Cast Members Who Were Not Permitted to Direct (Again)

[t_smitts]

It seems rather common that cast members on TNG, DS9, and Voyager got to direct episodes, but apparently some of them didn't work out or never got the chance. There's a couple of passages from Rick Berman about this in "The Fifty Year Mission" (p. 253 & 254)

Jonathan started this ball rolling, and all of a sudden other people started making the request. My feeling was that this was a gift and not something that, as far as actors are concerned, that I owed them. There were some actors during the course of the four series that were not necessarily perfectly behaved in terms of being prepared, being on time, not giving grief to various people that they worked with on the set. I had no interest in giving those people the gift of a direcing assignment, but there were others like Gates [McFadden], LeVar [Burton], and Michael Dorn who did direct.

On Deep Space Nine, a lot of people wanted to direct. And it kept going. Sometimes it was very hard because one of finest actors, and I'm not going to say who, did a very mediocre job at directing, and in fact, there was more than one. There were maybe two or three actors over the course of the shows who didn't do a great job of directing, and I had no interest in giving them a second assignment. Which is very hard, because these were people I was working with and dealing with on a daily basis.

I'm curious who some of those actors who were not given an opportunity to direct, or didn't do that good a job and weren't offered more jobs.

I know one of them is Garrett Wang, which he was a bit upset out. (Story here) In terms of "being on time", as Berman mentioned, I saw him talk in a recent podcast interview who did have a bit of punctuality issue for a while due to his oversleeping due to depression. (He mentions having been called into Berman's office and getting ripped a new one for it because Berman assumed Garrett had been out partying the previous night). (That story here)

In terms of the "not giving grief to various people they worked with on set", I wonder if that's a reference to the now-infamous feud between two certain actors on the Voyager set.

As for the ones who did direct but weren't asked to again, I wonder who those are. Gates and Tim Russ only directed one episode each. Robert Picardo and Alexander Siddig directed two each. (One of Sid's was the notorious "Profit and Lace"). The other episodes they directed weren't bad though (at least I don't think so), so which actors was he referring to?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I took notice of the same passage when I came across it, but I suspected that Siddig was one of the actor-directors who failed. I think "second assignment" is imprecise, not to be taken literally.

 

[DamarsKanar]

Yeah I was wondering the exact same thing when I read that! I surmised it might be Tim Russ or Gates but I figured probably not Gates (she's great but probably not one of their finest actors..) so I figured Tim Russ although he has gone on to pursue some directing. Maybe Siddig does make sense even though he did 2 episodes .. though he has spoken about wanting to be a director long before wanting to be an actor and had some low profile experience of that. So not sure bit maybe it didn't work out what with Profit and Lace and everything (and there was tension between him and the writers since he tried to direct that episode as more serious in tone while they wanted it more farcical).
It's tricky to figure this out, I wonder if anyone has any more info?

 

[Trek Survivor]

I can't find the reference, but have read previously Siddig and his directing of Star Trek was seen as a bit of disaster and not encouraged for more episodes.

Gates McFadden was very well received as a director, but her first assignment was near the end of TNG run (she has said that, though she loves directing, the technical considerations of a show like TNG had previously put her off pursuing a directing assignment). She was never interested in directing any of the other shows.

 

[stardream]

Wasn't there a quote somewhere about Picardo that said he tried directing and decided it wasn't for him? I seem to have a vague memory about that...but maybe it was another show.

 

[Jedman67]

I don't really know who directed which episodes; Frakes was fairly decent, but I'd be hard pressed to say he was "good" based on the TNG movies (a lot can change in 20 years.)
Some episodes were excellent because of the directing of a very mediocre script. (Starship Mine, for example was a decent B+ episode. Without the quality of directing it could have been much worse. And Picard gets to kill Tuvok!).

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Another option, if we don't take the one episode restriction literally, might be Andrew Robinson.

 

[Prax]

Oops. Here it is again: