Majel Barrett Roddenberry has her hands full. In addition to bringing Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda to the small screen, she’s recently announced a partnership with comic book legend Stan Lee and famed Japanese visualist, director and writer Leiji Matsumoto ("Gundam", "Yamato") to produce an animated series just for the web.

This latest opus to emerge from the (Gene) Roddenberry archives is Starship, the story of "young human scientist and a brash alien commander who must work together on the Starship ECO-1, despite their personal differences, to combat intergalactic ecological disasters." SPACE.com’s Don Lipper spoke with Mrs. Roddenberry about the three non-Trek Roddenberry-inspired TV series in development.

SPACE.com: What are the Gene Roddenberry archives like at this point?

Majel Barrett Roddenberry: They’re all mixed up with everything he wrote for 30-40 years.

SPACE.com: And they’re a bunch of notebooks and boxes?

MBR: Notebooks and notes and it goes back to whenever he started them. Just stuff that he finished and then put down and didn’t bother to go back and pick up again.

SPACE.com: And how much material have you looked at? Have you looked at all of it?

MBR: No, I haven’t. Good Lord, no. It would take me forever to look at all of it. But the pieces that I pick up, I kind of put together and find out if I have a whole project, and then I offer it to somebody. Or if I don’t have a whole project, or if he’s got one there that I know that he’s done and I’ve seen them do it, I just offer it as it is.

Andromeda was offered as it was. There was only about one or two sentences -- or four sentences anyway -- in it. And it just said that it’s a spaceship that hasn’t been operational for 300 years and when it wakes up, its head guy is way behind the times. So he wants to go find his family, and he wants to rebuild the Commonwealth.

SPACE.com: So you collaborated with Robert Hewitt Wolfe? What was that like?

MBR: I just gave him all the stuff that I had here from a bunch of [different projects], some that were pieces of Andromeda and Starship, but beyond that the stories that were actually used in [Roddenberry’s failed series pilots] Planet Earth and Genesis [for specific episode outlines].

[But we have to update the science in the stories because] everything has changed so much, you realize that in the 30 years since these things were written, a lot has changed. Some of it will be recognizable, some will not be recognizable. We’re certainly not hanging on to the science in the stories. We’re so far advanced beyond that. And we can just go through and pick up some of the stories that he had and apply them to [the new shows]. The stories are the important part because they promote the advancement of the people.

SPACE.com: About your role as an actress on Earth: Final Conflict where you’re one of the sympathizers with the resistance, are we going to be seeing more of you in the next season?

MBR: I would guess you’ll see me in one this next season. But after that, there’s too many other things to do.

SPACE.com: What other projects do you have going?

MBR: I still have the two that you mentioned, Earth: Final Conflict, Andromeda -- and Starship. And I’d like to perhaps do something, if we get to the live action version of Starship.

SPACE.com: Are you going to be appearing in Andromeda?

MBR: Probably not.

SPACE.com: Have you been overseeing any of the production on Andromeda or have you been pretty much hands off?

MBR: I’ve been awful lot of hands off on that. We’ve got people up there who are absolutely capable of taking care of all the day-by-day stuff that goes by. Kevin [Sorbo] is there and I would trust Kevin with my life, so I don’t see any need to go any further.

SPACE.com: What about the Star Trek franchise? What’s your involvement with that these days?

MBR: I have absolutely nothing to do with the Star Trek franchise.

SPACE.com: So Paramount hasn’t spoken to you about the next series at all?

MBR: No, they haven’t.

SPACE.com: You know that George Takei is heading up the Excelsior campaign?

MBR: Yeah, he has been for many years.

SPACE.com: Right. What do you think about Excelsior as the next series?

MBR: I don’t see it as a real strong possibility myself, but more power to him.

SPACE.com: And as far as the next Trek movie, they don’t talk to you about that at all?

MBR: They don’t have anything to say to me about it. I don’t think they’re that far ahead on that anyway.

SPACE.com: Starship is a new avenue for you -- working online -- and you’re working with Stan Lee, one of the great creative minds. What’s that like?

MBR: That’s wonderful because Stan and I actually think alike an awful lot.

SPACE.com: How so?

MBR: Everything we say, everything I say in the speeches that I’ve given and so on, he said "that’s amazing because that’s exactly what I said on my last speech somewhere." He said when we do these things in proximity to each other, we’ll have to get together.

SPACE.com: Now, online is a new medium for everyone, but it’s a new medium especially for you, because you’ve dealt with television and film. What’s it like, do you feel like you’re in television in the '50s?

MBR: It’s the same thing. [The new digital cameras on] Earth: Final Conflict have proved very sharp, very beautiful. It’s lovely, as a matter of fact, if we use that same kind of quality and we get these little webisodes, as we’re calling them. They’re five to seven minute pieces of material. We’re going to end up with some very exciting -- and these will have an arc to it -- very exciting stuff.

SPACE.com: Is that the project that you’re most excited about?

MBR: I think right now, yeah, to see all that happen as a webisode is "real," with animated characters which will come alive as people.

~

SPACE.com: Are there people, you or your assistants, going through the Gene Roddenberry archives? Just one page at a time?

MBR: Yes, one at a time.

SPACE.com: You’re keeping your plate full, executive-producing three series simultaneously. You don’t want to give David Kelley a run for his money, do you?

MBR: He can do as many. He’s young, he’s got a beautiful wife, he’s having a ball, let him go ahead and do it.

SPACE.com: So you don’t have any other shows in development right now?

MBR: We’ve got another one which we haven’t got a name for, and we’re going to be more on the order of Planet Earth or Genesis II. So, you’ve got the two of them.

SPACE.com: So would there be revival of those two series then?

MBR: Yeah, except that we’ll probably not even end up calling them that, because we’ve taken some of those names and used them already. We’re not paying any attention to names. We’ve got the projects with the names that matter. So we just keep on going until we fit a whole bunch of things together, and whatever fits and whoever we get for it and so on, everything will be geared toward the people doing it.

SPACE.com: Will we see another The Questor Tapes?

MBR: Yes, I’m hoping for that too, there’s another one that’s ready to go.

SPACE.com: And you’re looking for these as series? So you could potentially have six series going on simultaneously?

MBR: I suppose so. They’d all be different, but they would hold on to the general theme. Gene’s theme.

SPACE.com: There are a lot of people, especially at conventions, who talk about Gene’s legacy. What do you see as Gene’s legacy?

MBR: I just see a better, kinder, more generous world opening up to each other and letting there be some kind of communications between us before we can ever dream of going out into the universe out there. It’s about finding beings that are intelligent and communicating with them instead of shooting all of the Indians. I don’t see that as a really bright future.

SPACE.com: So do you see yourself as a keeper of the flame?

MBR: Oh my, yeah. Oh yeah.

SPACE.com: But at the same time, Gene was an entertainer?

MBR: Yes. We hope these things will be entertaining, but that’s going to be really up to the people that we put it in the hands of because I can’t possibly write, period. And to write all these wonderful things, he left the ideas, he left the germinations, and he just said, "go after them. Go after them, go get them and make them exciting, make them do something more than I did."

SPACE.com: Did people ever call Gene the "Great Bird of the Galaxy" to his face?

MBR: Oh yeah. He didn’t mind that at all.

SPACE.com: So are you now the Great Hen?

MBR: I suppose you’d call it that.

SPACE.com: Just sort of incubating more projects?

MBR: Yeah but let’s hope I don’t lay any eggs.

SPACE.com: Well, good luck to you, and thank you very much for the time.