Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 9.

The penultimate episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s first season was a big one for many reasons, including that it was directed by Captain William Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes. Ahead of next week’s finale, we were able to talk to Frakes about the big reunion between Caleb (Sandro Rosta) and his mom Anisha (Tatiana Maslany), how he directs such a storied franchise, how he deals with fan community hate, and more.

Frakes is no stranger to the director’s chair, and he has numerous credits in the wider Star Trek universe, but that didn’t make stepping on the set of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy any less impressive.

“It was literally the biggest Star Trek set ever,” Frakes said. “And so that was a pretty daunting and funny way to shoot. It was also peppered with enormous movie stars, which we'd never had before, and some wonderful new actors who had barely been on screen. By the time I got to them in Episode 9, I benefited from all the many thousands of hours they had spent working together, finding themselves, finding their rhythms, and finding their music. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy was already a well-oiled machine.”

Beyond that, however, Frakes had what he calls a “secret weapon” for this episode, and that was the Tatiana Maslany. Having first appeared in the pilot episode, her return was a huge moment for the new series as we got to witness the long-awaited reunion of mother and son after 16 years.

We talked to Frakes about how he decided to shoot that scene, which features extreme close-ups of the pair, who are both masked and yet come to realize who one another are. Part of the inspiration to go with those close-ups came from the guidance of series co-showrunner Alex Kurtzman.

“As you probably remember from the pilot, [Kurtzman] shot in these wonderfully tight emotional close-ups, and I think he encouraged all of us to do the same,” Frakes said. “I embraced it because it was great for my episode.

“On [Star Trek:] Discovery, we were encouraged to be cinematic in a different way, and to sort of shoot to thrill in many ways, but on this show, the intimacy was so important. And also, [Kurtzman] had gotten some lenses that were both anamorphic and spherical, and that defines the look of the show. I also had my favorite DP, Maya Bankovic, with me, so we were all in sync on how the show should look, and our episode lent itself right into that.”

Not surprisingly, the planning stage of shooting a Star Trek episode is hugely important to Frakes. Take for example the big confrontation between Caleb and his friends after Caleb has found his mother. This episode takes place at the end of the cadets’ first year at Starfleet Academy, and Caleb must now confront the impossible choice of either staying with his mom or leaving her again to follow his friends. We all know Caleb doesn’t really feel this way, but he tears into his friends as a way to cope with the fact that he is leaning towards family.

“The end of that scene was great,” Frakes said. “I blocked it purposely so it would look like he was working his way down the line. So I got them into the right position for his takedown, if you will, and then I was able to shoot over him to them, all the way. As we moved down the line, the camera would dolly over the actors and watch him go at them, and then the exact reverse camera would dolly over him and unload on them. When we get to Sam, he tries to unload on her, and there's that wonderful beat of, ’What the fuck is she going to do?’ and she throws herself on Caleb and calls, “Bullshit.” It's the writing. It's always in the writing.”

Another important piece of the puzzle Frakes had to work with was The Volume, which has famously been used to film The Mandalorian and much more. For those unfamiliar, The Volume is basically a group of very high-definition LED video walls that bring sets to life in new ways and help transport cast and crew into the worlds of the stories they are trying to tell.

“Working on The Volume is a whole different animal,” Frakes said. “It's an incredible filmmaking tool and has changed the making of TV and movies. But in terms of capturing multiple camera angles, which is essential for television, it is challenging.

“Not to get too much into the inside baseball of it, but the A camera, which is the first camera, determines the movement of the 30,000 LED lights that are on the wall. If you put a B camera next to it at a different size, that camera will not have the background in focus in the proper way. So you have to find another part of the forest, if you will, to put another camera.

“With all that being said, I think The Volume has made everything better. We spent years in front of a green screen and had to explain to people, ‘Well, there's a horrible Romulan ship that's invading you right there. There's a mad Bolian yelling at you.’ And they're little tape marks on a green screen. With The Volume, they're actually in the room with you. So it changed the game.”

Frakes has been making Star Trek of one kind or another for a very long time, so he has some experience when it comes to dealing with fandoms. He calls himself an “eternal optimist,” but is nonetheless surprised by how much hate Starfleet Academy has received in some quarters.

“I was prepared because when Next Gen came out almost 40 years ago, we were trolled,” he laughs. “Nobody wanted us. And this was pre-internet. But it’s still dimensionally more painful [today]… and the trolls are hiding, and the trolls are hating. … It's the first rule of the Constitution. I guess they're entitled to their opinion, but it surprises me how aggressively ‘anti’ they are with each new iteration of the show. And it continues to surprise me, and I try not to let it upset me.”

The finale of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s first season will premiere on Paramount+ on March 12, 2026. For more, check out our breakdown of the Star Trek timeline and the Starfleet Academy producers on the return of Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko.

Frozen Ever After at Walt Disney World just got a major upgrade as the Audio-Animatronics figures of Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff have been given new faces that make them feel as if they jumped off the screen and into EPCOT. To learn more, we spoke with Ken Ricci, Executive Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, about how the team brought this vision to life and why they chose now to update this beloved attraction for the first time in forever.

