Episode Behind the Scenes

TREKCORE > VOY > KILLING GAME PART I > Behind the Scenes

Writer/producer Joe Menosky had the original idea for this episode, having been affected by his experience of having repeatedly seen – while living and working in Europe – televised footage of the Second World War that was profuse there.

The plot concept was one of the first ideas that Menosky revealed to his fellow writing staffers on Star Trek: Voyager, upon returning to work on Star Trek from abroad. He remembered, "When I got back from Europe, I wanted to do a World War II show [....] I thought it would be real cool to do a World War II episode with our characters, and have a little French town and tanks and our people in GI uniforms."

Menosky proposed this idea in 1996. Neither he nor Voyager's other staff writers could find a way of making the plot concept work.  "We just never knew how to work it," Menosky admitted. "In the back of our minds, we figured it would be an arena-like story where a powerful alien race tosses us and somebody else down into a World War II scenario. We have to fight it out, like when a little kid throws red ants and black ants together and watches the results." This initial concept stayed on hold for a long time.

The war-related idea was reconsidered after the Hirogen were conceived. Joe Menosky recollected, "Once we had the Hirogen, that seemed like a good time to resurrect this World War II thing." The story was then added to by co-executive producer Brannon Braga, when he conceived of an idea that he thought was "cool" – having aliens in Nazi German uniforms.

Subsequently, the Hirogen were used to fill this role. Menosky commented, "I think [Braga's input is] what led to the idea of using these Hunters in that regard."

The specifics of how the characters would be transported into the World War II setting still had to be devised. "So, we were struggling with how this was going to happen," Joe Menosky related. "In my original story, I had the Hunters have a kind of hunting scenario planet. It was like a planetary Holodeck, and we found ourselves down in a simulation because they drove us there. But in working out the story, when we were all together as a staff team, Ken Biller came up with the idea that it was on our own Holodeck." Menosky also stated, "Ken Biller had the good idea of putting it on a holodeck, and making this the big holodeck episode of the year. That was the last key to get things rolling in terms of actually starting to write an episode."
Beginning to pen the script for this episode, the writer/producers decided to start the episode's storyline with the starship Voyager having already been invaded by the Hirogen. Joe Menosky remembered, "We cut right to the action, didn't deal with the takeover of our ship, and got right into this holodeck story."
It was while scripting this episode that the writers began to create the character of the Alpha Hirogen known as Karr, whose motives were used as thematic material for the two-parter. "A lot of times, strangely enough (and this happened in The Year of Hell [two-parter], as well), you don't get the bigger theme until you've actually progressed with the plot, despite the fact that the theme might hold everything together," Joe Menosky observed. "And in this case, through not only working out the story, but even the script of part one, Brannon and I arrived at the notion that one member of these Hunter aliens was starting to question the way his society behaved in terms of hunting and killing the species around them and what that would lead to. [It was] a metaphor for exhausting your resources."

The writers recognized that such a notion had far-reaching consequences, such as imbuing Karr with a more life-like personality. Menosky offered, "Once we came up with that character thread, that this guy was using the holodeck to explore ways in which he might change this destructive hunting dynamic of his people, then suddenly that gives a bad guy some depth." Brannon Braga concurred, "The Hirogen were not just the 'Hunter' villains. With any luck we managed to dimensionalize them a little bit more and say something about culture. It was more than just aliens in Nazi uniforms, I hope."

