Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the show that nobody wanted to make — not the fans, not the studio, not even the franchise's creator. A series that would eventually be recognized as one of the most innovative and influential science fiction shows in television history spent its entire run fighting for survival: against the shadow of The Next Generation, against a studio that considered it the junior partner in the franchise, and against the legacy of Gene Roddenberry, who reportedly rejected the very concept before his death.
In late 1991, Brandon Tartikoff took over as head of Paramount Pictures and reached out to Rick Berman, executive producer of The Next Generation, with a request: create a new science fiction series. Not necessarily a Star Trek show — Tartikoff wanted something in the spirit of The Rifleman, the 1950s Western about a father and son traveling the frontier [1][2].
Berman brought in Michael Piller, TNG's showrunner, and the two spent months developing concepts. Piller later recalled: "We spent a lot of time discussing numerous projects, some that fell within the Gene Roddenberry Star Trek universe and many that were unrelated. We finally decided that going the Star Trek route was the best way to go" [3].
When they settled on a space station setting, Piller's logic was brutally practical: "If you want to do a space show, you either do it in a spaceship, at a space station or on a futuristic planet. We talked of creating a futuristic Hong Kong on a planet surface... We felt that would be extremely expensive and difficult to produce, so we took our Hong Kong and put it on a space station, then we scaled it back in order to make it cost-effective" [3].
Gene Roddenberry was dying of frontotemporal dementia and alcoholism when DS9 was conceived. He gave a general blessing to the project but held no sway over its development. Accounts of his reaction to the specific concept vary dramatically:
Ira Steven Behr, who had joined TNG's writing staff and clashed with Roddenberry over the conflict restriction, recalled: "When I tried to introduce interpersonal conflict during my time working on TNG, Roddenberry handed me my head" [5]. With Roddenberry gone, DS9 was free to explore the darker territory the franchise's creator had forbidden.
Production on the pilot began on August 18, 1992 and shot for twenty-eight days through September 25. The two-hour premiere aired on January 3, 1993, and scored an 18.8 Nielsen rating — the highest-rated syndicated series premiere in history at the time, ranking #1 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. [1][6].
The pilot established everything that would define the series: Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) arriving at the station with his young son Jake, his resentment of Captain Picard over the death of his wife at Wolf 359, the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole, and the mysterious, non-corporeal beings the Bajorans worshipped as gods — the Prophets. Sisko's final scene in the pilot — sitting alone, playing baseball — set the tone for a series that was more personal, more grounded, and more human than anything Star Trek had attempted before [6].
The pilot won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Art Direction, shared by production designer Herman Zimmerman, Randall McIlvain, and Mickey S. Michaels [6].
When Michael Piller left DS9 during its third season to develop Star Trek: Voyager, he handed the showrunner reins to Ira Steven Behr — a decision that would define the series for the rest of its run. Behr had been a TNG writer who disliked the "Roddenberry Box" and had joined DS9 specifically because Piller told him: "The new show is going to have more humor, more conflict, it's going to be a little more bizarre" [5][7].
Behr's relationship with the show's founding vision was complicated. He had not created DS9, but Piller gave it to him, and he felt a duty to protect it. As he later told the documentary What We Left Behind: "Michael created the show. I didn't create the show, but Mike gave it to me. I felt I had a duty to take it and run with it, and do the best show I could do based on the parameters that they gave us" [7].
From its inception, DS9 was structurally different from other Trek series — and that difference was baked into its premise. As Piller explained: "We didn't want to do another series of shows about space travel. We felt there was an opportunity to really look deeper at the working of the Federation and the Star Trek universe by standing still" [4].
Because the show was set on a stationary space station, the writers couldn't simply warp away from problems. Robert Hewitt Wolfe explained: "Sisko couldn't just solve a problem and sail off into the sunset and never have to go back to that place again. That place was always there, and that problem could always come back to haunt him" [8].
This structural constraint made serialization inevitable — but Paramount fought it. In an era before DVRs and streaming, syndicated episodes could air in any order across different markets. Executives feared that ongoing storylines would confuse viewers who missed episodes. Behr later admitted: "I was told by executives that I was killing the show" [8].
His response was creative defiance: "I literally, around season five, told the staff we're just writing this now for ourselves. This is for us. We have to like it. I don't care who's watching anymore" [7]. He also admitted to lying to Berman about how serialized the show would become: he promised two or three connected episodes, then delivered seven [8].
