INTERVIEW: ‘The Center Seat’ to celebrate Star Trek’s 55th on History Channel
Photo: Gates McFadden executive produces and provides the voiceover for the new series The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek. Photo courtesy of History / Provided by Shore Fire Media with permission.
The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek is a new series on the History Channel that takes a deep dive into all things Star Trek. The show — created, produced and directed by Brian Volk-Weiss — begins in the early days of the sci-fi franchise when Lucille Ball took a gamble on this out-of-this-world idea from Gene Roddenberry. Episode by episode the series progresses to include stories from The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise, plus some of the movies along the way.
Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, provides the voiceover for The Center Seat, which premieres tonight, Nov. 5 at 10 p.m. on the network.
For Volk-Weiss, this intergalactic journey began many decades ago.
“Well, if we go all the way back, not to be cheesy, but my mom introduced me to Star Trek, so that’s pretty much where it began,” the director said in a recent phone interview. “We did a show for Netflix called The Toys That Made Us and then The Movies That Made Us. Those shows seemed to be well received, and I guess on top of that, we also have worked with History Channel many, many times. We had two shows on History Channel last year. We’ve done a lot with them. … And basically the idea was very simple. I was like if Ken Burns did a deep dive into Star Trek, what would that be like? That was the idea, and I put together a deck. And by the grace of God, History Channel bought it.”
Volk-Weiss’ love for Star Trek began with The Original Series, known as TOS by Trekkers and Trekkies, but his best memories from childhood actually deal with the original crew’s movies, including the well-received and highly influential Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
“It started technically with The Original Series, but it got serious or important or however you want to say it with the Star Trek movies,” he said. “So I really barely remember watching The Original Series as a kid, but I vividly, vividly, vividly remember seeing Star Trek II in the theaters and talking nonstop about Star Trek. It really was Star Trek II that got the ball rolling.”
When Volk-Weiss and his team at The Nacelle Company sat down and decided to track out the different episodes for The Center Seat, they knew they had to focus their efforts. With 55 years of television and movie history, there was too much to pack into a limited number of episodes, so for this first dive into the franchise — consisting of 10 episodes — the team decided to map out a journey from Roddenberry to Rick Berman, the producer of TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise.
“Basically what we did was we made a list of everything we wanted to talk about, I mean everything, and then that probably was over 50 episodes, believe it or not,” the director said. “And then we just broke it down into the most important topics, and we focused on what we perceived to be the most important topics. Just to give you an example of what I mean, we very early on made the decision to stop at the end of the Berman era. So just by doing that we knew that we weren’t, at least initially, going to be doing anything with The Next Generation movies and also the J.J. [Abrams] movies and also the Discovery era. … We knew it would end with basically Rick Berman. We knew that the show would start with Lucille Ball and Gene Roddenberry basically turning the lights on. We knew that season one would end with Rick Berman turning the lights off after Enterprise wrapped.”
McFadden came onboard because Volk-Weiss and the famous actor have been working together on a new podcast project. InvestiGates: Who do you think you are? is a successful podcast that launched earlier this year and features McFadden talking with other actors and creative team members from the Star Trek franchise. Their topics of conversation are not only about the show, but life, relationships, culture, family and love.
“We do a podcast with Gates called InvestiGates, so we already knew her,” Volk-Weiss said. “And we were already working with her, very successfully I might add. It is an extremely, extremely popular podcast, so I just thought to myself, you know, I’ve never had a producer who actually was at the place that we’re covering. So I just said to her, ‘Gates, why don’t you be an executive producer? All you got to do is watch rough cuts and give us your thoughts.’ She’s like, ‘OK, cool.’ She was not supposed to do the voiceover. One thing that I can tell you is of everything I have to do as a director of documentaries, the #1 thing I hate, and it’s probably the only part about my job I don’t like, is figuring out who is going to do the voiceover. So I kept procrastinating, and I never procrastinate. I’m like the last person on earth to procrastinate, but as with anybody, if you don’t like a topic, you tend to procrastinate. So I was procrastinating, procrastinating, and finally the day came when I was told, you’ve got to pick somebody. I don’t know what it was, but I was like Gates has a great voice. We’re already working with her. She’s been amazing. By the way, half of the important people we have, including Rick Berman, we would not have without Gates McFadden personally trying to get them in the show.”
He added: “So I just called Gates, and I’m like, ‘Hey, what do you think about doing the VO?’ She was like, ‘I love it. Call my agent.’ So I called her agent. We worked out a deal, and that was it. And, in my opinion, admittedly biased, she knocked it out of the park.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek, created, produced and directed by Brian Volk-Weiss, will premiere tonight, Nov. 5 at 10 p.m. on the History Channel. Click here for more information.
