Thanks to SciFiFan for this. I’ll post the second article next<\/p>\n
The December issue of Cult Times has a Roswell cover,
\n2 major articles, one small article, and a poster.
\nChristmas has come early!<\/p>\n
One of the two major articles is an interview with
\nJonathan Frakes; it follows below. . . enjoy . . .
\nwish I could show you the pictures. oh my!<\/p>\n
ROMANCE IS NOT DEAD
\nby Ian Spelling<\/p>\nIt has the combined staff of our American office
\nsitting on the edge of the bed (it’s a relaxed kind of
\noffice), but can a series that was sold on the
\nstrength of its romantic overtones win through as a
\nSci-Fi
\naction series? We asked Roswell executive producer
\nJonathan Frakes.<\/p>\nJonathan Frakes never had a doubt about it. The
\nco-executive producer of Roswell figured that the
\nfreshman series would return for a second season. In
\nfact, Frakes – who also directed several well-received
\nfirst season episodes and guest-starred a couple of
\ntimes (as himself) as well – never thought that
\nRoswell was in serious danger of cancellation, despite
\nthe show’s usually lethal combination of low ratings
\nand high production costs. “I am an eternal
\noptimist,”
\nthe ever-genial co-star and director of Star Trek: The
\nNext Generation says, laughing. “I think they held
\noff until the end because they were trying to decide
\nexactly where to put us. But once we moved to Monday I
\nthink it became clear that we were the best thing that
\nhad happened to the WB’s Monday night slot in years.
\nSo I was quite confident that we were going to be a
\npart of their future.
\n“We just got the pick-up for the rest of the
\nsecond season, which I’m sure you’ve heard about by
\nnow. We are all very happy about it, obviously. So I
\nthink Roswell will be around for a while; that we
\nwill be a part of the TV landscape. I think the move
\nto Sci-Fi, the addition of [scriptwriter] Ron Moore,
\nthe way that the cast has gelled – just like The Next
\nGeneration cast did years earlier – and the loyalty of
\nteenage girls to Roswell have all contributed to our
\ncoming back and to, what looks to me like, a promising
\nfuture.”
\nIt’s quite true that young females make up a huge
\nchunk of Roswell’s modest, but steadily growing,
\nviewing audience. That tidbit makes the changes in the
\nshow all the more intriguing and risky. Though it may
\nvery well be a cliche to say so, girls tend to like
\nromance and boys usually prefer Sci-Fi. Thus,
\nRoswell’s late first-season transition from
\nromance\/Sci-Fi show to Sci-Fi\/adventure\/romance series
\nwas a huge gamble. “The single biggest marching order,
\nfrom all of us down in the trenches through the
\nhigher-ups at the studio and the network was, `Do not
\nlose sight of the relationships, because that is what
\nsold the show’,” Frakes notes. “So, it’s a matter of
\nfinding the balance. That’s where we are now.
\nObviously, some scripts lend themselves to the balance
\nbetter and more
\nefficiently than others.
\n“I think that the human-alien relationships,
\nwhich are personified mostly by Max [Jason Behr] and
\nLiz [Shiri Appleby], are what drew everybody in. It
\ncertainly intrigued me. By putting Max with Tess
\n[Emilie de Ravin] – his destiny from the pod days, as
\nit were – we are breaking up the A-story love team.
\nWe’ve got the comedy team intact, even though they’ve
\nbroken up, too, and that’s Michael [Brendan Fehr] and
\nMaria [Majandra Delfino]. But I think we need to be
\nvery careful about completely losing our two lead
\nlovers. We always need to come back to them.”
\nThe day-to-day responsibility of guiding Roswell
\nfalls not to Frakes, but rather to Jason Katims and
\nformer Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager
\nscribe\/producer Ron Moore. Frakes recalls that when it
\nbecame clear to all involved that Roswell would follow
\nthe Sci-Fi route, it was he who suggested Moore for
\nthe job. “I put Ron and Jason in the same room,” he
\nsays. “Ron was thrilled. He was looking for a steady
\ngig. He and his wife are having another baby. People
\nlike steady work. I just needed to know that Ron and
\nJason
\ncould collaborate, because they are both used to being
\nleaders. That was my biggest contribution to the show
\nprobably, besides directing The White Room, perhaps .
\n. .”
