TREKCORE > VOY > EPISODES > INITIATIONS > Behind the Scenes
 

	Producer Jeri Taylor: "I thought it [the episode] was reasonably successful. We gave ourselves a very difficult task by writing a part for a fourteen-year-old young man. We ended up casting Aron Eisenberg, who plays Nog on Deep Space Nine, and more people were aware of that than we would have thought. He didn't look anything the same, but he has a very distinctive voice. It broke the suspension of disbelief and made people say not, 'Oh there's a young man in pain,' but, 'Oh, it's Nog from Deep Space Nine.' As soon as the mind is doing that, it's not involved in the story. Aron is a wonderful actor, and we cast him because the boys that read were simply not able to bring to it the richness and the depth that we wanted. We got the good actor, but we got a recognizable one."
	Aron Eisenberg, apart from playing Nog throughout Deep Space Nine, also plays the newspaper vendor in the Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond the Stars," which is the only chance in Star Trek to see him without alien make-up, and he also plays an extra in the final holodeck scene in the finale Deep Space Nine episode "What You Leave Behind." The actor is exactly 5 feet tall. As a teenager he had a malfunctioning kidney and had to have a transplant, which restricted his growth in height.
	The location shoot was filmed at Vasquez Rocks, a familiar Star Trek location.