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TREKCORE >
VOY >
CONCERNING
FLIGHT > Behind the Scenes
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A working title of this episode was "Da Vinci's Day
Out". |
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Initially, however,
the plot did not include the holographic recreation of Leonardo da Vinci. Despite receiving no credit for contributing to the
episode, it was co-executive producer Brannon Braga (one of many
persons who added to the writing of the script) who had the idea
of reusing the historical character herein; this possibility was
inspired by the third season finale "Scorpion", an episode that
features the Leonardo hologram and that Braga co-wrote (with Joe
Menosky, another writer who worked on this episode). Joe Menosky
recalled, "[Freelancer] Jimmy Diggs came in and he pitched
something that had to do with the Doctor's portable emitter and
a character getting away with it. Because we had liked da Vinci
in 'Scorpion,' when Brannon was listening to Jimmy's pitch, he
just thought this is a cool way to get da Vinci off the ship and
have an adventure. The way we work collaboratively in a
situation like that, where there is no real story except 'da
Vinci's day out,' we'll sit around and talk about it, all of us
as a staff. What could we do here?" |
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Joe Menosky generally disliked the way in which the
story continued to be developed. "This is when the collaborative
process collapses [....] I had massive disagreements every step
of the way with how this story should go, and I lost the
argument every step of the way," Menosky related.
"Somebody in
the room said, 'How does he get off the ship?' I said, 'That's
irrelevant. It doesn't matter how he gets off the ship. That's
like a one page or two lines of tech dialogue that you brush
off, and you're on to the adventure.' I lost that argument.
Everybody said it does matter how he gets off the ship. So we
came up with this [....] story for how you get the mobile
emitter off the ship [....] [It] drove the rest of the story in
utterly the wrong direction. I couldn't argue my way out of it."
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For this episode, Joe Menosky used personal
knowledge of Leonardo da Vinci's life and surroundings to write
about how the historical figure might interpret an alien planet.
"I do know late 15th century Italy and da Vinci's life really
well," Menosky confidently remarked,
"so that every one of his
statements is how a late 15th century Renaissance Italian would
interpret an alien world." |
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