All of the people you bring up here had a good amount of experience directing Star Trek episodes or had been with the franchise for a long time and understood Trek as a hole with the exception of Nick Meyer.
No, neither Wise, Baird, Abrams, or Lin had any prior Trek experience either. Counting Clarkson, that's 6 directors without prior Trek experience and 4 directors with -- and of the "with," only two had actual
directing experience on Trek. So it's dead wrong to claim that prior experience with Trek is the norm.
And the fact that people generally like Meyer's work on Trek should disprove the idea that prior experience is necessary. It's really bizarre to me that so many fans assume that someone hired to do a job would be incapable of
learning how to do it if they didn't know already. I mean, that's a basic professional skill in any occupation. You get hired to do a job, you do a period of training. You do research. You learn the things you're obligated to learn in order to do the job. Meyer and Harve Bennett weren't that familiar with Trek, but they boned up on the whole series and learned what they needed to know. Abrams wasn't an expert on Trek, but he relied on his collaborators who were experts to fill in what he needed. When I was hired to write a
Spider-Man novel, I'd only read a handful of the comics, but I tracked down every Spider-Man comic I could find and learned everything I could, and some readers praised my book for its expert level of Marvel knowledge and continuity. I learned what I needed to do the job well, because that is what you do when you are a professional doing a paying job. I think maybe fans don't get this because they only invest effort in the fictional franchises they already know and like. But professionals are operating on a very different level. This is a
career, and it entails training and developing new skills just like in any other career.
I mean, come on, look at S.J. Clarkson's
sizeable filmography. She's worked on dozens of different series on two continents over the past 16 years.
Obviously she knows how to adapt to a new series or franchise. She didn't need to have prior Marvel experience to do acclaimed work on
Jessica Jones and
The Defenders, so why should she need prior
Star Trek experience to do well on Trek?
