Episode Behind the Scenes

TREKCORE > DS9 > EPISODES > VISIONARY > Behind the Scenes
 
Freelancer Ethan H. Calk sold this story on his very first pitch session to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He pitched numerous other ideas before finally landing his second sale – contributing to the story for the episode "Children of Time".
   
The pitch for this episode was taken by René Echevarria, who saw it as "a very different, clever science fiction premise with a twist. A story that had a nice built-in clock element." He further commented that the episode was "a nice twist on the time-travel show that could be a bottle show to save money." In the original story for this episode, Odo jumped forward in time to witness DS9 destroyed. According to Echevarria, this was changed because the writers felt that they had done too many Odo stories that season. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 217; Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)
   
Calk had also used Nausicaans as villains, but these were rejected as not familiar enough. In response, he created the Romulan-Klingon intrigue plot.
   
Ira Steven Behr asked a friend of his, John Shirley, who was well versed in complicated science fiction concepts, to write the teleplay. "He hadn't written for television and he wanted to take a shot at it," said Behr. He later said of Shirley's experience, "I won't say it was the most pleasant experience he ever had in his career." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 217)
   
The script of this episode received an uncredited rewrite by Ronald D. Moore. (AOL chat, 1997) It was Moore's idea to kill the present O'Brien and replace him with a duplicate from the future. Moore was also part of the writing staff for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Second Chances", where the team temporarily considered killing off William T. Riker and replacing him with his own transporter duplicate. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
Bashir's use of hyronalin as a treatment for radiation poisoning is a reference to the TOS episode "The Deadly Years". This reference was added by Ron Moore, a noted fan of the original Star Trek series. He commented, "There's a lot of references from the original series rattling around in my head, because I watched it fanatically as a kid. Somehow it's easier to remember those references than the stuff I worked on a few years ago on TNG." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
Science advisor André Bormanis had two major tasks: to find a technical explanation for why O'Brien was jumping through time, and to determine how the Klingons could transport surveillance equipment into a bulkhead. Figuring out the first wasn't too difficult, according to Bormanis, as he merely had to create "a description of what mechanism might allow O'Brien to do what he's doing". He did admit, however, that the use of radiation as a trigger was "a little on the campy side." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
As for the surveillance equipment, Bormanis thought it quite plausible that "somebody had gone to the trouble of hollowing out a space inside the wall for the object and then used a very carefully tuned transporter beam to get it there." However, he was concerned about modifying a replicator to work as a transporter, as it had been established previously that replicators only operate on a molecular level, whereas transporters require quantum-level resolution. Bormanis' belief that such a modification would have required a great deal of skill was briefly addressed through Odo's line that the culprit had performed a "very sophisticated, very professional job". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
Robert Hewitt Wolfe noted that the darts game was useful when plotting the episode: "It gave us a way to establish that O'Brien's time jumps weren't taking any time [in the present]. He could throw the dart, go through a five-minute experience in the future, and then return to see the dart hit the wall." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
Ira Steven Behr felt that O'Brien's predicament in this installment was well-suited to the character, feeling that O'Brien was the "most fun" character to do such episodes with as Behr considered him to be "so human." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, p. 111)
   
When the two security guards walk Bo'rak out of Quark's, he says "Du'cha Kovah! Estah!" which, according to the script, translates as, "Leave me alone! Let me go!" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion - A Series Guide and Script Library)
   
Director Reza Badiyi recalled some of the unique problems the show presented. He stated, "The challenge was creating two people. Colm [Meaney] played two parts, which is kind of tough. He is such a wonderful actor, and I really like him, but you cannot keep him on the set. He has to go outside and get a little fresh air. So when he's in every scene twice, and we have to shoot it three times and lock the camera, and then he's coming to do this part and then he has to do the other part, it's very difficult. They didn't want to do it all in blue screen because it's so time consuming, because it would take nine days. They gave us seven, and we shot it in seven and a half days." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)
   
