By Captain Pyke | August 6, 2011 - 10:32 pm

We would like to wish a very happy birthday to Mike Okuda. He has been responsible for a myriad of things throughout the various Trek incarnations since the mid-1980s starting with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Mike gained notoriety for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a scenic artist / technical consultant and for designing the futuristic graphical user interface (LCARS or Okudagrams) used throughout the TNG era and all the way to DS9. I would also like to personally thank Mike and give him credit for inspiring me to work professionally in the graphic arts and user interface design. Thanks Mike, your work has inspired an entire generation of graphics professionals!

More about Mike:

He served as a technical consultant on the various TNG-era Star Trek series along with Rick Sternbach, advising the script-writers on the technology used throughout the Star Trek universe such as the transporters and the warp drive. This work resulted in a technical manual which was distributed to prospective script-writers along with the series bible. The manual was later published in revised and updated form as the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Pocket Books. Michael then went on to write a number of Star Trek books with his wife, Denise. Okuda continued working at Paramount Studios on the Star Trek series that followed The Next Generation, and worked as an art supervisor in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and through to the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. He also worked on the Star Trek movies that were produced while the various television series were in production. Okuda recently served as a producer for CBS to digitally remaster and update special visual effects for the original series.

Mike "invented" the Heisenberg compensator as a way to "explain" how Star Trek's fictional transporter might work, despite the limitation of the uncertainty principle. Okuda famously answered the question "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" with "It works very well, thank you."

Mike remains involved creatively with the Star Trek franchise. He and Denise Okuda created the text commentaries in the ten Star Trek Special Edition DVD movies, as well as special text commentaries for the Star Trek Fan Collection sets. In 2005, Okuda contributed as a consultant for Perpetual Entertainment in their development of the MMORPG Star Trek Online. He also helped with the cataloging of items for the auction of Star Trek memorabilia by Christie's auction house. The event, and the preparation for it, is included in the History Channel documentary Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier.

Happy birthday, Mike! From your friends at Subspace Communique.

(info source Wikipedia)