Speaking of tales, the story of how this Star Trek episode came about is pretty weird: it all began when Shankar had dinner with prolific franchise writer and producer Brannon Braga. Voyager was still being developed, but that didn’t keep these two from brainstorming episode ideas, and they eventually settled on the idea of the holographic Doctor going on a Viking-themed holodeck adventure to save some lost crew members. Soon, Shankar made the connection nobody else appreciated when he formally pitched the episode: “We go into this Viking village, people are disappearing, and everybody’s scared–this is Beowulf!’
Braga obviously loved Shankar’s idea, but the writer still had to win over the other Star Trek producers. On that front, he faced some good news and some bad news. The good news was that “everybody loved the premise.” The bad news, at least in his mind, was that nobody else in the room had read Beowulf, a story that Shankar (and us, too) thought was standard reading material.
