From Star Trek’s Starfleet Academy to Space Cadet: Dr. Erin Macdonald’s Sci-Fi Journey

Dr. Erin Macdonald is a real live member of Starfleet. In addition to being featured on Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, currently streaming on Netflix, she is also a bona fide Astrophysicist, a distinction that puts her in demand as a science advisor for the entire Star Trek franchise and the film Space Cadet on Amazon Prime. This is all in addition to being a celebrated writer and film producer, who is is also appearing in person at Dragon Con 2024 and the Fort Collins Comic Con this August. What follows is my interview with Dr. Erin Macdonald, about her fascinating career.

Adam Pope: Are you the first person to portray yourself as a member of Starfleet in the Star Trek canon? 

Erin Macdonald: Oh, that’s a good question, and you had a good qualifier there in that you said “in Starfleet”, because the only other person who’s ever portrayed themselves was Stephen Hawking, so like no pressure (laughs), but he was a hologram version of himself that Data had created to play poker with a bunch of physicists. But yeah, I’m playing myself as a professor at Starfleet Academy, which is honestly my dream job. So I’m good with that.

From Physics to Star Trek: A Journey of Exploration

Adam Pope: What would you say then? What is the biggest difference between Earthbound, Dr. Erin Macdonald and Starfleet officer, Lieutenant Commander, Dr. Erin Macdonald?

EM: I haven’t really thought about it, because for me, it’s all just me. I don’t know how I end up there. Maybe I’m a time traveler. Perhaps I’m plucked out. Maybe I’m a Q and I just don’t know it yet. But yeah, I guess it is funny, because when I was in grad school, I was like, “Oh, my God, my dream job would be a professor at Starfleet Academy. But I can’t do that, so I have to do something else.” So yeah, I guess I’m just a time traveler in the future, and I don’t know how to do that yet.

Adam Pope: What came first then for you? Was it a fascination with the science of the universe, or was it Star Trek fandom? 

Erin Macdonald: I didn’t really get into Star Trek until I was studying my undergraduate degree, and the joke I always like to say is like the Venn diagram of Star Trek fans and physics majors is pretty strong. So I it was inevitably exposed to Star Trek, but I was already interested in space and physics and had that love from other media like The X-Files or Contact and all that other stuff.

But when I was in graduate school I was really just deep diving and watching Star Trek all the time. That’s when I started kind of putting those pieces together where, you know, I was doing my PhD in general relativity and procrastinating my dissertation, and I was like, “I bet I could figure out how warp drive actually works.” So that’s where I sort of started diving into the science behind Star Trek and just went from there.

The Importance of Space Exploration

Adam Pope: Your career has quite had quite an emphasis on education, creating an appreciation for and understanding of astrophysics among the general populace. You even wrote a Star Trek: My First Book of Space for babies. So you’re starting them young. But for you personally, what is it about the universe that you would say we’re taking for granted here on Earth? What warrants further study by the average joe?

Erin Macdonald: That’s I love that. For me, we never lose that sense of wonder when it comes to space. I think that’s something that we all still stand in awe of. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the total solar eclipse this past year, and just seeing all of these people like caravanning down to the path of totality was just an amazing thing to see.

What we take for granted is when it comes to the dollars and cents of space, not travel, necessarily, but just learning more about our universe, these programs are really expensive. Sending a probe to Europa to see if there could be microbial life is a long, expensive process.

Many times, I think the public will go like, “Why are we spending that money? We have so much else we need to worry about, so much else here on earth we should be spending our money on.”

Really though, we have to remember that space is so hard and so difficult and presents us with so many challenges that that money, that investment, is not just what we could learn, which in itself is grand, but it also can be invested in many other things. It’s just unknowns that we aren’t sure how that could impact our society, but it’s worth the risk to me. So I just think we should be throwing more money at space exploration and taking on those risks and those long projects, because you never know what could come out of that,

Adam Pope: In that vein, are black holes as cool as a lot of science fiction entertainment makes them out to be? Or is there a more interesting phenomenon we are overlooking?

Erin Macdonald: Oh, well, I do think black holes are just objectively awesome. I think the biggest misunderstanding with black holes is that they’re not sucking material in. We always talk about them as black holes or, you know, sucking in stuff. They’re not going around “Hoovering up” galaxies and stuff. But they are deep gravitational wells. For me, it is my favorite science word of all time, which is “spaghettification”, which is what would happen to you as you fall into a black hole. You just get “spaghettified” because of the gravity gradient. I mean, there’s so much cool stuff out there, but black holes kind of continue to take the cake.

Adam Pope: You have multiple pop culture convention appearances scheduled this year, and you’ve made a lot of appearances on panels and things like that. So what is your favorite thing about the convention experience and do you have a pet peeve of something you’ve experienced?

Erin Macdonald: When I first started going to Star Trek conventions, even before I was associated with the franchise, I was giving science talks like “Physics of Star Trek” and I was having overwhelming stress. Dreams about being “Well, actually’d”, by the audience. Like, “Well, in episode 12 of season four of the next generation they said this…”, and that could not be further from the truth. I found that as I go to conventions, Star Trek fans, love to get into the minutia of stuff, but they’re mostly just excited to be around other people that when they say, “In episode 12 of season four…”, people are like, “Oh yeah, that episode!” So I love that atmosphere. 

