Primitive Culture is a Trek.fm podcast dedicated to a deep examination of the connections between Star Trek and our own history and culture. In each episode, Duncan Barrett and his guests take you on a fascinating exploration of how our world inspires the franchise we love—and how that franchise inspires us.
http://trek.fm/primitive-culture
episode 22: Finding the Big Mama
Cinematic Influences on Star Trek: First Contact.
As a first-time movie director, the stakes could not have been higher for Jonathan Frakes when he signed on to helm the Next Generation crew’s first solo outing, Star Trek: First Contact. Aware that his small-screen experience might not cut it at the cinema, he immersed himself in the work of three science-fiction masters-Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron-from whom he borrowed cinematic touches. It was an approach that paid off handsomely, as the resulting film was both a commercial and critical success, cementing Frakes’s reputation as a safe pair of hands.
In this episode of Primitive Culture, host Duncan Barrett is joined by Chris Nunn, a lecturer in film at Greenwich University in London, to look at some of the movies that influenced the making of First Contact. Together, they put themselves into Jonathan Frakes’s screening room, teasing out connections between the works he viewed and the movie he ended up making, and how First Contact’s mélange of cinematic nods and styles contributes to its success as a work of art in its own right.
Chapters
Intro (00:00:00)
Jaws (00:03:25)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (00:24:15)
Alien (00:37:00)
Blade Runner (00:52:10)
Terminator (01:13:55)
Final Thoughts (01:19:40)
Host
Duncan Barrett
Guest
Chris Nunn
Production
Clara Cook (Editor) Duncan Barrett (Producer) C Bryan Jones (Executive Producer) Matthew Rushing (Executive Producer) Ken Tripp (Executive Producer) Norman C. Lao (Associate Producer) Amy Nelson (Associate Producer) Richard Marquez (Production Manager) Brandon-Shea Mutala (Patreon Manager)