Jonathan Frakes: Star Trek: Discovery Will Be More “Optimistic”
Jonathan Frakes at Star Trek Las Vegas 2019
Veteran Star Trek actor and director Jonathan Frakes is in the unique position of being able to comment on two developing Star Trek series at once.
Yesterday, I told you how he suffered anxiety attacks at returning to acting in Star Trek: Picard. Today, Comicbook.com brings us more coverage from last weekend’s FanExpo Canada, and Jonathan Frakes’s comments about what we can expect from the next season of Discovery, some of which he is directing.
When a fan asked about the darker tone of modern Star Trek, when compared to older Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s original vision, he said, “I can tell you this much about season three of Discovery: It is in fact much more optimistic.”
Frakes acknowledged that the tone of Star Trek changed after Roddenberry’s death in 1991. “After Gene died, some of the writers decided that Deep Space Nine should maybe take a different tone, which, I think, it did, to certain degrees of success.” Frakes went on to say that Roddenberry’s vision is still part of Trek though: “The optimism that Gene infused in all of his shows and in all of us may not be as obvious as it once was, but it’s certainly the driving force of his vision and the franchise, and [Alex] Kurtzman and all the people who run our shows are very conscious that that canon is important to all of you and all of us.”
Jonathan Frakes is directing the as-yet-untitled episode three of Star Trek: Discovery season three, due out sometime in 2020.
This article was written for the podcast Daily Star Trek News.
Alison Pitt is the writer, producer, and host of Daily Star Trek News, on the Roddenberry Podcast Network. A veteran Star Trek podcaster, she started her career on the weekly show Priority One: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast in 2015. She has appeared on panels at Star Trek Las Vegas, WonderCon, and San Diego Comic Con.
