A Brief Guide to Star Trek

originally created to combat the Borg. This allowed the characters to more easily get off the station and fulfil the traditional
Star Trek
mission of ‘boldly going’. An influx of writing talent from the now defunct
The Next Generation
also boosted the series’ storytelling from the third year.
Deep Space Nine
had always embraced serialisation and the possibility that characters could change – both strong ‘anti-
Star Trek
’ elements. These aspects differentiated it from everything that had come before and were even stronger from the third year. The original intention – according to Berman – was for the Dominion War story to play out over a handful of episodes. So rich were the storytelling possibilities, however, that the decision was taken to extend the plotline for as long as good stories could be developed. It would actually run right through to the end of the series. An additional factor was the arrival of
Star Trek: Voyager
which took up much of Berman and Piller’s attention, meaning that Behr and his collaborators running
Deep Space Nine
had more creative space in which to work, allowing the series to move further away from Roddenberry’s idealistic view of the
Star Trek
universe.
    According to an interview with TrekWeb.com, Behr saw
Deep Space Nine
’s mission as ‘getting back to telling character-oriented stories, getting back to having conflict between human beings; plot at the service of character. We created a much morecomplete universe in which you can have all these characters with all these back stories, all these races, all these supporting characters. You knew more about Garak or Gul Dukat, ultimately, than you knew about Riker. We brought back money, greed, racial bigotry, war – all the stuff that [had] disappeared [from
Star Trek
]. I began to see opportunities that I hadn’t seen before. We certainly took the series where [co-creator] Michael Piller would freely admit he hadn’t thought of [taking it].’
    Building up the existing villains, the writers put the deposed Cardassians in an alliance with the Dominion, resulting in a state of all-out war by the fifth season’s finale episode, ‘Call to Arms’. Shifting loyalties and alliances kept the story elements fresh, but for any
Star Trek
fans not enamoured with military science fiction the strong shift in this direction was off-putting. Even
Star Trek
’s long-time enemies turned friends the Klingons got caught up in the Dominion War (on the Founders’ side), while the Romulans stuck by the Federation. Whatever viewers’ feelings about
Star Trek
turning military, there can be no doubt that this was a unique storytelling gambit and it certainly provided much story potential that had been denied the more straight-laced
The Next Generation
, which had been firmly stuck within Roddenberry’s storytelling ‘box’.
    Deep Space Nine
seriously explored the horrors of war more than any other series, even
The Original Series
that had regularly highlighted the issue in the shadow of the Vietnam War. Inspired by contemporary events in the Balkans, the later seasons of
Deep Space Nine
deliberately set out to reflect some very 1990s concerns. President Clinton had committed American military forces to preventing genocide in central Europe following the break-up of Yugoslavia at the start of the decade. Ethnic tensions had increased among Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats, resulting in an international armed conflict between 1992 and 1995. The show drew on this, and the earlier Gulf War of 1990–1, to inspire storylines of conflicting religious ideologies, the rise of international terrorism, the role of nation-building after conflict, the threat of bio-weaponry and the dangers of ethnic cleansingand potential genocide, all in a ‘dark’
Star Trek
context. The show took a more serious approach than
The Original Series
episode ‘A Private Little War’ had managed, an analogy of the Vietnam conflict with the Klingons representing America’s Cold War opponents. The seventh season episode ‘The Siege of AR-558’ saw regular Ferengi character Nog (Quark’s nephew) seriously injured in battle and lose a leg as a result. The greed of the Ferengi is highlighted when Quark quotes the 34th Rule of Acquisition to Ezri Dax: ‘War is good for business’. Faced with the personal outcome of war when his nephew suffers, Quark is forced to reconsider his opinion. Sisko ends the episode recalling that the people who lose their lives in