The irony was that Paramount's own actions enabled the serialization. By developing Voyager as the franchise's "flagship" series — the one that would launch the UPN network — the studio's attention was diverted away from DS9. As Behr put it: "Let them swarm all over Voyager... and let us go our quiet way and just be our subversive little selves and push the franchise, like a fucking boulder, up a mountain. Voyager was the best thing that ever happened to Deep Space Nine" [8].
DS9 was the first Trek series willing to go dark. Where TNG maintained an optimistic vision of the future, DS9 asked what that future looked like from the margins — from a space station that had been a Cardassian labor camp, populated by people who had survived occupation, and staffed by Starfleet officers who were not always sure they were doing the right thing.
Behr described his approach: "Is this paradise, or are there, as Harold Pinter supposedly said, 'Weasels under the coffee table'?" [9]. The show tackled religion, terrorism, occupation, war, and moral compromise with a seriousness that no Trek series had attempted — and it did so within the franchise's own framework, using the Roddenberry ideal as a lens to examine what happens when that ideal is tested.
Alexander Siddig (Bashir) credited the creative freedom to Berman's unusual management style: "Rick Berman was a great yes man. Any idea he thought was good, he would say, 'Yes, try that.' Rick broke the mold. He was the ultimate boss because he let Michael and Ira really try something pretty controversial at the time" [5].
DS9's per-episode budget was comparable to TNG's later seasons, but the show faced unique technical challenges. The space station itself — a Cardassian-designed facility with an asymmetrical, industrial aesthetic — was a radical departure from the graceful Enterprise-D. Production designer Herman Zimmerman created a grittier, more functional environment that suggested a place with a history of violence and neglect [1][4].
The USS Defiant, introduced in Season 4's "The Way of the Warrior," was the first fully computer-generated main ship in Star Trek history. While TNG and earlier Trek series relied on physical models, DS9 pioneered the use of CGI for its primary vessels — a transition that would eventually become standard across the franchise. The Defiant's compact, warship design — built specifically to fight the Borg — reflected the show's more militaristic tone [1].
The show's principal antagonists — the Dominion, a totalitarian empire from the Gamma Quadrant ruled by shapeshifting Changelings — were introduced gradually, first mentioned as a throwaway line in a Season 2 Ferengi episode ("Rules of Acquisition") before becoming the central threat of the series. The Dominion's Jem'Hadar soldiers and Vorta administrators gave the show a layered antagonist structure: faceless warriors, duplicitous diplomats, and mysterious, godlike Founders [1][10].
By Season 4, Paramount wanted a ratings boost. The solution: bring Michael Dorn over from TNG as a series regular. Worf's arrival in "The Way of the Warrior" (S4E1–2) was the most successful character migration in Trek history, expanding DS9's scope into Klingon political intrigue — the House of Duras, Gowron's chancellorship, and eventually Worf killing Gowron and installing Martok as the new Chancellor of the Klingon Empire [1][11].
Dorn had been glad to leave behind the hours of Klingon prosthetic makeup, but when Berman asked if he might return, he surprised himself by saying yes. He spoke with the writers about how Worf could serve as a catalyst for change, bringing a different perspective to the show [11].
Armin Shimerman had played one of the first Ferengi on TNG — a character he later described as a personal failure: "I didn't put it behind me for years; it was like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. All of my work on Deep Space Nine, for the first four seasons, was me trying to eradicate that original performance from everyone's mind" [12].
When DS9 cast a Ferengi as a series regular, Shimerman campaigned aggressively for the role. He endured a nine-week audition process, repeatedly calling his agent for updates with no response. In his final meeting, he read for Paramount executives with the full cast already present. When he finished, Rick Berman told him: "Don't worry, we wrote this character for you" [12].
Berman later advised Shimerman to lose the exaggerated Ferengi voice he'd used in the pilot: "Lose the voice, for two reasons. One is we don't need it, and two is it will wreck your throat" [12].
Shimerman's mission to redeem the Ferengi became one of DS9's great creative achievements. He hosted Sunday rehearsals at his home before Ferengi episodes, bringing together the other Ferengi actors — Max Grodénchik (Rom), Jeffrey Combs (Brunt), Wallace Shawn (Grand Nagus Zek), and Chase Masterson (Leeta) — to ensure consistency and depth [12].
The Ferengi evolved from TNG's failed villains into DS9's most unexpected source of human (and alien) insight. Ira Steven Behr found the hook when writing "Babel": the relationship between Quark and Rom became a story about brothers — the successful one and the loser — rendered in "20th century human terms" [10].
