#but then i saw the writers said they were inspired by this tng episode so i'm not crazy

[thelvadams]

STAR TREK • season finale cliffhangers

THE NEXT GENERATION - The Best of Both Worlds, Part I STRANGE NEW WORLDS - Hegemony

[thoughts-i-have-had-in-passing]

DS9 trivia/quotes from my DS9 Companion, Part XXIII:

The Homecoming

The final two episodes of season 1 were warmly received, so much so that it inspired the writers to try for bigger and deeper. “We’d taken eighteen episodes and established the show, the concept, the franchise, and now it was time to dig deeper and see just how far we could go. So we decided to do a show that deals with Bajor, and the station, and the tenuous relationship between the Starfleet officers and this new environment they’re living in: the station. We thought it would be bold to do a three-hour show. We were nothing if bold-bold and stupid.” – Ira Steven Behr

Michael Piller chose a storyline originally written by Jeri Taylor for TNG. “Michael saw it and said, ‘You know, that’s a much better story for DS9 than TNG. I want it.’ I said ‘You can’t have it-it’s my story. I need it for my series.” – Jeri Taylor

Said story then sat undeveloped for the remainder of season one, prompting Jeri Taylor to talk to Michael Piller about it. “So I went to him and said ‘Michael, if you’re not going to use that story, give it back.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no. It’ll surface, I promise you.” – Jeri Taylor

The original story focussed on a Bajoran woman who was picked up by the Enterprise, who wanted to rescue the leader of the Bajoran resistance, someone who was held in deep respect by the Bajoran people, and was languishing in a Cardassian prison. And once they broke him out he didn’t want to be a leader anymore, only to ‘somehow’ become a leader again. (The somehow is a direct quote, I get the impression that bit wasn’t fully worked out in the original draft).

Each episode in the trilogy was assigned to a different person. Steven Ira Behr did the teleplay for episode one, Peter Allan Fields was assigned part two, and Michael Piller took part three himself. This required the three men to work closely together to ensure that the story flowed smoothly. “We broke the first two stories before I went off and wrote ‘The Homecoming’. But we broke the third one at the same time I was writing, so I’d run in, sit in the story meeting and then go back and write. We all know what everyone else was doing.” – Ira Steven Behr

Several ideas were agreed upon in the very beginning: that the station would be boarded, that Sisko and the Starfleet officers would be forced to become guerrilla fighters, that the Bajoran religion would be highlighted, and that there would be heavy emphasis on character development. One change that was made was that the reluctant hero of Jeri Taylor’s story became a mistaken hero instead.

Some critics didn’t (and still don’t) like the incorporation of religion in DS9, but Ira Steven Behr felt it was important. “What I always say is, ‘You do religion because you set people off’. That’s the reason to do it. That’s why writers are told not to do it, and that’s why it’s become tougher and tougher to do it on the series. That we did it at all was amazing, and I can’t believe that no one [in the audience] seemed to notice. We were the only show on TV that consistently dealt with matters spiritual and no one seemed to care, which I find very strange.” – Ira Steven Behr

The Cardassian prison camp was filmed in Soledad Canyon, described as ‘one of the most hellacious location choices imaginable’. Freezing cold early in the morning and evening, extremely hot the rest of the time, bugs, snakes and bees all frequently encountered, but on the other hand, Unit Production Manager Bob della Santina loved the ‘wonderful scope’ of the site.

It was very unpopular with Colm Meaney. In his own words: “The first day back in the second season, and you’re slowly trickling back into it and then-boom-you’re out there in this blazing heat, with no cover or vegetation anywhere. It was a very long day and by the end of it, we had been burned and blistered. For someone like me, with my background-well, I wasn’t built for those conditions.” – Colm Meaney

“Colm and I were sick to our stomachs. We were seriously wondering if we were going into heat prostration. It was the perfect location for Cardassia IV, because it was like hell.” – Nana Visitor

Unfortunately for the cast, the location looked great on camera and so would appear again in ‘The Ship’ and ‘Rocks and Shoals’.

A lot of money was spent on the first few episodes of the season in order to come out with a bang. Although this meant that some later episodes would have to film on a restricted budget, this was considered a sacrifice worth making.

Frank Langella, who played Minister Jaro, went uncredited by choice. “He wanted to do the show. He did it for his children, because they loved the show. It was not done for money or exposure.” – Winrich Kolbe, director

Quark was firmly established as a ladies’ man in this episode, when the Boslic captain came in to order a drink and flirted the hell out of the part.