Production
According to writer Nick Sagan, the original concept for "In The Flesh" had the Voyager crew discovering a picture of Species 8472 in an ancient Earth culture, leading them to discover that some human legends of demons and devils grew out of early contact with Species 8472. When the writers couldn't work this idea out, Sagan wrote the episode as a Cold War parable, using his father's work toward détente as inspiration.
Sagan says the episode originally "didn't end quite so 'happy happy;'" it had a more ambiguous ending. Producer Brannon Braga wanted to resolve the issue.
Originally, the script called for a dream sequence where Species 8472 razed Janeway's hometown on Earth. However, due to the very high cost of the computer animation used for Species 8472, the scene was scrapped.
Sagan believes that the character of Valerie Archer "is in some way a connection to Captain Jonathan Archer on Enterprise." (Valerie says that she comes from a long line of Starfleet officers, so it is possible that the real Valerie Archer is one of Jonathan Archer's descendants.) Archer's name is an homage to two other science-fiction characters: Dave Bowman, the lead character of 2001: A Space Odyssey; and Ellie Arroway, the lead character in Carl Sagan's novel Contact. "You put bow and arrow together and you get Archer," said Sagan.
Actor Robert Beltran, who played Chakotay, listed "In The Flesh" among his favorite episodes of the series.
The computer monitor used by Species 8472 in this episode is largely composed of parts from an earlier prop: a Krenim game used in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Year of Hell, Part II". This monitor reappears in the later episodes "Life Line" and "Nightingale"; in both episodes, it still displays symbols associated with Species 8472.
Read more about this topic: In The Flesh (Star Trek: Voyager)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)