As Star Trek: The Next Generation celebrates its 20th anniversary, Dreamwatch Total Sci Fi sits down with actor and director Jonathan Frakes, who played Will Riker, to wallow in some nostalgia…

When you started work on the series back in 1987, did you or any of the other actors have any idea that Star Trek: The Next Generation would be part of your life for this length of time?

Certainly not in the beginning and not for the first year either. When the show became popular and the numbers became huge, and the conventions became a big part of our lives, it opened up like a flower. We realised that we were part of the popular culture in a way that I was either in denial about or unclear about.

Look at the conventions that are still going on. I went to one in Germany which was monstrous. TNG is still huge, and yet the show hasn’t been on the air in years and years.

I think all of us were surprised by the iconic power that the show had. I know Patrick [Stewart] and I used to talk about it because, except for LeVar [Burton] who had somewhat of a name from Roots, the rest of us were working actors. There weren’t any “names” in the entire cast. It changed our lives because we became, at least in this Star Trek world, very recognisable.

It will be forever our epitaphs – “aren’t you the Star Trek guy?” If I get it once a day, I should get it a dozen times! But isn’t “the guy from Star Trek” a great thing to be?

I assume you’d rather be known for that than recognised for something you’re less proud of…

Yes, and I’ve done some bad television. I’d done a lot of bad television before Star Trek! What started as just another audition for just another show, and you hoped you’d get the job, turned into a life-changing experience.

Did you actually audition with Gene Roddenberry himself?

I actually auditioned seven times. The last four probably were with Gene. The last three, Gene took me to the executives at Paramount whose money we were spending. He was spectacular, because I think he felt… no, I know he felt very connected to this character. There was a lot of him in Riker. Riker, Picard and Wesley were Gene spread amongst them. That was clear.

His passion about my character was really contagious and he was a delightful visionary, funny, irreverent man. He was wonderfully irreverent about everything. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed his politics, I enjoyed the Machiavellian glint in his eye. We were lucky to be created while Gene was still in full swing. It certainly helped the show.

Did you feel that Star Trek: The Next Generation was Gene’s reaction to what had happened with the movies based on the original series?

You have to remember, those had been taken away from him. His name was on them but he wasn’t involved with the movies. Ironically, he wasn’t involved in the making of any of our movies but that was beyond his control! But we felt he was with us, without that sounding too corny, and he was a big influence on Patrick and Brent [Spiner]. He had entrusted us with his creation.

I had always admired the Kirk, Bones and Spock triangle, and Patrick, Brent and I always aspired to it. We were never really written the same wonderful, ironic sarcastic material that those characters had. We always aspired to it.

In the very first episode, Encounter at Farpoint, there’s an element of that, surely, in the scenes between Riker and Data on the holodeck when Riker calls him Pinocchio?

Yes, it started and the groundwork was laid, but the irreverence I mentioned that Gene had, and the sarcasm that was there between Kelley and Nimoy was never really brought into the story.

Actors love to play irony, and we always regretted that we didn’t have as much as we would have liked to have. I was a big DeForest Kelley fan – huge - and he used to lay it out with Nimoy. He was dry as a bone. He was delicious on that show. You can still watch those shows for those acting moments. The technical stuff is what it is, but some of the acting moments, and some of the scenes, they were gems.

The same thing is true of our show. When you turn on an episode, you find yourself generally a little scene, a two-hander somewhere in someone’s quarters or in the ready room, or occasionally in the observation deck, but rarely on the bridge. It’s a little intimate scene and you think, “God I forgot about that scene.”

There’s some of them in the episode Ensign Ro: Michelle Forbes was fabulous. They offered her Nana’s part on Deep Space Nine when it started. I don’t know why she didn’t end up doing it because she ended up going on to Homicide: Life on the Street. She said she didn’t want to do television and then she ended up doing it! She was great in that. She’s a fabulous actor: very sexy, very smart. She was a gem. She was one of the best guests we had, up there with [John] de Lancie, that calibre of thespian.

How do you think audiences will react to the upcoming big screen incarnation of Star Trek?

J.J. [Abrams] has been given the keys to the spaceship. Seeing what he has done so far, I think the franchise is in good hands. It could be great.

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