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IMDb page for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV series, a sci-fi drama set in the 24th century. Find cast, crew, episodes, ratings, trivia, videos, photos and more.
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) is an American science fiction television series created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller. The fourth series in the Star Trek media franchise, it originally aired in syndication from January 3, 1993, to June 2, 1999, spanning 176 episodes over seven seasons.
- 7
- 176 (list of episodes)
- January 3, 1993 –, June 2, 1999
- Syndication
- Overview
- Summary
- Background information
- Main cast
- Executive producers
- Staff writers
- Episode list
- Related topics
- Media
was the fourth Star Trek series and entered production in 1992. It was broadcast in first-run syndication from January 1993 until June 1999.
It was the first Star Trek series created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller rather than by Gene Roddenberry. It was also the only series to air alongside another Star Trek production throughout its entire run, airing alongside Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1993 until 1994, and then with Star Trek: Voyager from 1995 until 1999.
•Main Title Theme (seasons 1-3) file info
•Main Title Theme (seasons 4-7) file info
goes where no Star Trek series had gone before – DS9 was the first Star Trek production not based on a starship, but instead, a starbase, known as Deep Space 9 (the starship USS Defiant was introduced in season 3, but the station remained the primary setting of the series). The show is known for its complex characters and storylines, engaging battle scenes and darker (less Utopian) atmosphere. Unlike its predecessors Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine tended to avoid an episodic format for most of its run and instead featured multiple-episode story arcs.
The show broke the "standard format" for Star Trek shows a number of times as well, with a direct, first-person narrative providing the commentary for the episode "In the Pale Moonlight", a retelling of a classic TOS episode from a different angle in "Trials and Tribble-ations", life in the racially segregated 1950s in "Far Beyond the Stars", and a reintroduction of the concept of "black ops" to the Star Trek universe with Section 31: "Inquisition". The show also broke with tradition – and with the two Star Trek series that followed it – by featuring a commanding officer as the star of the show at the rank of commander, rather than captain, for a significant portion of its run, until Sisko was eventually promoted to captain in "The Adversary". Additionally, a number of the episodes and main storylines focused entirely on characters who weren't members of Starfleet: for example, those revolving around Kira, Odo, Jake Sisko, and Quark. ("Progress", "Shakaar", "The House of Quark", "Heart of Stone", "Prophet Motive", "Little Green Men", "Bar Association", "Body Parts", "Nor the Battle to the Strong", "The Ascent", "The Darkness and the Light", "Business as Usual", "Ties of Blood and Water", "Ferengi Love Songs")
The charactersUnlike other Star Trek series, DS9 also had a large cast of recurring characters. Such characters included Nog, Rom, Elim Garak, Dukat, Vedek Bareil Antos, Winn Adami, Weyoun, the Female Changeling, Damar, Martok, Kasidy Yates, Leeta, Brunt, Ishka, and Zek.
Miles O'Brien, and later Worf, were two characters imported from TNG. Worf – a major character from TNG – played a large role on DS9. Several Next Generation characters also had recurring roles on the show, such as Keiko O'Brien and Gowron. Several other TNG characters made appearances too, such as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Thomas Riker, Q, Lwaxana Troi, Kurn, Lursa, B'Etor, Admiral Alynna Nechayev, Vash, Toral and Alexander Rozhenko. In addition, Julian Bashir and Quark also had one-time appearances on The Next Generation, in "Birthright, Part I" and "Firstborn" respectively. Quark (and the station itself) also made a cameo in the pilot of Star Trek: Voyager, "Caretaker". Characters from The Original Series were also re-introduced in DS9, including Kor, Kang, Koloth, and Arne Darvin.
The series also featured a number of episodes in which the character of Miles O'Brien was subjected to particular trauma. This became an in-joke among the DS9 writing staff, who called them "O'Brien Must Suffer" episodes and went to great lengths to produce at least one such episode per season. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?))
Alien racesThe series focused on several races that were first featured on TNG, such as the Bajorans, the Cardassians, the Trill, and the Ferengi. Later, the Klingons and the Romulans (both created in TOS) became pivotal species in the series. Many other species made appearances on the series, including Vulcans, Bolians, and Benzites. The series also created many species of its own, most notably the Changelings, the Vorta, and the Jem'Hadar, who formed part of the Dominion.
