These are the episodes that started life as one thing, only to be transformed in the writers' room
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00:00Half the fun in researching the episodes of Star Trek is finding out what they started life as,
00:04because as any writer will know, the first time you put pen to paper,
00:08it does not always resemble what it ends up becoming.
00:11With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture,
00:14and here are 10 Star Trek Voyager episodes that were almost completely different.
00:19Number 10.
00:20Tuvix.
00:21Tuvix, endlessly doing the rounds and debating circles,
00:23originally came to life in a plot that would ensure no one,
00:26least of all Nelix or Tuvok fans, would ever really remember the episode.
00:30In truth, it was originally going to be a slapstick comedy,
00:32one that even the writers weren't proud of.
00:34Kenneth Biller, Brandon Braga, and Michael Biller all worked on the script after the pitch came in.
00:38Biller recalled joking with Braga over how to name the character.
00:42Nulok, Tuvix, surely not.
00:44The jokes got so bad at one point that the pair even came up with a little theme song for the show.
00:49Then there was the ending.
00:50In the beginning, Tuvix was going to sacrifice himself upon realising
00:53that the ship needed Tuvok and Nelix to survive,
00:55and would go about separating himself to ensure that happened.
00:58No one was happy with this idea of a comedic character
01:01effectively killing themselves to return to the status quo, never to be mentioned again.
01:05Biller set about adding darker plot points, ditching the theme tune,
01:08and adding that ending with Janeway.
01:11The resulting episode remains a fan favourite for debate and discussion to this day.
01:16Number 9.
01:17In the Flesh.
01:18The fifth season episode of Star Trek Voyager saw the return of the dreaded enemy Species 8472.
01:24While the episode was always planned to have the CGI beasts return,
01:27it started as something quite different, and arguably ridiculously expensive.
01:32The first idea had a photo from the past turn up in Voyager's archives,
01:35showing a member of 8472 in Earth's distant past.
01:39This would begin an investigation as to how and why the alien race was visiting Earth via time travel.
01:44This version of the episode would see a large space battle,
01:46as well as a dream sequence showing Janeway's hometown being wiped out by the bio-ships.
01:51The conclusion would have seen a beat of understanding between the two
01:55before reinforcements arrive and Voyager had to escape at high warp.
01:58The idea sounds like it would have made for a truly spectacular show,
02:01one that would require the budget of a season finale or opener to truly pull off.
02:06The released episode, while very different,
02:08is far closer to the Star Trek ideas of the original series.
02:11The resolution comes from diplomacy rather than violence,
02:13which is far more in keeping with Janeway's character as well.
02:16Number 8.
02:17Scorpion.
02:18The finale for Voyager's third season, and the opening of its fourth,
02:21Scorpion went through several variations before the writers landed on the idea of the Borg.
02:26In fact, to be more specific, the idea of the Borg was there early,
02:29though the Alliance had not been.
02:31Star Trek First Contact had recently been released to much fanfare,
02:34and the third season episode, Unity, had shown a colony of collective as well.
02:38It was the decision to shake up the cast before the fourth season that pulled Scorpion forward.
02:42Year of Hell, having been telegraphed in before and after,
02:45was set to bridge the seasonal gap,
02:47though it ended up being pushed out to the first two-parter of season four.
02:51Another idea for the episode would have seen Voyager and her crew
02:53triumphantly returning to Earth, basking in the fanfare,
02:56before they are all revealed to be biometric duplicates,
02:59then proceeding to cause chaos on the planet.
03:01While the idea was shelved,
03:03the genesis of it would be recycled into the later episode, Coarse Oblivion.
03:07Number 7.
03:08The Raven.
03:09The original idea for The Raven,
03:10according to then-freelance writer and future Star Trek Discovery showrunner
03:14before the first season's release,
03:16was very different from the episode that delivered.
03:18While the one that was offered to audiences
03:20saw one or two of Seven's Borg programs coming back online,
03:24thanks to an old beacon waking them up,
03:26this is a largely non-violent presentation.
03:28The original idea was far, far more bloody.
03:31In this script, Seven was again reawakened by the Borg,
03:35but in this version, she becomes a vengeful drone.
03:38She moves through the ship,
03:39killing crew and aliens at random before ending up in engineering.
