With DS9's official Twentieth Anniversary nearly upon us (it actually started production in the summer of 1992), I've been digging out all the books about it I have. I was reading in the Making of Deep Space Nine that an original story idea the writers had was to make the origin of the station a mystery (no Cardassians or Bajorans) and that it had been controlled by several races before Starfleet arrived. The writers made the right choice by setting the series near Bajor on a Cardassian station, but do you think the "Tower of Babel" idea would have been an interesting alternative?
Kinda sounds a bit cliche at this stage after going through the various Stargate series. Mysterious Alien station is a bit meh. DS9 got some history and politics attached to it.
I can't imagine the series without the Bajorans and the Cardassians, although the idea is interesting. At that point, Stargate was just a thought in Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's meagre minds.
The "mysterious alien space station" does open a lot of avenues for stories, like finding ancient alien tech, buried secrets and whatnot, but it was probably for the best they went the direction they did.