I love that it’s like a safe place for people, that people can just fully express themselves and being a nerd myself, I get to geek out at these conventions as well. So, yeah, I absolutely love it. I love interacting with the public. The only pet peeve is just that I don’t have enough time to answer all the questions that people have for me.

Adam Pope: And what is the most common question right now? Do people try to get into “Tell me about Prodigy. Tell me about your character.” Or are they asking about the secrets of the universe? What do people want to know? What are they most curious about?

Erin Macdonald: Well, other than, “Can I get information about future Star Trek series out of you?” I think the most common question is, honestly like, “What technology does Star Trek have that we could possibly have in the future?” And a lot of it we already have, even if you go back to 1966. Things like flip phones or video conferencing, all of this is just standard use now, if not already dated. But unfortunately, the biggest one I get asked about is a transporter and physics says “No” for now.

Adam Pope: At this point, since you’ve been so ingrained in the universe, on screen and behind the scenes, what’s been the biggest geek out moment for you? Was it contributing something? Was it meeting somebody?

Erin Macdonald: So it actually just happened recently. I had a wonderful moment with Jonathan Frakes when I was first hired, where he just kind of very graciously welcomed me to the Star Trek family, which was a really kind of big special moment. 

But this year at San Diego Comic Con, they were doing a Star Trek: Prodigy panel, and I was lucky enough to actually get time to meet and speak with Kate Mulgrew beforehand, who played Captain Janeway, and she is MY captain. I have a huge Voyager tattoo on my arm. At the panel, she stopped for a second and she was like, “Can we just talk about how good the science is, and can we recognize our science advisor who’s here in the audience?” So MY captain took time out of a panel to recognize me at San Diego Comic Con, and that is the peak. Honestly.

Adam Pope: That’s amazing. Speaking of which, what is it that is your main focus when you’re trying to offer something to Star Trek? Whether you’re getting a script and you’re looking it over? How do you present it without saying, “Well, actually…”?

Erin Macdonald:I like to approach science advising with “yes and” attitude. Literally, this happens all the time. I’ll get an email like, “Hey, I read this cool article about some space phenomenon. Can we do that?” And instead of being like, “Oh, probably not”, I take the approach of like, “Heck, yeah. Let’s do it!” Let’s figure out how to do it.

These are the ways to talk about it. These are the important things you need to know, and this is the what you want to stay away from. Because really, fundamentally, my job, at the end of the day, if I don’t do anything else, is just make sure we don’t say something that’s explicitly wrong, and that’s the most important thing. But we can play with a lot of stuff. 

Erin Macdonald: Star Trek has a lot of its own technology. It’s in the future. Who knows what we discover between now and then. So I do concede a lot of wiggle room. I try to be, you know, positive and improv a lot of approaches that we could take, but as long as we’re not explicitly breaking and saying something wrong when it comes to the science, that’s my number one job.

Beyond Star Trek: Exploring New Frontiers

Adam Pope: Stepping away from Star Trek a little bit. What can you tell us about Space Cadet on Amazon Prime? What’s is its focus? What are you doing there?

Erin Macdonald: It came out early July on Amazon Prime. The way I like to phrase it is that’s basically Legally Blonde goes to NASA, and it’s such a good example of the job of science advising and the complexity of it. Because it is a really fun kind of goofy film that’s PG-13. You can watch it with your family.

It’s pretty fun, but you have to realize, as the science advisor coming in, what tone they’re going for and so just being like, this is not The Martian, this is not Interstellar. We’re not going for hard sci-fi. Here, we are going for a comedy. So again, we’ll let a lot of stuff go. The main thing is just don’t say anything wrong. And just add some color to some of the scenes. When they have people who are experts talking, make sure that they are saying the right things. But other than that, have fun.

Encouraging Future Generations

Adam Pope: Well, as we close out here, let’s get back on the education side of things. For people who feel like they have an interest, but they’re like, “I could never conceive of this stuff. I want to know, but could I really understand?” What is your encouragement to people who are looking to learn more about astrophysics and things of that nature?

Erin Macdonald: You know, there’s lots of great resources out there. It’s just trying to find the right balance for your level. And I do think there’s so much that sometimes it can be overwhelming. Honestly, doing a quick Wikipedia search is probably one of the worst things you can do, because many scientists have written the science pages on Wikipedia, and they are heady and deep and hard to comprehend sometimes.

But exposing yourself to things like NPR Science Friday is really good. You know, space.com, Astronomy News, all of that will have really good headlines. You can get those things delivered. I think just starting to get a little bit more aware of what’s going on in the space industry, those are the places I would start with.

We want to thank Dr. Erin Macdonald for her time and remind you to watch her on Star Trek: Prodigy via Netflix. You can also watch a video version of this interview on the Popgeeks YouTube channel.

Discuss the this interview with Dr. Erin Macdonald and more on our Film Forum.