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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 care for Trek culture and welcome to our video just before we get to
00:05I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who has liked who has shared and who has
00:10subscribed that helps us grow as a channel and it helps us continue to bring you lists like this
00:15So with that I am Sean and welcome to 10 behind
00:20the scenes secrets about caretaker number 10 recap
00:25Now it's pretty well known at this stage that Genevieve Beaujol was originally
00:30cast to play Janeway. Now she came in and she filmed for about a
00:35couple of days on caretaker until she quite abruptly said
00:39NAH
00:40and just walked out that was it she was done the explanation was that she just was
00:45not happy with the way it was being filmed the pace of production and things like that
00:50Now Garrett Wang actually expanded on this a little bit on a podcast in
00:552019 because he was among the first to be cast in caretaker
01:00and one of the few who actually shared scenes with Beaujol's Janeway
01:04he recalled
01:05that she would come to set she would film the scenes and she would leave
01:08and there was very little interaction with other
01:10actors on set so that he went up to her at one point and said kind of hello how are you
01:15what's going on and she just sort of opened up that she
01:20she had been promised all sorts of things but mostly that she would
01:25be playing a captain first and a woman second however when she got there
01:30hair and makeup just spent so much time trying to get her to look a certain way
01:35experiment with the hairdo this and that that it began to waste in her opinion
01:40valuable filming time that then meant they were looking at extremely long days
01:45and she had two very young children at the time and she was concerned that she was just going to miss them growing
01:50up as she stayed with the show so she made the unilateral decision to just go
01:55no that's not what I signed up for that's not why I'm here and she
02:00left now thankfully Kate Mulgrew stepped into the breach very quickly and we got
02:05the Janeway that we know and love today number nine redesigned Voyager when
02:10Voyager was going into production executive producer Jerry Taylor wrote that she wanted
02:15something smaller and sleeker than the Enterprise D now start with the next
02:20generation had only really just gone off the air in 1994 the production
02:25for Voyager started it could have began in 1993 and of course generations would come out
02:30in 1994 1995 depending on what territories you're in so that meant that the galaxy clash
02:35ship would be fresh in people's minds and she wanted the intrepid class ship to look very very different
02:40Rick Stern back was given the job of designing the new hero ship now he had
02:45worked on the next generation and DS9 before he was in fact the one who designed the runabout
02:50for example but it was his predecessor Andy Probert who had designed the Enterprise D so this was
02:55his first big shot at a hero ship taking the brief of smaller and sleeker but also taking
03:00inspiration from his own runabout he designed a ship that had sweeping
03:05down nacelles that sort of aimed backwards as well and also then
03:10a much more arrowhead saucer section for want of a better description this
03:15ship would be able to separate and the landing gear was there from the beginning because it was
03:20always designed to be able to land on a planet this got as far as after some
03:25changes went on they got rid of the pylons for example that had looked a little bit too close
03:29to the runabout well
03:30but a studio model was built of this version of the ship
03:34Jerry Taylor
03:35Jerry Taylor looked at it and went actually can we go a little bit curvier
03:40and so Sternbach took the brief and again reworked it now was able to
03:45go well look Voyager is not going to separate saucer sections was able to
03:48integrate the primary and secondary holes
03:50a little bit closer together shortened the nacelles which had been not quite discovery long
03:55but certainly had been longer and gave us the Voyager that we all know and love
04:00it was the result of a cheap lunch or two
04:04Michael Piller
04:05Michael Piller
04:06Rick Berman and Jerry Taylor all came together to write what would become caretaker
04:10and Voyager as a whole
04:12Brandon Braga who would of course go on to play a huge role in Star
04:15Trek Voyager missed out on these sessions because he had the audacity to go on holiday
04:20the cheek
04:21the absolute cheek
04:22Michael Piller recalled that what they would do is they would get together
04:25over lunch
04:26four days a week between July and September of 19
04:301993 over the course of these lunches which would last about two and three hours and
04:35were in Michael Piller's description very cheap they broke what would become the
04:40story of caretaker they were able to kind of build the characters together that way
04:45so that by the time September 93 came around they had what looked like
04:50the beginnings of what would become caretaker
04:53number seven
04:54it
04:55was inspired in part by Q
04:58one of the main
05:00pulling points of Star Trek Voyager was that it was going to be away from the rest of
05:05of Star Trek
05:06and an important way to get that to happen came
05:10from the episode Q Who
05:12if you recall in Q Who
05:14Q
05:15who flings the Enterprise D thousands of light years away from Federation space
05:20now it's not quite as far because data says it would take about two years to get back
05:25defederation space
05:26now while they're there of course they encounter the Borg it's a fantastic episode go and watch
05:30watch it if you haven't seen it it's amazing crucially in Q Who Q sends them back
05:35home again at the end which then begged the question what happens if he didn't
05:40that effectively was the nugget that led to the creation of Star Trek
05:45Voyager
