Episode Behind the Scenes

TREKCORE > VOY > MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE > Behind the Scenes

Robert Picardo made some uncredited, humorous contributions to the script of this episode. Shortly before the end of Star Trek: Voyager's fourth season, Picardo explained, "I have gotten into the habit of calling [episode writer] Brannon [Braga] with joke suggestions, and I scored pretty well on that particular episode." At about the end of the fifth season, Picardo commented, "I'm still phoning Brannon quite often with potential joke lines, although my record is still 'Message in a Bottle'. I think I had six jokes that were mine, in that episode." All six of these humorous suggestions were promptly approved for use in the installment.

One specific instance of the suggested jokes was, as described by Picardo himself, "in the scene with [...] EMH Mark-2... and my scripted line was 'Stop breathing down my neck.'" The actor recalled, "I said to Brannon, 'You know, we don't really breathe.' He said, 'It's just a human expression.' It still troubled me." Picardo consequently requested the addition of two particular lines of dialogue. "I remember calling Brannon," remarked Picardo, "and suggesting the following two rejoinders: EMH Mark-2 says, 'My breathing is merely a simulation.' To which the Doctor replies, 'So is my neck. Stop it anyway.'"

Robert Picardo suspected that he may have influenced some of the episode's jokes without being told he had. "There are even sex jokes which I insist Brannon Braga stole from my convention material," Picardo declared, "because I've been doing 10 minutes at conventions for a couple of years now about whether or not the holographic doctor is anatomically correct."
The episode's final scene was considerably altered; the scene was first shot in Voyager's mess hall, with the ship's entire crew, but was subsequently reshot and relocated to sickbay. Explaining why the first version was not used, Robert Picardo stated, "It was too much. Originally, we had all these extras, and it was this big emotional moment. They decided it was too much like The Waltons. We ended up redoing that scene and keeping it small, just with Janeway, [Chakotay] and Tuvok."
Actor Andy Dick was offered the role of the EMH Mark II after letting Brannon Braga (who was a friend of the performer) know that he would be interested in making an appearance on Star Trek: Voyager. Accounting for his acceptance of the role, Dick recalled, "It just seemed like such a great opportunity. I was a fan of Star Trek, but I'm not what you would call a regular viewer of any of the shows. I just thought it would be a challenge for me to do an episode."
Andy Dick had many other friends who were excited to hear of his upcoming role. "I have many friends who watch the Star Trek shows religiously," he explained. "They were all psyched when I told them that I was doing Voyager."
Because Andy Dick (who was best known for playing the character of Matthew in NewsRadio) was not entirely familiar with Star Trek, he prepared for his role here by watching some episodes. Robert Picardo explained, "Clearly he had not really seen the show before he got this episode, so he watched a few episodes and got an idea of the style of the show, because he's on a situation comedy [....] And even though we were setting up to do a funny Star Trek episode, there's a certain style to our kind of performance that he wanted to acquaint himself with, which he [partly] did from watching the show."
Indeed, although Andy Dick found that he extremely liked his Voyager character, he also found that portraying the EMH Mark II took him into unfamiliar territory. "I was right in thinking it would be a challenge for me," Dick admitted. "It was really an eclectic style of acting. It's like doing a French period drama and then doing Shakespeare. It was completely different from what I had done before. I mean, there's no comparing how we do NewsRadio to how they do Voyager. None [....] The characters are so different, too [....] As with Shakespeare, you have to stay within boundaries when you do a Star Trek show. The words are different; the style is different. I wanted to challenge myself and try that, too." He joked, "It was really like taking a class in Trekker-ism."
