Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1401019
30 I m ps e . o rg in the J.J. [Abrams] films and wanted something similar. So I took inspiration from there and created my own unique version which we used in the show. MT: Tim, if I recall, that was a moment that Alex was actually like, "Hey, let's see if we can sneak in the TOS warp sound, here." Right? TF: I was so happy when he asked for it and I already had that element prepped ready to go! NM: Moving on to Picard, like you said, it's a separate time, 20 years after The Next Generation. It's also in a diˆerent place than we've ever been before, but one thing that was a tie-in was the Borg and specifically, the character of Hugh, and then later Seven of Nine from Voyager. Was the sound of the Borg, whether it's the things whirling around and all that—did you repurpose any of that stuˆ or was it all brand new? MT: Interesting question. From the get-go, there wasn't a discussion about TNG or all this Borg stuff. They just said, "go find it, use it, see what you can do." We were on a deactivated Borg cube most of the time, and that was a new-ish thing. They wanted the Borg cube to be threatening but not threatening, as in it feels safe for people to be there. We started bringing back a lot of the Borg stuff in episode 6, where Picard boards the Borg ship and starts flashing back. That's where we leaned into all the server room and saw types of stuff that you had during the assimilation. There was a moment in episode 5 where we get to go into the guts of the ship with two of our main actors, and you see parts of the ship moving around as if it's kind of reassembling, like it's alive. Tim did some really cool stuff there, but that was where we started leaning more into the Borg sound. But there wasn't a distinct discussion to say, "Hey, go look at the TNG stuff and use that." TF: And the other thing is that so many of the Borgs have been de-assimilated. They called them X-Borgs, or X-Bs. They had a lot of the Borg technology taken out of them. I don't want to say they were more human, but they weren't as Borg-y now that they've taken all the implants out. So the biggest factor was just trying to make the whole Borg world sound entirely different than anything we've established in Discovery or the Starfleet side of things that we'd established in the first episode of Picard. It was a lot of trying to give that technology its own unique and different character. So all their technology sounds had to be created from scratch. MT: We rewatched First Contact. Remember when the Borg cube is attacking Earth, and they tell the Enterprise to not be part of that battle? So, the bridge is monitoring the battle and you hear Picard flashing back and hearing the Borg talk? I know we listened to that because we made some stuff similar to that for when he's flashing back in the cube in Picard. For when he is in the cube, we shot a bunch of loop-group saying, "We are the Borg. We will assimilate you. Resistance is futile." And we used that, slowed that down and did a bunch of weird stuff to it, and used that as part of the backgrounds and tones there as Picard is in the cube. You can't tell, it's just mostly tonal, but that's part of that landscape there. First Contact really was what we used for reference. EM: We're big fans of that movie. That might be my favorite Star Trek film. MT: Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's so good. EM: Dad, I know one sound that's always stuck out to you in The Original Series and lives on in Discovery, is the "red alert" sound. Tim, how did you update that in Discovery? TF: I took the original "red alert," and I basically just ran it through a comb-filter and spaced it out, so you have a layer of the original and then I put this kind of phasey, buzzy sound into the left, right, and surrounds for it, so it gave it a different, more sci fi edge. You still have that original klaxon as an element, but it has also been processed to give it a different sound as well. I did that a lot on the show. I took an original sound and then I'd come up with a processing chain that would alter it to some degree— sometimes more, sometimes less. So you'll hear a lot of stuff and think, "Oh, that's the beep from this." Yes and no. It was the beep from that and then I altered it in some way. It may have a similar cadence or rhythm to what it's referencing, but it will have a different pitch or modulation of some kind and is I took the original "red alert," and I basically just ran it through a comb-filter and spaced it out, so you have a layer of the original and then I put this kind of phasey, buzzy sound into the left, right, and surrounds for it, so it gave it a dierent, more sci fi edge. –Tim Farrell