By Rob Heyman

When I was in my mid teens – and I’ll place the year at about 1987 – it was nothing for my best friend and I to tear apart the latest Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, scene by scene, and assign a final grade based not only on the writing and acting, but also, more importantly, on its directing.

Of course, we felt we were the only two people in the universe at the time doing this type of criticism. Trying to get my parents or sister to watch Star Trek and talk about it was like asking them to watch ice melt. As two guys subsisting almost daily on a diet of Trek, Blake’s 7, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who, it was easy to think we were pretty alone in the world at the time. Outside of a couple online BBS’s, there weren’t really easy ways to connect with others like us.

Frakes directs Hallie Todd in “The Offspring.” (via Trek 365)

If you’re a young, sci-fi fan today, connecting isn’t much of a problem, relatively speaking, thanks to social media. And I must admit, despite the enormous age gulf now between me and them, I’m finding it pretty easy to spark spontaneous and sometimes accidental friendships with teens and early-20-somethings who are just as obsessive about directors and film composers as I once was, and still am. True armchair quarterbacks in the realm of cinema criticism – and shamelessly so.

I’m certainly not complaining about these welcome connections now but I often wonder if we’ve gotten to the point where we’re prejudging the prospects of a movie a little too much based solely on the choice of director. Of course those of us raised on Star Trek have good evidence for a solid defense of this obsession.

The choice of director has always been major point of discussion whenever a new Star Trek movie was announced. This is probably because Star Trek always allowed for a certain unorthodox transparency when it came to how it was put together. From The Next Generation’s open script submission policy to the voluminous production troves and behind-the-scenes dirt exposed for all to see in pre-Internet publications like Cinefantastique and others, Star Trek truly was an open-book.

William Shatner and Nick Meyer on the set of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

My fixation was The Next Generation, and in the early 1990’s Cinefantastique magazine would put out a year-end edition looking back at the previous year’s episodes and production in a frightfully honest way. Where Starlog only scratched the surface, Cinefantastique drove the blade in deep. Writer Mark Altman’s episode reviews were frank and often harsh. You learned why certain writers, directors, and composers were chosen for certain episodes, and why some were asked never to come back.

So when a guy like David Carson was selected to direct the first Next Generation movie, production fans could understand why: he directed “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” one of the series’ finest episodes. The choice of Jonathan Frakes to direct the next two movies wasn’t altogether surprising either, given his success directing several episodes of the show (and producer Rick Berman’s proclivity for giving actors a shot at the Big Chair). These were comfort choices: fans knew their names and what they would bring to the table – similar to what Nicholas Meyer promised when he was brought back to direct The Undiscovered Country – the promise of a good movie.

The choice of Stuart Baird, a longtime Hollywood editor, to direct the tenth movie, Nemesis, was an interesting one. I wasn’t surprised that Berman and company went outside the box, but there was very little evidence to predict how well it would do in his hands. What I knew of Baird comes mostly from audio commentaries he did with director Richard Donner for The Omen and Superman, both of which he edited.

Patrick Stewart and Stuart Baird on the set of Star Trek: Nemesis.

My immediate impressions of Baird: he’s funny, articulate, and absolutely in love with filmmaking and film composing (his adoration for Jerry Goldsmith in The Omen is evident). Based on this, I was cautiously optimistic for Nemesis. Others no doubt felt alienated by this unfamiliar choice, and when the movie fizzled at the box office, it was easy to place blame somewhere.

Getting back to Nicholas Meyer: it comes as no surprise that his name had popped up again for the next Star Trek movie (along with Jonathan Frakes). Now largely separated from Star Trek, J.J. Abrams is leading his own herd of skeptics who have been watching his every move with the new Star Wars movie. As of writing this column, Fast and Furious director Justin Lin has been tapped to steer the next Star Trek movie, slated for release in 2016.

Perhaps there is some justification for banking on directors. Given the high cost of going to a movie and growing pressure from online streaming services, some kind of marquee name who can provide an assurance of quality is needed to bring people to the theaters, and actors and actresses just don’t seem to do it like they used to.

Bringing Bryan Singer back to helm the most recent X-Men movie no doubt put a lot of fans at ease when the news was announced. Singer, after all, launched the successful franchise in 2000. To be honest, the choice of Justin Lin has me scratching my head. On the surface, it seems to show more concern with maintaining its new-found mainstream popularity, which Abrams helped solidify, rather than a sign of respect for the history and integrity of franchise.

Vin Diesel and director Justin Lin on the set of Fast & Furious 6.

My point for this column is that we should keep an open mind when it comes to a left-field choice of director, but that’s certainly hard to do when it comes to Star Trek, which every fan feels he or she has some stock in. And that’s not just among us seasoned viewers.

Even young fans seem to have been christened at birth with a heightened cinematic awareness and understanding of what works and what doesn’t when it come to producing a genre movie. One wonders if any movie produced today can ever meet these inevitable lofty, collective expectations facing it.