Jonathan Frakes Talks About His Directing Decisions For His 'Star Trek: Picard' Episode
Image Source: CinemaBlend
Star Trek: Picard season 3 episode 4, ‘No Win Scenario’, featured some of Jonathan Frakes’ best work as a director. Frakes, who plays Captain William T. Riker, has directed many episodes, not just from Picard, but across the Trek universe. He has also directed two of the feature films, First Contact and Insurrection. In this episode, the crew of the Titan is facing almost certain death by sinking into a gravity well at the center of an unusual nebula. This leaves the crew both trying to find a way out and, simultaneously, in a reflective mood trying to say their goodbyes.
The reflective mood is what allows Frakes to shine. The directing can be seen best in two homages featured in the episode. The first comes around the midpoint: the prickly Captain Shaw reflects on why he’s been treating Admiral Picard so badly, and realizes it’s because of the battle of Wolf 359 where Picard became Locutus of Borg. While Locutus, Picard killed thousands of Starfleet personnel and destroyed Shaw’s ship. Shaw was one of ten chosen to survive. The scene was a spot-on tribute to Spielberg’s Jaws, where Quint describes how he was one of the few to survive the USS Indianapolis sinking. Frakes said, “I try to watch Jaws every year... I believe Terry wanted that to be, tonally, what we were aiming for from the very beginning.”
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The other scene comes at the end of the episode, where Frakes created an homage to himself. There’s a famous scene in First Contact where Picard is washing his face, looking in a mirror, when a Borg implant suddenly pops out of his face. In “No Win Scenario,” there is a scene where Jack Crusher is washing his face while looking in a mirror. Instead of a Borg implant, he sees a kind of slime on the wall behind him. Frakes said, “It’s the exact same framing, same lighting, same lens.” These are just two of the more impressive scenes that show that Frakes is a master of his craft.
Star Trek: Picard can be seen streaming on Paramount+.
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