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TREKCORE
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Behind the Scenes
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Ever since the TOS
episode "The Enemy Within" split Captain Kirk in two every
sci-fi series from 'Logan's Run' to 'V' to 'Knight Rider'
to TNG has split one of its leads into two components.
Voyager is no exception. |
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Brannon Braga:
"Usually when a show does the evil
twin, it's on its last legs and they're desperate. We
figured, 'Hey, why not get it out of the way right now?' I
always felt that splitting her was a mistake, like making
Data human. Why do it? Why see it? Why resolve any of her
feelings? None of us believed it could be pulled off, but
Ken did it with the Vidiians. If anyone has the technology
to do this, they do. In the end, it was an effective
episode." |
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Jeri Taylor:
"I was not even in favor of buying
this idea originally. I thought it was a tired idea, and
it was too on the nose for B'Elanna. Ultimately it turned
out far better than we had any right to expect. Ken Biller
came up with marrying that idea with the Vidiians, and
that's what I think ultimately made it work and made it
credible. I thought Roxann did a wonderful job of playing
two completely different characters." |
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Kenneth Biller explains
that, before joining the [Voyager] staff, a story idea had
been purchased by writer Jonathan Glassner. In that story,
B'Elanna walked into a machine and came out the other side
having been split into human and Klingon versions of
herself. The aliens responsible are experimenting on
purification within a species. Although Biller did not
like the specifics, he was nonetheless attracted to the
idea of exploring the human-Klingon hybrid.
"I have a younger adopted brother
who's bi-racial, and it's very interesting to see how he
has had to deal with his identity. So this story idea,
thematically, is very interesting to me. The original idea
was very melodramatic and hokey. I admit my version was
melodramatic too, but I think melodramatic in the
tradition of Star Trek. It suddenly occurred to me that
Brannon had created these aliens in
"The Phage" who, we have
already established, have this incredibly sophisticated
medical technology and have been searching for a cure to
this disease. Then I realized that the Klingons have these
systems that allow them to fight off disease and injury
much more effectively than other races, and they're so
virile. Maybe they would be resistant to this thing. If I
were this scientist with this incredible technology and I
encountered a species I'd never seen before and it seemed
that there was some promise she might hold the secret to a
cure to this disease, I would do exactly what he did. I
hit upon what I thought was a very organic way of doing
something that might otherwise be really hokey. I love the
moment when B'Elanna finds herself human, touches her
forehead and realizes she doesn't have these ridges
anymore, and it causes this memory of being a little girl
with these Klingon ridges on her forehead in a place where
nobody else looked like her. Then there's the irony that
she suddenly looks the way she wanted to as a little girl,
yet she's stuck in this prison camp, dying." |
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As regards the bizarre
relationship between the Klingon B'Elanna and the Vidiian
scientist Sulan develops, as a result of which the latter
kills Lt. Durst and grafts the man's face onto his own
which has been ruined by the phage: Kenneth Biller:
"I love the beauty-and the-beast
aspect of their relationship. When he cut that guy's face
off....that's my classic moment in Voyager first season.
They're great aliens in the tradition of Star Trek because
they're ruthless scary, formidable, but they have pathos.
That moment in particular sort of personifies that. This
guy does this horrifying thing, yet he did it because he
was falling in love with this woman who, in her physical
prowess, is his ideal of beauty. Because he is humiliated
and embarrass about the way he looks, in his mind this is
the way to make her feel better and more comfortable. She
says, 'You killed him', but his rationale is 'Yes, but his
organs will save more than a dozen Iives.' While I
certainly don't embrace his point of view, it is hopefully
an interesting and complex one that makes it more than
just a horrific moment. It's a horrific moment that has
another kind of resonance." |
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The climax of that
episode generated a lot of negative mail to the production
office. Jeri Taylor explains: "I got
a number of really nasty letters, largely about a couple
of things. One, that our people got out of there and left
the rest of the poor devils behind in that awful prison.
And two, that nobody seems terribly sympathetic with
B'Elanna at the end. That wasn't our intent. What was
written in the action line as Chakotay's attitude toward
her, which is certainly comforting and all of that, made
it look like he was simply not responsive. People said,
'Couldn't he put his arm around her and show some warmth?'
In retrospect, they're probably right." |
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Roxann Biggs-Dawson:
"It was great. It actually was just
this wonderful learning experience in that I was able to
delineate these two sides that up until then were just
sort of metaphors. I was able to personify two aspects of
this character, and it was very revealing to me and it
taught me a lot. It was really a lot of fun. They were
very careful in scheduling and tried not to have me split
a day where I was in one character and then the other, not
only for me but because the make-up was so long and
difficult. They only concentrated on one character for the
most part one day and then switched to the next character
the next day. It was sort of like doing repertory theater."
Director Winrich Kolbe was able to avoid relying
exclusively on split screen thanks to the casting of a
realistic photo double for Biggs-Dawson.
"She was very intuitive and very
much able to almost mimic me. I was able to tell her what
I was going to be doing so she could give me the beats
that I could react to properly. She was very good and
supportive, and I was able to act off of a real person,
which was helpful." |
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Michael Piller:
"This was a story that a lot of
people had trouble with, and it was almost abandoned at
one point in time. We knew we could not do the
evil-versus-good story that the original Star Trek had
done, but it seemed that the half-human, half-Kiingon
conflict between B'Elanna as a woman divided would be
really interesting to see. In the first draft of the story
we did, it was somebody's idea that this could be the
result of a hideous concentration-camp kind of experiment,
that is, genetic demonstration of some sort. But it wasn't
until Ken Biller got the rewrite that he solved every
problem overnight. I was very impressed because I hadn't
figured it out, and Ken did a lovely job on it. I think
the show turned out quite well." |
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Skye Dent, the woman who
wrote
"Phage" along with Brannon Braga, and who created the
Vidiians: "I thought they did a
great job. It was better than mine, actually. It was just
so dramatic." |
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