Jonathan Frakes on Directing Next Generation, Lower Decks
This interview goes assorted places, but it has a small interesting bit about next year’s Discovery finale.
“I directed the first half of the finale of Season 5, which turned out to be the real finale… And then [‘Discovery’ executive producer and director] Olatunde Osunsanmi had to go back up and do two or three days of new stuff to actually make the finale the finale." https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/jonathan-frakes-star-trek-director-strange-new-worlds-lower-decks-crossover-1235680140/
I really hope they were able to come up with something satisfying with those reshoots. The series deserves a good sendoff.
I hope that the series finale is satisfying, too. Jonathan Frakes and Olatunde Osunsanmi as directors of it is a good sign. Jonathan Frakes + Star Trek = awesome. I enjoy a lot of Olatunde Osunsanmi’s Star Trek work as a director, including one of my favored DSC episodes, “What’s Past Is Prologue” (s1e13). That episode has everything. Action, drama, pathos. I love Saru’s delivery of, “That is all I needed to see. Fire!” Fabulous spark igniting the action of that scene. I enjoy DSC.
It brought Trek back, and also, I think surprisingly at the time, brought the film-level feel of polished production and longer serialised arcs along with it, all while having its own vibe and doing its own thing (I’m still madly in love with the idea of a time jump 900 years into a future of a broken federation!!).
This series deserves to be sent off.
Good interview with more than the usual proportion of new content and perspective.
And Frakes being Frakes, we actually get some insight into how the unexpected Discovery series finale was managed.
I am upset they are cancelling Discovery, it had flaws but it is an awesome show with some amazing moments and a very diverse cast.
I never understood the hate towards Discovery.
It had its flaws (namely in its pacing: too much talking about feelings and reasons instead of just showing them, but lazy writing is a general problem of our time), but I truly enjoyed the characters and the story.
@porthos @billmason Well DIS started a ST revival. Maybe without DIS PIC, LD and finally SNW wouldn’t exist. The biggest problem DIS had IMHO, was the weird licensing situation, when DIS was developed. Basically the same Problem the Kelvin-Timeline movies had. It should look like star trek, but not too similar. Because this, DIS felt a little bite alien towards old ST fans. The biggest issue DIS had, is bad story writing aka character development. They were all crushed by the messias Burnham.
@deafmutex @porthos @startrek Discovery did not have a licensing issue. It was under the auspices of CBS Studios, which had all the rights to all television Star Trek properties at that point.
@billmason @porthos @startrek I don’t think that CBS had all the rights to all ST properties. Today CBS, Viacom and Paramount are united again, but not before end of 2019. For example: https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-discoverys-version-of-the-enterprise-had-to-1825276401
@deafmutex @porthos @startrek Yes, the right to the first 10 movies at that point belonged to Viacom, who made them under license from CBS. But that’s neither here or there to what Discovery was doing.
Also, the story that the Enterprise was changed in Discovery because of rights/legal issues has been debunked. https://comicbook.com/startrek/news/star-trek-discovery-enterprise-design-legal/
