Ron D. Moore Q & A from AOL’s Message Boards
Dated 9806.30
Q: Has a date been set to begin shooting the season opener?
A: We start shooting on July 7.
Q: Will the New Dax be a Regular or Just a guest star have you decided if Dax’s new host will be a Male or a Female and who might play he or she?
A: The next Dax will be a regular castmember and she will be a woman.
Q: Was there ever any discussion about the rest of the Federation/Klingon Alliance not trusting Garak as much as Sisko & Crew?
A: Yes, and we’re talking about various ways to play this angle during year seven.
Q: A few weeks ago I asked you why there were no Intrepid or Sovereign class ships in the DS9 episode Sacrifice of angels and you told me that it was because you wanted to keep the Intrepid class ships for voyager and the Sovereigns for the movies. If thats the case then why did the Defiant appear in First Contact if thats solely ment for DS9?
A: We won’t use Sovereigns or Intreprids on DS9 because those ships are strongly indentified with the TNG and VOY franchises. The Defiant appeared in FC as a way of bringing Worf into the film. I doubt that we would’ve put a Defiant-class ship in the b.g. solely as eye-candy.
Q: in the TNG episode Cause and effect the Bozeman hits the warp nacelle of the Enterprise and the ship blows up. Now in Star Trek 2:The wrath of Khan, Kirk completly blows of the warp nacelle of the Reliant and the ship continues to fly through space. Why the difference, why can one ship still fly through space yet others blow up.
A: Uh… maybe the extended warranty ran out?
Q: I noticed a lot of foreshadowing in “Sound of Her Voice.” Was the whole death speech about missing friends originally intended for the closing of the show, or was it added later to foreshadow the death of Dax?
A: I wrote it to intentionally foreshadow the death of Dax. By that point in the season, her departure was virtually a done deal.
Q: A number of people feel Dax?s death wasn?t handled very well. Personally I thought it seemed as though is was written for a throw away character not someone I?ve enjoyed watching for six years and grown attached to. I felt after watching this episode there wasn?t much thought given to the feelings of the fans. I got the impression the character of Dax was paying for the actions of Terry Farrel. Why were the viewers denied a funeral for Dax andforced to watch a disruptive Odo/Kira quarrel and yet another tedious scene with Vic Fontain? Ron, don?t the fans deserve some sort of closure for this character? My biggest gripe of all is that even though I knew Dax was leaving I wanted to feel some sorrow for the character, the same way I did when Yar, Kirk, and yes even when Kes left. I really felt this episode would have been better if it paid tribute to Dax, rather than taking an almost indifferent attitude towards the character.
A: Dax’s departure was not something we just tossed off. It was the subject of long and difficult discussions among the writing/producing staff and with the studio. We discussed the option of showing a funeral, but no one had much enthusiasm for going that way. Since the symbiont was going to be saved and transferred to another host (in itself, the subject of an even more acrimonious debate) there was a built-in limitation on just how much of a cathartic funeral we could deliver. The character of Dax, as opposed to Jadzia, was not dead and would be just fine, thank you, by the beginning of next season. That being the case, we saw limited appeal for eulogies that would inevitably have to pull up short of truly saying good-bye and providing closure to anyone. Yar and Kirk were dead, they weren’t coming back, and their friends had to grieve along with the audience. Dax is coming back, albeit with a different body and a new personality added to the mix. Given that very salient fact, we felt it was better to have only one scene with Sisko and her coffin rather than a series of quasi-eulogies that would’ve ended up saying very little.
Q: Given that the events of TOTP affected Worf so much, I would have expected to see more of him in the last ten minutes. Some response to the events which had just unfolded. Was this in the original story break, and cut for time?
A: No, we never planned another scene with Worf after the Klingon death cry.
Q: If you’ve been perusing the board, you’ve noticed a lot of comments about scenes in “Tears” that either should have been deleted (Vic Fontaine, the Odo/Kira spat) or added (Jadzia’s funeral). How did the story breaking session go on this script, leading to the decisions that were ultimately made?
A: We trimmed two scenes out the Odo/Kira story after the show was shot. We loved the Vic scene and its associated storyline of Quark and Bashir trying to get over the loss of Dax. Bashir and Quark begin the episode by mourning their own loss of the character and trying to come to grips with the finality of that loss which in turn perfectly foreshadowed the actual death of Dax herself at the end. See above for why we didn’t do a funeral scene.
Q: I want to know why Dax’s death was written the way it was. Instead of a meaningless death she should have died a heroic death. For example sacrificing herself to fix something in the Defiant’s engine room and thus allowing it to complete it’s mission. Why wasn’t it done like that? I think alot of people feel like it was done this way to spite the actress and the fans just because she and Paramount couldn’t come to a contract agreement.
A: We discussed various and myriad ways of killing off the character, but we decided against “The Heroic Sacrifice” because it’s just been done to death (no pun intended). Spock went out that way (for a time anyway) in Trek II and we’ve seen many, many people check out in Trek while giving their all for the cause (the mission, their friends, their planet, their universe, etc.) and we felt that it would ring false in this episode. We decided that being at the wrong place at the wrong time was a much more believable and poignant way for Jadzia to die. It should go without saying that it was not done out of “spite.”
