Star Trek: Picard fans want Majel Roddenberry’s voice for computers

After the clip of Star Trek: Picard season three was revealed, fans wanted to know who was voicing the computer Admiral Picard heard.

A Twitter fan reached out to showrunner Terry Matalas on Twitter to ask about the voice of the computer since it clearly wasn’t Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who voiced the computers in Star Trek properties until she passed away in 2008. Her voice was digitized, enabling it to be used for additional work in the franchise. But Picard has never utilized Roddenberry’s voice, and for the final season, according to Matalas, who responded in a tweet [via Screenrant], the Starfleet and civilian computers would be voiced by different actresses.

Fans questioned why Majel Roddenberry’s voice couldn’t be used for Star Trek: Picard.

Roddenberry voiced many computers in Starfleet over the course of her career, and, as one fan pointed out, there is a digitized library that could be used to incorporate her voice into current Star Trek properties. Matalas said he wasn’t aware of the library, but he was sure it could happen with the right technology and budget. Season three had neither.

Matalas pointed out that he could spend the money to digitize Roddenberry’s voice or to bring back a legacy character onscreen. He added that fans might not want to hear it, but television shows had a finite amount of time and resources, and if Roddenberry’s voice was going to be used, it should be done right, not with some type of subpar deepfake.

Perhaps Matalas is right, and one day, we’ll hear Roddenberry voice the computers aboard Starfleet vessels again, but until then, we’ll just give these new actresses a chance to win us over like Roddenberry did.