BEHIND-THE-SCENES : [FAIR HAVEN] & [SPIRIT FOLK]

JANEWAY'S ROMANCE WITH A HOLOGRAM

Bryan Fuller, Story Editor for Season 5, Executive Story Editor for Season 6 and Co-Producer for Season 7: "And Kate (Mulgrew) was quite vocal about her dissatisfaction with Janeway sleeping with a hologram and we made a concerted effort to address her concerns, although not too well I'm afraid."

Holo-Sullivan: "Have you a man waiting for you at home?" Janeway: "No." Holo-Sullivan: "Are you looking for one?" Janeway "Why, do you have somebody?" Holo-Sullivan: "In Fair Haven? Not unless you fancy a pig farmer." [Fair Haven]

Kate Mulgrew: "I like the holodeck. You can do anything you want in a holodeck. The holodeck is mine, yours, to do with as you like. Would I have a love affair with a hologram? Je ne pense pas (I do not think so). I just think, you know, Janeway designs this guy, and then she programs him, and there he is, and she's having this romance with this hologram. I think it's slightly untenable."

ALAN SIMS SPEAKS

hologram Sullivan, about to play rings with Kathryn Janeway, [Spirit Folk]

Alan Sims, the show's properties master: For holodeck period pieces, we do a great deal of research to make sure the props match the period. For [Fair Haven] there was a game of rings that is played by our principal actors and the patrons of the bar. In talking with Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, I learned that it's a game where you throw rings onto pegs on a board that's hung on the wall, but I obviously wanted to be much more accurate, so I contacted some Irish people and got put on to someone living in Ireland.

It turns out that they played this game in pubs only in certain regions, and I got descriptions from several people and pub owners over there, and also from an Irishman who works in a pub outside of LA (Los Angeles). They told me that the board was shaped like a kind of family crest, a shield, and the pegs were slanted out of it at a certain angle. The different pegs had Celtic numbers under them, which was how you would keep score, and the rings were of hard rubber. Also, one of the people back in Ireland told me there was a net attached to the bottom of the board - basically, a hoop with a net hanging from it - so that it would catch the rings. It was always so dark in the pubs so if you missed the pegs you didn't want to go looking all over the floor for your rings! So I created this terrific hoop with a nice period net that hung under it, and it just seemed to be the finishing touch. On camera it worked marvellously.

the rings board, [Fair Haven]

The research done in order to ensure the authenticity of the props included researching everything from the teapot up.

JOSEE NORMAND SPEAKS

Joseé Normand is the show's hair designer, responsible for creating period looks for the large numbers of extras in [Fair Haven] and [Spirit Folk] all of whom needed to have, among other things, authentic-looking hair.

For [Fair Haven] and [Spirit Folk] we had Irish people and we got to do 1890s hairstyles, which was really nice. They were supposed to be poor people, not fashionable - they would get up in the morning and not really brush or comb their hair - so I put in a lot of small waving and then created each look so it didn't look like they'd used rollers or anything like that. I didn't want a beauty parlour look; I wanted the earthy look of the past.

hairstyles (and costumes) of certain women and men extras in the Fair Haven holoprogram, [Spirit Folk]

DAVID LIVINGSTON SPEAKS

[Spirit Folk] was fun because of the comedy. On Star Trek, very rarely do we do outright comedy, and this was about an episode about an Irish village, a holographic Irish village, and everybody in them thinks they really exist, and that's sort of the concept of the show.

And again we got to shoot that at Universal in European Square (they used the same location for [#86 and #87 The Killing Game] to represent a French village) and we had these wonderful character actors playing these Irish folk, some who probably drank a little bit too much. So that was fun. Tom Paris also drove an old Model T or Model A car (seen in the screenshot).

Fair Haven town, [#137 Spirit Folk]

Whenever you leave the ship and you go somewhere, especially when you go somewhere else that existed once on Earth that people can really identify with, it's really a lot of fun because you get to see something that is really real and now how can you make it real and yet Star Trekky at the same time? I enjoyed [Spirit Folk] because it was fun, it was funny.

RONALD B. MOORE SPEAKS

Ronald B. Moore, visual effects supervisor

[Spirit Folk] had one of the best shots of the year. Foundation (i.e. Foundation Imaging) did the show, and Sherri (Hitch), who works with us, put together the cow morph, which came out so beautifully. My co-ordinator Liz Castro was out on the set when they shot it, and had the foresight to get the cow in just the right spot. It was set up so well that we were able to save production money and not go back and shoot the bluescreen.

cow morph (pop-up window) [#137 Spirit Folk] I believe that Sherri did a little bit of CG for the in-between stages. She's a master at that. That's an impossible change; there aren't too many similarities between a girl's face and a cow.

holo-Maggie, waits to be kissed by Harry Kim [Spirit Folk]

holo-Maggie in the process of being transformed into a cow by prankster Tom Paris, [Spirit Folk]

holo-Maggie, transformation complete, [Spirit Folk]

We were all a little worried about whether we could pull it off. In fact, we'd discussed not doing it all, just doing a holographic zimmer. That was always in our back pocket, but it really worked. That's down to the people who did it.

As regards Gertie the cow, Joseé Normand, the show's hair designer, says: We were going to put a hat on her at first and maybe some flowers, and we went back and forth and decided not to!

Paris and Kim order the computer to freeze the holoprogram but it works only partially; the holocharacters either side of them are frozen

The end of the show involved a sequence where half the holodeck characters are frozen, while the others continue to move. (It is the scene in [Spirit Folk] in which the Fair Haven townsfolk ambush Kim and Paris in Sullivan's pub and try to capture them by throwing nets over them.) When we shot it, the idea was that these people were just going to hold still, but when we saw it, they were being bumped, they were moving - they're pulling nets off them and stuff - it was impossible. Greg Grainoff fixed it in the bay. He spent a lot of time freezing people and trying to make it work.

HOLODECK CONTROL PANEL

holodeck control panel, located in Sullivan's pub in the Fair Haven holoprogram, [Spirit Folk]

Tim Earls, set designer, designed a concealed panel to add to the Fair Haven set for the sequel [Spirit Folk]. The panel represented the holodeck control panel on the holodeck itself. Such controls on the holodecks themselves have been seen in [#24 Persistence Of Vision], [#56 Alter Ego], [#95 Night] and [#155 and #156 Flesh and Blood].