10 Star Trek: Voyager Episodes That Were Almost Completely Different
2. Parallax
Parallax, the second episode of Star Trek: Voyager, kicked off what would become a series of high-concept episodes in the series. While the ultimate episode dealt with a duplicate Voyager and some time distortion, the original pitch was quite different.
Jim Trombetta pitched the idea of finding a ship trapped in a quantum singularity, crewed by aliens who were a few steps removed from our reality. This pitch, titled Ghost Ship, interested Brannon Braga to the point that he bought it, but both he and executive producer Jeri Taylor felt that it would be too difficult to pull off.
The episode sees Torres promoted to chief engineer, which was a thread left over from Caretaker. This was a deliberate addition by Braga for a number of reasons. The first, obvious one, was that Torres was always planned for the position, so it needed to happen quickly. The second reason was to deal with the clashes between Starfleet and the Maquis. Torres, a Maquis herself, promoted to chief over several Starfleet staff - such as Lt. Carey - was designed to piss the Starfleet crew off.
For an episode that started as a ghost story, it ended up quite different. It may not have hit every note, but it was critical in establishing characters early on in the show's run.