Okudas And Rossi On Making 'The Ultimate Computer'

The Ultimate Computer was the most challenging episode to remaster for the second season of the original series.

As reported at Trekmovie.com, Dave Rossi and Mike and Denise Okuda answered questions regarding their work on The Ultimate Computer, describing the decision-making that went into remastering the show.

In the scene which shows four Constitution-class ships, they had mulled over the idea of using other types of ships. "...our first thought was to use this episode to show that there’s more to Starfleet than just the Enterprise," said Rossi. Mike Okuda added, "One of the ideas we considered was to have a Reliant-type configuration for a couple of the guest ships. The problem with a smaller ship is that you don’t want the sense that the Enterprise is more powerful, because that would hurt the drama of the story. Ultimately, keeping all four ships the same emphasizes that the only variable is that the Enterprise is piloted by the M5 computer."

In one scene, there had been an automated freighter that had been formerly used in Space Seed as the Botany Bay. It was replaced by a different cargo ship. "The cargo ship Woden is now based on the automated grain ships in the animated episode, 'More Tribbles, More Troubles,'" explained Rossi. "You may recall that we saw the Antares in the first shot of 'Charlie X,' which was based on the same design, although we added a crew module for that one."

The space station in the show has been changed too. "Well, the space station is now based on the Vanguard Starbase from the Star Trek novels published by Pocket Books," said Rossi.

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