Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Holographic Doctors and Galileo's Daughter: A Visit With Robert Picardo

Episode Date: September 8, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Music Mars is receding and school has begun, which is why you need a new Planetary Radio show more than ever. Hello again, everyone. We're back with Public Radio's half hour devoted to space exploration. I'm Matt Kaplan. This week, a visit with the Starship Voyager's sometimes cranky doctor. It may have been actor Robert Picardo's most famous role,

but there's much more to this talented fellow who cares deeply about our destiny in the solar system and beyond. We'll begin our visit with him right after Emily visits beautiful Blue Uranus. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, why is Uranus's face so bland? Unlike the brightly colored atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter, Uranus's atmosphere appears to be a muted, serene blue. However, the atmospheres of all of the giant planets are actually very similar.

All of the giant planet atmospheres are organized into horizontal bands of varying color and brightness. These horizontal band structures are thought to result from atmospheric convection caused by a balance between the heating of the atmosphere from above by the Sun and from below by internal heat sources. Giant Jupiter and Saturn have a large internal heat supply and so have active, bright colored atmospheres, but muted Uranus has virtually no internal heat. Strangely, Neptune, which is very similar to Uranus in size and composition, does have a strong internal heat source. The

combination of its strong internal heat source and relatively small size makes Neptune the windiest giant planet with wind speeds approaching the speed of sound over 500 meters per second or over 6,000 miles per hour. So within all this drama, Uranus indeed seems to be a very boring place. But that may change soon. Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out why. Radio to find out why. Please state the nature of the medical emergency. That may mean nothing to you, but Star Trek fans know the emergency medical hologram

has just materialized out of thin air. Accomplished actor Robert Picardo played that role on Voyager for seven years. You may remember him as Dr. Dick Richard on China Beach, or Mr. Cutlip on The Wonder Years, or from more than 50 movie appearances.

But his latest role has him directing a very special stage performance on behalf of the Planetary Society. An evening with Galileo and his daughter will mark the spectacular end of the Galileo spacecraft as it crashes into Jupiter. We met at Picardo's home to talk about this event, the benefit performance, that is, not the spacecraft, and whether holographic doctors dream of half-cyborg women.

Bob Picardo, how did you get roped into directing this staged reading of Galileo's Daughter? Well, Matt, I've been on the advisory board of the Planetary Society for about five years now. I did one of their last fundraisers, an evening of Ray Bradbury pieces that we were honored to have Mr. Bradbury there. It was, of course, a celebration of his birthday as well. And that was a very successful event. They had wonderful people participating, and I was proud to be part of that. And they asked this time, since there wasn't a role for me in the show, if I would consider directing it.

So this time I'm directing An Evening with Galileo and His Daughter, based on the best-selling book by Davis Sobel. Ms. Sobel will also function as our narrator in the piece, and it will star John Rhys-Davies and Linda Pearl. That's quite a cast. That certainly is. Linda Pearl is an actress I've been friends with since I worked with her some 20 years ago, and she's really a tremendous talent. And of course, John Rhys Davies is also just an extraordinary, not only an actor, but just a wonderfully educated man who's a pleasure to be around. And he projects all of that intellectual fire that you would hope for Galileo.

You and these two actors are incredibly busy people. In fact, we catch you now just before you have to be back at the studio, I think. I have a night shoot tonight for a new TV series I'm working on called Lion's Den. So I'll be on the back lot until about three tomorrow morning. I want to come back to that TV career that you've had, a very successful one. But this fact that you are so busy

and Linda Pearl and John Rhys-Davies are so busy, that's making it a bit more of a challenge to pull off this special program. It certainly is. Just finding out what city we were all in at any given time was pretty exciting, although I have to admit that Mr. Davies has the most exciting itinerary, bouncing from South Africa to now he's back in England or Australia, finishing post-production on the third installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He's been the hardest one to track down. But Linda Pearl is also starting an international theater festival in Denver, which is a very exciting project. She's been committing a lot of her time, too. And I have been working on both the Lion's Den television series and Stargate, which is a competitor to Star Trek, so I am, in fact, fraternizing with the enemy. As I said, we do want to talk about that career you've had since I'm –

it's no secret to this audience I think I'm an old-time Star Trek fan, as is the rest of my family, and we always felt bad for the EMH because it never quite got together with Seven of Nine, but we'll have to explain what all that means. The EMH, I mean, mention that, and then we'll come back and talk about Galileo's daughter some more. My character on Voyager was a computer-generated, holographically projected doctor, the emergency medical hologram. He was designed primarily for emergency medical use.