Ricci and I sat down in a lounge above Frozen Ever After to chat for a few minutes after I had the chance to check out these new upgrades for myself, and I am delighted to report that they do make a huge difference. I still believe the original designs were very impressive in their own right, but these feel so much more true to the films and, in my opinion, will withstand the test of time much better.

For those unfamiliar, Frozen Ever After opened on June 21, 2016, replacing the Maelstrom attraction in the Norway Pavilion at EPCOT's World Showcase. It was a groundbreaking moment in Disney history for many reasons, including being the first attraction to feature all-electric Audio-Animatronics and the first to combine electric motors and 3D printing. They also used rear-projection mapping to bring their faces to life, which was the main item addressed with these new updates.

"We're always looking at smoothing out our Audio-Animatronics figures' profiles, how they move, and how we can make them more human-like and realistic," Ricci told me. "That's something that's very, very much a passion of ours, as our goal is to hide the fact that their robots."

That is obviously easier said than done, but the 10 years since Frozen Ever After first opened provided the team with a unique opportunity to make this change much more quickly than would have been possible for an original project

Since its debut, Frozen Ever After has opened at both Hong Kong Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Furthermore, the fourth Frozen Ever After is about to welcome guests on March 29 when it opens alongside World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris' Disney Adventure World.

And yes, that's where you'll be able to see the way-too-adorable next-generation robotic figure of Olaf, who will literally be walking, talking, and interacting with guests around World of Frozen.

Hong Kong Disneyland's Frozen Ever After was actually the inspiration for EPCOT's upgrade, as that's where these advancements in these Audio-Animatronics figures were first seen. This was a huge deal because they were able to bring over the data and learnings from these other Frozen Ever Afters to save tons of time when upgrading EPCOT's.

"When we're updating an attraction, It's very important to us to minimize the amount of time it has to be down," Ricci said. "We did a lot of work on the backend to make sure we could port these heads over from Hong Kong without having to reanimate the figures. In order to do that, we had to match the kinematics of the figures exactly to Hong Kong, and that's the mechanical vibrations.

"We also updated the show control processors on the cabinets overnight, even before we started the downtime, and we had to update the wrists on Anna and Elsa just to make sure those motors and designs were the same as Hong Kong. At that point, it was just an exercise of porting that show data over from Hong Kong and tuning the motors to accept that show data so we didn't have to reanimate it."

This meant there was no need to adjust the animation frame by frame to ensure the dialogue was in sync with the movements of the figures, as that was already done for Hong Kong Disneyland! And yes, that original animation did come from Walt Disney Animation Studios, it just had to be "tweaked to work within the mechanical limitations of a robot."

The result is an attraction that feels brand-new and exciting in a lot of ways, even if much of it remains the same. However, there were some other updates made to Frozen Ever After that help make it feel just right.

"Guests will now notice that the scenes are brighter," Ricci said. "When you had the projected faces, we relied on UV black light for the scenes. With these new articulated heads, we changed over to white light in the scenes for their faces and we really punched up the paint. Since we were down, we also went back to all the black light scenes and punched up all the snow, refocused those lights, and we changed out any lighting fixtures that were due for an upgrade."

It's all about these little changes that add up to something truly spectacular, and another one of these is reminiscent of a big part of the Walt Disney Audio-Animatronics figure for Walt Disney - A Magical Life.

"You get that glisten in their eyes now because it's a 3D printed eye with glaze, and it now looks like a real eye that has that little shine from the light," Ricci said. "And if you look at Anna in the scene where she's with Kristoff and Sven, she's just got this emotion on her face that she never had before. And it's very sincere and it connects to you. And that's something you didn't have before with the projected faces. Now, she has that little extra something special in her look."

I can confirm that this totally works for Frozen Ever After as well as it did for Walt Disney - A Magical Life. It's hard to overstate how the seemingly smallest changes can make a world of difference when trying to recapture what makes us human and transport us into the world of the stories we hold closest to our hearts.

"My favorite thing about this now is I always feel as though Elsa just walked out of the film when you're there seeing her do her 'Let It Go' moment," Ricci said, which sums up these changes perfectly.

What I love most about this too is that this wasn't an upgrade that needed to happen. Frozen Ever After consistently has some of the highest wait times at Walt Disney World and it's really not that old. Despite that, the team at Imagineering love these properties and attractions as much as we do, and are always looking at ways they can make experiences for guests around the world even better.

And yes, Frozen Ever After is back open and guests can check out these new updates right now, and we'd love to know what you think!

Oh, and as much as we love the new and shiny, it's also very important that some things never change. So, don't forget to say hi to the adorable puffins near the end that are still exclusive to EPCOT and trace back to Norway's Maelstrom.

For more, check out the latest news on Frozen 3, all the details on the opening World of Frozen and Disney Adventure World at Disneyland Paris, and everything else to look forward to at Walt Disney World in 2026.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.