03:42There, she is dragging herself across the deck as Torres has blown her legs off,
03:46and though she is trying to destroy the ship,
03:48she begs Janeway to kill her so as to save them all.
03:51Suffice to say, that script didn't go very far.
03:53Bran and Braga described it as an empty, soulless piece of action,
03:57one that neither pushed the characters onward
03:59nor helped anyone learn anything about themselves.
04:02It was quickly scrapped, and the newer, toned-down script took its place.
04:05Number 6.
04:06Living Witness.
04:07Living Witness, directed by none other than Tim Russ,
04:10is often considered to be one of the best episodes in Star Trek Voyager's run.
04:13It's about as close to a Mirror Universe episode that the show approached,
04:17using its what-if scenario to tell a tale of a badly garbled interpretation of history.
04:22The one thing that was constant in all versions of the story
04:24was the image of the Doctor awakening in a museum in the future.
04:27There was some debate as to where the museum would be,
04:30with Rick Berman putting his foot down,
04:32it had to be the Delta Quadrant
04:34so that the show could avoid confirming that Voyager ever returned home.
04:37In the early drafts, the Doctor discovered that he, in the past,
04:40had inspired cybernetic lifeforms to push for great reform in society,
04:44thus leading to their acceptance as equals on this world.
04:47While that was certainly an interesting idea,
04:49the writers also felt that it was more of a data story rather than a Doctor story.
04:53The change of arc, from returning messiah to witness of a very different history,
04:58completely flipped the story around,
04:59turning what had been quite a charming story of positive impact
05:03into a cautionary tale of how the truth is often misinterpreted and twisted.
05:07Number 5 – Life Signs
05:08This second season entry went through some large rewrites during production,
05:12including a complete change of the ending.
05:14The introduction of Donara Pell offered a love interest for the Doctor,
05:18though her consciousness was not suited to a permanent holographic interface.
05:21This meant that the ending of the episode could go in one of two ways,
05:24something that executive producer Geri Taylor felt passionately about.
05:27She advocated for the ending that was shot rather than the initial idea.
05:31Pell would have originally opted to remain in her beautiful holographic body
05:34despite the death sentence that it carried.
05:36She would have lived for a few more days and died, spending that time with the Doctor.
05:40Taylor felt that her choice to die rather than live in a diseased body
05:44was an irresponsible message to put out to the audience.
05:46In her opinion, it suggested that people with diseases
05:49were less deserving of consideration or respect.
05:52She pushed for the ending that was ultimately filmed.
05:54Pell returns to her body, aided as much as possible by the Doctor.
05:57This is the superior ending, in this presenter's opinion,
06:00as it displays a resolve to keep fighting the illness and never let it win.
06:04It also had the unintended side effect of leaving the door open
06:06for Pell to return in the later episode resolutions.
06:10Number four, Hope and Fear.
06:11The close of Voyager's fourth season was a jumble of ideas
06:14before it eventually settled on Arcturus, the Dauntless,
06:17and the holographic game of Velocity.
06:19It was a standalone episode which presented the writers with a challenge,
06:22how to sum up a season, leave the audience ready for another,
06:25but do it all in 40 minutes.
06:26One of the earliest ideas was the introduction of Slipstream technology,
06:29while the episode would also focus on the conflict between Janeway and Seven.
06:33There was even a pitch for Seven and Janeway to play a game of Interstellar Chicken,
06:36flying toward each other in opposing ships at breakneck speed.
06:39Another idea saw Voyager discovering, after deciphering Starfleet's message,
06:43a Slipstream network.
06:44However, once they got inside, they would have found themselves to be trespassers,
06:48flying an antiquated ship targeted by the inhabitants of the stream.
06:52This was deemed a little too similar to Species 8472 and Fluidic Space,
06:56though before it was completely rewritten,
06:58Seven would commandeer an alien vessel with Janeway in hot pursuit.
07:01The one consistent theme between the drafts was the arc of Seven's humanity coming to a head,
07:06with a fight-or-flight moment against Janeway.
07:08Ultimately, the final version, including Arturus, is the strongest idea of them all.
07:12Number 3.
07:13Night.
07:14Night was considered a risky season opener by the writing team.
07:17While the admittedly cool idea of the more realistic huge gaps in space between stars
07:21was fun to portray,
07:22the team had to figure out what the actual threat inside the Void was going to be,
07:27other than Neelix's nihilophobia, that is.
