Introduction
Erin Macdonald (PhD, Astrophysics) is a writer, speaker, producer, and science advisor, best known for her current work as the official science advisor for the STAR TREK franchise. She has also voiced her fictional counterpart in the Star Trek universe: Lt. Cmdr. Dr. Erin Macdonald in Star Trek: Prodigy and the video game Star Trek Online. Known as “The Julia Child of Science,” as a science communicator Erin has appeared on NPR’s Science Friday and Short Wave podcasts, provided commentary for numerous docuseries, and wrote and hosted the award-winning “Science of Star Trek” promotional videos for Paramount+.
Interview
(Edited for content and clarity)
Glen Dower:
Hi, Ms. Macdonald. How are you, Ma’am?
Erin Macdonald:
I’m good. It’s nice to meet you.
Glen Dower:
You too. OK, so we have ‘Producer’, ‘Writer’, ‘Director’, ‘Science Consultant for Star Trek’…Which one of those titles is on your passport?
Erin Macdonald:
Ha! Well, I’ll say the Science Consultant for Star Trek will probably get me the most friends. So that’s the one I’ll say first.
Glen Dower:
That’s a great community to be part of. Let’s talk a little bit about your career and your education as well, because I’m interested, then we’ll talk about the two projects that you’re working on right now. You studied Astrophysics in Glasgow but was there a moment before that put you on the road to learning about the universe?
Erin Macdonald:
For me, it was film and television. I grew up in the 90s. So I was watching The X-Files. And Dana Scully was the coolest woman I had ever seen in my entire life. I just wanted to be her. And also the film Contact with Jodie Foster as Dr. Ellie Arroway. She was such a huge, cool, interesting, complicated person. And it was the first time I’d ever seen a woman be an astronomer. To be honest, it was probably the first time I saw a working astronomer too, to see what they do… And we don’t encounter aliens as much.
Glen Dower:
But they weren’t old guys in white coats…
Erin Macdonald:
Right! And just seeing what that work looks like. So that’s kind of what set me down that path. I never lost my passion for space. I always thought it was fascinating.
And then as I was going through high school and taking science classes, I did enjoy physics, just finding ways to describe the world around us. And then learning that you could go get a degree in the Physics of Space just seemed cool to me. Then I found out Dana Scully, the fictional character, did her undergraduate degree in physics with astronomy!
I was like, well, if I’m going to be Dana Scully, then that’s the path. So it’s come weirdly full circle for me to then, I now work in television and be able to create the next generation of Scullys. So that’s what makes me happy!
Glen Dower:
I’d have that on your website, ‘Creating The Next Generation of Scullys.’
Erin Macdonald:
Thank you!
Glen Dower:
I was a kid in the 90s as well and I remember staying up late for The X-Files, and of course Fox Mulder, played by David Duchovny of course, leads the show, but Scully was the heart of the show and she was the audience. Do you think we need more female protagonists like that today?
Erin Macdonald:
Yeah. I mean, it’s funny because I do think we still have a long way to go, but it’s all about this idea of representation matters and the number of people and different backgrounds and appearances and class systems and every, all of these diversity, you know, the Geena Davis Institute has a good phrase: ‘If you can see it, you can be it.’ And that was certainly the case for me. I am a product of the Scully Effect. You know, I saw Dana Scully and I wanted to become a scientist. And so, yes, we need as many as possible out there.
But what’s weird is we’re in a different time of television because I’m sure you remember everyone watched The X-Files. Everyone watched the X-Files. And we don’t have as many of those touchstones.
There are these shows that kind of come and go that a lot of people watch, but you’re still not talking to cross generations, different friend groups. Not everyone will be watching those. And so it’s just kind of about getting as much out there as possible because we don’t have those same cultural touchpoints that we did back then.
Glen Dower:
Right. Now tell us about your journey to becoming a scientist and then a consultant on a major sci-fi franchise.
Erin Macdonald:
I mean, I loved doing research. And so I wanted to go through my PhD and living in Glasgow was fantastic and I loved it. But for me, I was increasingly realizing that becoming a professor wasn’t the right fit for me, but I loved teaching. And so I left academia after I did one postdoc, kind of got out of the fog of my PhD, did one postdoc research assignment, and then was like, OK, correct. I don’t think academia is for me. And so I went into teaching a little bit.
I taught at community colleges, which I adored. I taught at a science museum, and I also loved interacting with the public. The best training you could get for science communication. And unfortunately, those jobs did not pay the bills. So I got into aerospace engineering. And to scratch the teaching itch, because I love it, I would go to these pop culture conventions, all the local comic cons around the country, and I would teach the science of Star Trek or I would teach the physics of Star Wars.
I would talk about how lightsabers would work, and what works and what doesn’t. I think what’s great about pop culture is people have seen this stuff. So you can at least use it as a reference point when you’re talking about what could work or what doesn’t work. So that’s kind of where I scratched that itch. And then I moved to Los Angeles. I wanted to be closer to the industry.
