also reveled in the "what-if" twist, the alternate historical story about what happened. Lawrence grew up watching Mulgrew as Mary Ryan on the soap opera Ryan's Hope. As Lawrence came from a family where women more often than not became homemakers, Mary Ryan was an "exotic" character—with her career and life in New York City—who served as inspiration. On the set of Star Trek: Voyager the two actresses spoke frequently about their careers, their backgrounds in theatre, and the struggles of balancing home and professional requirements. Lawrence felt that her relationship with Mulgrew influenced the relationship between their characters on screen. Mulgrew praised Lawrence's performance in "The 37's", saying that "[she] really played the hell out of that role". Although she specifically remarked on her pleasure at seeing Robert Beltran (Chakotay) again, Lawrence praised all the cast's professionalism and their ability to cope with the "vast amount of virtually unreferenced text that they have on Star Trek". Landing the USS Voyager Background For the original Star Trek, to avoid the tremendous costs of landing the every week, Gene Roddenberry invented the transporter to get the crew to and from planets cheaply and quickly. For Star Trek: Voyager, the concept of landing the Voyager was considered from the beginning as a way to differentiate the new series from those that preceded it. Episode co-writer Brannon Braga explained that it was understood from the beginning that the ship could land. Effects "The 37's" is the first time in Star Trek canon that a starship is landed on a planet's surface. This was accomplished with a combination of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and physical modeling. Overhead views of the ship as it descended were CGI because it allowed the ship to descend "to a virtual pinpoint". The initial description of the ship described its landing capability, so four small hatches on the ventral hull were included on both the ship miniature and model. However, the legs that were to emerge from those hatches had not yet been designed by "The 37's". In the allowed by the design of the ship, Rick Sternbach had difficulty designing "an articulated set of legs and footpads" that would fold out and support some of the ship's . Shots of the unfolding "landing struts" were CGI because motorized versions were not installed in the physical model; visual effects producer Dan Curry later said that installing such motorized elements in