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DAVID CARSON
(Director, 'Emissary')
"I think it's great to be able to [shoot on location] on
any show. It gives it great width and breadth - if the
show calls for it, and this show did - and it was very
cleverly woven into the strangeness of the story, which
was very good. It was good that there were earth locations
and as down to earth as baseball games and stuff like
that. I enjoy working on stages also if one is able to use
them imaginatively, where they don't look like stages. I
think a stage can be as effective a location, even though
sometimes people who work on stages all the time yearn to
do location work.
One of the
things that appealed to me about the script was that it
was very unusual to tell a story like this. Essentially,
it's about a Starfleet officer who does not want to take
over the command that he's told to take over. And he
bitterly resents the officer that is ordering him to do
this to such an extent that his resentment is literally
murderous, because he believes that [Picard] was directly
responsible for the death of his wife. That's a pretty
strong story you have there. I think it was felt by the
studio that we should tilt the balance back toward more
affability; certain things were taken out of the script,
like looking for other jobs.
Michael's stage directions emphasized that Sisko was
constantly unhappy, restless, disliking the Cardassian
architecture and everything that went with it. He was
appalled with what was going on there but nevertheless was
there to do his job. But if you tell a story about a guy
who's just there to do his job, he doesn't have that spark
of get up and go, and let's solve the mystery that you
associate with a Star Trek story. I think Michael and Rick
were rightly very careful to keep the basic elements that
have always been very common to Star Trek stories and
characters. It's a fascinating process of trying to make
sure the facets of the character that are presented
immediately to the audience are rich and yet immediately
accessible, and in that sense, I think there is good in
both ways of doing it."
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