In this SPACE.com exclusive Dispatch From Andromeda, Don Lipper speaks with Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda co-executive producer and head writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe about one of the biggest characters to hit science fiction, the Andromeda Ascendant.
SPACE.com: How’s the past week of shooting been?
Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Great! The whole crew is mostly over the flu. And Lexa has finally wrapped Friday the 13th, Part X. So she’s here. Our whole family is now together.
SC: Was Friday the 13th shooting late?
RHW: No, we always knew that we wouldn’t have Lexa until the second week of production. So it wasn’t a surprise. We had always planned to sort of shoot around that a little bit.
SC: This may seem like a weird question but is she going to be on camera?
RHW: Yes. Quite a bit. In many different ways.
SC: What do you mean?
RHW: She has several different modes when she interacts with the crew. One with basically her face on screen. One as a hologram, semi-transparent standing in various places around the ship. And then there’s also Andromeda androids which do not look like Lexa, but have Lexa’s voice. There’s the voice of the ship itself, which is again Lexa’s voice.
And then eventually there will be a human-looking solid body. But we don’t have that yet for any of the shows that we’ve done so far. That will come along in time.
SC: Presumably Lexa has her own body, doesn’t she, that you could use?
RHW: Well, yes. That would be the body that we would use. It will be Lexa playing the human incarnation of the ship.
SC: Would that be a droid?
RHW: Well -- if you cut it, I don’t think it bleeds. But, she has droid-like bodies (if that word isn’t actually trademarked by LucasFilm). In addition to that, one of her bodies will be indistinguishable at a glance, or even probably at a touch, from a human.
SC: Usually most science fiction has a single computer/human character but this series seems to have a many artificial intelligence entities in various forms. Could you elaborate on that a little more?
RHW: Most of her internal components have to a varying degree, some level of self-actualization, artificial intelligence, semi-sentience. Ranging from a very smart computer program such as, "I am a 30-second bomb and my job in life is to explode" to very sophisticated android-type bodies that can function fully independently that she can possess by an act of will and remote control. So she can become one of her androids, for all intents and purposes and she can even become multiple androids at the same time and do things like play chess against herself and not know which one’s going to win. That kind of thing.
SC: What can you tell me about her character?
RHW: Well, she’s an officer in the military. She’s basically a warship, a ship of the line of the Systems Commonwealth who was born and raised to be that. Her body is a kilometer long and usually has 4,000 people running around inside it, so she’s very competent and confident and a very strong personality. At the same time she’s very caring toward her charges, the people inside of her. She’s proud of what she can do and she likes her job. [Laughs.]
SC: Is there a wistful, sort of Pinocchio-like quality to her?
RHW: In that, "I wish I was a real boy"?
SC: Right.
RHW: No. What’s the point? Who would want to be a real boy when you can be a 3,000-foot long warship? [Laughs.] When she wants to be a real boy she has any number of ways to incarnate into human form and be that way. But it’s not like her whole quest in life is to be more human. She’s fully sentient. She’s as much a person, and by the laws of the Commonwealth and by everything she’s ever been raised to believe in she has no need to assimilate in with the human race. It’s all about diversity for her.
SC: What about her emotional make-up?
RHW: She has a much of a range of emotions as you or I. And [unlike Next Generation’s Data] she can use contractions too.
SC: [Laughing.] Oh, there you go. An important advance.
RHW: Oh, she’s very sophisticated. She feels all the same things you or I might feel, and she demonstrates them to the extent that she feels is appropriate, given her position.
SC: So, this is a ship that can cry, but doesn’t?
RHW: It certainly a ship that could feel sadness, and could feel the same emotions we could when we cry. Now there really isn’t anything about her that could shed physical tears, but she certainly can have those feelings. Whether she would choose to share those feelings with people is not a question, but she certainly has them. She certainly feels sadness.
SC: Now that brings up the point that with all these different incarnations, Andromeda has the potential to be sort of schizophrenic.
RHW: Well, yeah in the same way that your computer is schizophrenic when it’s running multiple applications. It’s not an unhealthy schizophrenia, it’s actually a multi-tasking function more than anything else.
SC: But in the case you were talking about where the three incarnations are arguing about a course of action….
RHW: But it’s the kind of conversation you might have with yourself in the mirror. You know?
SC: So does Andromeda actually need her human crew?
RHW: Yes! Yes! Definitely! A couple things. The major thing she cannot do is she cannot guide the ship when it’s moving faster than light. So right away, that’s a huge reason why she needs a human crew. The other thing is that if you have only one thing, or one system, controlling this entire starship and that one thing gets destroyed, then you’re in a lot of trouble. So while she can run the entire ship by herself, she does it mostly as a backup system. It’s much safer in some ways to have 4,000 lifeforms running the ship than one.
SC: What’s her relationship with Dylan like?
RHW: It’s very much a kind of partnership, in a way. The way that the Commonwealth command structure is set up, the AIs actually don’t have a rank on the ship. They’re not in the command structure, so there’s always an organic sentient who is ultimately in command of the ship. So they’re more like warrant officers in a military structure. She is an expert in her field, but she’s not actually in command of the ship. So it’s really his job to make those kinds of command decisions and her job to carry them out. But they have a very, very close working relationship. How much more close could you get, in a working relationship, than a captain and his ship?
SC: How long have they worked together?
RHW: Three years.
SC: Now, you mentioned [elsewhere] that there are female ships and male ships. Does that lead to Andromeda having any romances with other ships?
RHW: All things are possible in the eventuality of time. [Laughing.] Or to quote the magic 8-ball, "Answer cloudy. Ask again later."
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