I prefer to think of him as a satire of managed health care. His bedside manner left something to be desired, and he also worked as quickly as he could so that he could get rid of his patients and go back to his real interests in life, which were opera, literature, music, and chasing the occasional gorgeous blonde in a cat suit. Although I'd say his health care was a good deal more effective than a lot of the HMOs deliver nowadays. Well, he was the embodiment of everything we know about medicine in the 24th century,

so he certainly had an edge. He's a pretty smart guy. And this was a hologram with heart. As you say, he got to sing opera. He was in a holographic version of Beowulf once. That's right. He had to be a first on broadcast TV. He did like to be, he was the hero of his own fantasies. He had a very, for hologram, he had a very active fantasy life. He was constantly trying to expand not only his abilities relative to his job as a crew member aboard Voyager, but also to, you know, he aspired to having some of the other exciting things

that his organic crewmates had in life, like, you know, fantasies, daydreams. He even wanted to be able to sample things like real food, which, of course, he couldn't do as a hologram. He didn't have the stomach for it, literally. So to speak. So he had to, you know, he had to have the holographic stomach upgrade, those kind of things. And a bit of romance, too, or at least sort of a wistful hoping for, maybe, with Jerry Ryan, who played Seven of Nine.

We had a bit of a Henry Higgins, Liza Doolittle relationship where I mentored her in how to act appropriately in social situations. And, of course, when we got to the area of having a date during her leisure time as a crew person, I, of course, got to stand in for the gentleman that she was on a date with so that she could learn that kind of behavior. And in so doing, I became quite smitten with her, that kind of behavior. And in so doing, I became quite smitten with her,

although it remained a secret in my heart that I didn't confess to her until the very end of our run in season seven. A cyborg and a hologram. Perfect match. They're both technologically created, or at least she, at least semi. But I think that who better to understand both her technological and her physiological needs.

At least that was the pitch I gave her. Now, I have two fairly young daughters. I'm told they're a little bit older than your two daughters, but they're old enough that they were able to get in on Voyager from the start. Actually, they go back to watching Next Generation and had a great time watching that, the end of the run to that series. Well, you must have got them started pretty young. I did.

Because when Voyager premiered, my younger daughter Gina, who is now 11, was only just under four. In fact, in the second episode, the doctor's program malfunctioned, and I was shrunk down to sort of a squat fire hydrant-sized hologram. And I remember my daughter watching the show mystified. Went, ooh, daddy gets small, daddy gets small. And then she turned to me and went, do it, daddy, do it. Like I had this command of parlor tricks

that I hadn't shown her yet. And my older daughter was still old enough to ask me the question after the first half season of Voyager. She said, why do you have to drive to the studio, daddy? Why doesn't the ship fly over and beam you on? And I said, honey, it's time to come visit the set. So they were at the beginning of the show, they were quite taken with the magic of the future. And then, of course, after many years of Dad being on Star Trek, they became quite blasé about it. We should mention that you never did get a name.

No, I spent seven years playing a character with no name. It was kind of my fault because the original concept was that I was going to name myself after my programmer, Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the guy who created the Emergency Medical Holic Man. Who you also played in at least one episode. That's right. I played the man that created the program and, of course, based it on his own physical parameters.

Early in the first season, when we were about to go on the air, we had been doing several shows where I was saying I would like to have a name. I asked our captain, played by Kate Mulgrew, to have the freedom to select a name for myself. I said to our producer, are we going to play that storyline for a number of shows? He said yes. And I said, well, aren't we going to kind of give it away? If you refer to me in the opening credits as Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, aren't we killing the suspense as to what name I will eventually select? And he agreed.

And so they remade my opening credit in the show and changed it from Doc Zimmerman to The Doctor. And therein we began seven years of indecisive computer program jokes where the computer program couldn't decide what he wanted to be called, Windows 2400. Yeah, I was going to say the rest was future or is future history. Andre Bourmanis, who was then science advisor to Voyager and helping out with a lot of shows, said that you were a tremendous help with your character because you had a medical background or a pre-med background before you went into this other business. That's true.

I went to Yale as a biology major, and to my mother's eternal chagrin, I shifted to my hobby, which was theater, but with her blessing. Of course, with some irony, I have played television doctors for 11 years, counting my four-year stint on China Beach. So there's been some vicarious thrill, I suppose, to that, since that had been my childhood ambition to be a real doctor. And of course, as a television doctor, you don't have to carry malpractice insurance, which is a tremendous savings. which is a tremendous savings. But Andre was a great friend and continues to be.

But during my run on the show, we chatted quite a lot, and if I had any questions about any of the medical tech or any of the future tech that we did on Voyager, I could call and have a discussion with him. I sometimes caught him up on a couple of medical or anatomical inaccuracies, and he was very gracious, admitting his defeat. And he also began my involvement with the Planetary Society, for which I'm very grateful. He got me involved with the event that I mentioned earlier, the fundraiser for an evening with Ray Bradbury,

and that began a long and very happy association with a very worthwhile organization. Which is a great place for us to stop for a moment and take a quick break and then come back and talk about that relationship with the society and the event that's coming up in just a couple of weeks as this program begins to air. And that, of course, is this program, Galileo and His Daughter, which will be at the Pasadena Playhouse, I believe, on the 22nd. That's right. We'll talk a bit more about that later. I just want to get in one more thing before the break.

The other way my daughters know you, after they met you as the EMH on Voyager, was Coach Cutlip. Coach Cutlip on the Wonder Years. Great dialogue. The jockstrap. What is it? What can it do for you? Planetary Radio will be right back with Bob Picardo. 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 Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio where our special guest is Robert Picardo, Bob Picardo of Stage Screen, Small and Large. We were talking mostly about your background on Voyager, but we got into Wonder Years and you mentioned China Beach. but we got in the Wonder Years, and you mentioned China Beach. We had just talked about your relationship with Andre Bourmanis, science advisor on Voyager,

and how he got you into the Planetary Society. That's right. I got a call after this evening with Ray Bradbury from Louis Friedman, one of the founders of the Planetary Society, asking me to be on the advisory board. And I said, you know, Louis, I'm really not a scientist. I've just played one on TV. But then again, look, in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a governor, and yet he may be one. So the fact that I'm posing as a scientist is not quite so ridiculous when you think about the wonderful, wacky world we live in. But of course, he was asking me to join primarily because of my access to science fiction audiences at personal appearances

where I go to talk about Star Trek. I suspect it was more than that, but I'm sure that was a plus. Well, it's a plus that I get to see all sorts of people who love Star Trek and love dreaming about the future and say, hey, how much do you know about the current state of planetary exploration? And wouldn't it be wonderful to find out about that as well? Because there are some, if you think that's exciting on Star Trek, then you're bound to find this exciting as well. It's really been a great marriage. It's an opportunity for me to talk about it at public events

and hopefully try to woo some of the sci-fi audience over to real science. And I've been proud, proud to be part of it and very excited about the different projects I've taken part in, mainly Red Rover Goes to Mars, which was an educational project for kids. Which you did a video for the Planetary Society. Yes, I did a public service announcement right on the Star Trek set, for which I am eternally grateful to Rick Berman and our producers for giving me the opportunity to do that. And that was a very, very successful program,

and there are new programs for students that the Planetary Society sponsors. Those students actually got to give commands to the Mars Global Surveyor as to where to conduct, you know, to pick sites, to photograph regions for sample collection. And those kids were actually giving commands to the spacecraft. I saw some of those images, and some of them even surprised some of the scientists. They really picked very well, apparently. Well, that's because they're the future Mars walkers. Those are the guys that those kids are going to grow up and set foot on the planet.

So it's exciting to see the level of their interest and wisdom at this point in their lives. So you brought all that to your involvement on the advisory board, but I'll bet Lou Friedman and maybe you didn't suspect that you would be able to bring some of your other life skills and talents. I'm not aware of any other life skills and talents. Well, let me remind you. Yes. You're going to be at the Pasadena Playhouse in about two weeks after this show. Oh, of course, what we're here to talk about today.

That thing. How about that for a good segue. Yes, I will be there directing this reading of this wonderful piece. It's brand new. It's adapted from a best-selling historical book called Galileo and His Daughter. It stars two wonderful actors. It's a short piece, probably about 45 minutes long, but it's a dialogue that Davis Sobel, the author of the book,

has created from culling various works of Galileo's own that he wrote and interspersing them with letters that his daughter wrote to him from the convent that are so, so beautiful, both in their language and in the passion of her commitment, both to him as a loving daughter, but also as a follower of God. I mean, the most inspirational kind of language. It's really thrilling to juxtapose his passion for discovery and the genius this man had

and all of the things that he saw for the first time in human history and how moved and excited he was with his own discoveries with her own, to juxtapose those with her own passion for her life as tiny and small and contained as it was

because of her belief. So it's really quite a moving evening. I'm delighted with our two actors. I'm delighted that it's for the Planetary Society. And I think as much as anything, I'm delighted that it's in the historical Pasadena Playhouse, which is our state theater of California. It is an absolute gem.

