How ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ Crafted One of Its More Controversial Episodes
One of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s defining episodes owes a key part of its success to one late night drink.
The controversial and acclaimed hour “In the Pale Moonlight,” which turned 25 this month, finds Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) struggling to justify the moral and ethical compromises he made to trick the Romulans into joining Starfleet in their war against the Changeling-led Dominion.
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The stakes of the episode couldn’t be higher. And the only thing harder than the toll Sisko’s lies take on him was figuring out the structure for this outside-the-box episode, one that features Sisko seemingly breaking the fourth wall as he records a personal log directly into camera, recounting the chain of events that led this once self-respecting officer to find solace at the bottom of a bottle.
According to DS9 writer Ronald D. Moore, a night of drinking inspired his uncredited rewrite of Michael Taylor’s original teleplay, which weaves Sisko’s confessionals around a riveting conspiracy sparked by our hero. In doing so, one of Star Trek’s most compelling hours was born.
For “Pale Moonlight’s” 25th anniversary, Moore and Taylor joined The Hollywood Reporter for an interview about the making of this classic episode, the differences in Taylor’s initial story, and the episode’s controversial ending.
“We were all sort of flummoxed on what to do with the story,” Taylor tells THR. The scribe, who would later go on to work on Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, was then a freelance writer assigned to this episode. A fan of history and spy literature in general, Taylor did some research and unlocked a core piece of the story.
“The Zimmerman Telegram was something sent that helped get [the United States] into World War I,” Taylor explains. “It was a coded telegram sent by the Germans to Mexico offering an alliance, in case the U.S. entered the war.” But Taylor had a twist on the idea: “What if this message was faked to get us into the war? What if Sisko did something similar and was behind a concocted forgery?”
In the episode, Sisko partners with the station’s exiled Cardassian spy turned tailor, Garak (Andrew Robinson), and they conspire to create a fake holographic presentation that depicts Dominion figureheads plotting to attack the Romulans. With Garak’s help, Sisko springs an alien forger out of a Klingon prison to manufacture this fiction. If it works, the Federation can turn the tide. If it fails, Sisko’s deception will have forced the Romulans to align with the Dominion and likely defeat Starfleet.
Taylor’s initial story — like his previous DS9 script, the classic episode “The Visitor” — centered on Sisko’s son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton), who was a burgeoning reporter for the Federation News Service.
“It was going to be about how Jake would find out his dad is up to something with Garak, and father and son would be at odds,” Moore recalls. “And [the writers] felt that it was false to have those two in conflict. We were so deep into the Dominion War at that point, and putting Jake in the center of it, as I recall, just felt like the wrong impulse.”
Before that, the original premise — which was inspired by the Gulf of Tonkin incident that brought the U.S. into the Vietnam War — also centered on Jake. This version saw Jake “Watergating” a highly regarded Bajoran figure, First Minister Shakaar. If Jake exposed the secret about Shakaar’s past, it would upend all of Bajor — so Ben Sisko would step in to stop his son from sharing it. But the DS9 writers room, led by showrunner Ira Steven Behr, was unable to crack that version as well.
Eventually, the team focused on Sisko luring one of the Federation’s greatest enemies into the fray.
Depicting Stafleet captains in such a way had never been done before due to Trek boss Rick Berman’s often-strict upholding of creator Gene Roddenberry’s views on how the franchise’s heroes should behave. The Dominion War that dominated the last few seasons of DS9’s run was also a heavily serialized arc, which was a rarity on TV back then — especially on Trek. Thankfully, with Berman and the higher-ups somewhat distracted by another Trek series, DS9 was able to get away with it.
“I think [‘Pale Moonlight’] did kind of slip between the cracks in terms of there being a lot of focus on Voyager,” Moore remembers.
The writers opted to rebreak the story, putting the focus on Sisko. Scripting duties landed on Moore.
“We were struggling with it because it wasn’t quite clear what the show was, or what was working,” Moore says.
In this new draft, Moore knew he wanted Sisko working with Garak on a plot to bring the Romulans to the front line. Moore would then thread a series of escalating compromises that Sisko would make in his efforts to save the galaxy by way of continued warfare.