Brooks brought a gravitas to Sisko that distinguished him from both Kirk and Picard. Where Kirk was a cowboy and Picard was a diplomat, Sisko was a father — and a grieving one. Brooks insisted on the character's relationship with baseball as a symbol of Sisko's connection to the past, to human culture, and to his late wife Jennifer. The show's final shot — Jake and Kira staring out at the wormhole, waiting for Sisko's return — was a direct callback to the pilot's opening image [1][6].
When Nana Visitor became pregnant during Season 5, the writers faced a challenge: how to write it into the show. The solution was elegant — Kira served as a surrogate mother for a pregnant crewmate injured in an accident, with Dr. Bashir attending the birth. Visitor and Alexander Siddig (who played Bashir) had begun a real-life relationship during production; their son Django El Tahir El Siddig was born on September 16, 1996 [13].
The most consequential villain in DS9's history was first mentioned as a casual aside in "Rules of Acquisition" (S2E7), a Ferengi comedy episode. Quark and Rom travel through the Gamma Quadrant seeking new business opportunities, and the word "Dominion" is spoken almost in passing. The Season 2 finale, "The Jem'Hadar", revealed the true nature of this power — and changed the show forever [10].
During filming of the final Sisko-vs-Dukat confrontation in "What You Leave Behind" (S7E25–26), Brooks accidentally punched Marc Alaimo for real. Alaimo had to take several days off to recover. The production couldn't wait for his return, so Brooks filmed his shots without Alaimo present, then Alaimo came in and did the same in reverse — the two actors' final scene together on the series was never actually shot in the same room [15].
The incident was later detailed in the What We Left Behind documentary's bonus feature "One Last Punch" (2:31), in which stunt coordinator Dennis "Danger" Madalone and Alaimo recount the story [15].
When Meaney was getting made up as a Klingon for the first time — a rare instance of O'Brien donning forehead ridges — Michael Dorn was initially thrilled to have company. By day three of Meaney's complaints — "I can't close my eyes! I can't close my eyes!" — Dorn snapped: "Get him out of that makeup and never put him in it again, I can't stand listening to him!" [16].
Meaney and Siddig went drinking "twice a week every week for seven years." Meaney loved taking Siddig to Irish bars where the patrons "hated English people." Siddig, who is Black with an English accent, was bewildered by the hostility: "I thought they were being racist about the fact that I'm black and they weren't. They just hated the English people... and he just laughed his head off" [17].
In "What You Leave Behind", Damar's script called for him to die silently. Actor Casey Briggs asked permission to improvise something and came up with "Keep..." — a single, ambiguous syllable that has fueled fan speculation for two decades. Briggs has admitted he has no idea how he would have finished the sentiment [18].
At a convention, Armin Shimerman confirmed that actors on DS9 had no input into scripts and had to follow them exactly — then Jeffrey Combs admitted he improvised a lot. Shimerman's response: that was why his character was killed so often [19].
Multiple cast members confirmed DS9 had a dramatically different atmosphere from TNG. Shimerman: "The Next Generation people, they laughed all the time. We didn't laugh... not really." Visitor: "We weren't that funny. I tried. The set is really run by whoever is number one on the callsheet, and that was Avery Brooks. We were all deadly serious." She joked about the TNG cast: "They would come on our set and be funny, but we were deadly serious" [20].
For nearly three seasons, Brooks was forced to wear a toupee because Paramount feared a bald Black captain would remind audiences of his role in Spenser: For Hire. Brooks hated it. Ira Steven Behr and Rick Berman had to fight Paramount for permission to let Brooks shave his head and grow the goatee. When they finally won approval, Brooks walked right past Behr and just said "Oh, OK" without even reacting [21].
Farrell later accused Berman of being "very misogynistic," commenting on her bra size and comparing her body to his secretary's. She wanted to go recurring for Season 7; the studio demanded full season or nothing. A junior producer told her she'd "be working at K-Mart" without DS9. Behr said he had no idea and would have stopped it [22].
Farrell was also "so incredibly intimidated" by Brooks during her first scene that she pulled him aside during a lighting break and appealed to his gentler side. Brooks softened afterward and they developed a good working relationship. She was also nearly fired early on because she couldn't memorize her science-heavy lines — the producers hired an acting coach, and she solved the problem by asking science consultant Andre Bormanis to simplify the technobabble in scenes with other actors [22].
