Useful information
Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Disney is probably the last thing you think about while watching Star Trek. After all, what do fantasy fairy tales and talking animals have to do with the final frontier (please don’t say that Worf was a talking animal, he finds those comments hurtful)? However, one of the franchise’s most disgusting and horrible episodes was secretly inspired by a fairy tale made even more famous by Disney. The writer of the Journey to the stars: Voyager The episode “Faces” ended up basing the story of a captor who falls in love with his captive on Beauty and the beast.
Beauty and the beast
“Faces” was written by Ken Biller and, thanks to its crazy plot, most fans would never connect it to any fairy tale (Disney or otherwise). This is the torrid story of an alien who uses strange technology to split Voyager engineer B’Elanna Torres, half-Klingon and half-human, into two separate people. It’s all an experiment to help the alien discover a cure for the genetic disease affecting his entire race, but once he develops affection for her fully Klingon, Torres must use their combined feminine wiles to engineer a dramatic escape.
One of the reasons why most fans would never associate this. Journey to the stars: Voyager episode with Beauty and the beast is that this is basically a horror episode. There are some basic body horror elements when it comes to the clash of the two sides of Torres, and a race of rotten aliens (the Vidiians) is pretty terrifying on its own. But none of that compares to the scene in which the scientist tries to woo Torres by murdering her colleague and then dressing up his face. This was before Bryan Fuller wrote for the show, but this scene would have fit perfectly into his later Hannibal series.
Despite those horror elements, “Faces” writer Ken Biller insists that this Star Trek episode shares a lot of DNA with Beauty and the beast. She later said she channeled that fairy tale because “it occurred to me that if you come from this culture, your ideal beauty might be someone physically imposing and powerful, like a Klingon.” For an alien who was born dead (even more so than the rest of us), the strong Klingon was a real fantasy object, and the writer liked the idea that the scientist would “develop a crush on B’Elanna and she could use him.” . that Klingon sexuality so that he would do what she wanted.”
Now, Star Trek nerds tend to be very literary, so it’s worth emphasizing that Biller didn’t explicitly mention Disney when comparing his Traveler episode a Beauty and the beast. However, Disney’s iconic animated adaptation of this classic 18th-century French tale came out in 1991, just four years before “Faces” came out. Considering it would have been written even earlier, we’d bet all the Latinum Quark he’s accumulated that Biller hummed “Be Our Guest” at least once while writing this memorable episode.
As noted before, Star Trek and Disney rarely overlap, but the Beauty and the beast The connection on “Faces” proves that it should happen more often. Biller did what some of the best writers do: draw inspiration from something old to create something vibrant and new. Also, if Trek fans are okay with Captain Kirk ending it all Original Series film executed with a Peter Pan Quote, it’s too late for any of us to say we’re too cool to appreciate a good fairy tale reference from our favorite sci-fi franchise.