I’d met other people who had been science advisors on shows. I’d been meeting a lot of writers and actors. And so when I moved to L.A. all these opportunities started coming my way. And then I got involved with Star Trek specifically through my convention talks. They wanted me to come to their official events and give the ‘Physics of Star Trek’ talks. Then they were greenlighting all of these shows. And it made sense to have a single person in charge of all the science, all the technology, all of the in-universe stuff as well. And so that’s been five years now. It’s my main focus.
Glen Dower:
Awesome and it makes sense to have someone in charge and offer that consistency. Now, I’m not a Professor Frink from The Simpsons, but I do get an itch if I see something I know is not right. Just for example, on your website, there is an awesome picture of you in the Scum and Villainy Cantina on Hollywood Boulevard. But you’re doing the Vulcan Live Long and Prosper sign! I can’t comprehend that! But do you ever have fans who know who you are and do question you: ‘That wouldn’t have happened in 300 years!’ Do you ever have fans like that?
Erin Macdonald:
Oh, yeah, for sure. And, you know what, I love that though. I am of that same thing. And I think what’s so good is, that the show Lower Decks does such a good job, of being for Star Trek fans in the same way Galaxy Quest was. It didn’t make fun of Star Trek fans. It’s a love letter to those of us who it’s like, it appears like we take it seriously, but it’s just really fun to be so immersed in a world like that. And so yes, I mean, the people who keep me up at night are the ones who screencap every single frame and check the math that I put on the screen.
Every little piece of consistency. But I’ll all I try to do for everything. Some things slip up. Some mistakes are made there. We’re not perfect people. I always try to have an in-universe explanation of like, well, the computer system glitched! That’s why that number is wrong. When in reality, that slipped past us and the millions of things that we’re trying to keep an eye on. And so I think fans appreciate that. And it’s fun for me too.
Glen Dower:
It must be so much fun. Do you remember something you put a big red line through and just said, ‘No, I cannot allow this?’
Erin Macdonald:
I always try to have like a positive attitude towards working with the writers. I think that’s what’s helped me be successful working in this job. But there, there have been a couple of times. One was interesting because I did my PhD in gravitational waves before they were detected and it was all still theoretical, but that’s my baby! Like that’s what I spent a good chunk of my life studying.
So we were going to have gravitational waves in an episode of Star Trek Discovery. And they were doing the traditional thing of they’re sitting in the ready room. They’re trying to figure out how this guy is going to get out. And they’re visualizing the gravitational waves and they look like ocean waves. They look like surf waves, which isn’t how gravitational waves look.
They look like compression sort of sound waves. And so I kind of gave that note, you know, and I said, you don’t surf on the gravitational waves, you know? This is not quite how it works. And, so to their credit, you know, the VFX team, like they mocked up what gravitational waves would look like to try to explain what’s going on.
And it lost people. It threw people out because it wasn’t intuitive for the way they were describing the scene, which I had also helped check the box on. And so we went back to the surfing waves just because it was like, you want people to stay in the story and that’s fine. I can sleep at night. But it’s just an interesting example of that trade with story and science that we do all the time.
Glen Dower:
That makes a lot of sense because you don’t want to lose or ‘alienate’ your audience. So, let’s stay with Star Trek, and let’s talk about the animated project you also work on. We’re going into season two and you provide a voice. Tell us all about that.
Erin Macdonald:
Star Trek Prodigy just came out on July 1st on Netflix for season two. That has been such an honor. I play Dr. Erin Macdonald. They gave me Lieutenant Commander rank, which I’m fine with, with the science uniform. I made my first appearance at the season finale of season one. And that came about because we have all these characters in Prodigy who are young kids who are trying to understand Starfleet. It’s very much an introduction to Star Trek. And there’s one young girl whose name is Rocktalk, who figures out that she wants to be a scientist.
And so I helped the writers a lot, kind of create that character. I became very close to her and just as a character and what would motivate her as she’s trying and screwing up and finding her path in science. So when the kids get to Starfleet Academy, the showrunners, The Hageman Brothers are so kind, I said, well, she has to meet Dr. Erin. That has to be. And they had this little brief scene in there where I get to meet Rocktalk and set her on the path of xenobiology. But then as season two was coming around, we had a scene because it’s a huge time travel story.
And it very much, I helped them a lot in trying to figure out how the timelines would work and how we would all close sort of logically. We had to have like an explainer, a Mr. DNA video type. So they said, Hey, you know this stuff and I said I’m trying to do more TV writing. And they were like let’s put this in here. So they had me do the voice for it. And that was just fantastic! So I get to teach Temporal Mechanics 101 in Star Trek!
Glen Dower:
That’s so cool! And will you get an action figure?
