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Star Trek: Voyager's pilot took inspiration from little Mayfly - and the Crips and Bloods.
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00:00Hello my friends, Sean Ferry here for Trek Culture and welcome to our video. Just before we get
00:04started I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who has liked, who has shared and who
00:09has subscribed. That helps us grow as a channel and it helps us continue to bring you lists like
00:14this. So with that I am Sean and welcome to 10 behind the scenes secrets about Caretaker.
00:23Number 10, recasting Janeway. Now it's pretty well known at this stage that Genevieve Bourjol
00:29was originally cast to play Janeway. Now she came in and she filmed for about a couple of days on
00:36Caretaker until she quite abruptly said nah and just walked out. That was it. She was done. The
00:43explanation was that she just was not happy with the way it was being filmed, the pace of production
00:49and things like that. Now Garrett Wang actually expanded on this a little bit on a podcast in
00:542019 because he was among the first to be cast in Caretaker and one of the few who actually shared
01:01scenes with Bourjol's Janeway. He recalled that she would come to set, she would film the scenes and
01:07she would leave and there was very little interaction with other actors on set so that he went up to her
01:12at one point and said kind of hello how are you what's going on and she just sort of opened up that
01:19she had been promised all sorts of things but mostly that she would be playing a captain first
01:26and a woman second. However when she got there hair and makeup just spent so much time trying to get to
01:33get her to look a certain way experiment with the hairdo this and that that it began to waste in her
01:39opinion valuable filming time. That then meant they were looking at extremely long days and she had two
01:45very young children at the time and she was concerned that she was just going to miss them growing up if
01:50she stayed with the show. So she made the unorailable decision to just go no that's not what I signed up
01:57for that's not why I'm here and she left. Now thankfully Kate Mulgrew stepped into the breach fairly
02:04quickly and we got the Janeway that we know and love today. Number nine redesigned Voyager. When Voyager
02:10was going into production executive producer Jerry Taylor wrote that she wanted something smaller and
02:16sleeker than the Enterprise D. Now Star Trek The Next Generation had only really just gone off the air
02:22in 1994. The production for Voyager started it could have began in 1993 and of course generations would
02:29come out in 1994 1995 depending on what territories you're in. So that meant that the galaxy class ship
02:35would be fresh in people's minds and she wanted the intrepid class ship to look very very different.
02:40Rick Sternbach was given the job of designing the new hero ship. Now he had worked on The Next
02:45Generation and DS9 before he was in fact the one who designed the runabout for example but it was his
02:51predecessor Andy Probert who had designed the Enterprise D so this was his first big shot at a
02:56hero ship. Taking the brief of smaller and sleeker but also taking inspiration from his own runabout
03:01he designed a ship that had sweeping down nacelles that sort of aimed backwards as well and also then
03:09a much more arrowhead saucer section for want of a better description this ship would be able to
03:16separate and the landing gear was there from the beginning because it was always designed to be able
03:21to land on a planet. This got as far as after some some changes went on they got rid of the pylons for
03:27example that had looked a little bit too close to the runabout. Well a studio model was built of this
03:32version of the ship. Jerry Taylor looked at it and went actually can we go a little bit curvier
03:39and so Sternbach took the brief and again reworked it now was able to go well look Voyager's not going
03:46to separate saucer sections was able to integrate the primary and secondary hulls a little bit closer
03:50together shortened the nacelles which had been not quite discovery long but certainly had been longer
03:56and gave us the Voyager that we all know and love. Number eight it was the result of a cheap lunch or
04:03two. Michael Piller, Rick Berman and Jerry Taylor all came together to write what would become
04:09Caretaker and Voyager as a whole. Brandon Braga who would of course go on to play a huge role in Star
04:14Trek Voyager missed out on these sessions because he had the audacity to go on holiday. The cheek! The
04:20absolute cheek! Michael Piller recalled that what they would do is they would get together over lunch
04:25four days a week. 93 over the course of these lunches which would last about two and three
04:31hours and were in Michael Piller's description very cheap. They broke what would become the story of
04:37Caretaker. They were able to kind of build the characters together that way so that by the time
04:43September 93 came around they had what looked like the beginnings of what would become Caretaker.
04:50Number seven it was inspired in part by Q. One of the main selling points of Star Trek Voyager was that
04:59it was going to be away from the rest of Star Trek and an important way to get that to happen came
05:06from the episode Q Who. If you recall in Q Who Q flings the Enterprise D thousands of light years away
05:15from Federation space. Now it's not quite as far because data says it would take about two years
05:21to get back to Federation space. Now while they're there of course they encounter the Borg it's a
05:25fantastic episode go and watch it if you haven't seen it it's amazing. Crucially in Q Who Q sends them
05:31back home again at the end which then begs the question what happens if he didn't? That effectively was
05:38the nugget that led to the creation of Star Trek Voyager. You know what happens if they're sent so
05:44far away that they're cut off from everything and they can't get back really really quickly? It
05:50introduced just a whole bunch of challenges that would become again part of the crux of Voyager.
