brouhaha at planetary.org. The Mars Global Surveyor may have found a fallen comrade. The orbiter has returned images of what is probably the Mars Polar Lander, a spacecraft that is believed to have crashed on the red planet in late 1999. The sharp-eyed orbiter may also have gotten a shot of one of the Viking landers that has now been sitting on the Martian surface for nearly 30 years. And another mission to Earth has been completed. Well, actually, it was just the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe flying by Earth and the Moon a few days ago as it heads for a rendezvous with a comet.

And wouldn't you just know, you can check out these images at planetary.org. Star Trek Enterprise co-producer Andre Bormannis is coming up right after Emily pokes a few holes in Saturn's rings. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, what are Saturn's rings made of? When Christian Huygens first realized that the handles on each side of Saturn were in fact a thin, flat ring, he thought that the ring was a solid disk. Jean-Dominique Cassini disagreed, but it was another two centuries before James Clerk Maxwell proved

that a thin, flat, solid ring was dynamically impossible and that the rings must be made of an indefinite number of unconnected particles. Thanks to decades of telescopic observations and the Voyager mission, we now know that the rings are indeed incredibly thin, possibly only 30 meters thick, and that they are composed of uncountable billions of dust and ice particles. Saturn's ring system is so huge that you would think that the rings would be pretty massive. But in fact, if you gathered all of the ring stuff together into one body, it would be smaller than Mimas or about the size of Scotland. Why don't the rings contract into another moon?

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. I'm getting from that to here. It's been a long time. But my time is finally here. And I will see my dream come alive at last. I will touch the sky. What a great theme song. It's also the swan song for Star Trek Enterprise as it finishes its four-year mission to seek out new worlds and new civilizations.

To boldly go, well, you know the rest. The idea was to take us back 100 years before the time of Captain Kirk and his Enterprise. Captain Jonathan Archer and crew flew the first Warp 5 starship from Earth to check out our corner of the Milky Way. What they found wasn't always pleasant, but they stuck to the Star Trek code of ethics, more or less. With the series now sailing into a galactic sunset, we invited series co-producer and science consultant Andre Bormannis

to visit Planetary Radio once again. Andre, it's been, I think, two years since we last had you on the show, and we wandered around the set a little bit there at Paramount, which was such fun. It was such a good time. And now, sadly, at least for me, a big fan, we are talking on virtually the eve of the demise of Star Trek Enterprise. I guess it's going to live on on DVDs. It absolutely will live on on DVDs and in syndication starting next fall. Although we've wrapped the series and we will not be producing new episodes, we did do 98 episodes of Enterprise, which is a very good run by any standard. It certainly was sad to be there at the end of the show, the last day of

filming, and in fact, I have a little walk-on part in the final episode. No kidding! I'm just in a crowd scene. Are you human? I'm human. I didn't go for the alien makeup, but it was a great deal of fun. But it was certainly a bittersweet experience.

I've been working on Star Trek now for, I think, a total of 12 years. I started as the science consultant on the show. I had the opportunity to pitch story ideas, eventually sold a couple of stories to Star Trek Voyager. And then they asked me to write a script, which they liked well enough to have me do another one. And finally, by the time we started Enterprise, they brought me aboard full-time as a writer. And my position on the final season was co-producer. I still helped out with the science as needed. Because they didn't replace you. You were still the go-to science guy. Yeah. But we didn't have as much of the so-called techno babble on Enterprise as we did on Voyager. I don't think there are too many people who've gotten into the business taking quite the

career path that you have. Not many. The only other person who comes to mind really is my predecessor is the science consultant on Star Trek, a gentleman named Naren Shankar. As I have pointed out to many, many people, Enterprise made it one year longer than the original series. It's true. People had in mind a sort of a standard of seven years because Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager all ran seven years.