07:28The original idea always had Voyager flying through a darkened area of space,
07:32but they would discover a planet that had somehow managed to form and evolve
07:35without any light or solar interference.
07:37Naturally, a landing party would travel down to the surface,
07:40where all sorts of craziness would ensue.
07:42The planet it transpired would have been akin to King Tutankhamun's tomb,
07:46though replete with half-alive, half-dead creatures defending its secrets.
07:50They would swarm the landing party,
07:51and their vessels would come out from the nothingness ready to attack the ship itself.
07:55Writer Joe Monoski wrote about ten pages of material around this
07:58before he and the rest of the team took a step back, took a breath,
08:01and realised that none of it was truly working.
08:03That was when they opted to concentrate on Janeway's melancholy,
08:06the introduction of the Malon,
08:07and those badass-looking Void ships that sadly never returned.
08:10Number 2.
08:11Parallax.
08:12Parallax, the second episode of Star Trek Voyager,
08:15kicked off what would become a series of high-concept episodes in the series.
08:19While the ultimate episode dealt with a duplicate Voyager and some time distortion,
08:22the original pitch was quite different.
08:24Jim Trombetta pitched the idea of finding a ship trapped in a quantum singularity,
08:28crewed by aliens who were a few steps removed from our reality.
08:32This pitch, titled Ghost Ship, interested Bran and Braga to the point that he bought it,
08:36but both he and executive producer Jerry Taylor felt that it would be too difficult to pull off.
08:40The episode sees Torres promoted to chief engineer,
08:43which was a thread left over from Caretaker.
08:45This was a deliberate addition by Braga for a number of reasons.
08:48First, the obvious one was that Torres was always planned for the position,
08:52so that it needed to happen quickly.
08:53The second reason was to deal with the clashes between Starfleet and the Maquis.
08:57Torres, a Maquis herself, promoted to chief over several Starfleet staff,
09:01such as Lieutenant Carey, was designed to piss off the Starfleet crew.
09:04For an episode that started as a ghost story, it ended up quite different.
09:08It may not have hit every note,
09:09but it was critical in establishing characters early on in the show's run.
09:13Number 1.
09:14Mortal Coil.
09:15Mortal Coil went through extreme changes in the scripting sessions,
09:19with Brian Fuller being told to drop tools and rewrite days of work twice along the way.
09:24Brannon Braga and Joe Minoski were responsible for the final version,
09:27though both commented on Fuller's excellent early drafts.
09:30The initial story pitch by freelancer Kathy Hankinson
09:33centred around a death fetishist,
09:35one who tricks the Doctor into killing and reviving them several times through the episode.
09:40Though that idea didn't get far, the idea of exploring death intrigued the writers.
09:44They then decided that Ensign Samantha Wildman would be killed on an away mission.
09:48It was soon decided that Borg technology would revive her,
09:51though it would be similar to Pet Sematary.
09:53She would come back wrong.
09:55She would be more connected to death than life,
09:57with Naomi Wildman being her only link, which would lead Samantha trying to kill her.
10:02While the writers loved the idea,
10:03Rick Berman and the studio were nervous about showing a mother trying to kill her child.
10:06The character focus then shifted to Chakotay,
10:09with Fuller believing it could make for an interesting exploration
10:11of Native American attitudes towards death.
10:14Though this was quickly quashed as well,
10:15as many Native tribes had a less-than-positive view on the notion of an afterlife,
10:20which could have led to the episode being seen as distasteful.
10:23Finally, the episode settled on Neelix coming back from the dead,
10:25which is more than can be said for poor old Tuvix.
10:28That's everything in our list today, folks.
10:29Thank you so much for watching along.
10:31Don't forget to check out the original article back on whatculture.com.
10:34Thank you so much to our wonderful editor Martin, who made all this possible.
10:38Everyone remember that you can catch us over on Twitter at Trek Culture.
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10:44Don't forget to check out our podcast, which drops every Tuesday.
10:48Catch it on Acast or the podcast catcher of your choice.
10:51I have been Sean Ferrick.
10:52Catch me on the various socials at seanferrick.
10:54And all that I want you to do for the next week is to look after yourself,
10:58stay safe, live long and prosper, and remember, you're a bit bloody brilliant.
11:03Thanks very much, folks.
11:04Bye.