TREKCORE > VOY > EPISODES > TIMELESS > Behind the Scenes

	As was often the case during story development, executive producer Brannon Braga's first idea for this particular episode was visual, as the inIn a retrospective interview, former staff writer Bryan Fuller recalled, "It was very exciting. You know, that episode really started with an image. We were all in the break room, we were talking with Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga, and the central image of that show was Voyager crashing in the ice and sinking and finding the crew frozen, decades later."
	In a retrospective interview, former staff writer Bryan Fuller recalled, "It was very exciting. You know, that episode really started with an image. We were all in the break room, we were talking with Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga, and the central image of that show was Voyager crashing in the ice and sinking and finding the crew frozen, decades later."
	The fact that this is Star Trek: Voyager's 100th episode motivated the show's writers. Actor/director LeVar Burton observed, "They felt excited about it [....] They felt there was an opportunity to see something special, but you never know. It all boils down to the script."
	Brannon Braga specifically chose not to have the story become a two-parter. Kim actor Garrett Wang reflected, "Brannon's comment on that was that he wanted the episode to stand alone, as if it was a 'City on the Edge of Forever' episode."
	While the installment was under development, co-writers Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky tried to differentiate the episode's plot from the clichéd "twists and turns" (in Menosky's words) of a typical time travel story. Menosky believed that this concern had a visible impact on the installment's plot. "'Timeless' is like a post-modern time travel story, because nobody is actually traveling through time," he observed. "There's [only] a message sent through time."
	Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky also took a minimalist approach to the writing of the episode's beginning. Menosky reflected, "When we were initially talking about it, we were trying to figure out a way to do it with no dialogue at all, and do the teaser and Act One absolutely silent, which is pretty impossible to pull off." Nonetheless, because of this effort, there is not much dialogue in the teaser and first act, as Menosky also noted. He concluded, "I think we did it as well as we could."
	The script of this episode specified how much ice Brannon Braga thought there should be between the buried Voyager and the frozen planet that served as its resting place. Visual effects supervisor Mitch Suskin remembered this description from the episode's teaser: "The script said, 'They see Voyager under tens of meters of ice.'"
	The scripted description of the sequence wherein Voyager crashes on the frozen planet was very short. "[It's] almost like nothing," Joe Menosky commented. "It's something we barely scripted, when Voyager plunges out of space, down through the atmosphere of this ice planet, and then does a belly flop on this glacier and crashes into the screen. [In] the script it's like half a page, nothing."
	The episode's focus on the character of Harry Kim was one of several instances where the writing staff tried to feature lesser-seen main characters. Story editor Nick Sagan offered, "There was definitely that mindset, especially at the very beginning of the [fifth] season, with 'Timeless' and Harry Kim, which gave him an opportunity to shine."
	The persona of the future Kim was conceptually influenced by how the character had been portrayed in a previous two-parter. Explained Joe Menosky, "The future Kim in 'Timeless' was directly inspired by the belted-around Kim and edgy Kim from 'The Killing Game'."
	The addition of Captain Geordi La Forge was made to the script shortly after a draft of the teleplay was released to the production company. LeVar Burton, who reprised the role here, remembered, "We had a draft, and then I got a call one Sunday afternoon from Brannon, who said, 'I'm just kicking around an idea, but before I start running with this, I want to know how you would feel about making a cameo appearance as Captain La Forge.' I laughed and said, 'I don't know. You write it, and we'll talk.'"
	According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant, the USS Challenger was named for the space shuttle orbiter Challenger. Indeed, the two spacecrafts have similar registry numbers.

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