Innocent or Not, He's Going to Destroy Your Vessel

• ”TOXIC MASCULINITY” •

Originally, the episode's story – as pitched by Andrew Shepard Price and Mark Gaberman – involved an alien computer dissecting Seven of Nine (similar to the plot of Demon Seed) to create an army of drones that it intended to use for galactic conquest. 

Although the story changed considerably from the original pitch, the writing staff of Star Trek: Voyager composed the plot's final version by essentially weaving the initial story idea together with a theme that comments on false memory syndrome. 

Staff writer Bryan Fuller remarked, 

"That's kind of what we had to fall back on for this one." 

Regarding false memories, he commented, 

"We hear so much about how they can essentially ruin peoples' lives, how well-respected and credited doctors have been completely dethroned, how teachers and parents have been humiliated." 

"I initially had my concerns, because we were trying to distinguish it from a TV movie about date rape.

We removed the sexual elements." 

Fuller believed that the turning point for the story's development was the addition of The Doctor to the plot.

Analyzing The Doctor's actions in this episode, Bryan Fuller remarked, 

"He's dragging Seven INTO her frustration, 

and essentially filling the role of 

The Psychologist who's manipulating The Patient -- 

NOT with malevolence, but because 

he sincerely THINKS that Something Happened. 

But he goes about solving the mystery 

in such a haphazard way that only chaos can ensue." 

In agreement with Bryan Fuller's interpretation of the plot, Robert Picardo remarked on the character arc that his regular role of The Doctor undergoes in this episode: 

"[He] completely loses his self-confidence in a way I don't think we've seen thus far. 

It was actually kind of touching.

It's really quite touching, because it's basically the enthusiasm of someone really TRYING to help out, and really TRYING to be MORE than he's SUPPOSED to be, in a crisis situation." 

Picardo also described the request that The Doctor makes at the end of this episode as "quite dramatic."

Director Jesús Salvador Treviño was presented with the difficulty of creating an unusual look for certain sequences of this episode. 

"For me, the challenge was in conveying the flashback moments," the director explained, "and making them succinct and different enough that we would get a sense of how different this perspective is to [Seven of Nine] and whether it's REAL or not." 

To help create the desired effect, Treviño filmed the flashback sequences at eight frames per second, rather than the usual twenty-four frames per second. 

Ultimately, Bryan Fuller believed that he and Lisa Klink had successfully differentiated this episode from a television movie about date rape, and that the decision to remove the sexual aspects from the script had been made "wisely". 

He said, 

"I think it succeeded [...] and I think it's a solid episode." 

An element of the episode that Fuller especially liked was that it showed The Doctor was NOT infallible. 

"That's the great part of the story, that he screwed up.”

Nonetheless, Fuller also cited this episode as probably being his least favorite from those he wrote for Voyager's fourth season and related, 

"I found myself distanced from it. I'm always disappointed in a story when it turns out not to have happened, and it's based on some sort of illusion or memory wackiness." 

Contrastingly, Jesús Salvador Treviño liked the vagueness of this episode's conclusion. 

"I thought that was very daring for the Voyager writers. 

That was really nice the way they left it TOTALLY open-ended. 

We don't KNOW whether it really DID happen or if it DIDN'T; we have our suspicions and the clues are placed either way."