People talk about the LA riots as influential to the DS9 pilot, but i wonder also if the Gulf War was in the writers’ minds while developing the show. After all, the DS9 pilot is about a powerful government interfering in the politics of a faraway and unfamiliar nation, and seems concerned with the question of whether or not that interference is ethical. Given that the Gulf War was, shall we say, less than ideal, I could see Sisko’s compassionate leadership among the Bajorans as an attempt to articulate a kind of foreign policy that is ethical and that the US might hopefully practice someday. What are your thoughts? Do you feel like the Gulf War informed the way you tackled the political situation with Bajor, Cardassia, and the Federation over the course of the show? (For context, I was not alive during the Gulf War and I watched DS9 on Netflix, so I apologize if there’s anything about the early 90s that I’ve missed or misunderstood)

writergeekrhw:

Good question!

The Gulf War was definitely an influence and for pretty much the reasons you laid out. The Yugoslav Wars were also going on through the run of the series, and the Lebanese Civil War had just (mostly) ended, and the messiness of those conflicts, with their shifting ethnic and sectarian alliances and clashes, influenced us as well.

Overall, I think these events influenced DS9 to be a bit muddier than other Star Trek shows. The elegant, hopeful, but perhaps overly simplistic, “See a problem, solve a problem, warp away” storytelling of much of TOS and TNG seemed a bit less “true” given the times. We tried to bring in less certainty, more shades of gray, while still telling stories about good people trying to make the universe a better place.

All media are products of their time.