A secret plan among Star Trek writers gave the franchise one of its most powerful villains

When “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” debuted in 1993, series creators Rick Berman and Michael Piller gave themselves a little too much material to work with. The series took place on the titular space station, located next to the distant planet of Bajor. Bajor recently (and barely) survived a decades-long military occupation by the evil Cardassians, and Starfleet was called in to oversee the station as Bajor went through a period of rebuilding. Starfleet officers were very out of place on the Bajor-owned station and many interpersonal conflicts arose.

But wait, there’s more! Just off DS9, Starfleet discovered a stable wormhole that provided a “shortcut” to the far-off Gamma Quadrant, unexplored by Federation ships. A whole new frontier was open to Bajor and Starfleet, and cosmic mysteries awaited them.

And there is much more! Inside the wormhole lives a species of non-corporeal divine aliens with no concept of time or physical reality. These non-corporeal beings managed to communicate with Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks), an act that some Bajorans considered sacred. Sisko became a messianic figure for the Bajorans.

It took the “Deep Space Nine” writers two full seasons to explore all of this, and it wasn’t until the third season that audiences were introduced to the Dominion, a great, conquering space empire that served as a dark mirror to the Federation. When the showrunners created Dominion, a whole new wave of stories opened up and the series took off in quality. In a 2018 oral history for Syfy Wire, showrunner Ira Steven Behr and one of the series’ writers, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, recall the lengthy brainstorming sessions it took to create the Dominion, all part of a secret plan to introduce a unique new villain into the franchise canon.

It’s worth noting that “Deep Space Nine” debuted while “Star Trek: The Next Generation” was in its sixth season (of seven). For two seasons, “Deep Space Nine” was the “secondary” of the two series, the little brother of a more popular older brother. As such, the “Deep Space Nine” showrunners felt the need to strike out on their own, prove their uniqueness and come up with ideas that could only work on their series. Behr noted that, of necessity, he and his writers had to “find their own way.” We couldn’t build on what worked in “TNG” or the original series. Behr believed that he, Wolfe and fellow writers Pete Fields and Jim Crocker needed to find a new “villain” that they could call their own. In his words:

“We were talking about: how do we find a new antagonist, a new villain, that would be”New deep space’ specific? And not be taken from the Klingons or the Cardassians or anyone else? And because we couldn’t take the risk that this villain wouldn’t succeed (like when they brought in the Ferengi originally to be villains and it didn’t work). TNG), I said, “We’re going to come up with three different breeds of villains and I hope one of them works.” This is how the Dominion was born. »

Behr said the four writers conspired about Dominion, knowing they were eventually going to be featured, but without telling any of Paramount’s higher-ups, nor any of the cast or producers. “We mentioned the word Dominion in the [episode “Rules of Acquisition”]”, Behr said, “but we haven’t revealed anything.”

Wolfe mentioned that the best way to invent a new villain was to have him come through the Gamma Quadrant wormhole. He said:

“It was something we really wanted because the Gamma Quadrant was the unique aspect of the series that we had. ‘Deep Space 9’ was at this crossroads between the Alpha Quadrant and the Gamma Quadrant. We were literally right on the edge of the border. It made the wormhole and Bajor much more integrated into the whole story, if the biggest problems we faced were coming from the other side of that wormhole. If it were just the Klingons, you could tell this story anywhere in the world. Federation.”

Wise. Deep Space Nine, he said, did not necessarily have to be the center of the impending conflict between the Dominion and the Federation, but it was convenient to have the station right next to the wormhole. From now on, the series would focus less on Bajor in particular and on the politics of the galaxy in general.

And the Dominion ended up being a complex, multi-species conglomeration of conquerors, each with a different hierarchical role. The Founders were a species of long-lived Changelings who could disguise themselves and infiltrate. Their evil, wicked bureaucrats were the Vorta, and their soldiers were drug-addicted murderers called the Jem’Hadar. There was a lot going on and even more to explore. And yet, Dominion focused the series rather than overloading it. Now all the stories were under the guise of this wicked and widespread force.

As Behr succinctly puts it: “Once we created the Dominion, everything started to fall into place. »