Clear direction: ten of Cliff Bole’s best
As if losing Harold Ramis on Monday wasn’t enough, genre fans get another kick in the teeth, though perhaps not as high-profile as Ramis. Frequent-flyer Star Trek director Cliff Bole left us on February 15th, though word only leaked out to fandom today. With its very fixed lighting grid and the extremely limited setups afforded by sets that were not built “wild” (i.e. chunks of the set could be wheeled out of place to offer a perspective that would be impossible with a solidly-built three-or-four-wall set), Star Trek: The Next Generation was, perhaps, not the best showcase for a director. You had a week to prep, you had an ensemble cast who would undoubtedly tell you – though kindly – that they didn’t really need direction as such, and you had a monolithic, unmovable central set with bright, even lighting. Now what? Cliff Bole was one of a handful of Trek directors who managed to stand out without blowing out the budget or honking off the cast (two things that would likely prevent any director from becoming the recurring fixture that Bole was).
Here are my recommendations for ten of his best that aren’t The Best Of Both Worlds: episodes that he managed to rock despite limited resources and the show’s admittedly limited playbook. … Read more
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