Though the final scenes may look convincing in the finished episode, they weren't easy to produce, as Visual Effects Supervisor Gary Hutzel explained: "It was always confusing for the actor, because although the director and I have extensive discussions, until we arrive on set, we don't know ourselves exactly what's going to happen." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   
Destroying the station proved to be the biggest special effect of the episode. Hutzel commented, "Blowing up the station was a very very big deal. We'd decided that the station had to blow up, and it had to be particularly spectacular. So it was a very elaborate deal." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 219) Hutzel connected this commitment to a larger change occurring behind the scenes. The producers of Deep Space Nine were now much more interested in showing feature-quality special effects than they had been during the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Consequently, Deep Space Nine was granted a much larger budget for visual effects than its predecessor. (Hidden File 07, DS9 Season 3 DVD special features)
   
For the actual destruction, Special Effects Master Gary Monak had Model Maker Tony Meininger pull two new castings from the station's original six-foot mold. The duplicates were very similar to the original but lacked any lighting elements. Monak said of the whole process, "We rigged it so that it would go off in about ten stages: ten separate explosions that had to go off within half a second." The explosions were shot with a high-speed camera at ten to fifteen times normal speed; the half-second multi-blast took up five to seven seconds of film. Monak and his partner, R.J. Hohman, rigged the two models somewhat differently, so that they could decide after filming which explosion looked better. On what goes into making an explosion, Monak explained, "There's a little bit of everything: glitter, black powder, rubber cement, sparkle flash, sometimes a little high explosive primer-cord-stuff." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 219)
   
With the increasing use of CGI in television, VFX Coordinator Judy Elkins defended the decision to use a live model, saying, "You can't get the same effect with a computer. You don't get the fireballs, the fire effects, the shards, the pieces flying away. When you're working on a big scale like this, there's nothing like blowing up a big model. It's just beautiful." Though several shots of the station's destruction were filmed, only a small portion made it into the final episode. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 219)
   
Bashir uses a familiar-looking tool to adjust the armband that O'Brien uses to shift forward in time. It's a warp nacelle from a Romulan Warbird model. The tool is slightly modified; it's colored gray instead of green, and blinking lights are added on the inside.
   
The writing staff were pleased at Jon Shirley's ability to keep the potentially confusing plot comprehensible for viewers. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 217)
   
Director Badiyi opined, "I felt it worked, and the effect and the relationships worked fine. I liked the show." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)
   
Moore saw this episode as a good departure from standard time travel plots. He commented, "A very cool story because it was a different way to do time travel that we hadn't really played yet, which was going a short distance into the future and returning with that knowledge. Seeing yourself die and the station explode – it just became fun to try and play those scenes out, to enjoy the plot and not get bogged down in 'Oh my God, we're changing history.' You can play the gag of seeing yourself dead and bitching to the doctor because he didn't save your life." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)
   
After the show aired, Moore heard comparisons made between this episode and TNG: "Time Squared". Disagreeing with this assessment, he remarked, "I watched the episode again, and it's so ponderous. They agonize about what to do the whole show. All right, already! We just quickly decided we weren't going to be that concerned and just went forward." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)
   
Although Ira Steven Behr doesn't dislike this episode, it isn't one of his favorites: "it was good but it seems like a show we could have done on TNG. I prefer our shows to be Deep Space Nine-specific. 'Visionary' is kind of a tech mystery, and it's more TNG's kind of show." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 218)
   

Similarly, René Echevarria remarked, "It turned out pretty well, although it may have been a little confusing. Overall, it was a straight-on Star Trek that could have been done on any of the series." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 93)

   
Authors Mark Jones and Lance Parkin wrote of this episode, "A peculiar episode, if we are being charitable. The fact that O'Brien from now on is not technically the same as the one before is at first an astonishing revelation but in practice means nothing. Unfortunately, the same can be said for the rest of the episode, which descends to The Next Generation-levels of technobabble at the expense of the emotional story." (Beyond the Final Frontier, p. 213