But there was nothing carved in stone that said that a new Star Trek spinoff is supposed to be on the air for seven years. Enterprise went four, which is a good run by anybody's estimation. It's a lot harder to sustain a TV show for a seven-year run than it was maybe 10 years ago. When Next Generation debuted in, I think it was 1987, there was no other science fiction on television. And the syndication market was very different. The business of television has changed radically. So Enterprise, I think, was a terrific show.

It was a great pleasure to work on it. We had some terrific writers. The cast, couldn't ask for better people to work with. Scott Bakula is not only a terrific actor, but the nicest man in Hollywood, I'm convinced. Of course, he plays the latest in the long series of captains. Terrific, terrific guy. We were pleased it went on as long as it did. Obviously, we would have enjoyed doing

it longer, but unfortunately, that's just not what happened. Well, you know where I'm coming from, because I've even stopped denying that I'm a Trekkie or a Trekkie or a Trekker. I never denied it. I must be, because I can, as we were just before we turned on the microphones here, I was recounting connected scenes from different series within the Star Trek universe. The thought of television without an ongoing Star Trek series, I mean, yes, there was a big space between the original series and Next Generation, but I don't look forward to that. It also hurts to know that the show has been so good this year. And in these last few episodes, I do get the impression that you guys decided, let's have some fun.

We look at this one that took place in the alternate universe. And folks, you're going to have to look it up because we're not going to explain the whole thing here. But it was actually an alternate universe established in the original series that Captain Kirk and Spock visited. And you guys had a great time with it.

We had a ball with that. And you guys had a great time with it. We had a ball with that. And the actors had a great time with it. It's always fun for an actor in series television to get to step out of character. And all of our characters got to play their quote-unquote evil twin in this episode. So, of course, that's just refreshing from their perspective to try some different things and to look at their own dark sides. And, of course, we built these unbelievably wonderful sets, recreations, a complete recreation of the original series, Bridge. Beautifully done. As well as the corridors, the captain's quarters, the briefing room.

We managed to do a little scene of an engineering set. I think some of that was digitally added to whatever we shot on stage. We had a Jefferies tube, which is another sort of great feature. I yelled to my daughter. Look, it's a Jefferies tube. Uh-huh. And I have to tell you, it was kind of magical being on that defined bridge. After they built it, of course, we were all dying to get down there and see it.

You really had a sense of the history of this incredible television show, the show that Gene Roddenberry started nearly 40 years ago now. And as you pointed out, this will be the first time in 18 years that there has not been some new Star Trek series on television, and sometimes two. Since the beginning of Next Generation, there has always been a new season of Star Trek. This fall, that will not be the case, and that's going to be different. That's going to be interesting to see how people respond to that. We had a lot of great fan support, especially this last season, I think,

where Manny Cotto was our head writer this year, and he was another diehard Star Trek fan from way back. And he really wanted to embrace the prequel aspects of this show, to really start building toward the foundations of the Star Trek universe as it was conceived in the original series. Foundations of the Federation and so on. Exactly. And we did some of that our first three seasons, but possibly not enough. And maybe we did a little too much this final season because we wanted to try to get it all in. But I think that that's one of the ways that, you know, one of the aspects of the series this year that the fans really responded to, the more deliberate references to the original series, and obviously in a very prominent

way in those two Mirror Universe episodes. And we just knew that this was going to be our final season in all probability. We didn't get the official word until, I don't know, six weeks or so maybe before we ended production. But we kind of saw the writing on the wall, so we thought, why not pull out all the stops and just have fun with it, make it the kind of show that we as fans would really like to see. I don't know that it was everybody's cup of tea. It's very hard to kind of define what the Star Trek audience wants. People are often saying, well, why don't you do the shows that the fans want to see?

It's not a monolithic group of people. There are millions of Star Trek fans out there, and some of them like certain aspects of the show that others don't like, and vice versa. But ultimately, I think that we were all very proud of the work we did this year. We certainly put our hearts and souls into it and had a lot of fun doing the season. It showed. We're going to take a quick break, and then I want to talk about, even without a Star Trek series airing except in syndication, that certainly is not going to put a stop to the legacy of Star Trek and the effect that it has had on not just science fiction, but the American culture. And I think that that is maybe the most impressive thing about this dynasty called Star Trek.

