By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Pop quiz, media nerds: what’s the cheapest kind of television episode to produce? The answer is a bottle episode. These are the ones that use limited sets and characters and are made almost exclusively to save money. Such episodes are very common in Star Trek because they help to free up the budget for more ambitious episodes. That is, when producers save money making an episode on the cheap, they have more funds available for, say, an effects-heavy episode featuring villains like the Borg.
Early on in Star Trek: Voyager, one of the cheapest episodes was “Twisted,” which has something of a notorious reputation. Robert Picardo called it the worst episode of the entire series, and he badmouthed it at a convention so much that fans thought it might never even air. As a bottle episode, it did get one thing mostly right: it was cheaper to produce than many other series. However, in an ironic “twist,” the episode required pioneering some cutting-edge computer effects that ultimately made “Twisted” more expensive than the studio would have liked.
Star Trek: The Next Picasso
“Twisted” is pretty weird, even by Voyager standards. When Voyager passes through a weird energy field, it somehow changes the interior of the ship. Nothing is where it should be anymore, and characters wander the ship trying to find familiar locations. Most of the bridge crew ended up back in the holodeck, where they had been celebrating Kes’s birthday. When all their attempts to fix the problem fail, Tuvok suggests simply doing nothing. Surprisnly enough, his idea works. The ship safely passes through the energy field, which the crew discovers was actually a sentient alien lifeform.
Since “Twisted” was designed as a bottle episode, why did it require major computer effects? It all came down to the producers trying to figure out how to represent the distortion waves of the alien energy field on the inside of Voyager. Basically, both the ship and its interiors needed to be manipulated in three-dimensional models, something that was extremely rare for Star Trek: Voyager. It was also rare for television in general, as most ‘90s TV shows had neither the need nor the budget to pull something like this off. While the work was time-consuming, it paid off, and the cool visual effects are arguably the best things about this entire episode.
First: Do No Arm
One of the neater effects in “Twisted” was handled by Digital Magic, a special effects company created to handle postproduction of Star Trek episodes. The effect in question involved Captain Janeway’s left arm being affected by the alien energy field’s distortion waves. To make the shot work, Digital Magic filmed Kate Mulgrew’s arm against a blue screen. They ultimately ended up creating multiple composite versions of the shot before settling on a final version that provided some cool facial distortion, selling the idea that nobody on the ship was safe from this creepy cosmic phenomenon.
While “Twisted” isn’t the worst bottle episode in Star Trek history (that dubious honor goes to the Next Generation episode “Shades of Gray”), it’s pretty forgettable in almost every respect. It has a fairly nonsensical story, poor pacing, and bad characterization (Neelix’s jealousy is so obnoxious that showrunner Michael Piller made it his mission to save the character!). However, the episode has some of the coolest and most innovative effects in the first few seasons of Voyager, which help carry this stinker of a story across the finish line for anyone with a taste for cool visuals.
