Cassini and Star Trek Connections
A chance encounter with actor Robert Picardo in Los Angeles last week prompted me to look at the Internet Movie Database to see what he’s up to now. I thoroughly enjoyed his portrayal of the Emergency Medical Hologram on Star Trek: Voyager where he brought humor to the show and somehow managed to craft a genuinely believable character out of a computer program. On IMDB I see that he is doing a voice for Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, an animated movie with a 2009 release date. I imagine that date is highly tentative, but I thought it was a funny coincidence given my involvement in the Cassini mission. This movie, I believe, is an educational feature telling the story of a photon’s struggle to tell the story of Saturn and its rings, moons, and magnetosphere with the help of the Cassini spacecraft. At least that was the education and public outreach concept of Charles Kohlhase (former planetary mission designer at JPL) years ago before Cassini was even launched. I haven’t heard much about it since that time. Perhaps it will happen after all.
There must be something with Star Trek doctors and Cassini, because John Billingsley, whom I met at a fan convention in Denver a few years ago and who portrayed Dr. Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise, voiced the narration for the Cassini planetarium DVDs Ring World and Ring World 2. These DVDs are provided to science museums and educators for use in planetarium shows or other public presentations about the Cassini mission. Both John Billingsley and Bob Picardo couldn’t have been more friendly, by the way.
Maybe they’ve been searching IMDB to see what I’m up to. After all, my “STARmeter” rating on IMDB is up 354%:
Realistically, that probably means a handful of people stumbled on my entry after mis-spelling the name of whomever they were really looking for. However, now’s your chance to send my STARmeter through the roof. Check out my awesome acting resume on IMDB!
Continuing the Cassini/Trek connections in my own little circle, this weekend I’ll be giving a presentation on the real-life deep space probe at the StarFest convention in Denver where Leonard Nimoy will be appearing and signing autographs. Fortunately for Nimoy, he’s not scheduled against my awesome presentation.
And in the totally silly coincidence category, on the day I happened to meet Robert Picardo, he was the actor pictured on my day-to-day Star Trek desk calendar (yes, I’m a major Trekkie).
April 18th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Yes, but such a cute Trekkie! I still don’t understand why Hollywood has not yet noticed you
June 16th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
and it’s up again, more than 61% over last week! You just keep sending out those change of address notices, guys, and those of us who truly care — and know that salt and pepper shakes were used as Bones’ instruments in the original — will follow the Star Trek leads.
Josh, you’ve just got to upload your headshot to IMDB, you never know what casting directors are looking for in a comet advisor.