The exploding building near the end of this episode was thought up by Brannon Braga. He noted, "I always wanted to explode a building on Star Trek, and [had] never quite figured out how to do it."
In this episode's shooting script, Janeway's holographic persona goes by the name Genevieve. This is possibly an inside joke referring to Genevieve Bujold, the actress who was initially selected to portray the role of Voyager's captain. The name of Janeway's World War II character changed, thereafter, to Katrine.
Brigitte's pregnancy was influenced by actress Roxann Dawson's real-life pregnancy. "They worked that into the script," Dawson noted, "so that the character I played – in the alternate universe, basically – was pregnant."
The fact that Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky were not, at this point in the series, particularly interested in the character of Harry Kim inspired their decision to make him the only main character who does not participate in the holographic wargames of this episode's two-parter, a role that had to be accentuated in order to fill up the story. "We stuck his ass on the bridge," said Menosky, blatantly, "and we just didn't care [....] We ended up being short in that episode. Because the World War II sets had been struck, and it was elaborate amounts of costume to do anything in the period anyway, we were stuck with a few minutes of scenes we had to write, and no one but Ensign Kim." Menosky also commented that "no other character could have been used" in the same way as the brutalized Kim is, here.
Brannon Braga enjoyed trying to make the Nazis historically accurate. "We really tried," he said. "Joe Menosky was a big help with this, because he's really knowledgeable about historical things [....] It was fun to explore [although] it wasn't an episode about Nazism per se."
Being much more used to performing in classical theater elsewhere in the United States of America, actor J. Paul Boehmer classed this episode as "my first job in LA" and "my first job on television." Having been a keen viewer of Star Trek since his childhood, however, Boehmer was thrilled to be cast in the role of the unnamed Kapitän here. "I've followed it from the original series, so it was really cool to finally get to be on it," he admitted. "Getting the opportunity to work is always great, but getting the chance to work on a show that you've loved since you were five is a blast. I was walking on cloud nine for months."
J. Paul Boehmer found that his past in classical theater helped him with his pronunciations of his character's technical dialogue here, which he nevertheless thought was "hard to say" and "hard to memorize." Furthermore, the actor brought an historical understanding to his role of the Nazi Kapitän, aware of the pressures that such a person would actually have been under. "The Kapitan is participating in what was a really powerful movement at the time," Boehmer mused. "At the time at which the program is set, the Nazis were losing, and the leadership was pushing even harder for them to win." Such retrospection was important to Boehmer, as he was presented with the challenge of trying to find a moral root in a character that may outwardly seem archetypally villainous. "It's interesting, because it starts out as a love story for these two. [B'Elanna's character] has plans because she's part of the resistance, but my take on it when I played the character was that he was truly in love with her. He doesn't know she is in the resistance, and he would do anything for her."
Director David Livingston was pleased with this installment's selection of guest stars. He opined, "We had a wonderful guest cast."
Much to their surprise, Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky became delighted by this episode's depiction of Harry Kim, a development that Menosky referred to as "a really interesting thing." He went on to say, "Because [Kim] was messed up, because these [Hirogen] guys had been smacking him around, and he was rebellious but he still had to knuckle under, we saw this other side of Kim. It was a tough side of him that we had never seen before, and we really liked. That takes everybody by surprise, no one more so than us. You see him in dailies, and you see him in the episode, and you go, 'That's cool.'"
Kim actor Garrett Wang was unhappy that he felt this was one of several important episodes that he seemed to miss out on, although Joe Menosky felt differently. "In some ways, Garrett was the perfect person for that episode," Menosky stated.
As Roxann Dawson's pregnancy had been written as a facet of the holodeck persona Brigitte, Dawson was relieved that she didn't have to hide her body while filming this arc. "I was able to let it all hang out there," the actress laughed. "We didn't have to hide it." Dawson also remarked that not having to cover up her pregnancy, on screen, was "a lot of fun."
For the scene of this episode in which Neelix thinks he is one of the Klingons (as well as for many scenes of the second half of the two-parter), Neelix actor Ethan Phillips had to endure not only his usual Talaxian prosthetics but also Klingon makeup over that. "That was... hell, because not only did I have to have the Talaxian makeup, then I've gotta have Klingon make-up on over it," Phillips recalled. "I mean, forget it! That's a lotta rubber. It's hot with that make-up on, but this was like I was in a sauna. I felt like I was [in] an oven." Other than this discomfort, Phillips enjoyed his turn as a Klingon.
By the time she came to appear in this episode, Seven of Nine actress Jeri Ryan had become extremely stressed and exhausted. "I was sick with something almost every day of my first season – colds, sinus infections, bronchitis – and getting only four hours of sleep a night because of the schedule, so by the time we got to this really grueling, complicated two-parter set in World War II, I was totally wiped,"
David Livingston likened the identity that Janeway dons throughout much of the episode, Katrine, to Humphrey Bogart; specifically, Livingston described Katrine as "Janeway playing Humphrey Bogart, basically, with a white tuxedo."
Upon starting the filming of this episode, the production crew were tired out. "When Joe and I wrote the two-parter," Brannon Braga remembered, "the production team was exhausted. They'd just done 'Year of Hell' and 'Prey' and the other blockbusters. How in the world were we going to pull off this World War II epic?"

Elaborating on the confusion of how the group would manage to create this episode's two-parter, Braga reflected, "Nazis, aliens dressed as Nazis, Humans and Klingons – all together in a European, small French village. And it [...] just seemed impossible. How could we produce that, with machine guns and phasers?!"

