By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 27 seconds ago
Gene Roddenberry famously didn’t like the idea of conflict between humans, believing that in the far future, everybody would have evolved beyond that. Ironically, however, the Star Trek franchise has always been full of conflict that most fans never see. I’m talking, of course, about the fighting between writers and producers.
More than a few Trek writers (especially in the early days of The Next Generation) have horror stories about how their scripts were changed by leadership; in fact, this happened to Tracy Tormé so often that he began writing under a pen name before fleeing the franchise altogether. By the time Deep Space Nine rolled around, things were usually more copacetic between the creative team and the production team. But for the memorable episode of “Melora,” one forgotten writer secretly called the producers out for ignoring the needs of those in wheelchairs!
Scotty, Ramp Me Up
To understand this bonkers tale, you’ll need to know a bit about “Melora” and the thought process behind making the episode. You see, the title of the episode refers to Melora Pazlar, an alien Starfleet officer who has trouble navigating the gravity of places like Deep Space Nine. Because of this, she uses a special mechanical apparatus to get from Point A to Point B. While characters like Dr. Bashir use plenty of technical jargon to describe the apparatus, all you really need to know is that it’s a futuristic wheelchair.
When Deep Space Nine was still being developed, the producers considered creating a wheelchair-bound officer as the show’s chief science officer, but they worried about the cost involved. That’s why the science officer became Jadzia Dax, an able-bodied Trill with generations of memories. However, then-showrunner Michael Piller really liked the idea of eventually featuring such a character, even if it was just in a one-shot episode. Because of this, the writers were encouraged to create a story featuring such a wheelchair-bound officer, and “Melora” is the fruit of their labors.
The Script Went Downhill First
Evan Carlos Somers was a Writers’ Guild intern at DS9, and he knew about their desire to create such an episode. When he was allowed to pitch episodes for the second season, he pitched “Melora” while pointing out that he could bring some insights into the episode that nobody else could. After all, Somers used a wheelchair, so he would be able to write the titular Melora (not to mention others’ reactions to seeing a handicapped person on the station) more authentically than anyone else.
However, Somers rushed the script, writing “Melora” in about a week and a half. Several people helped rewrite the script, including Michael Piller. While Somers didn’t love all of the rewrites, he did enjoy how the final episode preserved one thing that he secretly wrote into the script: his own difficulty navigating the set!
They See Her Rolling
In the 24th century, you’d expect a character like Melora to have a really fancier set of wheels for getting around. In fact, it wasn’t supposed to have wheels at all. The producers originally intended to re-use the antigravity chair from the TNG episode “Too Short a Season,” but it proved too big to use for the narrow sets of DS9. Therefore, the script handwaved an explanation about how Federation anti-grav technology doesn’t work with Cardassian technology, forcing Dr. Bashir to replicate Melora’s much simpler wheelchair design.
According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, Somers essentially channeled his frustrations of working on the show into his script. While working for Star Trek, he had to regularly get in and out of an ancient office that originally had no wheelchair ramps, and he had to use “one of the world’s smallest elevators.” Things weren’t much better on the actual set, either, but Somers got the last laugh by giving the fictional Melora his own very real struggles.
“So Bashir has to replicate a much simpler wheelchair for her,” he said, referring to the chair that he helped design. “And she encounters all the problems that I did whenever I went down to the DS9 set to snoop around.” In this way, a relatively unknown writer secretly signalled that the producers of the most progressive franchise in television history weren’t that considerate about the needs of the handicapped.
Infinite Spite In Infinite Combinations
Personally, I love a writer who is motivated by spite, and it turns out that Evan Carlos Somers also used his “Melora” script to call out fellow Star Trek writers. As reported by The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, Somers hated “Ethics,” the TNG episode where Worf gets paralyzed and, per Klingon cultural tradition, considers killing himself. The writers claimed he “resented the message in ‘Ethics’ that Worf is worthless now that he’s disabled and therefore must kill himself.
Accordingly, he wrote “Melora” with a more positive message. The title character is offered a cure for her disability, but she refuses, a moment Somers describes as “the real driving force behind my wanting to do this episode.” In this way, the largely forgotten episode remains one of the most progressive Star Trek stories ever written. As for Somers, he proved that no handicap could hold him back. He could, in fact, do all things through spite, which strengthens him, especially when it comes to the producers!
