Faces 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.
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."
   
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."