And we will pick up again and talk about that with Andre Bourbonis, co-producer of Star Trek Enterprise, right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from

space exploration in the Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits you can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS that's toll-free 1-877-752-6387 and you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website planetarysociety.org the planetary societyoring new worlds. This is what you can now hear on the NASA.gov Return to Flight website. Hi, I'm Scott Bakula. As Captain Jonathan Archer of the Starship Enterprise,

I lead an intrepid group of explorers on fictional expeditions into the galaxy. But there are no screenwriters required to tell NASA's story. After more than two years, the space shuttle fleet will return to flight, stronger and safer than ever. Astronauts will resume building the International Space Station, helping NASA create a future that makes tomorrow's science fact look like today's science fiction. Andre Bourbonis is our guest on Planetary Radio this week,

co-producer of Star Trek Enterprise, the latest in that long and distinguished series of Star Trek television programs, to say nothing of a series of feature films and even an animated series, which I didn't see enough of as a certified Trekkie, I said that we wanted to come back and talk about the legacy of this show. And I think that that little piece that we just played of Scott Bakula being brought into the fold by NASA, that to me represents so much. And we've gone from a time when I think NASA was almost resistant to looking to Star Trek and to other science fiction forces to help them get their message across. Well, obviously,

things have turned around. Well, that's very true. And in fact, I think that if you talk to most of the scientists who are in their maybe mid-40s and younger today. Probably half of them would cite Star Trek as a significant influence in their decision to pursue science and engineering as a career. Roddenberry always said that this was the greatest reward in his life, the people who constantly came up to him, including astronauts. Yeah. I got into this because of you. Well, I met Mike Fink while we were shooting the final episode.

He's an astronaut who was aboard the space station on this last crew. And he came down to visit the sets and see us before we wrapped things up and said that he'd always been a big Star Trek fan and was very eager to see what we were doing down on the stage. Had a number of astronauts come and visit the set. Eileen Collins, who was commanding the next shuttle mission, I had dinner with her once a few years ago with a group of people up in Denver, and she was a Star Trek fan as well.

I didn't know that. Yeah. So I think that NASA certainly recognizes that in the popular imagination, Star Trek is one of the ways that people sort of conceptualize the reason that we explore space, why we go out there, why we want to learn these things, what the potential is for discovery and what the excitement's all about. And I think that in terms of its legacy, beyond the fact that it's, I think, inspired a lot of people to develop a greater interest in science and choose science and engineering as a career, there are still going to

be new adventures in the Star Trek universe. There are still books being published about Star Trek on a monthly basis, novels, short stories. And something that I think is particularly interesting is fans are now creating their own Star Trek films. There is a group that has a website. I think it might be called newvoyages.com. They have created their own Star Trek films.

They have built original series sets, uniforms, cast themselves as actors. They write scripts, and it's an astonishing level of work. Wow. When you look at it, it's like, oh, my God, this is almost up to par with what they were doing production-wise on the original series. We'll check it out, and we'll put that link up on the website, where we always put relevant links, right where we air the show. Yeah, so I think in the near term, the future of Star Trek is going to be in some of those areas, in fan fiction and fan films, and also the publishing world. Paramount has also said that Star Trek will return to television, but I haven't heard any details.

Well, there are no details yet. I think it's a given that Star Trek will come back in some way, shape, or form in the not-too-distant future. Rick Berman is discussing a new feature film with Paramount. Again, nothing official yet. It's not been greenlit, as they say in Hollywood. But it's only a matter of time before we see another Star Trek feature film and before we see another Star Trek series of some kind. But I think that the plan right now is to give it another year or two before they really start thinking seriously about the next Star Trek television series. They will probably want to revisit the idea of Star Trek.