05:46you know what happens if they're sent so far away that they're cut off from everything
05:50and they can't get back really really quickly it introduced just a whole bunch
05:55of challenges that would become again part of the crux of Voyager what happens if you
06:00can't just send a message to Starfleet what happens if Starfleet don't know if you're alive or dead
06:05what happens what happens what happens that is how the
06:10birth of Star Trek Voyager took place number six the mistakes of
06:15emissary led to caretaker emissary directly influenced
06:20caretaker but not quite in the way that say Q Who
06:25influenced the events of caretaker it was more the style that became
06:30very very important particularly in Michael pillars mind because he record
06:35that emissary totally went away from next generation it was a
06:40more ethereal particularly in the parts with the prophets a more contemplative
06:45that in the pilot it was about it was heavy on character and story it's not that they
06:50didn't want to do character and story with caretaker but absolutely pillar said
06:55we're just going to dial up the action adventure element here and that's exactly what they
07:00did now a good example would be look at the cold opens of both emissary and caretaker
07:05caretaker okay and you might be thinking well hang on emissary opens with the battle of wolf 359
07:10that's about as action-packed as you can get is it so we do get that
07:15fantastic scene of the Saratoga engaging the cube and being roundly
07:20destroyed and then it gets quiet and it cuts and then we get it's
07:25short for the little scene of Cisco talking to Jake on the holodeck and we get that nice
07:30quiet reveal with the theme tune of the station of Deep Space Nine
07:35okay now let's look at Star Trek Voyager the cold open here so again we open
07:40up with a little bit of action we have the Valjean being hunted by Gullivec and the Cardani
07:45Atlassian ship now we're firing torpedoes we're firing phasers we have the usual you know
07:50consoles made of rocks exploding all around us we end up in the badlands both ships take a beat
07:55the Cardassian ship is hit by one of those plasma storms in an effect that would be used
08:00again and again and again and again then you have the Valjean they see that the big massive
08:05displacement wave is covered up behind them and slam there is no lull there is no
08:10kind of breath here it was just let's go let's go let's go and that
08:15continues more or less through a caretaker of course there are quiet moments but
08:20in much more so than emissary we have a lot more action adventure in caretaker than we do
08:25in the opening of Deep Space Nine number five Michael Piller lost an argument and
08:30the Maquis gained Starfleet uniforms in caretaker the Maquis are of course an entirely separate
08:35crew that have been infiltrated by Tuvok and are then forced to work alongside the Starfleet
08:40officers as the episode goes on Michael Piller was very very
08:45set on having the Maquis remain Maquis for the duration
08:50of Voyager Rick Berman was dead set against this
08:55as Ronald D Moore recounted this was an argument Michael Piller lost Rick
09:00Berman had Star Trek Deep Space Nine in his mind during the writing of the
09:05episode and what I mean by that is that he was very convinced that the
09:10received failing ratings of DS9 meant that he did not
09:15want Voyager to be very reliant on the style of DS9 he wanted it to go
09:20back to next generation to have that more kind of optimistic view of the future
09:25and in fairness like pretty much that's what they did and therefore
09:30at the end of caretaker you have one crew and they are all
09:35Starfleet crew in Starfleet uniforms that was Rick Berman going I am
09:40not sitting down to commit to one two three however many seasons of two
09:45crews on the one ship that's too much diversity and it's too much
09:50conflict now the ghost of Roddenberry was very much in
09:55his ear at this point Rick Berman himself did say that yes once we didn't
09:59have to do those rules
10:00anymore things did get a little bit easier but definitely you can see that in
10:04caretaker
10:05specifically there was absolute nope we are not having a ship
10:10of people who are at each other's throats the whole time number four Nick
10:14Locarno
10:15Robert Duncan McNeil had of course already appeared in Star Trek in the next generation
10:19he appeared
10:20in the episode the first duty which is an absolutely fabulous episode as Cadet Nick
10:25Locarno
10:26he's the ringleader of the group that effectively served as the
10:30the template for what Red Squad would become they do the Cold War Starburst
10:34Wesley gets pulled up
10:35in it and Nick Locarno is kicked out of Starfleet Academy Robert Duncan McNeil then
10:40gets invited to audition for this new part now he doesn't know this but his initial
10:45company called Nick Locarno Jerry Taylor said we're gonna get a Nick Locarno type character
10:50so they just used his name throughout
10:52we've all said across the way it was legal issues legal issues
10:55and to be fair that is a massive part of why Nick Locarno became Tom
11:00in Paris but they did do a name change but they didn't change anything else because Robert
11:04Duncan McNeil
11:05himself said that when he got the script he was like
11:08this is
11:10who's Nick he didn't realize that he was auditioning for a new series he
11:15thought they were bringing the character of Nick Locarno back into what he thought was the then approaching
11:20Star Trek the next generation movie generations he knew that was coming so he thought oh okay
11:25it's weird that they're gonna bring Locarno back for that but all right grand
11:28he then of course discovered that
11:30he then of course discovered that
11:30no that was not the plan it was for Star Trek Voyager
11:34Locarno and Tom
11:35Paris are the same character and there's a couple of things that have changed
11:40they've kind of had to change along the way but from the beginning there wasn't it