Q: I thought David Birney did an excellent job as the Romulan Senator. as there any chance he will return?
A: While there will be other Romulan characters, we have no plans to reprise David Birney’s character.
Q: Are Odo and Kira sleeping together?
A: Yes. I’ve seen pictures.
Q: Was it implied that the “good guys” indeed captured Cardassia Prime?
A: No. The invasion was limited to the Chintoka system only.
Q: Just got finished watching “Tears of the Prophets,” and there was one thing that bothered me a lot. When Sisko was giving his speech in the ward room, talking about the common interests of the three empires, he referred to the Federation as “humans.” I thought this issue was supposed to have been cleared up in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Is the federation still a human-only club?
A: You’re right, it was an unfortunate choice of words.
Q: Why was Kira in charge of the Defient when she is in charge of the Space station?
A: Worf was paralyzed with fear and Kira saw that she had to take control… Okay, okay. The chain of command on the Defiant has obviously been somewhat inconsistant over the years. Our usual way of thinking puts Worf as Defiant XO under Sisko and as acting CO in Sisko’s absence. When Worf and Kira are both on the Defiant, Worf should still be the XO, but clearly in “Tears…” Kira stepped in. We can only assume that for reasons that aren’t clear, Sisko designated Kira to be the XO on this particular mission, perhaps freeing up Worf to act in some other capacity during the battle. Of course, the real reason was that we came up with this whole beat relatively late in the game. In fact, the scenes in question were on the stage and being rehearsed when we decided to play Sisko as feeling so incapacitated by what happened to the prophets that he needed to leave the Bridge. Kira hadn’t had much to do in the show and we thought she’d do a good job of stepping into the breach. To be honest, the Worf question never came up in the extremely limited time frame everyone was working under.
Q: Why did Dax stay behind?
A: Dax and Worf were not supposed to be serving together on missions after the events in “Change of Heart”.
Q: What did worf say in Klingonese after Dax died? Was it a prayer? Was he swearing to kill Dukat?
A: It was a Klingon death chant.
Q: Why kill her period? If you can’t work out a contract at least just transfer her. You can spring for a few geust spots, right? Just say she has superior knowledge of something about the war which would justify transferring her to a ship, etc, etc.
A: Transferring Dax would’ve meant transferring Worf as well, and we weren’t going to do that. It also would’ve meant that everyone would be waiting for a Dax guest shot all year and our characters would’ve been talking about her all season (especially Sisko, who would’ve presumably kept touch with the Old Man wherever s/he was). We didn’t want Terry to go, but once she made the decision, we felt it was in the best interests of the show to kill Jadzia and start next season with a new regular who would be the next incarnation of Dax. (dth.com)
Q: Will the Dominion’s white shorage ever be addressed?
A: The Dominion has found another way to supply their troops with White and I hope that we can mention this at some point this year.
Q: We will see Section 31 again, won’t we?
A: Yes.
Q: What is your opinion of the decision to use the atomic bombs at the end of World War II?
A: I think that the decision was justified at the time. President Truman and the military leaders in summer 1945 did not have the benefits of hindsight which we now enjoy. At the time, they were facing the very real possibility that the home islands of Japan would have to be invaded at a very high cost in Allied lives. Armed with a new and potentially decisive weapon, it is hard to imagine that the US would not choose to use it to bring the conflict to a close. There is a school of thought that says the bomb was used in order to impress the Russians and to establish US atomic superiority in the post-war world, but this misstates the nature of US/Soviet relations in 1945. While there was clearly growing tension between the two powers, US diplomatic efforts were concentrated on bringing the Soviets in to the war with Japan, not frightening them away. Indeed, both FDR and Truman went to great lengths to obtain promises from Stalin that the USSR would join the fight at both Yalta and Potsdam. The idea of demonstrating the power of the bomb to Japan by exploding it on an uninhabited island had merit, but there were several unknowns that Truman had to ponder: What if it didn’t work? Inviting the Japanese to view a bomb that fizzled (a real concern when dealing with brand-new technology) could have encouraged even stiffer resistance and given them false hope that things were turning their way. And even if the bomb did perform as planned, was there any guarantee that it would convince the military leadership of Japan to surrender? By all accounts, the Japanese were preparing to oppose the US invasion forces at every step of the way. Certainly, the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa had to give credence to the view that even in the face of overwhelming firepower, the Japanese army, navy, and air forces were prepared to fight to the bitter end. Would simply watching an a-bomb test change their minds? Would such a test then give away the element of surprise in exchange for nothing? It’s also been said that the US would not have used the bomb against Germany and that the decision was therefore racially motivated. I will not deny the strong feelings of racial hatred which colored American feelings toward the Japanese, but it should be noted that the atomic bomb was originally developed for use against Nazi Germany. If say, the Allied invasion of Normandy had failed only a year earlier, I don’t think that Truman would’ve hesitated to use the bomb against targets in the Fatherland.
