Bryan Fuller Q&A Session

StarTrek.com has posted the first half of their Q&A session with Bryan Fuller, Voyager's Co-Producer. In the session, Fuller answers questions on a number of topics, from writer's block to what he's currently working on – including some details of a new episode, February two-parter 'Workforce'.

John and Mary Jo T.: Is there a storyline or character development arc that you wish you could have explored, but for whatever reason you were not able to?

BF: The first thing that comes to mind is Kes' return in "Fury." I was disappointed in the way that episode turned out. Kes' motivations were unclear, the story was muddy, and the crew wasn't given the chance to interact with her in any REAL way. The original concept of that show was Kes would return and through her interactions with the crew, they'd realize that this is a very different woman than the one that left Voyager three years earlier. In the time she was gone, she had some sort of traumatic experience as she was evolving to the next phase of the Ocampan life cycle that corrupted her. Perhaps she even went a little crazy. There was no element of time travel in the original conception. What attracted me to the story was the chance to explore a character who had been so sweet only to become so nasty. It made sense to me that it would be someone like Kes, someone very naïve, that could be corrupted in that way. She was the proverbial innocent who found life on "the street" to be too harsh and unrelenting. Whatever happened to her caused her to become jaded, twisted even. It made perfect sense to me that someone like that could then turn around and blame her "mother," in this case Janeway, for encouraging her to explore all that life had to offer - especially since the life that she found was not what she expected. That really wasn't clear in the script. It was boiled down to a very rushed scene that had to compete with the Viidians invading Voyager. Also Kes' turn in Act Five wasn't believable to me. If she had become so enraged that she would plot the deaths of her former friends, there would be no way you could change her mind. I would have liked that story to end - whether it had time-travel elements or not - with Kes thwarting Janeway and escaping only to return as a recurring villain. That would have been a lot of fun.

Mervix: Can you tell us anything about the episodes you are currently working on?

BF: Ken Biller and I just wrote the story for our February two-parter called "Workforce" and we're currently co-writing the teleplay for the first part. Ken and Mike Taylor will write Part Two. The episode's very much an ensemble show that will have the crew exploring new lives as laborers on an alien world. I can't say much more about the plot than that, but I will tell you this, as with every good science-fiction thriller, there's much more going on than meets the eye.

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