Ooooo...
EYES. Delicate, curious, female. A beautiful peridot green.
WIDE--they belong to a diffident girl, keeping her distance, half-hidden behind a pillar. We’re still in the operating theater. Turquoise EARTHLIGHT pours in from an oculus. The instruments are off.
The girl is called Margarete, or MAGGIE, age 14.
After seeing that artwork with some kind of poop monster in a fancy hat and smoking a pipe, I'm all in to read whatever you can share! =)
First pic looks kind of like a speeder bike.
The love interest's ride in early drafts. Ultimately replaced by something slightly more traditional, viz., a horse.
I've found that this episode is quite different from TAWKI, or Trek As We Know It, often with fascinating results.
Originally I wanted to do an episode that took place entirely in the ready room, because I like what the term suggests: being in the wings of a theater, waiting for your cue--an antechamber to action, if you will. The premise was that Picard has to reach a critical decision during a Red Alert situation, though I would have been purposefully vague about the nature of it. What really interested me was writing a Star Trek that obeyed the Aristotelian unities of space, time, and action. I also would have obeyed the Greek theatrical dictum that no more than two characters are allowed on stage at once, meaning Picard has a series of interviews with the senior staff and maybe even the barber. Picard's arc was simple but powerful: from doubt to resolve, inertia to momentum. And the last shot would have been through the parted ready room doors as he steps onto the bridge. End with an overture.
I believe I did a treatment, which I handed in to Mel. He called it "repertory stuff" and repeated his desire for "vistas." To our credit, that's what Lennart and I delivered, though Roy, who did the middle episode based on our notes, wrote a beautiful and intimate story about Riker, which isn't to say it too didn't have "scope," another of Mel's favorite words.
What counts in writing, as in music, is how you get from point A to point B, and I still admire Roy's deft modulations.
I've asked the writers to provide some commentary for the site, and I can't help but share with everyone here a taste of the script's history from Syd Bodeen: