Scorpius was actually a character that Dave and Rock had talked about way way back, before I was even a gleam in their eye. So they had ideas about the character, and of course, by the time that we got around to doing the character, the show had evolved to a certain point, and those ideas had changed. [Then] Wayne Pygram came in and added so much to it, and Dave Elsey's design brought so much to it again, that the synergy made the character so much more than was originally envisaged.

I think I was the first to write casting sides [descriptions] for the character, and I had written a scene, which later I used most of in Nerve, of Scorpius interrogating John in the Aurora Chair, where Scorpius goes into a big rap about his life. Basically John says, "I'm not telling you anything, go away," and Scorpius says, "Let me explain something to you, Mr Crichton," and goes into this big spiel about his life. I believe it still exists in the script, intact, or maybe it got cut out later on.

He talks about being a half-Scarran, half-Sebacean, in the script, he says, "Let me tell you how patient I was. I had this jones against the Scarrans and it took me ten years, and a lot of research and a lot of resources and I developed a virus that would kill all Scarrans and I gave it to them, and now the Scarran species is entirely extinct and I killed them all. And that's been my life's work, so therefore, Mr Crichton, I can well afford to be patient with you." Basically, this is the big bad guy you're dealing with.

Rock and David loved that back-story, and said, "Let's not use it up, let's not let him succeed, let's keep the Scarrans alive. We're going to want to see these people some day, we're going to want to keep that as his motivation. Let's not use it all up in a back-story speech." So, that became the character in a different way than I had envisioned. It became an open business in his life, instead of a closed case.