in development of the teleplay. They were each paid the Writers Guild minimum of $2400. The production of the episode, originally scheduled for January 1990, was moved to December 1989 to accommodate the filming availability of Crosby and Whoopi Goldberg, who played Guinan. The task of writing and polishing the new treatment in half the time fell upon writer Ronald D. Moore, who submitted his first draft on November 9. Moore's script removed the alien probe and made the alternate universe militaristic, with the Federation and the Klingons at war. Some characters, such as Troi, appeared only briefly at the beginning of the episode to allow more screen time for the guest characters. The beat sheet for the episode, which detailed characters and scenes, was distributed on November 27. Due to time constraints, a team of writers was assigned to write the teleplay. In addition to the story credit to Ganino and Stillwell, Moore, Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler and Richard Manning would work on the teleplay, and Piller would provide the finishing touches. Because the Writers Guild would not allow more than three staff writers to appear in the credits (four after a special waiver was granted), Piller agreed to not feature his name in the credits. A partial first draft was submitted on November 30 so that preproduction for the episode could commence. The altered timeline provided a chance to show the Enterprise crew in a much more dramatic and human light than would be allowable in a normal episode. Behr explained that since the original timeline was to be restored, the writers had the freedom to include more action. "Even though it was an alternate universe, [Moore] and I got all excited because we realized we were going to kill everyone on screen", he said. Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach submitted technical memos regarding the type of anomaly that might drag the Enterprise-C through time, and suggested interstellar, super-dense strings as a possibility. The first draft teleplay was completed by December 4, and a preproduction meeting was held the same day. Given the scale of the story, various departments argued over costs and what items could be cut to reduce the budget. The final draft was finished and submitted on December 8. Design The studio decided to increase the episode's budget, which at that time was estimated by Daily Variety as $1.2 million per episode. This gave