Other difficulties were caused by the fact that, although Andy Dick normally wore glasses (including on NewsRadio), he found that he couldn't do so here. He said of his Voyager appearance, "One of the strangest things about doing it was that I couldn't wear my glasses [....] I was tripping down steps and bumping into things all the time. It was really funny."
On the other hand, Andy Dick appreciated that he was made to feel welcome on the Voyager set. He reminisced, "Everybody was really nice to me [....] I had a great time."
A particular relationship that Andy Dick valued was with Robert Picardo. "Robert Picardo was so awesome!" Dick raved. "He helped me so much, getting me to relax and helping me get that Star Trek jargon right. I don't think I could have pulled it off if he hadn't been there. Robert was hysterical. He's probably funnier than I am. He had me and the crew cracking up all day."
Early in their working relationship, Robert Picardo and Andy Dick teased one another about each others' surnames. During production, Picardo remarked, "My favorite Andy Dick story is this. About three or four days into the shooting he says to me, 'So your name is Picardo. It's so close to Captain Picard. Do you get teased a lot about that?' And I said, 'Your name is Andy Dick, and you're going to make fun of mine?' So he laughed – apparently he has a sense of humor. I don't think you can grow up with a name like that and not have a healthy sense of humor." In a retrospective interview, however, Picardo stated that the encounter in which they had traded barbs about one another's surname was "when I first met Andy" and, moments later, said, "That was our icebreaker, so [...] after that, we would joke about anything."
Robert Picardo was somewhat worried about being reported to be bosom buddies with Andy Dick. "I remember saying to him, 'My biggest fear is that, when this episode airs, that TV Guide will do a little close-up box about it and it will say something like, 'Picardo and Dick a treat,' or, 'Picardo and Dick inseparable,' [...] 'Picardo and Dick, together forever.' It just seemed... it seemed to give me a note of caution. However, I didn't follow it and I did tell the story."
Aside from the name-related jibes, Robert Picardo found that he enjoyed working with his co-star on this episode. Picardo commented that his own perception of Dick as "a bit of a loon [...] appealed to me" and that, consequently, "we got along real well." Picardo went on to say about Dick, "He was very solicitous of my advice about the world of playing doctor holograms, what the conventions were, and how I said, 'Please state the nature of the medical emergency.'" Picardo also commented that Dick familiarized himself with the style of performance required on Star Trek by "asking me and the director questions."
Initially, Robert Picardo was nervous about this episode's script. "That was one of our most overtly comic [episodes]," observed Picardo. "The whole second, third, and fourth acts with Andy Dick were quite funny, and intended to be funny. I'm always a little nervous when we try to do a funny script, because in my opinion Star Trek has never been known for its comedy [....] The situations they put us in were funny, so there was a lot of high anxiety and panic."
Ultimately, however, Robert Picardo was very pleased with the episode. He opined, "It did work out pretty well." He also stated, "'Message in a Bottle' was [...] very well done. It was quite a funny show, but its ending was quite serious [....] It was an exciting show." During the fifth season, Picardo enthused, "I loved that show. It was one of my favorites from last season. It contained a lot of humor, but was also very exciting and dramatic." Additionally, Picardo considered this episode to be "a nice demonstration of how the writers can use me, and find ways to give me interesting and different things to do, within the given circumstances of this character."
Robert Picardo was also proud of the breathing-related joke he devised for this episode, which he termed as both "the [joke suggestion] I'm proudest of" and "my favorite exchange that I have ever gotten into a show." Picardo further commented, "I thought [it] sounded like two holograms bickering. 'What holograms bicker about.' That was a fun moment." Additionally, he remarked, "I thought it was a good example of a Niles/Frasier one-upmanship."

