The episode was partly written as an attempt to remedy the fact that Voyager's producers felt Chakotay had been underused in the first season.
Special guest star Aron Eisenberg (Kar) played the ongoing character of Nog in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), running concurrently with Voyager.
This is the first episode to show Tom Paris in command of Voyager in the absence of Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok.
The outdoor scenes of this episode were shot on location at Vasquez Rocks National Area Park. Restricted by union rules to only use locations within a radius of 37 miles from Paramount studios, the producers were careful to avoid showing the most well known of the location's jagged peaks.
Aron Eisenberg was 26 years old when his character of 'Kar' was supposedly 13. If you look at his arms, you can see that they are far too muscular to be those of a prepubescent male. His growth was stunted at 5 feet tall by kidney disease.