Erin Macdonald:
Ha! Oh! I hope so! It’s weird. There have only been two people now who have ever played themselves in the Star Trek universe. Stephen Hawking and myself! No pressure! It’s an honor, to say the least.
Glen Dower:
And you didn’t have to audition for yourself. You didn’t have to put on a different voice. And how did you approach voicing essentially yourself?
Erin Macdonald:
Well, ironically, I had been doing voice acting for years, well, before I even started working in television. It was a hobby that I started when I was still a researcher because I finished my PhD and I realized I had not spoken to a non-scientist in like five years. And so I took some acting courses. And I’ve been doing voice acting on the side. Narrating some audio books and doing some fan projects, you know? Just small hobby-type stuff.
But I at least had that acting training and the background that I’ve been able to voice my character. So that’s been great. And they’ve put me now in Star Trek Online. I got to voice myself in the video game. So what was just an esoteric hobby that I had, has folded itself into my career as well.
Glen Dower:
That’s great. And you step outside Star Trek briefly with the new movie on Prime Video’s Space Cadet starring a very charming Emma Roberts. I’ve seen the movie and it’s just fun and it’s easy-going. You can’t take it too seriously, because obviously, you start to question NASA’s whole recruitment policy! But how did you get involved with that project?
Erin Macdonald:
I’m glad you asked about that. I think it’s a perfect example of the type of project where the writer/director wants to have a scientist check it like just as a sanity check of like, please, please just make sure I didn’t completely make an idiot of myself. And I know that she had a really hard time kind of fighting the right science advisor for that, who got it.
You read the script and you’re like, okay, I’m not gonna tell you not to do your third act. This has to still be in here. And I think she was struggling with that. But I pride myself as a science advisor on just like, all right, let’s do it. Let’s be weird. Let’s do the fun thing. And you have to very quickly understand the tone. I loved it, just as you described. It’s fun and lighthearted. It’s a fun movie. So I was all here for it.
And so I did a sanity check, you know, just make sure that they’re talking about things the right way. I think there was, it was a lot of the scenes when they’re in the training process, you know, of how the trainers are talking to them and explaining stuff. That was kind of most of the things that I checked. And then similarly, at the end, just kind of how they talk to each other, but I’m not gonna tell them not to send her in space. You have to. It was fun.
Glen Dower:
We are both geeks, and you are a true leader. Can step outside a movie or show and not pick that apart or can you let it wash over you?
Erin Macdonald:
Most of the time, I can let stuff wash over me, I would say probably 90% of the time, because like you said, I just enjoy watching these things. The only things that will pull me out are egregious mistakes. The one trigger point that I have is just, and it’s of no one’s fault because I think society, this has happened through our pop culture, but a misunderstanding of planets versus star systems versus galaxies.
We see so many times where it’s like, oh, these aliens came from the Andromeda Galaxy. Like, there’s like a billion stars between here and there that they could have easily come from in a much shorter distance. And so we call it the cosmological address. But you can understand why, right? That like Star Wars, it’s in a galaxy far, far away. But it’s just star systems that we see.
And then you have things like Firefly, which refers to the universe, you know, Battlestar Galactica takes place in our galaxy, but in another, they’re trying to find Earth, and they’re visiting different star systems. And so it’s all kind of gotten muddled in our culture, the difference between a star system, which is just a star or two stars with planets going around them, versus galaxies, which are islands of billions of stars that are out there. Those are the only things that if they screw up, I’m like, oh, no, oh, no!! Otherwise, I sit back and enjoy what I’m watching.
Glen Dower:
So we’re in a star system?
Erin Macdonald:
We are, yes. So, we orbit one sun, our sun, and it’s just one and then there are eight planets, there’s dwarf planets, there’s asteroid belt, and that is our star system. And if you zoom out further, we are a one-star system in the billions of stars that are in the Milky Way galaxy.
Then the Milky Way galaxy is in sort of a grouping of other galaxies, which include Andromeda, and then some smaller ones. And so I, I call it the cosmological address, because it’s like explaining where you live is, you know, you zoom out, right, you have your street, your town, your state, or your county, and then your country, it’s, you know, you’re zooming out, we have our planet, our star system, our galaxy, and then the universe. So I hope that helps!
Glen Dower:
Simple. There we go. Why do people get it so wrong? There’s one last question before I go, Erin. Your thoughts on The Acolyte?
Eric Macdonald:
Oh! I love The Acolyte! Oh, I’ve been enjoying it! Again, I watch all Star Wars content, just inject it into my eyeballs. I will watch all of it. I’ve been loving the lore. I love this High Republic era, this pre-Skywalker Saga era that we’re in. I have some theories, but I don’t get screeners. So I don’t know what’s coming. I think the cast has been fantastic. Carrie-Anne Moss is just a treasure. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved this last week’s episode blew my mind.
Glen Dower:
Excellent! Perfect. Well, thanks so much for your time, Erin, it’s been a pleasure!
Erin Macdonald:
Thank you so much.
