Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair
Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair
I wasn’t positively impressed by the direction from Valerie Weiss in this episode.
Others have remarked about the tone being all over the map in this episode.
That’s a fair assessment in my view but it’s not a fault in the writing per se. Comic levity in the midst of intense drama goes back to Shakespeare and even Greek theatre, and certainly isn’t uncommon in episodic Trek.
But somehow it felt like the great pieces of the episode just didn’t quite come together. It doesn’t feel like the fault was in the editing or writing.
Paul Wesley’s portrayal of Kirk was excellent but at this point, I’m going to give the actor the credit over the director.
This is just the second episode directed by Weiss. The previous one was Ad Aspra Per Aspera which was a very different challenge for a director. What they needed was a director like Frakes who can do both the comic and the serious.
Yeah, I'm glad that the episode has been quite well-liked overall, but it didn't land right with me. I'm going to give it another look at some point - often, my opinion shifts once I have an understanding of what the episode is and is not.
It's interesting that she highlighted the tonal challenges in the interview.
Yes, I’m not saying she’s not a capable director, but she doesn’t seem to have been the right choice for this episode.
Looking across the distribution of directors used for SNW, as well as Discovery and Picard, there definitely seems to be particular ones that are consistently asked back for specific tones.
Maja Vrvilo directed the season 2 finale Hegemony Pt I and the season 3 one New Life and New Civilizations. In season 1, she directed Children of the Comet.
Jordan Canning directed Charades last season. This season she was given Wedding Bell Blues and Four and a Half Vulcans.
This show is hitting all the wrong notes for me. I don’t want to see Kirk’s early adventures — I want to see Pike and his crew. I especially don’t want to see Kirk portrayed by someone who looks and acts nothing like Kirk.
I like Wesley as a young, uncertain Kirk. I very much do not want to see him as Kirk during the 5YM. When we saw him in that time period at the end of season 1 he didn’t feel right at all.
I had wanted a Pike and Number One focused show but the showrunners and Paramount seem determined to make this show about laying the backstory for TOS.
While I still love the show, I agree that it’s still frustrating that the opportunity to focus more on the unexplored characters.
about laying the backstory for TOS.
I wouldn't really look at it like that. There was even a nurse Chapel and doctor M'benga in TOS. This story is about Pike, but we already know what happens to him, just not the exact "why" or "how".
And obviously when Pike's accident happens Starfleet wouldn't just replace the whole crew. So there has to be a sense of continuity from one captain to the next. Technically, we're still on our 2nd chief engineer and Scotty is just a technician. We haven't met or even heard of a McKoy, Chekov, or Suli.
This story is about Pike, and all the main crew of the Enterprise when Kirk took command would have known Pike and even worked with him.
I think this show is being done brilliantly and is the first real Trek since Voyager (I haven't watched lower decks yet, and Picard was very odd feeling).
this is really interesting considering in the Kelvin movies, that's considered a strength and one of Kirk's defining features. one of my favorite tjings about this current wave of trek is how it takes apart the idea of the idea of the perfect, mythic captain. They feel more human this go around, which makes the times they do shine and embody the classic captain archetype that much more powerful
To me it feels like a callback (call forward?) to Wrath of Khan, where he has to come to terms with having never faced defeat before.