\nContrary to what one might assume, Frakes insists
\nthat he was not responsible for placing another piece
\ninto the Roswell puzzle. That piece was Genie Francis,
\nFrakes’s wife and the actress who portrayed the vision
\nof the aliens’ mother at the end of the first season.
\n“You know whose idea that was?” Frakes asks. “That was<\/p>\n[producer-writer] Thania St. John’s idea. She was a
\nhuge Laura [of Luke and Laura from the heyday of the
\nsoap opera General Hospital] fan. She and Toni
\nGraphia, who’s still with the show, called me and
\nsaid, `Do you think Genie would do Roswell?’ I said,
\n`I think she’d be thrilled’. So they called Genie and
\nI was so happy she did it. Also, Katie [Heigl] sort of
\nlooks like she could be Genie’s daughter, so it works
\ngreat.”
\nAnyone checking out this season’s episodes on a
\nregular basis probably has noticed that none of them
\nfeatures a `directed by Jonathan Frakes’ credit. And,
\nunfortunately, none of them are likely to. Frakes has
\nbeen too busy ramping up the family-oriented Sci-Fi
\nadventure film Clockstoppers – not to mention hosting
\nBeyond Reality, acting in two episodes of the cable TV
\nseries The Lot and vacationing with Francis and their
\ntwo children – to helm any hours of Roswell. “Right
\nnow, I look at the cuts before they go to the network
\nand I look at the scripts before they get shot,” notes
\nFrakes, who has his hat in the ring to direct Star
\nTrek 10, which is currently being scripted by John
\n(Gladiator) Logan. “I’m doing what I can. I liked The
\nEnd of the World a lot and also Summer of `47. I liked
\nSummer of `47 because I loved the way the kids looked
\nin that period. I thought The End of the World worked
\nbecause it had what we’ve just been talking about,
\nwhich is that balance of Sci-Fi and romance. And I
\njust read a script that Jason [Katims] wrote, which
\nwill be our Christmas episode. It’s just delicious.
\nThere are good shows coming up. We’ve got a whole arc
\nfor Sheriff Valenti [William Sadler], which should be
\nvery good.
\nAnd we’ve also got a couple of episodes in which we’ll
\nsee duplicate versions of our alien kids. That should
\nbe interesting.
\n“If I think about it, we had the same problem,
\nthe same challenge, on Star Trek, which was to find
\ngood stuff for the other members of the ensemble to
\ndo. I think that Nick Wechsler [as Kyle Valenti] is
\nunderused. He’s a fascinating actor. I love Colin
\nHanks
\n[as Alex]. But we’ve got to keep the leads busy.
\nFortunately, they’ve finally put Katie Heigl in some
\nmajor stories. I thought she really blossomed last
\nyear and I’m glad to see that she’s getting so much to
\ndo.”
\nThis season’s shows have been nothing if not
\neclectic, from the discoveries of Skin and Bones to
\nthe time-tripping aspects of The End of the World and
\nfrom the dress-up fun of Summer of `47 to the
\nskins-shedding shenanigans of Harvest. If there’s been
\nany complaint,
\nbeyond the shift from romance to Sci-Fi\/adventure,
\nit’s that the show has been revved up to such a degree
\nthat plot lines that might have been explored over the
\ncourse of three or four or five episodes are now being
\ncrammed into one or two or three episodes.
\nIt’s quite possible that Katims and company felt
\ncompelled to cram as much into the first 13 episodes
\nfor fear that Roswell might end when that 13th episode
\naired, the thinking being that the fans would get
\ntheir money’s worth and that many of the questions the
\nfans
\nwanted answered about the characters, their history
\nand so on, would be addressed or at least touched on.
\nNow that the WB has green lit the back nine, and it’s
\na certainty that Roswell will get the chance to finish
\nout the season, might things slow down a bit? “Katims
\ncan probably speak to this more than I can, but it
\nprobably does give you some room to breathe, so your
\narcs aren’t just two episodes but maybe three
\nepisodes,” Frakes replies, bring the conversation to a
\nconclusion. “It’s a very good question. Let’s say yes.
\nThat would be my instinct. I’m sure everybody’s
\nbreathing a little easier now that we know we’re going
\nto be around, and that may be reflected in the
\nstorytelling.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to SciFiFan for this. I’ll post the second article next The December issue of Cult Times has a Roswell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2393,5],"tags":[70,82],"coauthors":[2273],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jonathan-frakes","category-roswell","tag-interview","tag-jonathan-frakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28431,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions\/28431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}