DS9 series bible

[Chick_McGeester]

Wasnt the paraplegic character who floated around her quarters supposed to be an original character but was scrapped because it would have been a pain in the ass to shoot her all the time with special fx?

Me thinks you're thinking of Melora.

They did consider that sort of character as a cast regular but dropped it. the idea was recycled as the episode Melora later on.

I knew I wasnt crazy. I remember hearing of that character right when DS9 came out. And yeah they mentioned how they ended up ditching the idea. I thought I also remember hearing that they went with Odo instead. But I could be wrong about that...

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

My copy of that book is in storage. Could you also please quote the bit where the original idea was that the show would take place on Bajor and focus on Dr. Amoros with Lt. Ro in charge of the Starfleet base?

Here's what I can find in the book on that:

It was to have been an exterior set, built about an hour away from Los Angeles, somewhere up north, It would be a frontier outpost - a twenty-fourth-century version of Fort Laramie on the edge of the frontier. Its alien structures had been looted and burned by Cardassians - a twenty-fourth-century version of Los Angeles itself, after the Rodney King trial riots.
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In this outpost, somewhere in a trackless desert on the planet Bajor, each week we would follow the adventures of such regular characters as Lieutenant Ro Laren and Dr. Julian Amoros as Starfleet attempted to help the Barorans bring order back to their world.
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Often conflicting with Starfleet's goals would be Kai Opaka - the man who was spiritual leader of the Bajorans. Visitors who met with the Kai would have to disrobe while the Kai probed their pagh through deep-tissue massage of their feet...

As Michael Piller says, "if you're going to have a show set in space, you basically have three options - on a ship, on an alien planet, or on a space station."
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With the ship option ruled out for the moment, Berman and Piller decided to set the series in another common Star Trek setting - a starbase, and they briefly thought about selecting a starbase on an alien planet. The alien planet that came to mind was Bajor - a world that they had created in their Next Generation script "Ensign Ro."
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That episode had briefly featured a makeshift Bajoran refugee encampment on the planet's surface, and Berman and Piller thought equally briefly of expanding on that idea as the new series' setting - envisioning it as an alien version of a Hong Kong colony, built as a live set north of Los Angeles.
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But with the cost of a full, first-unit production crew running at about five to six thousand dollars per hour, and thinking about those charges totaling up each week for the two half-days it would take to move production of the series from the interior sets on the Paramount lot to the hypothetical live sets in some undetermined location and back again, both Berman and Piller gave up the idea of that kind of setting very quickly. And since outdoor settings are difficult to realistically achieve on an indoor set, that propelled them toward the third option: a space station.

Thanks!

 

[Tulaberry whine]

I remember reading about early ideas for the space station and one was that it would be a sort of Tower of Babel in that over the years it had been gradually built by different alien races - so it had become a mish mash of their different styles etc.

I loved that idea - it had so much potential. I'm not sure it would have worked as well as Terok Nor as the setting for DS9 but it was a great idea all the same.

 

[C_Miller]

There may have been multiple forms of the bible, but this is clearly the one that went to the writers and producers. If they weren't going to get Ro or use the Tower of Babel plot line, those would not end up going out to everyone, as you don't want people to write about them if they aren't happening. And most likely the issue with Michelle Forbes not wanting to come to DS9 was resolved very early in the creative process. You never or should never bank on one particular actor without consulting them first.

 

[JoeD80]

Sometimes scripts will be written with characters not locked down yet, and they do have to come out of a script and others are brought in because of a casting issue, though they worked the Forbes one out early on. All that has to be done is just that a revised bible will be sent to the writers; the version linked above isn't the final version either. There were more revisions made at least up to September according to the Making of book.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I remember reading that passage regarding the show taking place on the planet and thought it would have been an interesting concept. I'm guessing they abandoned it early though because it would have been difficult to generate stories. Too grounding I guess.

 

[Navaros]

I disagree with you. I don't think that Odo staying in Human form was "cheerleading". It was merely that he would not fit in with solids if he did look like them. He would have been embarrassed, and Odo does not take embarrassment well.

I didn't mean only his humanoid form when I say pro-human cheerleading, but also lines by Odo such as: "are you questioning my loyalty [to you, Sisko, and the Federation]?"

Odo is supposed to be loyal to justice, period, not persons or institutions when they conflict with justice. This also becomes a huge problem when Odo agrees not to provide the cure to the genocide disease just because Sisko tell hims not to. Odo being complacent in the genocide in that way is way OOC for Odo, since he is supposed to be loyal to justice above all else. That's a great example IMO of how the Odo character's integrity suffers and is sabotaged by being written to support evil human actions just because they are done by humans.

 

[firehawk12]

Sorry for the necrobump, but did this (and the other series bibles) ever get rehosted anywhere? The link doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

[TheSeeker]

@firehawk12 , please create a new thread next time. It's been over 13 years since the last response!