They will probably want to revisit the idea of Star Trek, think about how they can make a Star Trek series for the 21st century that is still true to the premise of Star Trek, as Gene conceived it 40-some years ago, but builds a new audience of people for the show. It's not an easy thing to do. Star Trek has obviously been around for a long time, and we've produced something like 700 episodes of television and 10 feature films. And I think that it's such a brilliant premise that it's something that you could explore almost infinitely. And I can certainly imagine another TV series. But the more that you've created of it, the longer it's been around, the harder it is to try to find a fresh approach to it that will bring in those new viewers. People sometimes look at it and think of it as something that's almost retro now. It's kind of a throwback and not a show that's about the future per se.

So you've got to kind of overcome those kinds of perceptions and just find a different way to approach it. But ultimately, this notion of having a spaceship that's capable of exploring our galaxy and the kinds of adventures that people could have on such a vessel, there's no question that that's just a timeless sort of idea that speaks to not only our own sort of American spirit of exploration, but certainly the larger interest around the world and what's out there. And speaks to the explorer that lives in the souls of, I would say, most human beings. I think that's true. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that it's a genetic imperative,

although some people do, that part of the reason that we've survived as a species is because we're explorers, because we're wanderers. We wanted to see what was over the next hill. And so we expanded our territory from a small corner of Africa to the entire globe in a matter of a few thousand years. Whether that's genetic or not, it is clearly a big part of the history of our species. And I think it is going to be imperative for us to get off of this planet if we are going to survive into the long-term future. There is so much more I would love to talk about regarding Star Trek, but, Andre, we're out of time.

I want to thank you for coming back. We will mention that your book, Star Trek Science Logs, is still available on Amazon. It's been out for quite a while now. It has, actually, about, gosh, eight years, I guess. What's the other book that you contributed to and conceived of, just very briefly? I conceived a book called New Worlds, New Civilizations. I wrote the first piece in the book about the planet Vulcan.

Jan Michael Friedman wrote the remainder of the book. It's kind of a tourist's guide to the Star Trek universe. They're fictionalized first-person narratives of what it's like to take a trip to some of the various planets that we've seen on Star Trek that are popular. So it's quite a bit of fun. I'm going to pick up a copy of that. We are going to leave it there. Andre also just having completed tenure with Star Trek Enterprise, finishing as co-producer of that series.

We're also going to leave you with this little snippet from a bit more of popular culture wrapped around the Star Trek universe. One of my favorite fun bands, Warp 11, based in Sacramento, California. Just this little touch from this bunch of rock and rollers who happen to be in love with a thing called Star Trek. And then I'll be back with Bruce Betts and What's Up after we hear from Emily. Dead gym, but she's still alive She's a dominion I'm in that second, I'd make it so Can't take too much, can't take too much more Can't take too much, can't take too much more Can't take too much, can't take too much more

Can't take too much, can't take too much more Walk on, on the dance floor Can't take too much more Walk on, on the dance floor. Take too much more. On the dance floor. Take too much more. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. What is preventing all the particles in Saturn's ring system from collecting together into one moon? The answer is that Saturn's ring system lies inside an invisible barrier to moon formation called the Roche Limit.

There are two competing forces acting on Saturn's satellites. One is their own self-gravity. Gather enough particles together, and they will form a mass that will attract more particles, and eventually you can get a large moon like Titan or Tethys. The competing force arises from Saturn's gravity. When a body gets close enough to Saturn, the side of the body closer to Saturn feels a noticeably stronger attractive force than the side of the body farther from Saturn. If a body gets inside the Roche limit, the differential tidal forces

acting on the body will tear it apart. This tidal disruption happened to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 when it got too close to Jupiter. The comet broke into at least 21 separate fragments before it slammed into the planet. For Saturn's rings, gravitational forces will occasionally bring some piles of particles together into loose clumps. But those clumps don't stand a chance to form moons before Saturn's gravity tears them apart again. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He's here every week to tell us what's going on up there, out there, among the stars. Where?

