Episode Behind the Scenes

TREKCORE > DS9 > EPISODES > THE SEARCH, PART I > Behind the Scenes
 
Martha Hackett (Subcommander T'Rul) also played the recurring character of Seska in Star Trek: Voyager.
   
John Fleck (Ornithar) has played numerous roles in the different incarnations of Star Trek including the Romulan Taibak in The Next Generation's "The Mind's Eye", a Cardassian Overseer in the Deep Space Nine episode "The Homecoming", Koval in the DS9 episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges", Abaddon in Voyager's "Alice" and the recurring character Silik in Star Trek: Enterprise.
   
Both Salome Jens (the Female Shapeshifter) and Kenneth Marshall (Michael Eddington) make their first appearances in DS9 in this episode. They both go on to be recurring characters through the series.
   
The new style Starfleet commbadge makes its first appearance in this episode. It will be used in all future 24th Century Trek episodes and movies, right up to Star Trek: Nemesis.
   
Jadzia Dax's new "up" hairstyle is unique to this episode and part II.
   
As his first contribution to the show, writer Ronald D. Moore was charged with naming the new ship. He originally wanted to call the Defiant the USS Valiant, but was unable to, as the USS Voyager also began with a "V". As such, he decided to call it the Defiant after the ship seen in the Original Series episode "The Tholian Web": the USS Defiant. Moore later created a Defiant-class USS Valiant for the sixth season episode "Valiant".
   
Of the creation of the USS Defiant, Robert Hewitt Wolfe points out, "Bringing in the Defiant was based on our own internal perceptions of something that would make the show better. It was not based on ratings." There was also a practical reason, as Ira Steven Behr explains, "We'd created villains who were that powerful, and all we had floating around as the thin red line of defense against this possible invading army were three runabouts."
   
Of the fact that the Defiant had a number of design problems, science consultant André Bormanis says:
"I liked the idea of getting away from the concept that all Federation technology was squeaky clean and perfect. The Defiant has its problems because it's a prototype. it was hastily put together in the face of the Borg threat."
   

After deciding not to make T'Rul (Martha Hackett) a recurring character, the producers also decided not to use the cloaking device beyond "The Search, Part I". Indeed, they actually planned to mention early in the season that the cloak had been returned to the Romulans. So certain were they that it wouldn't be used again that they even informed production designer Herman Zimmerman and director of photography Jonathan West, and told them that they didn't need to design an elaborate lighting rig because the dimming effect seen when the ship is under cloak would only ever be seen once. As such, Zimmerman's set design didn't allow room for West to construct a rig which could contain the set-up necessary for both normal lighting and cloaked lighting. Instead, West had his crew simply manually change the lights for the scenes under cloak.

Of course, only a few episodes later, in "Defiant", the cloak was once again employed, and many times after that, but the set and the lighting rig were never redesigned, so every time the ship went under cloak, West had to have his crew manually change all of the lights, something which he was quite annoyed about.
   
In The Birth of the Dominion and Beyond featurette found on the DS9 Season 3 DVD, Robert Hewitt Wolfe explains the structure and organization of the Dominion:
"The Gamma Quadrant isn't empty, it isn't just a bunch of planets. It's bound together by the Dominion, a very very tough, very smart, very old civilization, run by the mysterious Founders, who are experts in genetic engineering, and who turn out to be Odo's people, the Shapeshifters. They then go and engineer these slave races that do their bidding. Essentially, the two main slave races were the 'carrot' and the 'stick'. The carrot being the Vorta, who would come to your planet and say "Hey, you're nice people, here's some M-16s and some popcorn, and whatever else you want baby, alcohol, fire-water? All you have to do is sign this little contract and we'll make you cool". Then there's the Jem'Hadar. So the Vorta say "Oh, you don't want to play ball? Then meet these guys. They're gonna kick your ass"."
   

Rene Auberjonois initially felt that the decision to have Odo find his people was a bad idea; "I thought if we solved that mystery about Odo's character, I didn't know where we'd go with him."

Auberjonois felt it would be the dramatic death of the character and that fans would lose interest in him. However, after being told that Odo would find his people, but would almost immediately alienate himself from them, Auberjonois came to see the potential; "What it did was make the character more complex. It just added to Odo's angst and to his depth, and it made him more challenging and interesting to play. And the fact that he ultimately comes to understand that he can't go back to his people, that he can't go home again. They opened up more avenues for me to travel as an actor."
   
Armin Shimerman on the scene where Sisko makes Quark kiss the scepter of the Grand Nagus:
"Despite the Federation's lip service to their Prime Directive, which says they're not supposed to apply their standards to any culture's attitudes, it seems to me that this was another example of the Federation making fun of, taking advantage of, and ridiculing the Ferengi way. So kissing the scepter was a bit irksome to both the actor and the character."
   
According to Ronald D. Moore, the character of Michael Eddington, who is introduced in this episode, was initially conceived of merely to fill in when Colm Meaney was away doing a film, but over the course of the season, the writers decided to expand the character and even went so far, towards the end of the year, as to set Eddington up as a possible Founder infiltrator.
   
T'Rul was originally conceived to be a recurring character who would be in charge of operating the cloaking device on board the USS Defiant. However, after the initial two-parter, the producers realized that the character would not offer enough story material to warrant keeping her around.
   
Odo's slightly altered makeup and uniform debuts in this episode, at the request of Rene Auberjonois. He liked the way his mirror version of Odo looked in "Crossover" and he lobbied the producers to keep this design. His uniform would remain like this for the rest of the series.
   
This is the first episode with Jonathan West as Director of Photography. He served as such for every episode of the series run, except for the ones he directed, starting from this episode.
   
"Empire" Magazine cited the whole two-parter, "The Search" as the best episode of Deep Space Nine when they ranked the series #47 on their list of "The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time".