{"id":263546,"date":"2026-02-02T06:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263546\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T06:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:13:07","slug":"27-years-ago-this-week-star-trek-delivered-one-of-its-best-episodes-thanks-to-a-surprising-problem-on-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263546\/","title":{"rendered":"27 Years Ago This Week, Star Trek Delivered One of Its Best Episodes (Thanks to a Surprising Problem on Set)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the greatest decisions in genre movies and TV shows were an accident of fate, and Star Trek: Voyager<\/a> has a great example. Han Solo was never supposed to say \u201cI know,\u201d Roy Batty never spoke as succinctly about \u201ctears in the rain,\u201d and Bruce the shark being a terrible costar was the only reason Jaws barely showed the monster (and invented an entire subgenre in the process). And for Voyager, without an unfortunate accident on set, we wouldn\u2019t have one of its greatest \u2013 and still, most rewatchable \u2013 episodes of all.<\/p>\n

In 1999, this very week, Voyager released \u201cBride of Chaotica!\u201d, the 12th episode of Season 5, which was conceived and co-written by future Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller. One of the best holodeck episodes in all of Star Trek<\/a> history, it remains one of the best Voyager episodes, and is rightly lauded for its creativity, and, in particular, for the narrative conceit that forced Captain Janeway to perform as a high-camp, pantomime space opera villainess. But all of the creativity was forced, and the writing \u2013 which effectively trapped the crew in the holodeck for the whole episode \u2013 was a result of a fire that made Voyager\u2019s bridge set unusable.<\/p>\n

How A Fire Gave Star Trek Fans An Iconic Voyager Episode<\/p>\n

\"Star<\/p>\n

The episode sees Tom Paris and Harry Kim<\/a> reenacting a Captain Proton episode on the holodeck. Proton is an in-universe Earth sci-fi show, and a perfectly observed pastiche of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The villain, Chaotica, owes everything to Ming the Merciless, and in this genius episode, his war with actual aliens who accidentally access the subsequently malfunctioning holodeck is the recipe for a great advert for Star Trek.<\/p>\n

The episode is mostly set on the holodeck (in black and white), not just because of any creative decision to make another bottle episode, but because a small fire on the Bridge set had happened in the early stages of production (on 2 October 1998). Smoke and sprinkler damage rendered the set unusable, and the writers were forced to adapt on the fly, minimizing the Bridge scenes (which were filmed weeks later when the damage was fixed).<\/p>\n

Robert Picardo<\/a> claimed (in jest) he was responsible, thanks to a misplaced cigar, but it was actually a bulb exploding during a publicity photo shoot for executive producer Rick Berman. Robert Duncan McNeill (Paris) later discussed the fire: \u201cOne of the light bulbs popped. I guess the spark smoldered down in the dust and caught fire on the ceiling of the bridge. No one was hurt, but we had a hungry crew, and our lunch was on that stage.\u201d <\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the\u00a0ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the greatest decisions in genre movies and TV shows were an accident of fate, and Star…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[61212,156,111,139,69,150812,150813,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-263546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-answer-feature","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-star-trek-generic","14":"tag-star-trek-voyager-tvshow","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}