Terry Matalas On Whether the Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Computer Will Sound Like Majel Barrett
Terry Matalas.
JANUARY 27, 2023 - Watching Star Trek in any of its various forms from the ‘80s through the ‘90s, one thing was a constant. Majel Barrett Roddenberry (wife of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry) was the voice of the ship’s computer, as well as the station Deep Space Nine. (She also played the original Number One in the first pilot, the heart-struck nurse Chapel in TOS, and Lwaxana Troi in TNG and DS9.)
As we’ve come to know by now, (and if you don’t, well, you’re just not paying attention) the upcoming Star Trek: Picard season 3 will bring back many elements of TNG. We’re getting the return of Worf, La Forge, Troi, and Dr. Crusher. Terry Matalas has promised the show will bring back the flagship vessel, the USS Enterprise, though it will be the Big F, not the Big E.
Though we’ve learned that when Captain Worf and his guests speak to the Enterprise computer, it won’t be the familiar TNG voice from Majel Barrett Roddenberry that responds. Matalas clarified questions posed on Twitter that the ship computers will be voiced by different actors, with one voicing Starfleet ships and another for civilian ships. Not everyone was happy.
I'm not usually in the "change bad!" camp, but I'm oddly disappointed by this. With the hours of available lines and deepfake there's no way you couldn't keep Majel, even if you altered it to reflect the evolution of AI in Starfleet. TOS-->TNG-->Picard could have been beautiful
— Dave (@webmonkeydave) January 16, 2023
Time & money. Or I can spend that bringing back a legacy character onscreen. Fans may not love to hear this: TV shows actually have a finite amount of time & resources. You can’t dial up some subpar deepfake on a website and call it a day. If you’re going to do it, do it right.
— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) January 16, 2023
Matalas is defending the decision by letting the fans know that he’s trying to do right by Trekkers. Because even an important show like Picard has “a finite amount of time & resources,” he has to pick and choose what he can include. (Barrett Roddenberry sadly passed in 2008.)
The J.J. Abrams movies, which had a considerably larger budget than its small screen cousins, had various actors for the ship’s computers, even going so far from the template as to include a male voice in the form of comedian and actor Bill Hader.
Still, some will inevitably be very disappointed by it, wishing that Matalas would have used the resources he had to bring the (entire) cast back together. The team hopes that fans will be happy with what they did spend the money on, such as Worf’s arc where he will carry a Klingon sword called a “Kur’leth,” designed by Bat’leth creator Dan Curry. It cost the production team a bit, pulling him out of the ‘90s to create a brand new Klingon battle blade. (Say that five times fast)
Star Trek: Picard season 3 debuts on Feb. 16 on Paramount+. For more information on this and a few more tidbits, set thrusters to full and head over to DenofGeek.com.
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