I love this theater. I've performed there twice myself. You just were on the stage there just recently. About a year ago, I starred in a musical called A Class Act, which had played on Broadway the previous season. I love this theater. I'm very grateful to the Pasadena Playhouse for offering us the theater for such a worthy function. And I'd like to thank Sheldon Epps and Tom Ware and everyone at the Playhouse for being so terrific and so supportive for such a wonderful organization as the Planetary Society. I'm a cheerleader for the Planetary Society.

That's what I do. And it's not simply because I look good in shorts. It's because I believe that the more people find out about our efforts in space and our future efforts in space, I mean, the exciting things like the launch of the solar sail project and all these things that are going on that most people don't know about it and when they hear about them by consulting the Planetary Society website or getting a copy of Planetary magazine, they're just amazed at what we're working on.

So you have a great venue for this program. You have a terrific cast. You are obviously quite inspired by the material that will be performed. It's a wonderful book. As others have said before me when the book was reviewed, it brings history alive and gives us a new prism with which to look at a genius like Galileo, to see the human dimension of viewing him through the eyes of his daughter. And also the language is so beautiful.

That was what was most thrilling to me, to read the daughter's letters from her convent. Her love for her father, her admiration and support of her father, but also her love for her creator and her feelings about the Almighty are so vivid in her language that I've been leaving the book lying around so that my 11- and 14-year-old daughter will say worshipful things about, first of all, their father, but then their other father as well, their father in heaven. So it's really wonderful to see this brought to life

and to see a man like Galileo in a way that you couldn't possibly get from a regular history book. So you are bringing something wonderful to the work of the Planetary Society, I would say. Scientist or not, there is the aesthetic side that I think is also to be appreciated. Yes, the material definitely struck an emotional chord in me

and made me say, yes, okay, I'd like to do this, even though I haven't directed in theater for many years, and that's not my regular job. I said I feel strongly enough about this material that I want to be part of this event. I can't wait to see it. We are out of time, Bob Picardo, and I need to let you get off to the studio. That's right. What was the name of that new show that you're working on? It's called Lion's Den, starring Rob Lowe.

It's a legal drama. It's Lowe. It's a legal drama. It's very exciting. It's a legal drama and a thriller kind of rolled in one, and it will be on Sunday nights at 10 o'clock on NBC. Wonderful. We'll look forward to seeing you there. Thanks very much for welcoming us into your home, and we'll see you again, I guess, on September 22nd for Galileo and His Daughter

at the historic Pasadena Playhouse. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Uranus is the most bland of the four giant planets, with hardly any internal heat and little obvious banding in its atmosphere. But the balance between internal heat and external heat may be changing right now. Uranus's rotational axis is the most tilted of all of the planets. It is tilted 98 degrees. As a result of this nearly horizontal tilt,

its south pole has been pointed at the Sun and its north pole away from the Sun for the past few decades. But it is now approaching an equinox, which will occur in 2007. At that time, both hemispheres will receive equal illumination from the Sun. Planetary astronomers have begun monitoring Uranus using every available wavelength of light in order to detect seasonal change in the planet's cloud cover. We won't have conclusive information for several years, but initial hints are that Uranus may undergo some interesting changes. Stay tuned.

Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now, here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. More Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up with the Planetary Society's Director of Projects, Bruce Betts. Bruce, welcome back. Why, thank you very much. Excited to be here as always.

As always. And as always, you've got some great information for us. Where do we start? We start where we started recently, at Mars. Look up in the night sky, see Mars. Rises still around sunset, sets around sunrise. You can see it very easily. Still brighter than any star in the sky.

Brightest object up there except the moon. Go see it. The only, speaking of the brighter object, the moon. Mars will be near the moon on both the nights of the 8th and the 9th. So Monday and Tuesday evening. If for some reason you just can't find the moon Or can't find Mars Because they're too bright They'll be near each other You can find them together

Because they're too bright I'm going to work that one out before we finish But go ahead Contrary to certain radio hosts They are too bright Oh, I didn't mean you, Matt Anyway, moving right along You can also see Saturn in the early morning.

We'll get back with more details as it gets easier to see. Jupiter, if you just have an incredibly flat horizon, you can see right before sunrise. But I just stick with Mars for another week or two, and then we'll start moving to the giant planets. And remember, if you can get to a telescope with Mars, that would be great, because you can see the south polar cap. You can still find a lot of events going on on our website at planetary.org slash marswatch2003. I read that tens of thousands of people showed up at one of the events that we were pushing on that Mars Watch section just here in L.A., up where the Griffith Observatory is not even open at the moment because it's being renovated.

There were so many people disappointed just standing around in the dark with nothing. No. Yes, tens of thousands of people have shown up to various Griffith Observatory events. We've gotten feedback from some of the 330 events that were part of our Mars watch. Wow. And every one of them is coming back with, if they expected 50 people, they got 500. If they expected 500, they got 5,000. On to this week in space history.

A little bit more Mars, because we just can't get enough these days. September 9, 1975, Viking 2 was launched. And on September 11, 1997, Mars Global Surveyor arrived at Mars. Mars Global Surveyor, now six years later, still functioning wonderfully, providing incredible images, altimetry data, and other data of Mars. I'm shocked. I didn't realize that Mars Global Surveyor had been there anywhere near that long. If you'd asked me, I would have said, oh, in three, four years.

Amazing photos that it continues to return. Really has revolutionized our view of the planet with the various instruments that are on board. Random space fact! Mariner 10 is the only spacecraft to have visited poor, lonely Mercury. And it did a set of clever flybys, but left us seeing

only half the planet. A planet only half explored by Mariner 10. That will be rectified in coming years with the Messenger spacecraft from one of the NASA Discovery missions that should be launched this coming year. And then there's a European plan for BepiColombo, a spacecraft later in this decade, to launch. There's a name I hadn't heard yet. What was that once again?

BepiColombo. I apologize to all of those who know how to pronounce it. There was a children's show with a similar name in Los Angeles when I was a little kid. Let's just say it's named after that. Beppi Colombo. Of course it's not. I don't want to make fun of our extremely talented and resourceful European friends, but some of those things do sound kind of funny in English.

And there's nothing wrong with kids' shows, darn it? No, not at all. All right. How about we move on to the trivia contest and try to work our way out of this Mercury conundrum? Moving to Mars, our trivia question last week. Mars Exploration Rover B, the Opportunity Rover, is going to Meridiani Planum on Mars. Why? What mineral was observed from orbit that caused intrigue about that location? We have, I'm pretty sure, a past

winner who has picked it up again this week, randomly chosen from everybody who submitted the correct answer. It is Dominic Turley. Dominic, congratulations. He hails from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. And he says Opportunity is going to the Meridiani site because it appears to be loaded with hematite, a mineral deposit that could be indicative of... Now, he puts ancient hot springs, and I guess there are other possible water-related explanations,

but that's what he put. And the reason, indeed, that we're excited about hematite that was observed from Mars Global Surveyor, the Thermal Emission Spectrometer, is that it is associated almost always with formation in the presence of liquid water, liquid water being one of the holy grails for Mars of figuring out where it was in the past and present. And so the Mars Exploration Rovers, as robotic geologists, will be equipped to study and try to learn about the past history of liquid water on Mars.

Well, Dominic, that was good enough to get you a Mars 3D poster, which will be in the mail to you soon. Bruce, we're almost out of time. We better hurry on to the next trivia question next week. All right. For next week, question about an upcoming NASA mission, one that truly is in the spirit of demolition derbies, junkyard wars, a number of exciting, say, testosterone-inducing type activities. The spacecraft is going to slam a roughly 500-pound ball of copper into a comet,

make a big hole in the comet. There actually is a reason for this besides just fun, because it exposes the lower layers of the comet. The surface of a comet is highly altered. We'll come back and talk more about it next week. My question for you, what's the name of this mission? And if you don't know the name, what should have been the name of this mission? Oh, that's a good one.

I'm glad. Let's get some entertaining answers, folks, and some accurate ones, some correct ones as well. How do people get those to us, Bruce? Go to planetary.org and follow the links to Planetary Radio, and you can enter our contest. And that was short and succinct, and we're done with What's Up for this week. Oh. It's all right.

We'll be back next Monday. Oh, good. Look up in the night sky and think about Squi Squi. Okay. I think that was a kid's show in L.A., too. No, but it is. There are words that my kids made up, and it was just a shameless plug for them. Thank you very much.

Thank you, and good night. Bruce Betts, excellent father and director of projects for the Planetary Society based in Pasadena, California. I love you guys. He's here with us every week with What's Up. We're out of time. Remember that you can hear this and all our past shows at the Planetary Society's website, planetary.org.

That's where you can also learn more about An Evening with Galileo and His Daughter at the Pasadena Playhouse on September 22nd. Thanks for listening and have a great week.