This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you Hear weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
Robert Riccardo has known for so many wonderful roles on television and in the movies. You may remember him as mister cult Cutlip on The Wonder Years, also Doctor Richard in China Beach, the com remungently hologrific doctor of Star Trek Voyager. But I will always remember you, Robert, as the cowboy on Innerspace.
Thank you my strangest role much Well.
You know, I remember seeing you in that role and how facial you had to be in the close up scenes. I mean, I was convinced when you pulled at your cheek that that was a plastic cheek you were pulling at. They didn't just didn't look for everyone.
Was yeah, the makeup the makeup artist. They asked him, how did you do that with you know.
Pacardo's face, which of course was just me tugging on my own cheeks, and he, like any good artists, said trade secret.
Your new project is called Space Command Redemption, available now on Amazon Prime and Google Play. Tell us about this new project.
Well, Space Command Redemption is very much old school optimistic science fiction. Like Original Trek, there's a galactic battle between good and evil. And what made it really fun for me is I got to work with another of my Star Trek colleagues who I've always loved and admired, and
that's Doug Jones. And also what made it interesting is it's very much like the issues that were dealt with on Voyager between me and artificial intelligence character trying to get the organic characters human or alien that worked on our ship to accept me is a full fledged member even though I was an artificial intelligence. It's kind of the same argument from the other side. This time I play the organic character who cannot accept the artificial intelligence played.
By Doug Jones as an individual. To me, he's just a renegade machine.
Designed to work in my mining colony who has somehow become sentient, and he you won't cooperate and do what he was supposed to do, and I have to befriend him, learn to understand him, and ultimately support his fight for
personal freedom. So, as I said, it's some of the same themes from Voyager, but I got to visit them again working with a new actor that I love and really dealing with all the issues from the other end of the table, from the side of the person who didn't understand, and that is I think the theme of redem why it's called Space Command Redemption, is that all of the characters are struggling to redeem themselves in a different way. In my character's case, he has lost his
wife in a tragic accident. It's very hard for him to open up and feel anything. And in this struggle in the movie and getting to understand Doug Jones' character really makes him alive again.
So it's an exciting film.
The visual effects are great and as if you're a fan of Doug Jones or me, or hopefully both of us, you'll really enjoy seeing us in these new roles.
Doug Jones plays along with Robert Piccardo, along with Ruth Box Light or two and the new Redemption I'm Sorry. Space Command Redemption available now on Amazon Prime Video and Google Play as well. One of the things that has always impressed me going all the way back to the original Star Trek and then they seem to keep that writing style all the way up through Voyager, is that you didn't rely. I mean, even though there are more special effects available now to visualize what the crew is
dealing with. The crew's dialogue is much like the dialogue of old radio drama, where you have to be very descriptive. Am I right in looking at it that way?
Yeah? Well, obviously, Star Trek.
When the original Star Trek came along in the late sixties, we were.
Not that far.
We were a mere you know, television was only in everyone's house for about fifteen or at most about fifteen years, right or at most twenty if you were an early adopter technolology, So we were much closer to the radio drama generation, and a lot of your audience had grown up with radio drama from the twenties, thirties, forties, whatever.
Because here you are with television show in the sixties. Remember, the original Star Trek is one of the first shows shot entirely in color in ero when a lot of shows were still in black and white. So I understand what you're saying, and but it's also kind of a it's a style.
Of writing that that.
Where I mean, you know, you might say, well, it's it's very expositional, but.
There's a lot of story. There's a lot of.
Story packed in a very short amount of time. So yes, you do have to have exposition. And one of the keys I think the great science fiction acting and Shatner showed us the way is to really enlive that kind of dialogue with your performance. You know, Shatner really went out on a limb in a way that you know, I only now understand and appreciate as an actor, having been you know, an actor for nearly five decades. He went out on a limb to really bring that to life.
In my particular case, I speak extremely quickly through the expositional material and voyager. I remember when I met the Italian actor who dubbed me into Italian. That was his job was to look at the screen and then change my words into Italian.
When I met him, he said to please sometimes not the talk of.
Well. One of the things that I think was important with Shatner's delivery and has always been very diverse with your delivery in all of your roles is voice. How much do you rely on voice when you are projecting a character?
Well, you know, I remember I was a theater actor who had done Leeds on Broadway, came to California and got my first television drama, and I remember the sound man coming up to me and saying, you don't have to talk that loud because I was still playing. I was still playing to the balcony right and the microphone was off camera about three feet from me. And you
can use the dynamic range of your voice. Once you understand how you know, the freedom you have so that you can go down to a whisper things that you can't really do on stage, or you have to. You have to use much more voice on stage even to create the illusion. That's why they call it a stage whisper versus a real whisper. So I think that I like to think of myself as an actor who really
plays a lot of different notes. In I try to avoid, you know, any kind of boring vocal quality, and in Voyager, because my character was a newly activated technology, I had to start out with a very sort of motionless, boring, mechanical kind of a cadence, so that it gave me a place to grow over the course of seven years as the character became more human life. So so there was a sort of an artificiality by design in the way I spoke early on, very much like Data did
in a very different way. But Data also had a very kind of, you know, childlike, you know, Pinocchio like way of speaking in his artificial intelligence character. I was simply much crankier than data.
Gotta wrap.
So yes, I think voice is really important.
And as I said, Shatner really blazed the trail because he played a lot of notes, a lot of different high and low notes as Kirk Robert Piccardo.
The film is Space Command Redemption, available now on Amazon Prime Video and Google Play as well. We thank you for joining us and for bringing us to great stories.
Thank you so much, Lee, It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation