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Chris Sarandon (Martus) was married to Susan Sarandon
from 1967-1979. He provided the voice for Jack Skellington in The
Nightmare Before Christmas and also played Prince Humperdinck in The
Princess Bride. |
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Cirroc Lofton (Jake) does not appear in this episode. |
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Jim Trombetta and Michael Piller, the writers of this
episode, intended the character of Martus Mazur to be a son of Guinan.
Guinan herself was to appear in the episode but Whoopi Goldberg was
unavailable. All the references to Guinan were removed and only Martus's
status as an El-Aurian was retained. Also, this episode was the first to
name Guinan's species and Guinan herself is not identified as an El-Aurian
until Star Trek
Generations. |
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The show's creators originally hoped to make Martus a
recurring character, but dropped these plans because they were less than
thrilled with the finished episode. |
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The costume worn by Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir
during the racquetball match was auctioned off in the It's A Wrap! sale
and auction. The shoes are, in reality, silver-painted Nike air shoes. |
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Director David Livingston describes "Rivals":
"People just didn't like it. It was pretty much a
piece of fluff, but it was fun. I had a good time doing it."
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Jim Trombetta recalls his original pitch:
"Quark gets a device that gives him a lot of good
luck, at the expense of other people. Someone had dug up this machine
from an ancient civilization and was using it to gamble with. And Quark
started having all this good luck, while everyone else was having
terrible luck and things were falling apart." |
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Writer Joe Menosky describes "Rivals":
"A lot of times a writer is given a six-page story
that isn't in very good shape, and you look at it and think, 'What the
hell am I going to do with this?' But 'Rivals' was a pleasure to work
on, because Michael [Piller] had a really strong idea about what he
wanted to do with Martus as a rival for Quark." |
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Armin Shimerman on his costar Chris Sarandon (Martus):
"Chris and I got along fine, but the one-upmanship
that should have there, these two swindlers trying to outswindle each
other, didn't really work." |
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Alexander Siddig on the racquetball scenes:
"The scenes were kind of bizarre because the
racquetball court was such an odd shape that the ball would bounce
wrong. It was designed in a sci-fi shape, with the walls at all sorts of
oblique angles, and you'd hit the ball and you wouldn't know where it
would go. So we were chasing these balls around like nutters, until they
finally just staged us so we could look like we were shooting the ball
where we wanted it to go." The dartboard was cheaper, and we started
using that in the third season." |
