- Increase speed to... - Captain?
It's alright.
What is this place?
In Season Five, I directed The Inner Light.
It was a situation where I just think the gods were shining on all of us.
Patrick Stewart was very enthused about it.
His son even played a part in it.
I think it was the first time he got to act with his son,
which was special for him.
The director of photography got to do some very interesting work,
because we were depicting a planet that was getting hotter and hotter.
The production design got to have some fun
because it was a little bit of an artists' colony...
.. that we created on this planet.
I still get people asking me about that episode.
It's quite a way in the past now
but it's definitely a favourite Star Trek episode.
Just kind of... lucky.
Father?
Your mother thinks you have something to tell me.
- I'm leaving school. - Leaving school? No, you're not!
I want to concentrate on my music. That's what I care about.
- We'll discuss it. - Thank you, Father.
I found Patrick's son to be just totally enthusiastic about the work.
I didn't have to, you know, really...
We had a discussion up front
about what I thought the character should be.
He was in total agreement.
So we had no conflicts whatsoever.
Patrick was, of course, very into the episode as well,
and so he was doing his best work.
When you have Patrick Stewart acting up a storm,
you don't have to direct too much.
You point the camera at him, that's about it.
That's what this launching is.
A probe that finds me in the future.
I had then, and for all I know still may,
although there have been so many episodes since,
the earliest make-up call in the history of Star Trek.
For the most extensive age sequence in that,
my make-up call on Monday morning was 1:00am.
And my set call was seven.
So I left home round about midnight,
having tried to sleep in the evening and, of course, failed entirely.
Got into Mike Westmore's hands, who did my make-up for Inner Light.
Mike has a way of working with actors
whereby it's possible for you to doze for long periods while he works.
Inner Light was the show that Patrick actually progressed into
an old man with a family and grandchildren and children.
The process to put a person into make-up like that takes hours.
What's interesting is you literally almost sap the energy
out of the individual.
On a show I did years ago, called Eleanor & Franklin,
with Jane Alexander,
I could literally see Jane turn into Eleanor Roosevelt as I made her up.
She listened to tapes of Eleanor as we did it.
The same thing with Patrick in Next Generation.
They sit there, they sleep, they doze.
When they finally get up and look in the mirror,
they go, "Oh, my gosh. " You haven't changed them into another being.
They look at themselves and say, "I look like my grandfather. "
Or a woman, "I look like my grandmother. "
You find women dislike the process more than men do.
The whole idea of ageing isn't popular with females.
With Patrick, though, again it was a process...
Inner Light, Patrick should have won an Emmy for.
How do you put him up against the detective shows
and things that win nine Emmys in a row,
and you wind up with Patrick Stewart doing the performance he has done
in Next Generation over the years? You can't compare it.
One thing the audience don't realise is
we do more than just the alien make-ups.
We get involved with the props.
It's like Worf's spine.
The Klingon spine has half as many bones as the human spine.
We literally had to sculpt a spine
and make the bones larger and less of them to pull the gag off.
Initiating DNA sequencer.
All hands, abandon ship.
Cause and Effect is definitely one of the most popular episodes I wrote.
I don't know why. Probably because it was a high-concept episode,
the crew caught in a repeating loop of time.
Cause and Effect was like a directing assignment.
Cause and Effect was essentially the same act repeated five times.
The episode actually came out maybe two years before Groundhog Day.
Which was a great movie.
And I think it really was something people had never seen before.
When I read the script, I thought Brannon was playing a joke on me.
It turned out it was not a joke, it was in fact the entire episode.
Back us off, Ensign.
- Nice and slow. - Aye, sir.
Back us off, Ensign.
- Nice and slow. - Aye, sir.
How do you think we handled this before?
Back us off, Ensign.
- Nice and slow. - Aye, sir.
So the challenge, obviously, was to shoot the same scene five times,
for each act, but five different ways.
Sometimes I'd shoot wide and high,
or I'd start on different characters.
But really, especially on the bridge, which has only so many good angles,
it became a directing exercise.
It was a wonderful episode because of that.
Marvin was very helpful in finding new ways to shoot the same act.
That episode showed we could do time travel
without the kind of cliché "Must go back to save Lincoln" kind of plot.
It was innovative.
