Sound effects designer Michael Schapiro has boldly gone to great lengths over the last several years to connect the modern iterations of “Star Trek” with the franchise’s past. A five-time Emmy Award nominee across three “Star Trek” properties – including “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” and “Star Trek: Discovery” – Schapiro says he often tends to think of his work as “archeological sound design.”
“We’ve got a lot of material from those old shows,” Schapiro tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview as part of our Meet the Experts: Sound panel. “We can dive into old episodes and see what was done. But the initial pilot of the original series was from 1965. So it’s digging into what they might have used to make these things then and then updating it or recreating it, and getting it more modern sounding.”
But then the challenge becomes satisfying the “Star Trek” fans – many of whom are old enough to remember “Star Trek: The Original Series.”
“They will call us out if anything is off base,” Schapiro says, noting how “Strange New Worlds,” for instance, takes place in an era just before the “Original Series” timeline. “So we have to stick as closely as we can while updating it to modern standards, which can be tough. Sometimes some of those early sounds are a little cheesy, but they’re also iconic. So it’s keeping them what you’d expect from a modern show while still honoring what was done 60 years ago.”
That balance was readily apparent in Season 2 of “Strange New Worlds,” particularly with the the fearsome alien species the Gorn. In the “Original Series,” the Gorn was depicted as a man in a suit – and while “Strange New Worlds” used a more modern approach to the prosthetics, the entire alien race was given a pretty horrific makeover.
“That is our horror episode,” Schapiro says of the Season 2 finale – where the Gorn appear as both terrifying babies and full-grown monsters. “With the baby Gorn, they’re small but also really scary. That was one of our sound editors Kip Smedley, he has an alpaca farm. So one of his alpacas on a shearing day, screams up a storm. Otherwise, she’s perfectly fine – she’s just unhappy being sheared. So he got a microphone and that is a good chunk of the baby gorn sound – this very unhappy alpaca. And I think there’s another shearing day coming up in a few days, so he’s getting ready for Season 3.”
With “Star Trek: Discovery,” now in its fifth season with a timeline 1,000 years after the events of “Strange New Worlds,” Schapiro says a lot of the sound work was maintaining what worked in Season 4 but still pushing ahead to combine the classic “Star Trek” sound with original creations. “That is a chance to do something new,” Schapiro says. “Again, with an eye on the older material.”
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” and “Star Trek: Discovery” are streaming on Paramount+.
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