Terry Matalas is surrounded by science fiction. The showrunner best known for SYFY’s “12 Monkeys,” the third season of Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Picard,” and the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe series “VisionQuest” has been steeped in the genre since childhood, going to see “E.T.” on opening day “when I was way too young to see it,” getting raised on “Close Encounters,” even kicking off a side career restoring the DeLorean from “Back to the Future.”
And when IndieWire caught up with the showrunner over Zoom, his office contained everything from a life-size Audrey II puppet from “Little Shop of Horrors” to one of the “real aliens” from “Close Encounters.” “It’s just part of my DNA, how I was raised,” Matalas told IndieWire. “I consumed way too much.”
Raised in New Jersey, long before the Emerson College graduate was concluding the MCU trilogy that began with “WandaVision” and continued with “Agatha All Along,” he was working his dream job as an intern on the Paramount lot. Obsessed with “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Matalas found himself working on the three soundstages occupied by “Star Trek: Voyager,” while “Deep Space Nine” was across the street on another three soundstages.
“Going from a fan to suddenly being in it and walking around those sets with creatives who I had admired, it was really an incredible place to learn, sit in [with] those writing staffs and the art department, and be on set and see how television was made. It was the best education I could possibly have,” Matalas recalled.
And as you might expect from someone who has spent the subsequent decades delving further into science fiction, rather than being inside the dream factory turning him off from the genre, it thrilled the young Matalas. “Making television and making movies is really hard, but there’s nothing quite like getting that final product and watching it turn into this…