Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: fringe, Jon Dudkowski, star trek: discovery

Star Trek: Discovery Editor Jon Dudkowski on "Fringe," Fandom & More

Editor Jon Dudkowski discussed the responsibilities that come with working on a dream project like Star Trek: Discovery, "Fringe," and more.

Jon Dudkowski hopes to give back just as much as he's received working as an editor in Hollywood for 20 years. He's also a big believer in creating goals and turning dreams into reality – like when he landed his dream in Star Trek, working on Paramount+'s first franchise series in Discovery from the premiere episode "The Vulcan Hello" to seeing its final voyage in the series, "Life Itself," working on 18 of the 65 episodes across all five seasons. He's also worked on several other hit shows along the way, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe, The Umbrella Academy, and The Man in the High Castle. He spoke to Bleeding Cool about if he felt extra pressure working on his dream project, how he feels fans will think more fondly of Star Trek: Discovery as time passes, and learning his craft while on Fox's Fringe.

Star Trek: Discovery Editor Jon Dudkowski on Teaching, Making Dreams a Reality, and Learning While on 'Fringe'

Bleeding Cool: With your fandom and getting the work in the franchise, did you feel like there was a separate chip on your shoulder to ensure 'Star Trek: Discovery' succeeded compared to when you approached your other work?

I truly love Star Trek, which has been my childhood dream, so the stakes were high, but I also teach some on the side. One of the things that I talk to my students about is encouraging them to figure out…there's an exercise I ask my students to do: I tell them to make two top ten lists, one of the art, media, and whatever has touched you and made you feel something very strongly, whether it's a song, photo, painting, or whatever. I make that top ten list, put it aside, and then make a top ten list of your fantasy Hollywood jobs, whether that's the art director on 'Rosemary's Baby', choreographer on 'Thriller', or whatever it is. Imagine as you close your eyes, you could have any Hollywood job. What are the ten jobs that are just the coolest frigging things you could imagine? Look at those two lists, and if you look at them objectively, everyone will have different lists.

You can see artistically what somebody is all about, see what moves them, where their passion lies, and there's that Venn diagram, like those two lists that create circles. They come together and whatever is right there in the middle. That is where your passion and the reason you're in the business come together, and for me, that was Star Trek. Everything I'd done before, like I worked on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', 'Fringe' and before I said, 'Star Trek: Discovery,' I was on a show. I'm wearing this shirt now, 'The Path,' which is this fabulous show.

I had done a lot of stuff I was proud of and that I cared about tremendously, but nothing as much of a bullseye for me as 'Star Trek.' I came into 'Discovery', and I put everything I had into it because it's what I've always wanted to do. It was never about "success or failure." I don't know if we often have any real control over that. The world is so complicated, there's the marketing and so many things that come together, but I know I poured my heart and soul into it. We were lucky enough that there were enough Star Trek fans.

'Star Trek: Discovery' doesn't work for every fan. There's plenty of people, you can go on the boards, and there's plenty of people that say, "'Star Trek: Discovery,' these are my problems." If it's not this, it's that or, "It's not episodic enough. Maybe it's got too much of a political agenda." To those same people, I encourage you to go watch 'The Original Series' or any of the shows.

Like 'Star Trek V' and "What does God need with the Starship?"

Exactly! You can go back to any of them, and the thing about Star Trek fans that is funny is they're very passionate and often hate whatever the current version of Star Trek is, but they still watch it. When the next one comes along and they're like, "No, this one is horrible, but that one last one was great! I think you're already starting to see that people are starting to think more fondly of 'Discovery', because it's gone. I never went into it saying this must succeed, but I went into it saying, "I must put everything I have into this because this is what it's all been about, is to get to this point and to do this show, and this is my test!" This is my creative test as to who I am professionally and creatively, and I'm grateful I got the chance to do it, and it was such a treat.

