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Jonathan Frakes on the Making of Star Trek First Contact

By GustavoLeao / 02:26, 16 June 2009 / General Star Trek

Sci Fi posted a recent interview with Star Trek The Next Generation actor/director Jonathan Frakes and here are few excerpts.

First Contact is one of the top Trek movies. Was there something that Jonathan Frakes brought to First Contact that nobody else could have?

I always thank Rick Berman and Paramount for letting me have the opportunity - they gave me "the keys to the car" with Star Trek. Another cliché that is really true is that if you have a good script it is your job to screw it up. The script that Ron Moore and Brannon Braga wrote is arguably as good a Star Trek movie has ever been written.

It doesn't hurt to have that company of actors we have. Then I was able to hire Alfre Woodard and Jamie Cromwell and the incredible Alice Krige, who played the Borg Queen. It was one of those situations where I was so nervous and so over-prepared that I was driven to make this as good as it could be and I frankly had the support of the acting company.

We're all pretty close in our group that it's a little Pollyanna, but we really are still a family. We keep in touch, we all stood at each other's weddings and we're all godparents to each other's kids. So when I got the helm I had real emotion, physical, psychological support from the company. Rick Berman's wife is the godmother of my son. So there's a lot of blood connection in that particular project.

You have hive-mind, android zombies as your baddies. Would you say The Borg are the best monsters in the Star Trek universe or is there something else that scares you more?

No. I would say that The Borg are the greatest nemesis (no pun intended) of all things Star Trek and one of the reasons The Borg are so great is because of the Academy Award winning John Knowle who works for ILM. What he and his team, who did a lot of Star Trek movies, created to embellish Michael Westmore's makeup really caught peoples' eye.

It made Star Trek now not only an action-adventure movie but made it a horror movie as well. The scariest movies are the ones that get inside your head and the idea of being assimilated from the inside of the brain is terrifying for kids of all ages.

What is it about sci fi and Star Trek that enables it to have such a huge reaction from fans?

I've always thought that Star Trek resonates with the fans and has for 40 years because the late, great Gene Rodenberry created an arena on all the Enterprises and on all the shows where the people, who were the regulars on the show, were civil to each other. They followed the Prime Directive. They behaved in a way that was free of racism and free of sexism.

The future that Gene created - that Rick Berman and all the other writers after tried to maintain - was a future in which there was hope. There was a certain forward thinking that human beings and aliens had found a way to live together and that we had been good to the environment somehow. I mean, all the things we seem to be flying in the face of right now - going to hell in a handbasket - on this planet they have given us the responsibility to take care of.

Gene's vision is that we as humans in the 24th Century did the right thing. We did take care of it, did take care of each other. I think that quality - particularly in light of how screwed up things are in Darfur, in Belize, in Northern Ireland - it's a cliché I guess but it's that vision of hope that has allowed Star Trek to be so popular for so long. Do you know what I mean?

The full interview is here.

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RE: First Contact.....Best of TNG ? | Report this post to moderator
By: cdydatzigs (Odo's file, contact) @ 08:59:41 on Jun 17, 2009

Quote:
All of the TNG movies, save perhaps Nemesis, felt like 2 hour episodes.

That's because the TNG crew began their film adventures right after the series ended, so they all looked the same and benefitted from the same producers, sets and art department as they did on Next Generation. The first six films don't feel anything like TV episodes because of how different everything looked in them compared to the series they were based on due to the time that had passed.

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Funny thing is that "Yesterday's Enterprise", another David Carson outing, is better than any of these "2 hour episodes", including First Contact.

I don't know about that, but I will say that "All Good Things..." would have made a much better film than Generations was. Even the producers have admitted as much after the fact.

Quote:
And what jaw-dropping, industry changing, definitive films had Jonathan Frakes directed before (or after) First Contact?

I wasn't saying Frakes was much more prolific either, I was simply trying to be a devil's advocate to the lofty praise a television director was getting for a film that wasn't much different than the episodes he directed prior.

--------

-- Steve
"If a sixth Star Trek television series is ever realized, it will be set in the new universe." -- cdydatzigs, June 15, 2009.

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RE: First Contact.....Best of TNG ? by captainkoloth @ 19:40:54 on Jun 17

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RE: First Contact.....Best of TNG ? | Report this post to moderator By: cdydatzigs (Odo's file, contact) @ 08:59:41 on Jun 17, 2009

RE: First Contact.....Best of TNG ? | Report this post to moderator
By: cdydatzigs (Odo's file, contact) @ 08:59:41 on Jun 17, 2009