Trivia / Star Trek: Voyager S2 E26, S3 E1: "Basics"

• California Doubling: Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California doubles for Hanon IV.
• Executive Meddling:
  • When ratings started to nosedive in Season Two, Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga went into panic mode and decided their so-called "serialized" approach was not working out. Michael Piller was asked to remove all the elements he introduced in the previous season, including the Kazon and the ongoing Starfleet-Maquis feud. Since Hogan was a character who had strong opinions and provoked some mutinous sentiments on the ship, he was obviously the first to go. Suder was the next to die. Seska dies from an exploding console — an embarrassing coda to say the least.
  • Like in the first season, the producers were forced to move four episodes filmed for this season into the next. However, they received enough warning that they deliberately chose Basics Part II for one of the four. This made the Basics two-parter the only season ending cliffhanger in the entire franchise to have both halves filmed during the same time period.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Piller's early draft had the baby getting killed off, but Berman and Taylor hated it, saying it was "in extremely poor taste", so Seska died instead and Culluh made off with the kid.
  • The kid was also intended to be Chakotay's kid from the start, but when the baby was granted a stay of execution and the ax fell on Seska instead, Jeri Taylor wasn't interested in Chakotay having a son, so to wrap up that plotline, they just rewrote him as Culluh's son.