Did any ENT actors direct episodes of the show?

TNG, DS9 and Voyager all had episodes directed by cast members of those series. Did this ever happen with Enterprise?

(I'm fairly sure that Scott Bakula, for example, has directed episodes of Quantum Leap. Did he ever do it with this show?)

 

Have you tried IMDb? (It’s not a discussion topic, only research.)

 

unfortunately, no.

Roxanne Dawson directed 10 ENT episodes
Levar Burton directed 9
Robert Duncan McNeal directed 4
And Michael Dorn directed 1

A good place to find this is to go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek:_Enterprise_episodes where everything(like director, writer, release date, viewer ratings, etc) is put into a spreadsheet.

 

Peter Weller agreed to appear in the Terra Prime two-parter, under condition he directed an episode in Season 5.

 

I thought it was stupid Paramount wouldn't the actors direct Enterprise episodes. It was a wasted opportunity.I know Dominic Keating and John Billingsley and Connor mentioned it in interviews I read along time ago they had story ideas for episodes they wanted to write and direct.

 

That list is surprisingly accurate. The one wrong item I found after a quick glance was that David Straiton directed "STORM FRONT, PART II", not Allan Kroeker. (I do know that there was some guideline in tv production long ago that said when a two-parter happened and it was to be directed by different people, the director of the first part was required to be present for the first day or scenes, or something along those lines. That might explain why that list has Kroeker listed for part two.)

(Side note to the side note... I think the only exception was if a two-parter fell on a season finale/premiere, which does explain why "UNIMATRIX ZERO PART II" was directed by Mike Vejar, not by Allan Kroeker... I read he had a family emergency and was unavailable. The only other times of a finale/premiere two-parter being directed by different people was "Redemption" and "SCORPION". I don't know why in either case.)

Regarding not allowing actors to write for this series... ENTERPRISE was the only spinoff that had NO involvement from Michael Piller, who was famous for starting the policy of allowing outside scripts and writers to be used. I've always wondered if ENTERPRISE would have had a better season 1 and 2 if they kept that policy.

 

I don't believe actors were ever allowed to write episode scripts. There are one or two exceptions at most across all of Star Trek, that being Robert Picardo, who has a writing credit(but only a story credit) on one episode of Voyager. There might be one more in DS9(Andrew Robinson?), but I don't remember. On all the shows, however(including ENT), the actors were allowed and welcome to make suggestions and get scripts changed when they had an idea, or were unhappy with something.

Directing episodes requires a huge commitment from the actor who is interested, on top of an already huge commitment as an actor. I know in Voyager, Garret Wang had been asking to direct an episode, but wasn't willing to commit to all the extra hours, so he was never given the opportunity, while many of his co-stars were. So it could just be that no one on the Enterprise cast was interested in directing and/or willing to make the immense commitment.

Frakes, Dawson, and McNeal were so committed to directing that they gave up acting altogether, and have gone on to be very successful TV directors(particularly Dawson)

 

Why not???

The OP’s question could spawn discussions.


What if Connor Trinneer directed TATV instead??

 

100 out of 733 episodes and 5 movies, so far, have been directed by STAR TREK actors. And a number of them are really great episodes. I hope further shows continue the trend.

 

They’d be off-topic, not to mention that nobody will read 47 pages of resulting meandering discussion, merely come in on page 48 and comment on the basic question again, which will then be riffed on in ways very similar to those on pages 17-24 (but not quite)…

 

Then he might have chosen to film his stupid death from a different angle, directors don't get to make changes to the script.

 

He directed three episodes of Quantum Leap - 'Permanent Wave', 'Roberto!', and 'Promised Land'.

 

Interestingly, TATV was directed by Allan Kroeker, who directed DS9's finale and Voyager's finale.

 

I’m off-topic for saying that the answer to this straightforward question can be found on IMDb, then explaining to The Green Monster why it’s a good idea to stay on-topic? Don’t we want to encourage everyone to do the most basic research rather than fire off a question and wait for free answers?

Someone can always retitle the thread to make it cover more ground, but I just said why 100-page threads are discouraging to new participants.

 

They sometimes do. Nimoy refused to do Generations because he couldn't change some elements in the script he was given.

Oh shoo.. you don't need to read them but lot of the threads go on for months or so even years after getting "off-topic".

 

Yeah, this ain't Quora...man!


Jk

 

Movie directors are usually the top dog and can change he scipt, for tv shows that's usually the job of the showrunner, tv directors play second banana because they change from week to week and it's the showrunner's job to ensure each episode has the same voice and style.

 

Yes. A bit pedantic?