Development
The decision to set the series on a space station, rather than a starship, spawned when Brandon Tartikoff originally approached Rick Berman about the show, in 1991, and specifically said he wanted it to have a format that was new for Star Trek but was classically western; if The Next Generation was Wagon Train in space, Deep Space Nine was to be The Rifleman in space – a man and his son coming to a dilapidated frontier town on the edge of known civilization. Berman brought this concept to Michael Piller, and together they set about creating a western in space. As Robert Hewitt Wolfe later explained, "We had the country doctor, and we had the barkeeper, and we had the sheriff and we had the mayor, we had it all, it was all there. We had the common man, Miles O'Brien, the Native American, Kira." Indeed, the producers initially discussed setting the show at a colony on an alien planet rather than on a space station. This idea was ultimately rejected because it was felt that it would involve too much location shooting, and because they felt that fans of Star Trek wanted to see story lines set primarily in space, not on a planet. (New Frontiers: The Story of Deep Space Nine, DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) The change of venue to a space station was largely intended to differentiate DS9 from The Next Generation, because the producers felt that having two shows about a starship airing simultaneously would be unacceptable. As co-creator and executive producer Rick Berman later explained, "Because there were two years of overlap with The Next Generation, we could not create a show that took place on a spaceship. It just seemed ridiculous to have two shows and two casts of characters that were off going where no man has gone before. It was a land-based show, it was a show that in a sense was taking place on a space station. So it had to be an entirely different concept." (Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning, DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) The decision to set the show on a fixed station rather than a traveling starship was also based upon a desire to look deeper into the actual workings of the Federation and to see how it dealt with the type of problems one wouldn't find in a show set upon a starship. Michael Piller felt that, by having the characters standing still, they would be forced to confront issues not usually applicable to people on a starship. Whereas on The Next Generation, issues raised each week could simply be forgotten about the following week as the ship visited somewhere else, on a space station, events couldn't be forgotten or left behind but instead had to have implications for the future. As Piller explained, "We didn't want to have another series of shows about space travel. We felt that there was an opportunity to really look deeper, more closely at the working of the Federation and the Star Trek universe by standing still. And by putting people on a space station where they would be forced to confront the kind of issues that people in space ships are not forced to confront. In a series that focuses on a starship, like the Enterprise, you live week by week. You never have to stay and deal with the issues that you've raised. But by focusing on a space station, you create a show about commitment. It's like the difference between a one-night stand and a marriage. On Deep Space Nine, whatever you decide has consequences the following week. So it's about taking responsibility for your decisions, the consequences of your acts." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?)) Similarly, in 2002, Piller stated, "If you look at The Next Generation, it's really about movement. You don't ever stay in one place long enough to get to know anybody. Well Deep Space Nine is a show where everybody is forced to stay week after week, so each episode, each show, is fundamentally dealing with the people who have to learn that actions have consequences, and they have to live with the consequences of their actions on a weekly basis." (New Frontiers: The Story of Deep Space Nine, DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) Setting the show in a fixed location meant that a large cast of recurring characters could be built up with relative ease; much more so than in The Original Series or The Next Generation before it, or Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, or Star Trek: Discovery since. As Rick Berman, speaking in 2002, stated, "The show was land-based, but the benefit we got from that was that by staying in one place, it enabled us to create twenty or thirty secondary and recurring characters, which really enriched the show because of all the multi-layers of relationships that have existed over the years. It's a very character-driven show as a result, and I think that makes it quite unique." (Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning, DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) The decision to set the show in a fixed location was regarded as a benefit by the series' staff writers. For example, Ira Steven Behr, speaking in 1996, commented, "We have certain advantages that I think no other Star Trek series has had, because we do have a base of operations that doesn't travel through space, which is the space station. Every story we do, the repercussions, the consequences don't disappear. It's not like the other shows where you have an adventure and then you zoom off into the great unknown. We are here, we have made a home, what we do has consequences. And I think we're able to do this mosaic, this fabric of life in the future, which I like." Similarly, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, speaking in 2002, stated, "I think if Next Generation and The Original Series were about going out there and discovering new things about other races, Deep Space Nine is about staying in one place and discovering new things about ourselves. Not that we didn't go out there and discover things, but we had the same characters, we didn't change location every week. 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. So, in a lot of ways, it was a more complex show." (New Frontiers: The Story of Deep Space Nine, DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) The series was designed to have more interpersonal conflict than its predecessors, while still staying true to the universe that Gene Roddenberry had created. Rick Berman commented, "[Deep Space 9]'s an alien space station that doesn't work the way they want it to, and that in itself created a lot of conflict. At the same, our core characters are Starfleet officers; Sisko, O'Brien, the doctor and Dax in no way vary from The Next Generation in terms of the lack of conflict among themselves. That was a rule we had to follow." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 5) Berman also commented, "What we wanted to do was something that was almost paradoxical – bring conflict but not break Gene's rules. They still play paramount importance in what we're doing. We created an environment where Starfleet officers were in a location that they weren't happy about being in, and they were in a location where the people who lived there weren't all that happy about them being there." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 8) The show's main cast was intentionally assembled to create conflict (Quark and Odo, Kira and Sisko, etc.), so as to contrast the relatively tranquil atmosphere aboard Federation starships. This was another very specific decision taken by the producers. Gene Roddenberry's golden rule was that there was to be no conflict among Starfleet characters, so the producers decided to introduce non-Starfleet characters so conflict could come from within the show rather than always coming from outside (as it did on TNG). Rick Berman recalled, "We [....] created a situation where we had people who were members of our core group who were not Starfleet: the security shapeshifter Odo; the Bajoran Major, Kira; the bartender, Quark. A group of our integral people are not Starfleet officers, and the ones that are Starfleet officers aren't crazy about where they are, so we have a lot of frustration and conflict." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 8) Writer Joe Menosky explained, "You can see right away they're not the perfectly engineered Humans of TNG. They seem more real. I don't know if that makes them as attractive to viewers or not. But they are really different, and they represent a different way to tell a story. And it was definitely a conscious choice to create that potential for conflict." Similarly, Berman stated, "Viewers didn't see that group of loving family members that existed on the first two Star Trek shows." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?)) Michael Piller also commented on this somewhat controversial aspect of the show; "One of the primary goals of the development process was to come up with a show that had more inherent conflict than The Next Generation. In order to do that, you have to understand that Gene Roddenberry had a very specific vision for humanity in the 24th century. What that meant for The Next Generation was that everybody gets along remarkably well on the Enterprise. There's very little room for interpersonal conflict between those people. In this series, we set out to create a situation that would provide natural conflict. We've populated the show with several aliens, primarily Bajorans, as we are stationed on the edge of the Bajoran star system. And the Bajorans are very different people than we are. They are people who are very spiritual and mystical and have a whole different way of looking at life than the 24th century humanist views which many of our Starfleet people will have. So immediately, there are conflicts. And then there's additional aliens from elsewhere who are thrown into the mix. So, as regular characters, not all the people are Starfleet, not all the people are Human, and as a result, you have this continuing conflict, because people who come from different places, honorable, noble people, will naturally have conflicts." (Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning, DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) Unlike with TOS and TNG, Gene Roddenberry wasn't directly involved in conceptualizing DS9. Regarding Roddenberry's involvement in the series, Rick Berman stated, "Michael and I discussed it with Gene when we were still in the early stages, but never anything conceptual." "We never got a chance to discuss it (the concept) with Gene. By the time we had it to the point that it was discussable, he was in pretty bad shape and not really in the condition that it would have been wise to discuss it with him. On two specific occasions I was with him at his house and we tried to bring it up, but it wasn't really appropriate." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 328) Director Paul Lynch remarked, "My gut feeling is that Gene would be jumping up and down. This is definitely a different take on what Gene spawned, but I think he would love it [....] While it's quite different, Deep Space Nine is also, in many ways, quite the same. All of Gene's moral requirements are upheld in this show. If we've done anything, we've expanded on what Gene created." (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine issue 1, pp. 10 & 12) Initially, Berman and Piller were at a loss for a title for the series and toyed with calling the series "The Final Frontier". During further development, the station was temporarily dubbed "Deep Space Nine", which not only stuck permanently as the name of the station, but also the title of the show itself. Despite this, the two co-creators were reportedly dissatisfied with the name. (Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Unauthorized Story, pp. 17-18) Miles O'Brien was brought aboard DS9 and made a part of the space station's senior staff because the producers felt that Colm Meaney was too talented an actor to confine his character to a transporter room. Additionally, they hoped the TNG crossover would help boost the new series' ratings. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. ?), Michael Piller explained the rationale behind each of the principal cast members, why each character was chosen, and what each one was to bring to the mix; •Jadzia Dax: "The Trill is a great race. They had some interesting ramifications on TNG. A Trill character would provide great potential for dichotomy and paradox." •Odo: "We knew that we needed some kind of Data/Spock character who looks at the world from the outside in. And the idea that an alien entity would have to find some way to pass as Human was fascinating, and seemed to give us an avenue into the kind of 'complexion of humanity' stories that we wanted to tell." •Quark: "A Ferengi would provide the show with instant humor and built-in conflict. I saw Quark as the bartender who is a constant thorn in the side of law and order, but who has a sense of humor about it. He'd be someone who could obviously throw lots of story dynamics into play." •Julian Bashir: "We decided to create a flawed character. He'd have to be brought down to size in order to grow. And we wrote him as kind of a jerk for much of the first season." •Miles O'Brien: "After we decided we were bringing him over to the new show, we thought, 'How do we use him?' We'd already decided to focus on Bajor, with this long backstory, establishing his bitterness towards the Cardassians, so it worked very nicely together." •Kira Nerys: "We liked the idea of having somebody working with the commander of the station who would be a thorn in his side, who would represent a different point of view. We knew we'd get conflict and interesting dynamics between the two characters." •Benjamin Sisko: "Every hero needs a journey. You want to take your leading man on a quest where he has to overcome personal issues as well as whatever space stuff happens to be out there. The idea of a man who is broken and who begins to repair himself is always a great beginning for drama."
Serialization
The series is best remembered for an approach to serialization, predating the format of the late-2010s Star Trek series. Ira Behr commented: "The fact that Discovery is serialized or that Picard is serialized doesn't mean much to me, because how could they not be serialized in 2019? They get to just stay with the times. It's easy to be serialized now. Thank God they're doing that, but it would only be worthy of discussion if they didn't do it. The serialization was a bold move. I look back at it now and I was really a bit of an asshole, because everyone was saying people can't keep up with it. The show was syndicated and on at different times. I didn't care about any of that. I just wanted to do the best show we could do. I could understand why certain people involved and other producers and studios would feel that that was a little bit of an annoying take, because it did hurt the fan base, but at the time, I wasn't thinking about the future. I just wanted to do the best show we could do". Ron Moore commented, "I think a lot of Battlestar was born at Deep Space Nine in that Deep Space started as much more episodic because of the nature of the show, it became more a continuing serialised structure. I really liked that, and I discovered I really liked that style of storytelling, and also particularly when we got into the later years of Deep Space, and we started telling the Dominion War story (1997-99), we would sit and argue and fight with the powers that be at Trek about making it a more realistic war, about making it grittier, and ugly; adding more ambiguity to the characters, and roughing it up a little bit, and I kept bumping my head against the strictures at Trek. What Star Trek is could not accommodate things that I wanted to do, so I started to have this sort of pent up frustration about ‘well if we were really going to do it right’, these ideas would sit in the back of my head so when Battlestar came along, I could now do all of those things that I was never allowed to do at Deep Space." Due to the non-episodic nature of DS9, some of the series was lost on the casual viewer when it first aired. Many also believe that the changing television landscape contributed to DS9's ratings trouble, as local TV stations which had aired TNG in prime time became WB and UPN affiliates and pushed syndicated programming to the margins. Subsequent Star Trek shows Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise had network support from UPN and a guaranteed time slot. DS9 was also the only series to run opposite another Star Trek show (first The Next Generation, then Voyager) for the entirety of its run (the first twelve episodes of the third season aired without another series on). Additionally, certain markets, notably in the UK, would only play one Star Trek series, in its entirety, at a time. Thus, events alluded to in The Next Generation or Voyager that happened in Deep Space Nine took months to "sync up."
