By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Who’s the best Star Trek director of them all? There are some strong contenders, including Nicholas Meyer, who effectively saved the franchise by turning The Wrath of Khan into a monster hit. But for many fans, myself included, the best director is Jonathan Frakes, best known for playing Commander Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He helmed several episodes of TNG and two of that show’s feature films. He also directed episodes for Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but never Enterprise. Why is that? Because he got a Voyager episode so bad that it took him decades to return to the franchise!
During the Golden Age of Star Trek, Jonathan Frakes divided his directorial duties very evenly between the first two spinoffs of The Next Generation. In addition to directing First Contact and Insurrection, he directed three episodes of Deep Space Nine and three episodes of Voyager. However, he bowed out of directing duties during Voyager’s second season; he never directed any episodes of Enterprise, and he didn’t get back behind the camera for the franchise until Discovery. Why is that? Reading not-so-between the lines, it seems like he had a terrible time directing the Voyager episode “Prototype.”
Eye, Robot
If you need a refresher, “Prototype” was the episode where B’elanna Torres finds a robot floating in space. She retrieves it, revives it, and receives its weird backstory. Once upon a time, this race of robots was at war with another cybernetic faction; now, with their numbers reduced and their bodies falling apart, this guy’s faction is on the verge of extinction. Torres wants to give it the ability to reproduce, but Janeway warns her this is a clear violation of the Prime Directive. But Torres ends up modifying this robot to save the ship. Eventually, she destroys her pet clanker in order to avoid tipping the scales in another culture’s war.
“Prototype” was directed by Jonathan Frakes, and he did his best to make the episode look great. Unfortunately, this was harder than usual due to the crappy design of the robots whose costumes included these tiny eye slits. Normally, Frakes is known for his very creative cinematography, and he pioneered some of the coolest shots in all of Star Trek. But with “Prototype,” he was effectively restricted by the design of the robot costumes. As chief robot actor Rick Worthy told TV Zone, “Jonathan had to set up each shot in such a way that made the slits unnoticeable to viewers.”
One To Beam Up
Frakes, the consummate professional, didn’t spend any real time complaining about the episode and its shoddy costumes…at least, when he was on set. According to Beyond the Final Frontier, before “Prototype” even aired, he warned audiences at a Star Trek convention that he didn’t really like this episode. Because he’s a classy guy, Frakes didn’t offer any specific commentary beyond that. But the very fact that he was effectively warning audiences it would be a bad episode before it hit the air is a strong indication of just how much he hated working on “Prototype.”
Another strong indication? He didn’t direct anything else in the franchise for decades! Despite his pretty awful cameo in the show, Jonathan Frakes never directed any episodes of Enterprise, and he didn’t get back behind the camera until Star Trek: Discovery. Since then, he has consistently been one of NuTrek’s best directors, someone who combines skill and experience with his living memory of what made the franchise work in the good old days. As a lifelong fan, I’m just happy that he came back; honestly, looking at those robot costumes from “Prototype” (seriously, they look like something out of ‘60s Doctor Who), I wouldn’t blame the man for staying away forever!
