McNeill & Dawson On Directing 'Enterprise'

See Also: 'The Breach' Episode Guide

Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) and Roxann Dawson (B'Elanna Torres) may not play a married couple anymore, but they still share plenty of experiences, including the trials and tribulations of directing Enterprise episodes.

At the Creation Entertainment convention in Seattle last weekend, Dawson spoke of how she doesn't always know how the episode ends when filming begins. "We get the script very late, as Robbie can attest, and there are changes constantly being made," the actress said, according to a report at StarTrek.com. "One of the shows I did, I got my fourth act when we were already into four days of shooting. I didn't know the end of the story when we were shooting the beginning."

McNeill faced exactly that situation when he helmed "The Breach" last month. "John Billingsley had a big doctor storyline, and we didn't have the third or the fourth act when we started. We got the third act on Day 2 of shooting. And then [John] had a scene one day where he was supposed to kinda break down, but we hadn't seen the fourth act. It was all about some big secret that [Phlox] was going to reveal in the fourth act — and he said to me, what is this secret? And I didn't know, none of us knew. So we made the phone calls and they gave us some idea of what it was going to be. But literally sometimes you can start shooting the episode and you don't know what the secret is that you're hiding the whole episode."

While Dawson will return to the Paramount lot next week to direct the penultimate episode of Enterprise's second season, she recently branched out and helmed an instalment of Charmed. "I just handed in my director's cut of Charmed," she wrote at her official web site. "I hope you will all tune in to see this 'very special episode' on Sunday March 16th. The episode is called 'Lucky Charmed' and will be a great way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day." The actress added that directing for the show was "a wonderful experience" and the "cast and crew were gracious and supportive."

The full report from Seattle, which also features comments from Marc Alaimo (Dukat), Casey Biggs (Damar) and Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun), can be found here at StarTrek.com. Roxann Dawson's original message is available at her official site.

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