TREKCORE > VOY > EPISODES > RELATIVITY > Behind the Scenes

	This was the last of five Star Trek: Voyager episodes that Nick Sagan, story editor for the series' fifth season, was involved in writing. He previously worked on "In the Flesh", "Gravity", "Course: Oblivion" and "Juggernaut". In his capacity as story writer and teleplay co-writer here, Nick Sagan found this to be an enjoyable episode to write. He later reminisced, "I think that might have been the easiest one I worked on, because the goal is simply to have fun. With the others I felt a lot of different loyalties to character this, character that. For some reason that one came together very quickly, and it was such a joy to write because we were just trying to please ourselves."
	Executive Producer Brannon Braga did a lot of uncredited rewriting on the episode.
	One aspect of this installment that was changed was its depiction of the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards; the episode's script originally called for only a simple shot of a lone Voyager in drydock at Utopia Planitia. Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz noted, "One ship, one drydock, and that was it."
	Not having been a science fiction fan prior to her work on Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine actress Jeri Ryan found this time travel episode's script difficult to follow. "It was a challenge just keeping the time frames straight," she admitted.
	Jeri Ryan also found it humorously coincidental that, in this outing, her character wears the disguise of a Starfleet uniform, a fact the actress described as "actually very funny." She continued, "I had just done an online chat three or four days before this script came up. As they always do, one of the fans had asked me when we were going to see Seven in a Starfleet uniform, and I said, 'Well, never, because she's not Starfleet, of course.' Then bam, I get a call from wardrobe two days later saying, 'We need you to come in for a fitting because you are in a Starfleet uniform for the next episode.'"
	Although Captain Braxton appeared in Star Trek: Voyager twice before, he is played by a different actor in this episode, with Bruce McGill replacing Allan G. Royal.
	he 29th century phaser that Seven of Nine uses against Braxton is of the same type seen in possession of Henry Starling's assistant Dunbar in the third season episode "Future's End" during the phaser fight outside the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in 1996.
	The thrombic modulator is seen again in this episode, having first been seen in "Message in a Bottle" when The Doctor didn't know what it was.
	Another prop reused in this episode is the triangular device that Lieutenant Ducane places on Seven of Nine's arm before transporting her to the USS Relativity. It was used in "Tattoo" as a universal translator between one of the Sky Spirits and Chakotay.
	Even though some minor cosmetic changes were made to the Voyager sets for the fourth season (for example, the trim on the briefing room table as well as the ready room desk was changed from a gray to green), the scenes from this episode that take place prior to "Caretaker" show the newer set colors.
	According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant, the bridge of the Relativity was a redress of the USS Enterprise-E bridge, with interior design elements from the Enterprise-E and Voyager.
	The reasoning why the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards was depicted as more extensive than the script suggested was that the visual effects artists from Foundation Imaging were extremely excited about visualizing the elaborate shots that open this episode. "As fans who were working on the show, we couldn't bear to be this close to seeing the shipyards and not go all the way," reflected Adam Lebowitz. "So, in our own time, we created the entire shipyard and took rough drafts of the shots we had in mind to VFX supervisor Ron Moore and producer Peter Lauritson. Luckily, they were very receptive. It may have only amounted to two shots in the final episode, but they were an absolute labor of love for all of us. The half-constructed ships looked great (thanks to the hard work of Koji Kuramura), and the image of Mars you see in the final sequence is made from a satellite photo of the real Utopia Planitia, courtesy of the folks at NASA. In fact, the whole time we were working on the episode, we thought it was a shame that the people at home would only see this stuff on blurry TV screens, and not in the high-resolution glory we had created them in." Robert Bonchune and Lee Stringer were others at Foundation Imaging who donated personal time to realize the sequence.
	The battle scenes between Voyager and the Kazon were stock footage of combat from earlier episodes, namely the second season outings "Alliances" and "Basics, Part I".
	Ultimately, Brannon Braga was extremely pleased with this installment. "'Relativity' is a time travel romp," he declared. "It's an incredibly fast-paced, mind-bending, fun, time travel story. [The identity of the bomber] will be a real shocker."
	Nick Sagan was also satisfied with this outing, likewise finding it to be fun. He stated, "I don't think it's an episode that needs to be studied, per se, or ruminated upon, you just go with it like a rollercoaster ride."