From Chris Snellgrove
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As big fans of Star Trek: VoyagerWe always love exploring the production details of different episodes to learn how each of Captain Janeway’s adventures came to be. Most of them are tender stories about how a cool idea came about and became another memorable episode in Gene Roddenberry’s extensive science fiction series. But “Faces” is the rare case of a Star Trek episode where even the producers thought the idea was a terrible idea from the start.
“Faces,” like most Star Trek episodes, began very differently from what we eventually saw on screen. This memorably split half-Klingon engineer B’Elanna Torres into two halves (one fully human, one fully Klingon), and as executive producer Michael Piller said, the earliest story idea assumed that this was “the result of a hideous crime.” could be a concentration camp.” Art experiment.” That didn’t exactly excite the production staff: senior story editor Kenneth Biller explained that “the original idea was very melodramatic and cheesy,” and executive producer Jeri Taylor said, “I wasn’t even in favor of that idea originally to buy” and that “”It was a trite idea” that “was too intrusive for B’Elanna.”
“Faces” didn’t make much of an impression either Star Trek Producer Brannon Braga, who admitted: “When a show does the evil twin, they’re usually on their last legs and they’re desperate.” and later said, “I always felt that separating them was a mistake, like making Data human.” He questioned why the series felt the need to “resolve any of her feelings,” which a legitimate question is, considering that the tension between these dueling halves of their personalities would continue throughout the series.
Regarding “Faces,” Michael Piller said, “It was a story that a lot of people had problems with, and at one point it was almost abandoned.” However, the writers and producers stuck to their guns because they felt a new take on the story was needed classic Trek motif of splitting a character in two (à la Kirk in The original series) had some fun creative potential. The finished episode was ultimately a success, and the credit for that seems to go entirely to Kenneth Biller.
As for the final “Faces” script, it includes the Vidiians, a tragedy Foreigner Race that is always looking for a new way to cure the phage that constantly ravages their bodies. A Vidiian scientist insanely splits B’elanna Torres in two to discover the cure. The alien egghead eventually falls in love with his prisoner, Beauty and the Beast Style, and the two versions of Torres join forces and escape captivity, only to be reintegrated into one body on Voyager.
Biller is the sole writer of the Faces television drama, and he had the unenviable task of adapting the Star Trek script that no one liked into something compelling. He incorporated the alien Vidiians to make the body splitting work, and Piller later gushed, “It wasn’t until Ken Biller got the recast that he solved every problem overnight.”
Meanwhile, co-producer and story skeptic Jeri Taylor admitted: “It ended up going a lot better than we had any right to expect.” She continued: “Ken Biller came up with the idea of splitting B’Elanna and him to marry the phage AliensAnd I think that’s ultimately what made it work and made it believable.
As you can see, “Faces” is one of those Star Trek episodes that was very problematic to produce, and it’s a small miracle that this story made it to air. That’s a good thing, though, because this episode’s themes of horror and identity make it one of the most memorable episodes of Voyageris still in its early stages. The fact that the focus is on Torres (arguably the show’s most interesting character) serves as icing on a mock chocolate cake (we can only assume Deanna Troi would approve).