Legacy
was nominated for 32 Emmy Awards, mostly in "technical" categories such as visual effects and makeup. It won four: "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Main Title Theme Music", "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects", and "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series" (twice). remained a fan-favorite series throughout its seven-year run, with reviewers consistently lauding the series for its bold shift in tone from The Next Generation. Most notable among such changes was the concept of inter-personal conflict – something which Gene Roddenberry himself was said to have forbidden. Said Ronald D. Moore, DS9 producer and screenwriter: Robert Hewitt Wolfe remarked, "The truth of DS9 is, we had a great ensemble cast. Michael Piller created all these terrific characters [with the exception of Worf]." ("Flashback: The Way of the Warrior", Star Trek Magazine issue 127) Several former producers and head writers from DS9 have been involved in other sci-fi series, including the creation of the "re-envisioned" Battlestar Galactica, as well as The 4400, Farscape, Medium and Outlander. In 2019, the documentary What We Left Behind was released. The documentary featured interviews with the actors, writers, production staff and fans, as well as featuring segments in which the writers pitched a new episode. There was also a rivalry with another popular and critically acclaimed television series, Babylon 5, created and produced by J. Michael Straczynski for Warner Bros. The two productions, which ran largely concurrently, were observed to be so similar that Babylon 5 fans accused Paramount, to whom Straczynski had previously pitched his series, of plagiarism. Considering how fellow Star Trek alumni like Walter Koenig and Andreas Katsulas had major roles in the rival series, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry agreed to a guest appearance in Babylon 5 as a gesture of goodwill to encourage a reconciliation between the two sets of fans. Rick Berman commented that rivalry was: "purely a fan thing," adding: "there was a time when, I don’t know whether it was specifically Straczynski or other people, it was implied that he had pitched an idea similar to DS9 to Paramount and that it had been rejected and that, lo and behold, a year or so later DS9 came about. The implication being that Michael Piller and I perhaps stole all or part of his idea, which was always amusing to Michael and I because it was completely untrue. We had no knowledge of this gentleman. If he did pitch something to Paramount, we never heard about it. DS9 was a show that was created by Michael and me and Brandon Tartikoff, who was the recent head of Paramount at the time, without any knowledge of Straczynski or of anything that he had ever pitched. So when we were accused of stealing his idea it was a little sad but at the same time a little comical to us."
Starring
•Avery Brooks as Commander/Captain Benjamin Sisko
Also starring
•Rene Auberjonois as Odo •Nicole de Boer as Ensign/Lieutenant jg Ezri Dax (1998-1999) •Michael Dorn as Lt. Commander Worf (1995-1999) •Siddig El Fadil as Doctor Bashir •Terry Farrell as Lieutenant/Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax (1993-1998) •Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko •Colm Meaney as Chief O'Brien •Armin Shimerman as Quark •Nana Visitor as Major/Colonel Kira
Special guest stars
•Steven Berkoff as Hagath •Rosalind Chao as Keiko O'Brien •Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun •Meg Foster as Onaya •Jonathan Frakes as Thomas Riker / William T. Riker •Louise Fletcher as Winn Adami •Salome Jens as the Female Changeling •Penny Johnson as Kasidy Yates •Richard Kiley as Gideon Seyetik •Richard Libertini as Akorem Laan •Andrea Martin as Ishka •Bill Mumy as Kellin •Brock Peters as Joseph Sisko •Andrew Robinson as Elim Garak •Tim Russ as Tuvok •William Sadler as Sloan •Michael Sarrazin as Trevean •Wallace Shawn as Grand Nagus Zek •Kurtwood Smith as Thrax •Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard / Locutus of Borg •Leigh Taylor-Young as Yanas Tigan •Clarence Williams III as Omet'iklan
•Rick Berman – Executive Producer
•Michael Piller – Executive Producer (1993–1995)
•Ira Steven Behr, Staff Writer
•Hans Beimler, Staff Writer (1995–1999)
•René Echevarria, Staff Writer (1994–1999)
•Ronald D. Moore, Staff Writer (1994–1999)
•Bradley Thompson, Staff Writer (1996–1999)
•David Weddle, Staff Writer (1996–1999)
Season 1
DS9 Season 1, 19 episodes:
Season 2
DS9 Season 2, 26 episodes:
Season 3
DS9 Season 3, 26 episodes:
•DS9 directors
•DS9 performers
•DS9 recurring characters
•DS9 studio models
•DS9 writers
•Character crossover appearances
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comics (IDW)
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comics (Malibu)
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comics (Marvel)
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine soundtracks
•Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on VHS
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the third live-action television series in the Star Trek franchise and aired in syndication from January 1993 through June 1999.
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A sci-fi series set on a space station near Bajor, where Commander Sisko leads a diverse crew against alien threats. Find out where to watch the seven seasons of this spinoff of "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine chronicles the adventures of Captain Benjamin Sisko and a team of Starfleet officers who take command of a remote space station on the edge of a frontier and a critical crossroads of galactic events. 7 seasons • 176 episodes • 1993-1999. Cast of Characters. Benjamin Sisko. Kira Nerys. Odo. Worf. Quark. Jadzia Dax.
A spinoff of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," this series follows a crew on a space station near a wormhole. Watch full episodes of the drama series on CBS.com and connect with other fans.