When the genetic enhancement twist was forced on Siddig with one day's notice (script arrived Thursday, filming Friday), he was furious. He deliberately sabotaged subsequent Data-esque scenes — literally pinning lines to the back of other actors' shoulders instead of learning them. "I just fluffed the lines... I wasn't bothered even to learn them. And they got the message and dropped it" [23].
Siddig also claimed: "The studio tried to get me fired every year for the first three years" because Bashir wasn't the Jason Priestley-type heartthrob they wanted. Berman protected him each time. He was reportedly "a pain in the ass" for the first couple of seasons and refused to show up for the Season 4 cast photo because he was unhappy about a story decision — he is absent from that photo [23].
Behr recounted that Berman "prepared me like it was going to be a very prickly phone call" with Leonard Nimoy about using "Trouble with Tribbles" footage for "Trials and Tribble-ations" — heavily implying Nimoy would object. When Behr called, Nimoy enthusiastically said: "What took you so long? Absolutely, yes." Behr realized Berman had set him up — likely because Berman had denied Nimoy the chance to direct Star Trek: Generations and feared retaliation [24].
During filming of "Trials and Tribble-ations," the original "Trouble with Tribbles" writer David Gerrold was on set and caught the director scanning the reference tape the wrong direction. On a soundstage "where nobody contradicts the director," Gerrold corrected him. He then found himself telling the director exactly how many tribbles to remove from a scene: "I suddenly realised I'm directing the director" [25].
During "Trials and Tribble-ations" filming, Dorn sat in the commissary with a scarf covering his head, muttering in Worf's voice: "The tribbles know I'm here... I'm standing out." He kept rationalizing they should be back on DS9. Terry Farrell called it "hilarious" [26].
The last scene of DS9 ever filmed was Quark and Vic Fontaine playing Go Fish. The final shot of the station pulling away was CGI — the only time the station was ever depicted as a computer image rather than a physical model [27].
DS9's seven-season run produced its share of visible errors:
DS9's ratings never matched TNG's, and the show was perpetually treated as the junior partner in the franchise. But the streaming era vindicated its innovations. The serialized storytelling that Paramount had resisted became the standard model for prestige television. Shows like Battlestar Galactica (created by DS9 alumnus Ronald D. Moore), The Wire, Game of Thrones, and Homeland owed debts to the ground DS9 had broken [8][14].
As Ira Steven Behr reflected: "The fact that people watch it now... the only thing that kind of shook my tree was when I've met a lot of people in the last few years who go: 'I loved it from the beginning and I was there all the way.' And I'm like, really? When people tell me they didn't like it, I totally believe them! 'I tried to get into it when it was on, but I just didn't like it, now I'm a fan.' That, I totally get. The people who said they got it from the beginning, I'm like, 'Where the hell were you!?'" [7].
See also: DS9 Milestones, DS9 People, TNG Making.
[1] Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Wikipedia
[2] CBR - How Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Was Made
[4] The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years - Edward Gross and Mark Altman
[5] Variety - Star Trek: DS9 at 25
[6] Star Trek.com - DS9 Debuted 24 Years Ago Today
[7] Gizmodo - Ira Steven Behr Looks Back on DS9
[8] IndieWire - DS9 Led to Picard, Changed TV Forever
[9] CBR - DS9 Broke Trek's Formula
[10] Gizmodo - How DS9 Helped Invent Everything You Love
[11] Memory Alpha - The Way of the Warrior
[12] CBR - How Armin Shimerman Fixed His Ferengi Mistake
[13] People - A Family Enterprise
[14] CBR - DS9 Quietly Invented Prestige Serialized TV
[15] TrekCore - What We Left Behind Bonus Features
[16] Cinemablend - Meaney Recalls Klingon Makeup Nightmare
[17] Giant Freakin Robot - DS9 Cast Pranks
[18] DITL - What You Leave Behind Episode Page
[19] Inside Trekker - DS9 Convention Panel
[20] Screen Rant - DS9 Set Was Deadly Serious
[21] Yahoo - Avery Brooks Finally Allowed True Look
[22] Screen Rant - Why Terry Farrell Left DS9
[23] Red Shirts Always Die - Siddig Hated Season 5 Change
[24] Giant Freakin Robot - Berman Tried to Make Nimoy Hate DS9
[25] BBC - David Gerrold Interview
[26] TrekMovie - How Trials and Tribble-ations Started
[28] MovieMistakes - DS9 Name Misspelling
[29] IMDb - DS9 Goofs