The beats where Sisko narrates his recollection of the events directly at the camera were Moore’s addition, as was a scene where Sisko and his science officer and trusted friend, Dax (Terry Farrell), role-played a hypothetical debate between the Federation and Romulans. Here, Sisko takes the side of Starfleet, Dax the Romulans, as the two discuss the barriers to the “what if” scenario Sisko was contemplating, one that he was willing to put into action — based on a lie — if it meant lessening the amount of Federation causality reports.
“The audience had to understand so many aspects of the Dominion War — who the players were, and what the state of play was. And I remember when I was first writing it, I was struggling with how to get all this exposition out to the audience,” says Moore of figuring out the role-playing scene, which served to explain those details.
From there, Sisko sets his plan into motion and it’s a series of clandestine deals with individuals like the station’s most nefarious resident, Quark (Armin Shimerman), that require the captain to peel away layers of his moral armor. By the end of the episode, Sisko has shed most of his uniform in the process of baring his soul. That choice, Moore recalls, came out of that night of drinking.
“It came in the same kind of epiphany of ‘let’s do it all in flashback.’ Because once I had that frame, it kind of then defines everything within the [episode’s] structure. So the whole business about him taking off the clothes, I don’t remember where that came up, but it was a great metaphor for the whole thing,” says Moore. “And as I set through the script in that framework, I knew that each scene was a step to hell for Benjamin Sisko in the past, because he was already in hell at the beginning.”
Sisko’s personal hell only gets deeper when the Romulan politician Sisko seeks out, the icy Vreenak (Stephen McHattie), arrives at DS9 in a cloaked shuttle. The special miniature effects employed to depict Vreenak’s arrival were a memorable part of the episode for Moore.
“That shot wasn’t a cost-saving thing or anything like that, it was intended to be just a cool effect to see a ship decloak in the landing bay.”
Soon after Vreenak views Sisko and Garak’s “proof” that the Dominion are plotting to violate their non-aggression pact with the Romulans, he realizes it’s a fake. He then threatens to go back to Romulus and relay to the higher-ups Sisko’s treachery. But, thanks to Garak, Vreenak’s shuttle explodes offscreen — without Sisko’s knowledge — and the Romulans are led to believe that the Dominion are responsible. Prior to Vreenak’s demise, Moore originally intended for audiences to spend more time with the pivotal figure.
“There were some small scenes that were cut for time and budget that had more to do with the Romulan shuttle and its explosion. I think I’d written some scenes that were actually on the shuttle, and you saw more of how the plot played out. I think I realized in a conversation with Ira that actually, you didn’t need it at all. And he was right.”
Following Vreenak’s death, Sisko confronts Garak in his tailor shop with a couple of punches — which Moore saw being filmed when he went down to set. By episode’s end, Sisko gets his wish — the Romulans align with Starfleet in battle — and the beleaguered captain admits to camera that he “can live with it.” Moore recalls that he was prepared to have a major battle with Berman over that very un-Roddenberry ending.
“That was the thing I was the most worried about having big fights with Rick about. I knew this was a dark journey into the soul for our leading man. If there was any kind of argument about it, it was fairly low key and it just blew over. And I don’t even think there was much of an argument. I think [Rick] didn’t like it. I don’t think it’s his favorite episode, by any stretch. But, to me, that was what it was all about.”
Sisko actor Brooks was also apparently onboard with the places this atypical episode took his iconic character.
“I think he embraced the complexity of it,” Moore says. “I think he appreciated really stretching and pushing the character.”
Taylor also appreciated the places where the final episode, and its visual tone, took Sisko.
“I remember watching it for the first time, in a hotel room, on some trip — and it just really had that dark, noirish sense,” Taylor says. “It epitomized one aspect of Deep Space Nine for me — as both a fan and as a casual freelance contributor — which was an ability and willingness to do stories in a way that were more realistic. … now we’re seeing the outgrowth of that in a way on Star Trek: Picard [season three]. I really enjoy watching it, and I don’t know if you ever would have seen that kind of storytelling without Deep Space Nine, or without this episode helping take that first step.”
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