05:56What happens if you can't just send a message to Starfleet? What happens if Starfleet don't know if
06:00you're alive or dead? What happens? What happens? What happens? That is how the birth of Star Trek
06:08Voyager took place. Number six. The mistakes of Emissary led to Caretaker. Emissary directly influenced
06:16Caretaker but not quite in the way that say Q Who influenced the events of Caretaker. It was more the
06:25style that became very very important particularly in Michael Piller's mind because he recalled that
06:32Emissary tonally went away from Next Generation. It was a more ethereal particularly in the parts with
06:38the Prophets a more contemplative pilot. It was about it was heavy on character and story. It's not that
06:46they didn't want to do character and story with Caretaker but absolutely Piller said we're just going
06:52to dial up the action adventure element here and that's exactly what they did. Now a good example
06:58would be look at the cold opens of both Emissary and Caretaker okay and you might be thinking well
07:04hang on Emissary opens with the Battle of Wolf 359. That's about as action-packed as you can get
07:10is it? So we do get that fantastic scene of the Saratoga engaging the cube and being
07:16roundly destroyed and then it gets quiet and it cuts and then we get it's short but
07:22a little scene of Cisco talking to Jake on the holodeck and we get that nice quiet reveal with
07:28the theme tune of the station of Deep Space Nine. Okay now let's look at Star Trek Voyager the cold
07:35open here. So again we open up with a little bit of action we have the Valjean being hunted by Gullivec
07:41and the Cardassian ship. Now we're firing torpedoes we're firing phasers we have the usual you know
07:46consoles made of rocks exploding all around us. We end up in the Badlands both ships take a beating the
07:52Cardassian ship is hit by one of those plasma storms in an effect that would be used again and
07:57again and again. Then you have the Valjean they see that the big massive displacement wave is coming up
08:03behind them and slam there is no lull there is no kind of breath here it was just let's go let's go
08:10let's go and that continues more or less throughout Caretaker. Of course there are quiet moments but
08:17in much more so than Emissary we have a lot more action adventure in Caretaker than we do in the
08:22opening of Deep Space Nine. Number five Michael Piller lost an argument and the Maquis gained Starfleet
08:28uniforms. In Caretaker the Maquis are of course an entirely separate crew that have been infiltrated
08:33by Tuvok and are then forced to work alongside the Starfleet officers as the episode goes on. Michael
08:39Piller was very very set on having the Maquis remain Maquis for the duration of Voyager. Rick
08:48Berman was dead set against this. As Ronald D Moore recounted this was an argument Michael Piller lost.
08:56Rick Berman had Star Trek Deep Space Nine in his mind during the writing of this episode and what I mean
09:03by that is that he was very convinced that the perceived failing ratings of DS9 meant that he did
09:11not want Voyager to be very reliant on the style of DS9. He wanted it to go back to next generation and
09:18have that more kind of optimistic view of the future and in fairness pretty much that's what they did
09:26and therefore at the end of Caretaker you have one crew and they are all Starfleet crew in Starfleet
09:34uniforms. That was Rick Berman going I am not sitting down to commit to one two three however many seasons
09:40of two crews on the one ship. That's too much diversity and it's too much conflict. Now the ghost
09:49of Roddenberry was very much in his ear at this point. Rick Berman himself did say that yes once
09:55we didn't have to do those rules anymore things did get a little bit easier but definitely you can
10:00see that in Caretaker specifically there was absolute nope we are not having a ship full of
10:07people who are at each other's throats the whole time. Number four Nick Locarno. Robert Duncan McNeil
10:12had of course already appeared in Star Trek in The Next Generation. He appears in the episode The First
10:18Duty which is an absolutely fabulous episode as Cadet Nick Locarno. He's the ringleader of the group that
10:24effectively served as the template for what Red Squad would become. They do the Cold War Starburst,
10:31Wesley gets pulled up in it and Nick Locarno is kicked out of Starfleet Academy. Robert Duncan McNeil
10:36then gets invited to audition for this new part. Now he doesn't know this but it's initially called
10:42Nick Locarno. Jerry Taylor said we're gonna get a Nick Locarno type character so they just used his name
10:48throughout. We've all said across the way oh it was legal issues, legal issues, legal issues and to be
10:53fair that is a massive part of why Nick Locarno became Tom Paris but they did do a name change
10:59but they didn't change anything else because Robert Duncan McNeil himself said that when he got the
11:03script he was like this is Nick. He didn't realize that he was auditioning for a new series. He thought
11:12they were bringing the character of Nick Locarno back into what he thought was the then approaching
11:16Star Trek The Next Generation movie generations. He knew that was coming so he thought oh okay
11:21well weird that they're going to bring Locarno back for that but all right grand. He then of course
11:25discovered that no that was not the plan it was for Star Trek Voyager. Locarno and Tom Paris are the
11:33same character and there's a couple of things that have changed they've kind of had to change along the
11:38way but from the beginning there wasn't it wasn't an accident how similar these two characters were.