People liked the fact
that we experimented with the structure of the show
and did something daring. It was cool.
It's a rather emotionless show.
it doesn't have any profound character developments
or political statements or anything.
It was really kind of a "Boy, that was cool" kind of episode.
All hands, abandon ship!
Repeat, all hands, abandon ship!
First Duty. I liked that episode.
It was the first time we saw Starfleet Academy.
It was fun to play around with that idea.
I'm a military-history and naval-history buff.
I always wanted to see the Academy of Starfleet
and what it would be like. So I imbued it with these traditions,
ringing bells, plebes, all that stuff.
We will reconvene at 1300 hours tomorrow.
First Duty was a great show about the moral and ethical dilemmas
that people face when confronted
with do you tell the truth, or do you betray your friends?
I liked the idea that there's a group of kids,
they do something, something goes terribly wrong.
The bond between the kids
is balanced with the bonds to the institution.
Did you see the collision take place?
I think Josh got frightened and tried to pull out of the turn prematurely
and then crashed into Cadet Hajar.
This is a show in which Wesley has to decide
if he's going to tell the truth about an accident at the Academy.
I understand that at the Air Force Academy,
they show this episode to this day
to cadets to say, "Look, this is what it's all about. "
The great thing was Ron Moore and I had a huge fight about it.
There were a lot of arguments about what Wesley should do,
what was the right thing, should he tell the truth in all circumstances,
what about his obligations to his friends, as a cadet, an officer.
We're on different sides of the argument.
He said, "Wesley would never betray his friends, in any circumstances. "
I said, "Look, this is about Starfleet. "
"This is about the truth, this is about honour, your word. "
You said we wouldn't have to lie to them.
We all agreed not to lie to them.
I didn't lie. Everything I said was the truth.
- The accident was not Josh's fault. - He panicked.
- We don't know that. - Of course we do.
None of us wanted to say it out loud but we've all had the same thought.
Haven't we?
A lot of scenes came out of us sitting in a room,
arguing with each other.
Michael saying, "No, he has to tell the truth,"
and me going, "His friends, he owes them, as a human being. "
"You swear obligations to the State,
but what about other people you make promises to?"
"Doesn't that matter?" It was great, it was drama.
We could make a show out of it. A lot of fun.
Ultimately, that's the struggle that drives this show.
"Ron, I want you to fight as hard for your point of view,
within the context of what Wesley is facing,
as Picard, my role, is going to fight for the truth. "
"If you are really involved emotionally,
that scene when Picard and Wesley confront each other
should be a beauty. " And it was.
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth.
Scientific truth, historical truth or personal truth.
It is the guiding principle of Starfleet.
If you can't find it within yourself to tell the truth,
you don't deserve to wear that uniform.
I'll make this simple for you, Mr Crusher.
Either you tell Admiral Brand what really took place, or I will.
- Captain... - Dismissed!
When did I learn to play this?
I'm afraid you never did, dear. You do keep trying.
I see what you mean.
The script called for an instrument
called a Ressikan flute.
We said, "What is a Ressikan flute?" None of these things exist.
This whole folklore thing is totally manufactured.
So the Ressikan flute became an instrument,
if I hold this up you can see it,
commonly known as the tin whistle or the penny whistle.
The reason it was chosen was not for its unique haunting sound,
but more for its photogenic ability.
You figure out that a typical flute, a transverse flute,
is held in front of an actor's face.
It's hard to get a good shot of him playing,
because his hands are right in front of the face.
But a penny whistle is played vertically, like this.
The camera can get some nice angles
without the hands really being so obtrusive.
Although I can't perform all of the piece, I can tell you
it's become one of the most requested pieces in the Paramount library.
In the actual episode, Patrick Stewart played this instrument
for a naming ceremony for his children
and learned this theme that he played.
Later on, when he wakes up back in the normal time frame,
they come into his ready room and open up a case
and give him this case.
He opens it up and there's this Ressikan flute.
He got it out and played this theme.
We went off to space with him playing solo penny whistle,
which is a total departure
in how we would go to those space shots with music.
They would always be big and grandiose.
Peter said, "It would be great to have that,
but we'd better cover it with some orchestral thing just in case. "
But it was bold to go where they went musically.
It went off into space
with just the solo penny whistle and the Enterprise.
That's how it worked.