The controversial Star Wars episode that even the producers hated
Author: Chris Snelgrove Published
As a loyal fan StarCraft: Voyagerwe always love looking into the production details of different episodes to see how each of Captain Janeway’s adventures come together. Most of the time, these are cute stories about how a cool idea came to be and became another memorable episode in Gene Roddenberry’s vast sci-fi series. But “Faces” is the rare case of a Star Wars series where even the producers thought it was a bad idea from the start.
Like most Star Wars episodes, “Face” begins very differently than what we ultimately see on screen. This memorably split half-Klingon engineer B’Elanna Torres into two halves (one fully human, one fully Klingon), which, as executive producer Michael Piller said, the earliest story ideas considered “Probably the result of a horrific concentration camp” kind of experiment. This didn’t excite the production staff: Executive story editor Kenneth Buehler declared that “the original idea was very dramatic and contrived,” and executive producer Jerry Taylor said “I wasn’t even in favor of the idea being accepted initially” and ” It’s a tiresome thought” and “too irritating for B’Elanna.
“Faces” also didn’t impress Star Wars producer Brannon Braga, who admitted, “Usually when a show does evil twins, they’re down to their last legs, They were desperate. Initially frustrated by the idea of doing away with this familiar TV trope in the first season, he later said, “I always felt like splitting her up was a mistake, like turning data into humans. ” He questioned why the show felt the need to “address any of her feelings,” which is a fair question when you consider that the tension between the dueling halves of her character will continue throughout the course of the series.
Of “Faces,” Michael Piller said, “It’s 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 felt that splitting the character into 2’s new take on classic Star Trek tropes (like Kirk in Star Trek) original series) has some interesting creative potential. The finished series’ ultimate success seems to be entirely due to Kenneth Buehler.
As for the final Faces script, it incorporated the Vidians, a tragic alien race who are constantly looking for new ways to cure the phages that continue to ravage their bodies. A Vidian scientist eventually split B’Elana Torres in two as part of a madcap attempt to discover a cure. Alien nerd ends up falling in love with his captor, beauty and the Beast Styles, the two versions of Torres teamed up and escaped captivity, only to be reunited into one body aboard Voyager.
Buehler, the sole writer on the TV series “Faces,” had the difficult task of turning a script that no one liked about “Star Wars” into something compelling. He included the alien Vidians as a way to achieve the body split, which Pillar later gushed: “Until Ken Beale got a rewrite and he solved everything overnight.”
Meanwhile, Jerry Taylor, another executive producer and story skeptic, admitted that “the end result was a lot better than we expected.” She continued, “Ken Beeler came up with the idea to bring this to life combine [of splitting B’Elanna] Working with the phage aliens, I think that’s what ultimately made it work and made it believable.
As you know, “Faces” was one of the more difficult episodes of Star Wars to produce, and it’s a small miracle that this story even got to air. That’s a good thing, though, because the episode’s themes of horror and identity make it one of the most memorable Voyager‘s early days. The fact that it focuses on Torres (arguably the funniest character on the show) is like the cherry on top of the replica’s chocolate cake (which we can only assume Deanna Troy would approve of).