A controversial Star Trek episode that even the producers hate

According to Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 2 days ago

Like big fans Star Trek: Voyagerwe always love digging into the production details of the various episodes to learn how each of Captain Janeway’s adventures came together. Most of the time, they’re loving stories about how a great idea came to life and became the next memorable installment in Gene Roddenberry’s sprawling sci-fi franchise. But “Faces” is the rare case of a Star Trek episode where even the producers thought it was a terrible idea from the start.

“Faces,” like most Star Trek episodes, started out very different from what we ended up seeing on screen. This memorably split the half-Klingon engineer B’Elanna Torres into two halves (one fully human, the other fully Klingon), and as executive producer Michael Piller said, the first idea for the story assumed it “could be the result of a hideous concentration camp.” kind of experiment.” This didn’t exactly enthuse the production staff: executive story editor Kenneth Biller stated that “the original idea was very melodramatic and funny” and executive producer Jeri Taylor said “I wasn’t even buying the idea originally” and that “it was tired an idea” that “was too much for B’Elanna.”

“Faces” didn’t make a glorious impression either Star Trek producer Brannon Braga, who admitted that “when the show does an evil twin, it’s at the last minute and they’re desperate.” Initially open to the idea of ​​getting this familiar TV trope out of the way in Season 1, he later said, “I always felt that splitting her up was a mistake, like making Data human.” He questioned why the show felt the need to “resolve any of her feelings,” which is a valid question when you consider that the tension between these competing halves of her personality will run throughout the series.

Regarding “The Face,” Michael Piller said, “It was a story that a lot of people had trouble with, and at one point it was almost abandoned. However, the writers and producers stayed the course, thinking that a fresh take on the classic Trek trope of splitting a character in two (a la Kirk in The original series) had some fun creative potential. The finished episode ended up being a success, and credit seems to go entirely to Kenneth Biller.

As for the final “Faces” scenario, it involves the Vidiians, which is tragic foreign a race that is constantly searching for a new way to cure the phage that is constantly ravaging their bodies. A Vidian scientist ends up splitting B’elanna Torres in two as a crazy method to try to discover a cure. The alien egghead eventually falls in love with his captive, Beauty and the Beast style and the two versions of Torres bond and escape capture, only to be reincorporated into one body on Voyager.

Biller is the sole writer of the “Faces” teleplay and had the unenviable task of taking a Star Trek script that no one liked and turning it into something engaging. He incorporated the alien Vidiians as a way to make the body-splitting work, and Piller later stated that “when Ken Biller got the script, he solved every problem overnight.”

Meanwhile, fellow executive producer and skeptic Jeri Taylor admitted that “it ended up being a lot better than we had any right to expect.” She went on to say, “Ken Biller came up with the idea (to split B’Elanna) with Phage. aliensand that’s what I think ultimately made it work and believable.

As you can tell, “Faces” is one of those Star Trek episodes that had very problematic productions, and it’s a small miracle that this story made it to air. It’s a good thing it did, because this episode’s themes of both horror and identity make it one of the most memorable episodes Voyagerearly days. The fact that it focuses on Torres (arguably the show’s most interesting character) serves as the icing on top of the replica chocolate cake (we can only assume Deanna Troi would approve).