Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Photo by Jean Marie Ward)

…did they get involved? Did Majel Roddenberry and Tribune actively seek their input?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: No. In the case of Paul Woodmansee, the guy who worked with [the Air Force Jet Propulsion Laboratory], I knew him from college. He's the one guy who didn't leave engineering. I wanted him as our science advisor. He's our science advisor.

You can look him up at Woodmansee.com. He's got a little column there called "Ask the Rocket Scientist," where he answers questions about rocket propulsion for school kids. It's really cool. He's a really good guy.

The other one, Ashley Edward Miller, I would say, was brought more by the Roddenberry name. Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek have a huge following among real scientists and real military people -- a very large following. A lot of these people are attracted to the shows.

This is a guy who, with his partner, wrote speculative episodes of Star Trek and had been on the fringes trying to get in and pitched a Star Trek: Voyager [script]. But they had never sold anything until they sold us a script. This is how people usually get jobs; they sold us a script off a pitch. They wrote the script, and it was good, so we hired them on the staff.

But it wasn't like [we hired them for their background]. What Ashley used to do is a nice added benefit. If he couldn't write, he wouldn't have gotten the job. But it is good to have someone -- everyone brings their life experiences to their job.

Crescent Blues: In the early days of Star Trek, people who were not already in the film industry, amateurs and aspiring writers could pitch story ideas to Gene Roddenberry and other members of his organization. Will the same apply to Andromeda?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: I would like it to, but that isn't as simple as the general perception would have it. What that requires is a large number of lawyers and a large number of professional readers to read the volume of material. We used to get a thousand spec episodes of Deep Space Nine a year, and it's impossible for the writing staff to read that volume of material. It all had to be screened by readers. We don't have the resources to do that right now. Whether we will be able to do that or not, it's impossible to know. It has a lot of benefits, and I think it is a wonderful thing. It also is a difficult thing to do. That's why no show other than Star Trek ever did it.

The crew of the Andromeda Ascendant -- (left to right) Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram), Seamus Harper (Gordon Michael Woolvett), Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder), Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo), Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb), Andromeda (Lexa Doig) and Rev Bem (Brent Stait). (Photo courtesy of Tribune Entertainment)

Crescent Blues: Andromeda will be one of the first productions associated with Gene Roddenberry to be shot in Canada --

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Well, no. Earth: Final Conflict is shot in Toronto with a different co-production partner. That's co-produced by Alliance/Atlantis, not by Bioworks. We specifically chose Vancouver, because they have excellent crews in Vancouver. Economically, it makes sense for the show, and it is in the same time zone [as Los Angeles], which makes things so much easier for everyone involved. Shooting it up there is working quite well.

Crescent Blues: Did you have to relocate?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: I commute back and forth. Mostly, I work in Los Angeles, but I spend a lot of time up there.

Crescent Blues: Could you give us some idea about what people will be seeing when they watch the show -- the aliens they'll be looking at, the crew…

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: The crew they can see on our official Web site. All our crew is up there in costume. As far as the types of aliens, we're experimenting a lot with different alien looks and trying to see what works.

Up to a certain extent, aliens on a science fiction show are sort of a trial and error process. You find out the ones that work the best and you use them again. We had some aliens on Deep Space Nine that were wildly successful, and we had some aliens that were like, "Man, we don't need to see those people again."

So up to a certain point in the production, we see a lot of alien races. We do have two aliens in the crew. We have Trance Gemini (Laura Bertram), who is an alien of a type…well, she's not saying, and we're not going to tell anyone.

Crescent Blues: Not until you know.

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: I know. I know. I totally know. I know, she knows, and the writing staff knows. That's about it.

And Rev Bem (Brent Strait), who is a monk of a religion called Wayism. He's also a scientist, and he has a bit of a bestial nature that he has to struggle with on a daily basis. Those are the two aliens in our crew. But we have a lot of different alien species. We have the Fan, who are these bug-like. We have the Veterans, who theoretically will be these centauroid aliens. We have Perseids, who are humanoid aliens. We have Nightsiders, who are rat-looking things. So we have a wide variety.

Discovery -- Beka Valentine (Lisa Ryder) checks the vital signs of Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb). (Photo courtesy of Tribune Entertainment)

Crescent Blues: Even the humans are somewhat altered. In your DragonCon panel, you mentioned genetic engineering.

