Daedalus the Labyrinth as an edifice rather than a single dancing path to the center and out again, and gave it numberless winding passages and turns that opened into one another, seeming to have neither beginning nor end. Ovid, in his "Metamorphoses", suggests that Daedalus constructed the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it. Daedalus built the labyrinth for King Minos, who needed it to imprison his wife's son the Minotaur. The story is told that Poseidon had given a white bull to Minos so that he might use it as a sacrifice. Instead,
The Daedalus Variations original concept of an episode involving alternate realities was a room in Atlantis that shifts into alternate realities. However, the idea had several issues, including the possibility of no Atlantis in one reality, so Robert C. Cooper suggested using the "Daedalus". The final draft of "The Daedalus Variations" was completed on February 11. On February 12, the prosthetics meeting for the episode, as well as "The Seed", "Broken Ties" and "Whispers" took place, which most likely involved the unknown aliens featured from the episode. The appearance of the aliens was revealed in the advertisement for the episode on July 27.