Picardo believed that such comparisons with those two main characters from the television series Frasier were warranted. He said of himself and Andy Dick, "We do have some very high-paced comedy scenes together, where we natter at each other, and it does sound a little Frasier-like."

The revised version of the episode's final scene was another highlight of the episode for Robert Picardo, who particularly enjoyed the performance that Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew delivered for the scene. Picardo commented, "That is a touching moment [....] Kate's reaction was great, at the end. It is a moment of triumph."
Executive producer Jeri Taylor was highly amused by the pair of actors who played the holographic doctors here. She remarked, "[Andy Dick] and Robert Picardo together are just hysterical."
The two Starfleet officers beaming over to the bridge of the Prometheus near the end of this episode were played by two regular DS9 extras. This is probably because, unlike the Voyager extras, they were fitted with the latest Starfleet uniforms – the same type as can be seen worn by the other Starfleet officers aboard the Prometheus here, including the EMH Mark II.
The production of this episode was enjoyable for Andy Dick. "They work very hard on Voyager," he observed. "Some days went as long as 16 hours. It was nice to be able to work hard, but also to laugh hard the whole day."
There was some confusion during the production of "Message in a Bottle" concerning the registry of the Prometheus. According to Michael Okuda, he had used the number 74913 on all the internal displays and the ship's dedication plaque. However, the Foundation Imaging FX artists did not get the memo and used the number 59650 instead. Although Okuda's number does appear on screen, the Foundation number is much more visible.
According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant, the bridge of the Prometheus was a redress of the USS Enterprise-E's bridge.
Visual effects supervisor Mitch Suskin was highly pleased with the sets for the Prometheus. "I think the art department did an amazing job on the interior of the Prometheus," Suskin remarked.
A shot that involved holographic appearances and disappearances being choreographed as different from how they usually were was one in which the EMH Mark II deactivates himself, duly disappears and Voyager's Doctor moves into the area vacated by the Mark II, who then – reactivated by Voyager's Doctor – reappears in the background. "Obviously, in production Andy [Dick] dropped out of frame, ran around to the background, and continued the scene," Mitch Suskin explained. "But this kind of staging makes the shot more fun and more satisfying."
Tiny Ron (Idrin) is better known for his role as Maihar'du, the Hupyrian servant of Grand Nagus Zek, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
The exterior of the Prometheus was designed by senior illustrator Rick Sternbach. This was the first episode to feature CGI versions of the D'deridex-class Romulan Warbird, which CGI supplier Foundation Imaging built as a digital model especially for this episode. To visualize the pair of Defiant class ships that are shown here, the visual effects artists borrowed a digital model of the Defiant from Digital Muse. That company also produced the astrometrics graphics of this episode, the creation of which constituted a considerable challenge. Much of the episode's visual effects work involved adding the appearances and disappearances of the two holographic doctors (effects that Mitch Suskin described as the holograms "zimmering in and out").
The effect of Voyager's Doctor being sent between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants was done at POP Film and POP Animation. Mitch Suskin recalled, "It was a 3-D mannequin that was rendered on a Macintosh, [with] a lot of compositing bay futzing around to get the whole thing put together. Obviously it needed to have some connection to the hologram universe of Star Trek and the zimmer, but we wanted it to have a different look and to get the idea that he was being compressed."
This episode was Mitch Suskin's favorite installment of Star Trek: Voyager's fourth season. "'Message in a Bottle' I'm most pleased with," he said, "because it was a really funny story."
Both of the episode's two lead actors perceived this episode as being a fairly popular one. Shortly after working on the installment, Andy Dick stated, "As far as I know, people liked the episode. I've gotten positive feedback from everyone I've spoken to and, from what I understand, the fans liked it, which is the most important thing." Robert Picardo later cited this as one of two episodes from the fourth season that he knew had been favorites of fans on the Internet (the other such outing being "Living Witness").
One controversial element of this episode was its use of two Defiant-class ships, as many fans had previously believed that the USS Defiant was the only ship of its class, despite other Defiant-class starships appearing in shots of the Second Fleet in "Call to Arms". The question of how many Defiant-class ships there were was therefore a topical discussion point, both on the Internet and among some of the makers of Star Trek themselves.

 This issue was later directly addressed in the episode "Valiant", with confirmation that Starfleet had put the class into full production during the Dominion War.
Robert Picardo was extremely pleased that the relationship between his own character of The Doctor and the EHM Mark II was publicized as being similar to the bond between Frasier and Niles Crane. The actor remembered, "When the [Voyager] show aired, we got a review in USA Today that called Andy Dick and I the 'Frasier and Niles of outer space' [....] Because I love that show and both those actors, I thought that was about the highest compliment we could have gotten."
After having appeared in this episode, Andy Dick felt he had learned how to handle the technobabble of Star Trek. "I can now talk pretty convincingly about Romulans and holoemitters and starships," he said, shortly after the episode's production. He was also very open to the possibility of returning to Star Trek. "Oh, I would totally do it again!" he enthused, before saying of his many friends who watched Star Trek, "Now they're telling me that I would make a great Ferengi on Deep Space Nine." He concluded, "I would love to do Star Trek again. I'm just sitting here right now, waiting for the phone to ring. If they came up with another show as good as that, I'd be there in a minute."
Robert Picardo was under the erroneous impression that, upon the series finally depicting Voyager's return home, the plot point about The Doctor achieving the first contact with Starfleet here would, in his words, "come back and resonate."