While io9 had mixed feelings about last week’s episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, one thing about “A Space Adventure Hour” that worked well was its gleeful recreation of 1960s Hollywood. With a bit of chaotic holodeck assistance, the story saw likenesses of the main cast acting out a murder mystery set behind the scenes of a show that very much resembled the original Star Trek, complete with a nerdy creator that’s clearly a stand-in for Trek‘s own Gene Roddenberry.
Admitting the effort was both parody and homage, director Jonathan Frakes talked about how he and actor Anson Mount—whose character, Captain Pike, appears in the simulation as the Roddenberry-esque “TK Bellows”—worked to bring their riff on the sci-fi legend to life.
Speaking to Variety, Frakes recalled his experiences of working with Roddenberry on The Next Generation helped inform Mount’s performance. “I had the privilege of working with Gene for three or four years before he died,” Frakes said. “Anson and I started really wanting to lean into Gene, and he asked me to get some tapes which I was able to track down from the Roddenberry Association. We were really into him doing Gene, but I think [executive producers] Akiva [Goldsman] and Henry [Alonso Myers] wanted us not to lean in too hard.”
Strange New Worlds costume designer Bernadette Croft echoed the initial idea of not leaning in too hard but said that Mount was enthusiastic about pushing that a bit. “Anson was like, ‘Let’s do a belly, let’s really lean into the suede jacket.’ [Roddenberry] was this bookish intellectual, but then he kind of turned, like a cut snake if he was in a bad mood or if someone crossed him.”
As Frakes sees it, “We ended up in a wonderful place where Anson created a character who, for better or for worse, anybody who knew him could see Gene. The voice specifically is brilliant, the physicality is so not Pike. Everybody had a ball playing in a different part of their toolbox.”
Head to Variety to read more of Frakes’ behind-the-scenes take on, including Paul Wesley’s “ham school” take on William Shatner. New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds arrive Thursdays on Paramount+.
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