by Chris Snellgrove
| Published
As big fans Star Trek: Voyagerwe always love learning about the production details of the different episodes to see how all of Captain Janeway's adventures are put together. Most of the time, these are endearing stories about how a great idea was born and turned into another unforgettable episode of Gene Roddenberry's sprawling sci-fi series. 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 eventually saw on screen. This splits 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 posits that this “could be the result of a gruesome concentration camp.” Kind of an experiment.” This didn't exactly excite the production staff: executive story editor Kenneth Beller declared that “the original idea was too melodramatic and funny,” and executive producer Jerry Taylor said that “I wasn't even buying into this idea originally” and that ” “It was a tired idea” which “was within reach of B'Elanna”.
“Faces” also did not impress the celebrities Star Trek Producer Brannon Braga, who admitted that “usually, when a show does an evil twin thing, it's on its last legs and they're desperate.” Initially, he was warm to the idea of doing away with this familiar TV trope in the first season, later saying, “I always felt that splitting it 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 fair question when you consider that the tension between these two dueling halves of her character will continue throughout the entire series.
Regarding “Faces”, Michael Piller said: “This was a story that a lot of people had trouble with, and it was almost abandoned at one point.” However, the writers and producers stayed the course because they thought there was a new version of the classic Trek trope of splitting a character in two (similar to Kirk in The original series) had some interesting creative potential. The finale ended up being a success, and it looks like it's all thanks to Kenneth Beller.
The last text, “Faces”, includes the Vedic text, and is a tragedy Alien A race that is always looking for a new way to cure the phages that are constantly destroying their bodies. Scientist Vidi ends up splitting B'Elanna Torres in two as a crazy way to try to discover a cure. The alien intellectual ends up falling in love with his captive, beauty and the beast method, and the two versions of Torres team up and escape captivity to be reintegrated into one body on Voyager.
Biller is the sole creator of the “Faces” TV series, and he had the unenviable task of taking a Star Trek script that no one liked and turning it into something engaging. He incorporated the Vidiians aliens as a way to make the body-splitting process work, and Biller later said: “It was only after Ken Biller got the rewrites that he could solve every problem overnight.”
Meanwhile, fellow executive producer and story skeptic Jerry Taylor admitted that “in the end it turned out much better than we had any right to expect.” She continued, “Ken Peeler came up with the idea of marrying the idea (of splitting B'Elanna) with Phage AliensThis is what I think worked in the end and made it credible.
As you can tell, “Faces” is one of the Star Trek episodes that had the most troubled production, and it's a small miracle that this story got aired. It's a good thing, though, because this episode's themes of horror and identity make it one of the most memorable episodes. VoyagerThe first days. The fact that it focuses on Torres (arguably the most interesting character on the show) is the cherry on top of the refined chocolate cake (we can only assume Diana Troy would approve).
