Star Trek icon and sought-after television director, Jonathan Frakes will return to Starfleet to direct a season 1 episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Neither of Star Trek: Discovery‘s showrunners, Gretchen J. berg, nor Aaron Harberts, has said a word on the record about the episode in question. Ms Berg made the announcement to EW, “Jonathan Frakes will rejoin the Trek world with Discovery.” Ms Berg continued, “He’s a fantastic guy and great director.”
Added fellow showrunner, executive producer Aaron Harberts: “Our cast is dying to work with him.”
Mr Frakes has helmed two Star Trek feature films and episodes of all the Star Trek sequel series. He appeared in and directed First Contact and Insurrection as well as episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, DS9 and Voyager. Mr Frakes’ Star Trek character, Commander Riker, has also shared scenes with every Star Trek Captain since 1987: Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer. Technically, on Deep Space Nine (DS9), it was CDR William T. Riker’s transporter duplicate W. Thomas Riker, but Capt. Sisko didn’t know that until later. Mr Frakes didn’t get the opportunity to direct Enterprise, but he did appear as Will Riker in the series finale.
Since the Star Trek cannon has established the Riker bloodline as far back as the U. S. Civil War, it is possible that Mr Frakes could appear in Discovery as one of Will Riker’s ancestors. If so, he would be the second Star Trek actor to play an ancestor of his main character. Michael Dorn played the character Worf on Picard’s Enterprise and Sisko’s Deep Space Nine. Mr Dorn also played Worf’s ancestor Mog in feature film, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country.
Mr Frakes is an accomplished director outside of Star Trek as well. In addition to directing Star Trek shows, Mr Frakes also directed several episodes each for Castle, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Librarians, Burn Notice and Leverage with Timothy Hutton. Mr Frakes brings humor, visual flair and an efficient shooting style to the set with him. He previously worked with Ms Berg and Mr Harberts, directing five episodes of Roswell.
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