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Well, as we know, humans are really good at genetic engineering today, and Gene Roddenberry was one of the first people to examine what the consequences of that might be. One of our main characters is completely genetically engineered. Tyr Anasazi (Keith Hamilton Cobb) belongs to a subspecies of humanity called "Neitzscheans" or "Homo Sapiens Invictus." They are genetically engineered to be the ultimate survival machines. By that I don't mean this big guy that yells and screams and whacks people over the head. That's not really that good a survival strategy. A Neitzschean's survival strategy is to sneak up on your enemy, cut his throat, then go home and have lots of kids.

Crescent Blues: How do they compare with the Klingons?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: OK, this is the Klingon's best day. He wakes up and kisses his wife good-bye. He goes to the field of battle, where he does honorable combat with his greatest enemy. They fight for six hours in intense hand-to-hand combat, exchanging massive wounds, at the end of which, the Klingon whose day it is leaps up, stabs his enemy through the heart with his last dying breath. They both die, but he got the guy, and they'll sing songs about that for a thousand years.

A Neitzschean hears that song and says, "That's so stupid! What a bunch of morons." Here's the Neitzschean's version of the same story. The Neitzschean wakes up in the morning, has sex with his wife, goes over to the house of his greatest enemy who thinks that he's the Neitzschean's best friend, slips some neurotoxin in the enemy's wine. The greatest enemy dies of a heart attack, which appears to be natural causes.

Our hero goes home, has sex with his wife again. She gets pregnant. They have many, many children. Seventy years later as he's dying of natural causes, on his death bed, the Neitzschean thinks back on how he killed his greatest enemy with poison, and the Neitzschean still doesn't tell anybody. He won. That's all that matters.

The way you win if you're a Neitzschean is that you have more children than anybody else. And more grandchildren. And more wives if you're a male. And if you're a female, you attract the very best husband. And he does whatever you tell him to, because if you don't listen to your wife, you don't get no nookie, and if you don't get no nookie and you're a Neitzschean, what's the frigging point?

Crescent Blues: Absolutely. How does that concept, that outlook on the world coincide with a quixotic quest?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: It doesn't, not very easily.

Crescent Blues: So how did Tyr Anasazi wind up in the crew of the Andromeda Ascendant?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: In a complicated way. You'll see it in the first two episodes.

Crescent Blues: I understand Andromeda is rather unusual in that you've already sold two years of the show.

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: That's one of the benefits of syndication. One of the down sides is that I can't tell what station or what day or time it will be on, because it will be different in every single market. But the up side is that we've already sold two years. We're committed for 44 episodes.

And frankly, there's not a single person on the show who's aiming for two years. We're all after five, six, seven years. We want this show to last.

Crescent Blues: You've got a story arc in your head that's about five years long.

Andromeda interior -- Captain Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo) joins Seamus Hunter (Gordon Michael Woolvett) in one of the starship's interior chambers. (Photo courtesy of Tribune Entertainment))

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Well…I know how it ends and some of the way we'll get there. I know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I basically know what the end is. But I'm as eager as anyone else is to find out how we're going to get there.

Writing television is like herding cats. It's wildly unpredictable. Maybe there are people who can say, "I know every beat of this entire show today. And it will not change." I'm not one of those people.

Crescent Blues: How is this different or similar to working on Deep Space Nine?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: It's different 'cause I'm the boss. [Laughs.] No, it's very similar. We run the show almost exactly the same way -- structurally, as far as the way the writers interact, the way we do the stories, the way we break them down. Obviously, it's a different show, and the characters are different, and the situations are different, and everything we encounter is different. The universe is very different. The technology is very different.

However, as far as the actual approach to creating the show, it's very similar. It's a very disciplined type of writing. We break everything down by beats. We work very hard on the story. The craftsmanship level is as high as we can make it.

All the guys who were on Deep Space Nine have gone on and are working in shows in higher positions than they occupied in Deep Space Nine. I think that's a testimony to the level of craftsmanship on that show. I certainly would want to…aspire to do that well.

Crescent Blues: Anything else you'd like to add?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: Watch our show. Watch our show. I think it will be cool.

One other thing I think people will ask is: "What will make this show worth watching?" I'll say this: the show will be fun. You will not be bored. You will have a good time. You will dig these characters. It's fast. It's funny but not goofy. And as far as tone, we're aiming for really good adventure movie -- The Great Escape, Magnificent Seven movies with a lot of action, cool characters, good humor. And we'll see if we can pull it off. I like to think that we can.

Jean Marie Ward

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