You touched upon it earlier, I wanted to ask you about 'Fringe' because like it was one of the earlier series where it helped put you on the map as an editor. What does your time on that show teach you about your craft? As a side note, what was it like working and editing on a show that featured Leonard Nimoy?

I edited most of Leonard Nimoy's episodes, which I was excited about. In 'Discovery' (in the episode 'Unification III'), he had passed by that point. His only true appearance on 'Discovery' was also my first episode (I directed). I loved 'Fringe', and I lucked into it. It was the first writer strike back in 2006 was going on. I had done a little bit of work with Bad Robot on an ABC show called 'What About Brian?' and at that point, I had edited a couple of episodes of this rom-com and dramedy, which was this cringy beach volleyball movie that I did, an independent film ('Green Flash' (2008). I didn't have a lot, but I've always been a visual effects heavy…I grew up in awe of ILM (Industrial Light & Magic). I grew up in Santa Fe, so it was down the street. Visual effects have always been a big part of my life, and so from the beginning, working on 'Buffy' and everything else, I was heavily into VFX, so a friend of mine who's a visual effects supervisor was working on the 'Fringe' pilot, and he said they needed a visual effects editor and I needed work.

I said, "Oh, I'd love to do that," and so I came on board when they were doing the pilot, and I had a lot of fun with it. I was working 100-hour weeks. The thing about working on those shows and doing a network show of that scale, on that schedule, because we were cranking out like 24 or 25 episodes on season one. It meant that I literally lived at the office. My fiancé at the time, who's now my wife, would joke I would come home, shower, sleep for an hour, and then roll right back to the office. We were at the office all the time. It was an awesome team. Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman were the showrunners, and they came up under a lot of the same people. He earned his stripes on 'Alias', and I had mentored with editors from that show, and so there's a director on that show, Fred Toye, who was our directing producer for a number of seasons, and he had been an editor. He is both a mentor and a coach in a lot of ways, and there's another editor, Maryann Brandon, who has done a lot of writing for JJ [Abrams].

I'd sort of grown up with the same people that Jeff considered his community, and it was a good fit, but I was really green when I started 'Fringe.' I was good with visual effects, and I was a creative, out-of-the-box thinker. I'm heavily into technology, now also AI, and I'm always pushing on the edges of what's technically possible, but I wasn't very good then, honestly. When I started, I was willing to work really hard, but I had a lot to learn. Since we were working 100-hour weeks, we were working our butt off every single week, you learn how to get better quickly. I would argue I didn't feel like I was on top of it and sharp as an editor until season two or three of 'Fringe.' By that point, I felt I started to get it. There's a woman, Tanya Swerling, who had been an editor in season one and then became the creative producer over editorial, and she is the one who coached me through being more than just a technician, but being an artist and taking the scene and saying, "OK, you got all these technical skills, and that's fantastic, but the meat of the job is being an artist, taking the footage, and turning it into something that makes people feel something special and feel what the script was designed to make them feel. I probably should give most of the credit to Tanya for having the patience to sit with me and bring me up to speed because she's truly an exceptional editor.

That's where I got good. I started competent, and I ended up…not to be arrogant, but I got good because of people like Tanya, Jeff, and Fred. They had the patience to sit with me. Bryan Burk is another one who I'll never forget. In season one, Brian gave me one of the most scathing comments I've ever heard, and to this day, it haunts me when I'm cutting a scene because he watched my first assembly. I can't remember the scene, but he watched it, and he's like, "John, it's OK, but it's a run-on sentence." That cut me to the core. I was like, "Good God! That was a failure!" If I made a scene that played like a run-on sentence, I screwed up, and there wasn't malice in his critique. He was being honest, and then we worked on it. We got it to the point that it was good. I love 'Fringe', and it was hard, but it was such a beautiful story. Those fantastic actors and the writing on that show are so incredible.

I hope 'Fringe' gets a revival.

All five seasons of Star Trek: Discovery are available on Paramount+. Fringe is available on digital.

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