11:45it wasn't an accident how similar these two characters were
11:48number three
11:49Crips and Blood
11:50The poor El Kazon have been referred to in many circles
11:55including my own as discount knockoff Klingons and
12:00I'm not gonna lie I don't feel particularly guilty for that statement because they never really got a chance
12:05to become anything more than thugs that's all they really basically
12:10they are thugs there you go enjoy your new villain and that is one of the reasons they were
12:15written out of the show relatively early but in Caretaker they serve
12:20as roving gangs in space and they took inspiration from
12:25the Crips in America in the earliest notes that was literally written in and the Crips were
12:30we'll do this and the Crips will do that the Crips were formed in 1969 and they are
12:35one big organization but they are also comprised of lots and lots of subs
12:40sets which is that's basically what the Kazon are they are sect in Caretaker
12:45we got the Kazon Ogla and of course we know we would go on to see the Kazon Nistrum they would become
12:50the bigger group if you like now in real life these street gangs
12:55they engaged in drug dealing they engage in murders they engage in all sorts
13:00of violence and this is replicated in a way in Caretaker
13:05now we don't see drug dealing going on but we do certainly see acts of violence and of course the
13:10oppression of the Ocampa as well once Voyager effectively stands up to them
13:15and only really wins because of superior technology they say
13:20hey yeah our buddies are going to come after you and that was again directly
13:25inspired by how a lot of this would happen in real life
13:29number two
13:30Suspiria was a get out of jail free card inspired by the fugitive
13:35Suspiria was the caretaker's mate now we wouldn't get the name Suspiria for a few episodes we
13:40could just hear that there's another one out there so the female caretaker if you like now
13:45at the end of caretaker the caretaker dies
13:50with him goes the technology to send Voyager home that of course is what strands
13:55them in the Delta Quadrant Janeway's decision to destroy the array however
14:00Rick Berman recalled that Paramount were like this is a great idea this
14:05is a great idea you need to give us an out it was the nerves of having this lost
14:10deep space style show going on that couldn't cross over with deep space
14:15nine and I couldn't cross over with the Star Trek movies because it was so physically far
14:20away from them so Berman looked to the old series and its recent movie
14:25adaptation The Fugitive as a way of solving this problem he looked at the character of
14:30the one-armed man now basically there's something else out there now we might not see it and we might not
14:35know where it is but it's out there don't worry it's out there it's out there I mean it took four seasons
14:40for the one-armed man to really become a character in The Fugitive and it took two seasons for Suspiria
14:45to become a character in Star Trek Voyager wouldn't by the time that happened Paramount were a bit like
14:50yeah listen you're okay now you can continue doing what you're doing but in the beginning
14:55that entire inclusion of the female caretaker was purely so that
15:00they could do a hard reset if they had to if it looked like the audience
15:05just was not reacting well to the idea of a Starfleet ship out
15:10in the back pocket of the arsehole of nowhere number one
15:15it was heartless and no one cared about Neelix from the beginning
15:19Michael Piller
15:20Michael Piller recalled that caretaker by the time it was finished and put on air was
15:24it was very good
15:25there was a lot of action going on so it was quite an enjoyable romp
15:29but
15:30what it didn't have
15:31what it didn't have
15:32was heart
15:33he recalled that
15:34Tom Paris
15:35it's an arc
15:36in caretaker
15:37you know he goes from
15:38I'm the bad boy in the penal
15:40colony to basically
15:41yeah he was actually a good guy
15:42pilot of Voyager by the end of it
15:44there is
15:45there is an arc
15:46there but in Piller's view that was it
15:49all of the other
15:50characters
15:51it wasn't so much that they were ill-defined
15:53but it's
15:54rather
15:55more than
15:56the action depending on them
15:58they depended on the action
16:00this
16:01he felt was a frustrating element of caretaker
16:05because it let down the story overall
16:07now they were able to jig a few things around
16:10to give people slight character moments that really helped them along the way
16:14but
16:15the one character that Piller felt just did not come out of caretaker
16:20well
16:21was Neelix
16:22he thought
16:23we have a problem here
16:24because
16:25if you think about caretaker
16:26his first scene
16:28is
16:29you know he's in the
16:30junkyard
16:31and it was a bit like
16:32okay grand this could go any which way
16:33and how many different
16:35person in junkyard's character have we seen
16:37so there's nothing really stand out about it
16:39and by the end
16:40the end of the episode
16:41he is standing on the bridge with Kes ready to join the crew
16:45not an awful lot
16:46really
16:47between that
16:48you have the scene in the bath which is funny
16:49sure
16:50and then you have him betraying the Starfleet crew once he gets
16:55to Okamba
16:56and gets Kes
16:57caretaker Neelix
16:58is not a massively likeable character
17:00now
17:01as time went on
17:02it's
17:03flip a coin
17:04he's become
17:05an armite
17:06in that respect
17:07now Ethan Phillips by all accounts
17:08is like the nicest man who was ever
17:10worked on Star Trek
17:11which is a massive shame
17:12that poor Neelix
17:13is
17:14hated by a lot
17:15a large portion of the fanbase
17:16but particularly
17:17behind the scenes
17:18in
17:19caretaker
17:20the one character
17:21that they all felt
17:22just didn't work
17:23was poor old Neelix
17:25he's
17:26he's
17:27he's
17:28he's
17:29he's
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