11:45Number three, Crips and Bloods. The poor Al Kazon have been referred to in many circles including my own
11:53as discount knockoff Klingons and I'm not gonna lie I don't feel particularly guilty for that statement
12:00because they never really got a chance to become anything more than thugs. That's all they really
12:06basically they are thugs there you go enjoy your new villain and that is one of the reasons they were
12:11from the Crips in America. In the earliest notes that was literally written in and the Crips will
12:17do this and the Crips will do that. The Crips were formed in 1969 and they are one big organization but
12:25they are also comprised of lots and lots of subsets which is that's basically what the Kazon are. They
12:31are sects. In Caretaker we get the Kazon Ogla and of course we know we would go on to see the Kazon
12:36Nistrum. They would become the bigger group if you like. Now in real life these street gangs they engaged
12:43in drug dealing, they engage in murders, they engage in all sorts of violence and this is replicated
12:50in a way in Caretaker. Now we don't see drug dealing going on but we do certainly see acts of violence
12:56and of course the oppression of the Ocampa as well. Once Voyager effectively stands up to them and
13:03only really wins because of superior technology, they say yeah our buddies are going to come after
13:10you and that was again directly inspired by how a lot of this would happen in real life. Number two,
13:18Suspiria was a get out of jail free card inspired by the fugitive. Suspiria was the caretaker's mate.
13:25Now we wouldn't get the name Suspiria for a few episodes, we just hear that there's another one
13:29out there. So the female caretaker if you like. Now at the end of Caretaker, the caretaker dies.
13:38With him goes the technology to send Voyager home. That of course is what strands them in the Delta
13:43Quadrant, Janeway's decision to destroy the array. However, Rick Berman recalled that Paramount were like
13:51this is a great idea, this is a great idea, you need to give us an out. It was the nerves of having this
13:57lost in space style show going on that couldn't cross over with Deep Space Nine and it couldn't
14:03cross over with the Star Trek movies because it was so physically far away from them. So Berman
14:10looked to the old series and its recent movie adaptation The Fugitive as a way of solving this
14:16problem. He looked at the character of the one-armed man. Now basically there's something else out there,
14:20now we might not see it and we might not know where it is, but it's out there, don't worry,
14:25it's out there, it's out there. I mean it took four seasons for the one-armed man to really become a
14:29character in The Fugitive and it took two seasons for Suspiria to become a character in Star Trek
14:34Voyager. By the time that happened, Paramount were a bit like, yeah listen you're okay now,
14:40you can continue doing what you're doing. But in the beginning that entire inclusion of the female
14:45caretaker was purely so that they could do a hard reset if they had to, if it looked like the audience
14:53just was not reacting well to the idea of a Starfleet ship out in the back pocket of the arsehole of
15:01nowhere. Number one, it was heartless and no one cared about Neelix from the beginning. Michael
15:07Piller recalled that Caretaker by the time it was finished and put on air was, it was very good,
15:12there was a lot of action going on so it was quite an enjoyable romp, but what it didn't have
15:19was heart. He recalled that Tom Paris gets an arc in Caretaker, you know he goes from I'm the bad boy
15:27in the penal colony to basically, yeah he was actually a good guy, pilot of Voyager by the end
15:32of it. There is an arc there, but in Piller's view that was it. All of the other characters, it wasn't
15:39so much that they were ill-defined, but it's rather than the action depending on them, they depended on the
15:47action. This, he felt, was a frustrating element of Caretaker because it let down the story overall.
15:55Now they were able to jig a few things around to give people slight character moments that really
16:01helped them along the way, but the one character that Piller felt just did not come out of Caretaker
16:08well was Neelix. He thought, we have a problem here because if you think about Caretaker, his first
16:15scene is, you know, he's in the junkyard and it's a bit like, okay grand this could go any which way
16:21and how many different person in Junkyard's character have we seen, so there's nothing
16:25really stand out about it. And by the end of the episode he is standing on the bridge with Kes ready
16:31to join the crew, but not an awful lot really between that. You have the scene in the bath,
16:36which is funny, sure, and then you have him betraying the Starfleet crew once he gets to
16:43O'Komba and gets Kes. Caretaker Neelix is not a massively likable character. Now as time went on,
16:50it's flip a coin. He's become Marmite in that respect. Now Ethan Phillips by all accounts is like
16:56the nicest man who has ever worked on Star Trek, which is a massive shame that poor O'Neillix,
17:01is hated by a large portion of the fan base. But particularly behind the scenes in Caretaker,
17:08the one character that they all felt just didn't work was poor old Neelix.
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