27 Years Ago This Week, Star Trek Delivered One of Its Best Episodes (Thanks to a Surprising Problem on Set)

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In 1999, this very week, Voyager released “Bride of Chaotica!”, 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 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 – which effectively trapped the crew in the holodeck for the whole episode – was a result of a fire that made Voyager’s bridge set unusable.

How A Fire Gave Star Trek Fans An Iconic Voyager Episode

The episode sees Tom Paris and Harry Kim 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.

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).

Robert Picardo 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: “One 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.”

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