In this exclusive Dispatch from Andromeda, find out why Jar Jar Binks and his digital relatives won’t be appearing on the show any time soon, which sci-fi novelist is writing an episode and why pine trees are vitally important in this new TV universe.

Don Lipper speaks with Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda co-executive producer and head writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe about CGs, fees and trees.

SPACE.com: How’s shooting going?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Good, we’ve got three episodes in the can. And that’s really nice.

SC: Shot or through post?

RHW: Shot. Post will take quite a bit of time. It’s a complicated show.

SC: I assume you’re using mostly CG [computer generated effects].

RHW: All CG.

RHW: Not as regulars. No. We may later on a case-by-case basis. We have an episode where we’re examining the possibility of a CG character. But not on a regular basis -- it’s not quite there, at least not in our budget.

SC: Is it only money or are there other problems when you have a CG character?

RHW: It really is money. When I was on Deep Space Nine we got to a place, by season four, that the effects guys stopped telling us that they couldn’t do things, because they could really do anything. They started telling us how much things cost. [LAUGHS] Which is completely valid thing.

There is no longer anything that cannot be done. You really can do anything your imagination comes up with, but it will have a price tag. Do you want to put Brandon Lee digitally back into a movie? We can do that. Do you want Humphrey Bogart starring in your movie? We can do that too. It’s all about money. So as Star Wars showed, a CG character is completely doable, it’s strictly a question of cost. Right now it’s not something that is cost effective to do on a daily or weekly basis.

SC: And most likely you’d be looking at in terms of a monster rather than a character?

RHW: Well, we’ve got two stories where the possibility of a CG character is being considered. One is a monster thing and the other is more of a "character" character.

RHW: We haven’t done any cost analyses on it yet, so I don’t know. But I think if you take all the money we had for guests and all the money we had for CG for one episode and put them together, my suspicion is you still wouldn’t have enough money. Even if you threw in that episode’s prosthetics budget, you’d probably still need more to pull it off in a way that would be really cool, interesting and convincing, to get an actual performance and not just a monster. But we haven’t even come close to prepping those two episodes and neither one is written yet.

SC: Roughly what number would these episodes be?

SC: Any stories from the last two weeks of shooting?

RHW: Obviously we shot them out of order. We shot the first two episodes third and fourth. So for episode one, we had the entire original crew of the Andromeda on board. It was pretty cool to see the original crew in all its glory. [Editors note: Few members of the original Andromeda crew survive the first episode.] It was cool to see huge numbers of people on the set.

SC: Did Next Generation start out with that many heads?

RHW: No, we have the same number of alien heads that they had on Next Generation season one. We’ll build up that library of heads.

SC: When you’re showing the original crew, are you showing relationships that will echo later in the series?

RHW: Absolutely. We’re showing relationships that will continue throughout the series.

SC: So if someone from the original bridge crew is now gone, does another character from the new Andromeda universe psychically take that place?

RHW: I think there are definitely some compare and contrast opportunities between Dylan’s original crew and his new crew. Then of course just because that relationship may end in episode one doesn’t mean it will never be back again. In episode one there are many characters established that we will see again down the road.

SC: Do you have that planned out for season one or season two?

RHW: Everything unfolds in the fullness of time.

SC: What’s it like to have been shooting for almost a month? Have you got your rhythm?

RHW: Yeah the crew has always been great. We have some of the initial bugs ironed out. We‘re still addressing some of the other ones. A lot of the mystery and worry on a day-to-day basis has gone away.

SC: After a month, what are the differences for you between a station show and a ship show, from a production point of view?

RHW: From a production point of view there really isn’t that much of a difference. You’re still on your standing sets. We’re going out a little more often than we would’ve on Deep Space Nine.

We’re doing our first exterior show in episode five. Hopefully the weather will clear up; otherwise it will be a rainy planet. Which will work fine but matching shots will be a pain in the ass.

The logistics aren’t all that different. The logistics between doing a science fiction show and doing a cop show are huge because there’s so much more location and night shooting on a cop show whereas on a science fiction show you’re always on the sets.

SC: Do you have a "Planet Hell" set [the crew nickname given to the standing guest planet set on Star Trek soundstages]?

RHW: Yep but we haven’t named it. We call it "the corner of the stage with the rocks in it." [LAUGHS] We also discovered that in the Andromeda universe humans use Lodge Pole Pines as one of their primary terraforming plants. So a lot of planets have pine trees in our universe whereas a lot of planets were desert and scrub vegetation in the Star Trek universe. [LAUGHS] My reasoning is that if you are terraforming a planet and you want a large oxygen producing plant that is hearty and can survive in a wide variety of climates, what better plant than a pine tree?

SC: And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you’re shooting in Vancouver?

RHW: Oh nothing. It has nothing to do with the fact that we have several million acres of pine forest readily accessible from here.

SC: Which you moved in at great expense.

RHW: Yeah. They planted them special just for us. [LAUGHS]

SC: So you’re the first show to actually do terraforming here on Earth.

RHW: Exactly and I have to thank the BC Film Board for their willingness to plant large expanses of pine forest for our convenience.