Episode Behind the Scenes

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This episode was originally pitched by David S. Cohen and Martin A. Winer as a second season episode. It was purchased by the producers, who assigned Cohen and Winer to write the teleplay, but it never made it into production, primarily because it focused on a prophecy of happiness and joy; an idea that, according to the producers, didn't make for a very exciting episode. Rene Echevarria, who made an uncredited rewrite of the script, recalls, "The early draft had a lot of nice stuff in it. It was done very lyrically and the writers had a lovely poem concerning Trakor's prophecy [...] a wonderful thing that was going to happen, a miracle, and Sisko was told that he was going to be a part of it. A miracle was happening. So why was that bad? Why would Sisko not want to be a part of it?" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 210-211)

   
The original story idea revolved around Starfleet seeking to relieve Sisko of his post. As David Cohen recalls, "We had enjoyed Deep Space Nine's pilot and the mythic overtones it suggested, as [Commander Sisko] was believed by an alien race to be the 'Emissary' from their gods, as prophesised in their scriptures. It occurred to us that Sisko's bosses couldn't be very comfortable with that. What if they pulled a Heart of Darkness on him and sent someone to extract him from this situation? The perfect chance to do so, we decided, was if there was some specific prophecy, that would, ipso facto, prove he's not the Emissary. We'd raise the stakes by having a pencil-pushing staff officer threaten to transfer him to another command if he doesn't end this 'Emissary' talk." They decided the problem was that, "Sisko really was the Emissary, so every effort to extricate him from this situation only furthered the prophecy. By the end, even the pencil-pushing staff officer has played a role in the prophecy and is in it as deep as Sisko, so Starfleet Command decides to just live with the whole situation." The "pencil-pushing officer" mentioned in the original story was named "Marlowe" as an homage to the character in Heart of Darkness. (Screen Plays - How 25 Scripts Made it to a Theater Near You - For Better or Worse, p. 9)
   
After the writing staff reconsidered the story, Cohen and Winer had another go at writing it. The new version turned out better but the staff still believed something was missing. Finally, Ronald D. Moore joked, "Jesus, this should be a prophecy of doom." Suddenly the story made sense because, as Echevarria notes, "[Sisko]'s a Starfleet officer, because he doesn't believe this 'Emissary' stuff. And suddenly there was dramatic tension galore: Sisko versus the Bajoran people, Sisko versus Kira, Sisko versus himself." The "fiery trial" prophecy that Yarka tells Sisko at the end of the episode is the prophecy that was in the original draft. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 211-212)
   
Ronald D. Moore remarked; "It just took us a while to figure out how to do it, We wanted to deal with the Emissary, we wanted to do a Bajoran-orientated show. We also wanted a communication relay in the Gamma Quadrant anyway, and since it was following "Life Support", we could make the Cardassians integral to it and include the peace treaty. It all just started to come together for us." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 92)
   
The original draft included the Rule of Acquisition, "Faith can move mountains of inventory", which was created by David Cohen and Martin Winer. Though this did not make it into the final script, Ira Behr liked it so much that he included it in his books The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (p. 50) and Legends of the Ferengi (pp. 86-87), where it is #104. (Screen Plays - How 25 Scripts Made it to a Theater Near You - For Better or Worse, p. 10
   
Cohen and Winer also consulted science advisor Andre Bormanis for the specifics of the comet. Bormanis recalls, "They knew what a comet was, but they were a little shy on details. Things like, 'How big is a typical comet? What is it made of? How do they travel through space? And how fast and in what kind of orbit?' And they wanted one sort of unusual effect associated with this comet, so we came up with an invented name of a substance that was found in the comet, the 'maguffin', as they say." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 211-212)
   
Echevarria oversaw most of the final stages of the story development, and even came up with #34 and #35 of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, with the approval of Ira Steven Behr. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 211)
   
The prospect of introducing two sympathetic Cardassians was done as a way of showing there are different kinds of people in Cardassian society. As Robert Hewitt Wolfe explains, "At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were sympathetic scientists, people we could work with and talk to." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 211)
   
Indeed, the parallels between this and the Cold War were intentional. The script describes the scene where Sisko and Kira first meet Gilora and Ulani; "This is the first joint project between two powers in an uneasy peace, so the scene plays out like a meeting between Americans and Russians at the height of the Cold War – a lot of diplomatic language is bandied about to cover everyone's discomfort."
   
The character of Yarka was named after one of David Cohen's favorite theater professors at SUNY Albany, Jarka Burian. (Screen Plays - How 25 Scripts Made it to a Theater Near You - For Better or Worse, pp. 9-10)
   
A copy of the script for this episode was sold off in the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay.
   
The scene in which Quark provides Gilora, Ulani and Dejar with some Cardassian cuisine originally ended with Quark returning to the table, seeing Dejar is the only one eating and offering some more food. Ulani then replies that more of the "special Cardassian delicacies" would be appreciated before Quark, oblivious to the underlying tension in the air, heads off saying "It's working!" to himself. The rest of the scene was ultimately cut from the final episode but can be read in the episode's script.
   

One of the sets that was created for the Defiant is the generic crew cabin where Sisko and Kira go to discuss "the sword of stars" which, thanks to three removable (or "wild") walls, has a number of possible looks. As Robert della Santina explains, "There's only one wall that isn't wild. It's the one that includes the doorway. That's a double-faced wall that also serves as part of the corridor. But the director can pull out any of the other walls to give the room any one of three different looks." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 211)
   
The comet the visual effects team developed for the episode was a model built by Tony Meininger, and not a computer-generated image. The artistic challenge, according to Gary Hutzel, was determining what the inside of a comet looks like; "A lot of people describe a comet as a big chunk of dirty ice, so we took it that way. It had a rocklike surface but the inside was transparent, like ice or crystal." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 212)
   
The relay station is a reuse of the Amargosa observatory model from Star Trek Generations. Gary Hutzel also had the job of adjusting it to appear in this episode; "In the feature, it has extremely long extensions on it. So basically, I took a saw to it! We cut off the extentions and redesigned a couple of elements and did a new paint job." The script describes it as being "the size of a runabout, with high-tech antennae and communications gear." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 212; [4])
   

In a 2010 interview, Erick Avari recalled some of his personal experiences during production of this episode; "[It] was a very talky piece and I played a very serious character. We worked 12 to 16-hour days, which Star Trek was famous for. So it was a grind, and I tend to get really giggly when I'm really tired, and if I get the giggles I'm in deep trouble and I know it. Tears start running down your face, your make-up starts to smear and then you can't get through your lines. No one thinks it's funny and you know that. Nina Craft was my makeup woman for this episode, and she got me going in-between takes. At one point it was one o'clock in the morning and the two of us were just laughing like silly schoolgirls. The director then said, 'Places everyone,' and I thought to myself, 'OK, I've got to straighten up.' I had this long, wordy scene that I was supposed to be very serious in. It was about doom and gloom and prophecies to come, and all I remember is just praying that I would keep a straight face through the take. So that was a fun episode."
   
While in full Cardassian makeup, actress Tracy Scoggins (Gilora Rejal) took the opportunity to walk around the Paramount lot, "scaring schoolchildren on buses" before security called the DS9 set, saying, "Could y'all do something about keeping your aliens contained over there?"