A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Odo channelled the split nature of Spock, being a shape-shifter living among humans, and Kira Nerys anchored the Bajoran–Cardassian story nexus, while Sisko’s character arc explored issues of power, responsibility and faith, especially through his relation to the wormhole aliens and the fact that he was essentially engineered by them to battle the evil Pah-Wraiths.
    At a cost of $12 million, the pilot episode of
Deep Space Nine
was the most expensive television pilot then made. The episode featured Patrick Stewart to cement the connection to parent series
The Next Generation
. The fledgling show found it difficult during the first year, with writers who’d written for a previous
Star Trek
driven by exploration, having to revamp stories for a station that went nowhere and a cast of characters who – by virtue of their circumstance – were more reactive than active.

    It always takes a new series a while to find its feet.
Deep Space Nine
both benefited from and was hampered by being under the wing of
The Next Generation
for its first two seasons. The show spent very little time as the only
Star Trek
series on air, though, as halfway through its third year it was joined by the more traditional (for
Star Trek
)
Voyager
.
    Beyond the elements set up in the pilot show, ‘Emissary’ – Bajor, the wormhole and the role of the Maquis –
Deep Space Nine
would explore areas that made for a darker
Star Trek
seriesthan any that had gone before. In many ways the show initially struggled to find an identity, but the third season (the show’s first without
The Next Generation
around) saw the development of a strong military space opera storyline with the Dominion War arc (contrasting heavily with
Voyager
’s traditional exploration-driven narrative). Writer–producer Ira Steven Behr was a key storyteller behind this development, initially set up by a mention of the Dominion in an otherwise comic episode of the second season, ‘Rules of Acquisition’. The aim with the Dominion was to clearly differentiate the Gamma Quadrant from the more familiar
Star Trek
‘home turf’ of the Alpha Quadrant. Those who hailed from the Gamma Quadrant were the ‘anti-Federation’, an alliance of alien races who were the opposite of the ‘enlightened’ Prime Directive-following Federation, a kind of ‘axis of evil’ in space.
    The second season finale episode, ‘The Jem’Hadar’, properly introduced the Dominion, a military power from the Gamma Quadrant led by the Founders, a race of shape-shifting changeling aliens. Odo (Auberjonois), the station’s amnesiac alien security officer, discovers he is one of the Founders and that his race is in a battle for dominance with the ‘Solids’, as they call creatures of fixed form like humans. It was writer–producer Michael Piller who made the connection between this new race and Odo, solving the existing mystery of the character’s origins. This development gave what had previously been a rather mysterious and underdeveloped character a strong role in stories going forward, and built right through to the series’ overall finale. It elevated Odo to the role of the character with split loyalties that had previously been filled by Spock and Worf. The Founders use a pair of genetically altered races, the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar, as their foot soldiers. Both races worship their ‘creators’ as gods. Fear, rather than the Federation’s friendship, was the tool used to cement alliances and hold these races together in their malevolent (at least to Federation thinking) aims. It’s evident from their name that in developing the Founders,
Deep Space Nine
’s key storytellers – Behr, RobertHewitt Wolfe and Peter Allan Fields – had been looking to Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation
trilogy of ‘deep history’ novels. Asimov had been a friend of Roddenberry’s and was someone he often consulted via letter in the days of the original
Star Trek
. For all involved, the development of a new iconic
Star Trek
villain, following the original series’ Klingons and Romulans and
The Next Generation
’s Borg, had been incredibly difficult. Wolfe admitted that they’d fallen back on the old idea that had informed the Romulans – the history of the Roman Empire – in some of their thinking about the nature of the Founders.
    The third season not only brought the threat of an all-out Dominion attack, but also saw
Deep Space Nine
acquire its own ship, the USS
Defiant
, a small prototype