The Hirogen-decorated version of the captain's ready room in this episode features numerous weapons. In fact, according to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant, this was "almost the whole stock of prop weapons."
The shooting of this episode included some bluescreen filming of Janeway actress Kate Mulgrew and Seven actress Jeri Ryan, for the sequence depicting the destruction of the Nazi headquarters building. Ronald B. Moore, the visual effects supervisor on this episode, recalled, "We put up a big bluescreen, and they [ran], one on each side of the camera. They just [came] up to the camera and [dived]."
Being much more used to performing in classical theater elsewhere in the United States of America, actor J. Paul Boehmer classed this episode as "my first job in LA" and "my first job on television." Having been a keen viewer of Star Trek since his childhood, however, Boehmer was thrilled to be cast in the role of the unnamed Kapitän here. "I've followed it from the original series, so it was really cool to finally get to be on it," he admitted. "Getting the opportunity to work is always great, but getting the chance to work on a show that you've loved since you were five is a blast. I was walking on cloud nine for months."
J. Paul Boehmer enjoyed working with David Livingston on this episode, as well as with Victor Lobl on the two-parter's concluding half, and found both directors to be extremely helpful. The actor enthused, "The directors were very much aligned on what they wanted from the individual episodes. Both of them were very good at seeing where the thrust of the piece needed to go. I had a pretty clear vision of what it needed to be, too, so it was pretty easy to move that forward. They were terrific to work with, both of them. They were very supportive, very helpful." Boehmer concluded that he also found both directors to be "really great to [him]" about the fact that the two-parter was his first acting job in television work. A long-time Star Trek director, David Livingston himself was thrilled to direct this installment. "'The Killing Game' is my favorite Star Trek episode that I've been able to direct," he raved, "because it had everything in it." After explaining that he was referring to the episode's unusual setting and variation of characters, Livingston continued, "They threw everything into it. I had the best time doing that episode, because it just had so much stuff in it."
Ronald B. Moore described the destruction of Nazi headquarters in this episode as "probably one of the biggest [effects] that we've ever done on any [televised] Star Trek." To create this effect, Vision Crew Unlimited created a seven foot replica of the building. According to Ron Moore, Thane Morris – a pyro technician in the employ of Vision Crew – "helped get the design of the building right." The same people who created the swastika flags for the exterior of the full-scale building replicated them, again in accordance with instructions from James Mees, at one-fifth scale. Mees then provided Moore with the flags, before the building was set to destruct.
To film the model exploding, a trio of high-speed cameras was utilized; two of these cameras ran at 360 frames per second, while a third ran at 120 frames per second. Additionally, the model and the full-size building were lit alike, for the sequence. Ron Moore remembered, "[Marvin V. Rush] was able to match the lighting on the model. I transferred it, and then cut things together." In Moore's estimation, the mixture of footage of both the miniature and the full-size building was highly effective. "You can't tell [the difference]," he reckoned. "The model is up there and most people see it and think it is the real building." Brannon Braga, for one, was thrilled with the explosion. "Of course, it was just a model," he remarked, "but it was great!"
It was after the explosion was filmed and edited together that the bluescreen footage of Kate Mulgrew and Jeri Ryan, running and diving, was filmed. The final edit of the sequence involves a shot of Janeway and Seven exiting the building and running towards the camera, two quick shots of the miniature blowing up and a final shot showing the pair of women diving out of sight, backdropped by more footage of the exploding model. Initially, however, Ron Moore was somewhat worried about how the final edit would look. He took his concerns to executive producer Rick Berman. "[I] said, 'I really think the people are going to cover the explosion up a little bit,'" Moore recounted. "'You've got two quick cuts when they are not there, and then suddenly they pop on.' Berman said, 'I don't care if it covers up the explosion.'" In the end, Moore found that he indeed need not have worried. "I did a rough roto around [the two actresses], and put them over the explosion. I had to shift their sync a little bit, so they were together as they went. It worked beautifully. Berman was right."
The breach in the holodeck, created by the explosion, was modeled entirely in CGI by Digital Muse. Mitch Suskin, who served as visual effects supervisor on the concluding half of the two-parter, commented, "Greg Rainoff (at Digital Muse) created the whole blend between the holodeck and the Voyager piece, with the flashing of the lights at the edge. It actually played a lot better once we had all the elements together."
This episode aired back-to-back with "The Killing Game, Part II" on its first airing. Even though these two episodes were originally intended to initially air on two separate nights, the decision to first broadcast both parts on the same night as each other was made by UPN, surprising the producers. Brannon Braga commented, "It was actually their idea. We planned it as a two part episode, and it was their idea to air it on the same night as a Voyager movie of sorts." Indeed, it was also originally planned that the two parts would first air as a single, feature-length edition (and promotional trailers for the episodes advertised them as such). However, these plans did not materialize, and each episode aired as a separate entity. A feature-length version was broadcast by the BBC on its first airing on 5 September 1999, and formed part of the UK VHS release Star Trek: Voyager - Movies.
The way in which the two-parter originally aired was a Star Trek first, because – although there had been feature-length episodes in the past (with Star Trek: Voyager's own pilot episode, "Caretaker", included among them) – this was the first time when both halves of a two-parter aired on a single night. Tuvok actor Tim Russ noted, "Again, here we go with defying convention, breaking the rules once in a while. That's what keeps people interested."
Both Brannon Braga and Tim Russ were ultimately happy with the ratings of the "Killing Game" two-parter, as well as the fact that both segments of the two-parter were first aired on the same night as each other. Russ observed, "I think it was received quite well [....] To put on a two-hour show like that in one night was just great." Similarly, Braga said, "It really worked out well. The ratings were quite good."
The success of this two-parter's first airing influenced two-hour, feature-length episodes in subsequent seasons. The first of these was "Dark Frontier", of whose development Joe Menosky said, "Because of the success of airing 'The Killing Game' in a single night, the network and the studio were really interested in doing a Voyager movie, a two-part episode that was aired on a single evening."
he success of how this installment depicts Harry Kim influenced the character to be featured in the anniversary episode "Timeless". "In a funny way, the future Kim in 'Timeless' was directly inspired by the belted-around Kim and edgy Kim from 'The Killing Game'," explained Joe Menosky.