Uncle Traveling Matt

Uncle Traveling Matt is a fictional puppet character from Jim Henson's television series Fraggle Rock. Matt is a major supporting character from the series. He is performed and voiced by Dave Goelz in both the original series and its reboot Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. Patrick Pinney voiced him in the animated series.

Traveling Matt is an explorer, and the uncle of the show's protagonist Gobo Fraggle. In the first episode of the series, "Beginnings", Matt discovers an entrance leading from Fraggle Rock into "Outer Space", aka the human world. He subsequently leaves Fraggle Rock and devotes his time to exploring Outer Space, sending back postcards to Gobo recounting his adventures. Matt is well-meaning but clumsy and completely oblivious to the world around him; his woefully incorrect perceptions of the human world provide much of the humor for his character.

Character biography and storylines
As a child, Matt was raised by his Uncle Gobo, who resembled an older version of himself. He dreamed of his following in his uncle's footsteps as an explorer, though Uncle Gobo did not approve of Matt's dreams. During a famine in Fraggle Rock, when the Fraggles run out of mushrooms, their primary food source, Matt inadvertently discovered radishes in the Gorgs' garden.

By the start of the series, Matt is already a well-known and respected explorer in Fraggle Rock. The first episode begins with him exploring the last uncharted area in the Rock. Here, he discovers an entrance leading into the home of the human Doc. Matt, now choosing to go by the name "Traveling Matt", leaves Fraggle Rock, sending postcards back to Gobo in which he recounts his discoveries in Outer Space. Gobo must journey into Outer Space, and get past Doc's dog Sprocket, in order to retrieve these postcards.

Matt remains in Outer Space for most of the series, only occasionally returning to Fraggle Rock. This changes in the episode "Uncle Matt's Discovery", when Matt discovers a cave he names the T. Matthew Fraggle Room, which contains a number of portals that lead to various locations in Outer Space. While he continues his explorations in Outer Space, Matt returns to Fraggle Rock more often from this point on, telling Gobo of his exploits in person instead of sending postcards.

In a 2006 interview, Matt's performer Dave Goelz discussed the three character flaws that define Matt's personality: his misperception, his clumsiness (created by Goelz to make taping Matt's segments more interesting), and his denial of the first two flaws. As Goelz later said in a 2011 interview: “The original concept for him was that he went out and misinterpreted everything and then sent postcards back that we saw on video, where he described the outside world in a distorted way. I just didn't think it was very funny, so I started adding two other components. I started adding clumsiness so he was also physically an inept explorer. And then I added this emotional disconnect. So when he wrote back to his nephew, he would say, "I decided to leave the shop." In actuality, you see him being drop-kicked out of the place and flying through the air and hitting a wall. That aesthetic started to become part of the material, and it was written in as we developed it."

Development
Uncle Traveling Matt was designed by Michael K. Frith and built by Tim Clarke. Dave Goelz, also the performer of Boober, was cast to play the character. Matt's name was derived from a traveling matte, a type of filmmaking technique.

Behind the scenes
Uncle Traveling Matt has made several cameo appearances in Muppet productions, being the only Fraggle (although not the only Fraggle Rock character) to do so. He appeared as a guest at Kermit and Miss Piggy's wedding in The Muppets Take Manhattan, and also appeared in The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years. He also appeared, along with the other Fraggles, in the 1987 TV special A Muppet Family Christmas.

Dave Goelz vocally reprised his role as Matt for the 2020 short-form TV series Fraggle Rock: Rock On!, produced for Apple TV+, while John Tartaglia performed the puppetry. In Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, Goelz once again provided Matt's voice, with Frank Meschkuleit and Kevin Clash alternating the puppetry.