You know, I'm still jazzed because I got to talk about Star Trek. I'm such a Trekkie. You really are. I really am. It's just, it's disgusting, but fun. So what's up, Bruce? Hey, we have some very nice planets up there. We've got Venus starting to poke up after sunset, looking in the west, following the sun 45 minutes or so after the sun sets. Brightest star-like object up there. We've got Saturn about 45 degrees away in the sky, also in the west. In the early evening, you can see it near Castor and Pollux.

And we've got Jupiter high in the south hanging out, looking really, really bright, but not quite as bright as Venus, and in the south in the early evening. And if you're up in the predawn, go check out Mars, looking kind of reddish over there in the east-ish. Mars looking kind of reddish over there in the east-ish. And near Mars, right around now, if you pull out some nice binoculars in a dark sky or a small telescope, there's actually Uranus. So if you're looking for a fun little challenge, check out Uranus, which is marginally naked-eyed, but not really. Also, we've got that Antares occultation of the moon coming up in a couple weeks. occultation of the moon coming up in a couple weeks. On May 23rd

and 24th, the moon will pass in front of the star Antares as seen from various places on the Earth. Check out our website for a link. Excuse me, did you say the Earth? I did say the Earth. I thought so. I once had a professor who used to say some combination between Earth and Earth, and I could never quite

figure out how to combine the TH and the F into this strange interim sound. Okay, don't mind me. I'm sorry. Just go right ahead. Earthman. Earthman. So make sure you check out Marf in the pre-dawn sky.

Moving on to Random Space Fact. The sun hangs out in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years across. It takes 100,000 years for light to travel across the galaxy. Big. Yeah, indeed. Indeedy-doo. Lots of room. All right, on to our trivia contest.

We asked you, what do you call that cloud, for lack of a better term, of comets that surround the solar system and are the source for long-period comets? What do we call that cloud? And it's got a really fun name. Can I say it, Matt? Yeah, please do. Okay, you want to try that again? Oort cloud. The Oort cloud.

The Oort cloud. How many of you got the hint last week? A lot of people told us they got the hint when we were saying, uh-oh, uh-oh, because it's O-O-R-T. Yeah. That was you, Matt. Well, it was me, yeah. Yeah, you're the one who gives the hint. O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O people entered. Our winner is Nate Sanders. Nate Sanders from Michigan. I'd love to say the name of his town, but I can't remember how. So St. Marie? Salt St. Marie? Sue St. Marie? Anyway,

he's from Michigan, and he is going to get a beautiful solar sail poster because he did come up with the right answer. He said the cloud is actually about 25% of the way from our sun to Proxima Centauri, So it's very far out there indeed. He's probably talking about the outer reaches. Yeah, the outer reaches. It goes way out there. Some of these are out at 100,000 AU. AU is the distance between the Earth and sun.

Pluto, for reference, is at 40 AU. So we've got the Kuiper Belt, which is about 40 or 50 AU out to 80 AU, which we think is the source of short-period comets, things that are like 200 years or less. Some of these comets out in the Oort cloud have periods that are a million years. Wow. Wow. What do you got for us next week?

Well, I'd like people to tell me, what is the farthest object you can see with your naked eye? Huh. What is the farthest object you can see with your naked eye. What is the farthest object you can see with the naked eye? Go to planetary.org slash radio and find out how to give us your answer and to win another fabulous solar sail poster. And you've got until the 16th of May at 2 p.m. Pacific time. May 16, 2 p.m. Pacific time.

Pacific. Pacific. I'll be specific. Pacific time to get us that response. That was Pacific. Are we done? I think we're done. Wow.

That just felt like no time at all. It's always fun. It was quick. Yeah, yeah. Okay, everyone, go out there. Look up at the night sky and think about how the relativity of time affects you. Thank you. Good night.

That was Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Each week he's here on Planetary Radio bringing us, What's Up? There's Nothing Else Like It on Earth. Planetary Radio is a production of the Planetary Society. We'll be back next week in the real world of space exploration.

Live long and prosper prosper won't you