TREKCORE > VOY > EPISODES > EQUINOX, PART II > Behind the Scenes

	This was the first Voyager episode on which writer Ronald D. Moore worked, having transferred to the Voyager writers' room after the conclusion of Deep Space Nine. Moore later told an interviewer, "We sat down and approached 'Equinox II' and tried to find what the show was about. What was the point of meeting this ship and this crew and this captain, and what did it mean? We finally landed on this idea that the two captains were going to go in opposite directions. Janeway was going to really feel the same kind of pressures and stresses that Ransom felt, and watch how it could turn a good, by-the-book Starfleet captain into what he had become. At the same time, his interaction with The Doctor and Seven of Nine would rekindle his humanity. It was this nice, double track approach, but it just got lost in the translation. It has no coherence. You're not sure what's really going on. You've got some potentially good scenes. The scenes between Janeway and Chakotay had some real fire to them, and you kind of felt like she is going off the deep end, a bit. Then she relieves him of duty, and there is this crisis of command between the two of them. But at the end of the episode, it's just a shrug and a smile and off to the next. I just hit the ceiling. I remember writing in the margins, 'This is a total betrayal of the audience. This is wrong. You can't end the show like this. If you are going to do all this other stuff, you can't end the show like this, because it's not fair, because it's not true, and it just wouldn't happen.'
	Moore continued his criticisms of the episode: "The things that Janeway does in 'Equinox' don't work, because it's not about anything. She's not really grappling with her inner demons. She's not truly under the gun and suffering to the point where you can understand the decisions that she's made. She just gets kind of cranky and bitchy. She's having a bad day; these things keep popping around on the bridge, and we just keep cutting to shots of people grabbing phaser rifles and shooting, and hitting the red alert sign, over and over again. It doesn't signify anything. It's kind of emblematic of the show. There is a lot of potential, and there is a lot of surface sizzle going on in a lot of episodes, but to what end? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to touch in the audience? What are we trying to say? What are the things we are trying to explore? Why are we doing this episode? That was my fundamental question. When I would say, 'What was the point of doing the first part?' there was never a good answer for that. As a consequence, it was hard to come up with the ending to the show that has no beginning. You just start throwing things around. 'Two captains on different courses' at least sounds like an episode. At least there is something in it. Janeway will take something away from that experience, but not in the current version. What does she learn from that experience? I don't know how it's affected her. Chakotay, for all his trouble, he just goes back to work. There is no lingering problem with Janeway; there is no deeper issue coming to the fore. The show in general just kinda sucks frankly."
	Ronald D. Moore would later rework this concept into the episode "The Pegasus" in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. The Pegasus experiences a crisis similar to the one encountered by the Equinox: alone in Cylon controlled space and with only half its crew, the commanding officer of Pegasus forces refugees into service and takes critical supplies and parts, and then leaves the refugees' shipmates to die.