{"id":348302,"date":"2026-03-20T01:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/348302\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T01:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:31:19","slug":"one-of-star-treks-best-episodes-was-created-out-of-spite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/348302\/","title":{"rendered":"One Of Star Trek’s Best Episodes Was Created Out Of Spite"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Chris Snellgrove<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t | Published 43 seconds ago\t\t<\/p>\n

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Ever learn about someone for the first time and feel an immediate kinship with them? Recently, I learned about the late, great Evan Carlos Somers, someone who wrote for the best Transformers show ever made: Beast Wars. He also wrote the episode \u201cMelora\u201d for Deep Space Nine, which just happens to be the greatest Star Trek show ever made (I said what I said, haters!).<\/p>\n

What intrigued me most about Somers is that he wrote \u201cMelora\u201d out of spite. Part of that spite was for the Paramount<\/a> production offices and the DS9 set itself. As a man in a wheelchair, Somers discovered how tough it was to get around the studio, and he made sure the wheelchair-bound Melora faced the same difficulties navigating the most famous space station in the quadrant. On top of that, he wrote \u201cMelora\u201d largely to wave a middle finger at the writers of \u201cEthics.\u201d That\u2019s the TNG episode where a paralyzed Worf<\/a> wants to (as the kids on Starfleet Academy might say) unalive himself with the help of Commander Riker.<\/p>\n

The Best Parking Spot On The Station<\/p>\n

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This tale is gonna need a double dose of context, so buckle up. The most notable thing about the \u201cMelora\u201d is that even in the 24th century, the titular Starfleet officer must use a wheelchair to move around the station. This is because she comes from a low-gravity planet, and her fancy hoverchair is incompatible with the station\u2019s Cardassian technology. The episode was pitched and originally written (it got later rewrites) by Evan Carlos Somers, who felt that his life as a handicapped person would help him more authentically write for a wheelchair-bound character.<\/p>\n

The big emotional thrust of the episode comes when Dr. Bashir develops a \u201ccure\u201d for Melora that would allow her to easily walk in Earth normal gravity. However, it would keep her from returning to her homeworld. It would also fundamentally change who she is, and she eventually decides not to go through with it just to make Bashir happy. In this way, the handicapped Somers wrote a quintessential Star Trek<\/a> episode in which a character refuses to be defined by her disability and, instead, fully embraces it.<\/p>\n

Today Is A Good Day To Die<\/p>\n

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While he was motivated to write \u201cMelora\u201d largely out of his desire to honestly portray the lived experience of a handicapped person, Somers also wanted to write a response to the Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/a> episode, \u201cEthics.\u201d This is the episode where Worf gets paralyzed by some falling barrels, and he considers committing ritual suicide because of Klingon cultural customs. They believe if you can\u2019t walk, you can\u2019t fight, and if you can\u2019t fight, you might as well be dead. Worf is unable to convince Riker to help with his assisted suicide and is unwilling to ask his son, so he reluctantly agrees to an experimental medical procedure that allows him to walk again.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/a> Magazine, Evan Carlos Somers revealed that \u201cEthics\u201d was an episode that \u201chad gotten a little under my skin.\u201d While acknowledging that Klingons have their own cultural values, he still felt that \u201cwe\u2019re making statements with Star Trek\u201d and that \u201cmessages and values are being broadcast loud and clear.\u201d In this case, he \u201creented the message in \u2018Ethics\u2019\u2013that Worf is worthless now that he\u2019s disabled and therefore must kill himself.\u201d This motivated the writing of \u201cMelora\u201d because \u201cI always thought it would be nice to create a disabled character who\u2019s accepted for what she is and doesn\u2019t have to change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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In retrospect, \u201cMelora\u201d did have a nice message, but I find it personally hilarious that this progressive episode was written out of spite for the writers of an earlier TNG episode. Even funnier, \u201cEthics\u201d was written by Ronald D. Moore, the Klingon expert who later went on to create the acclaimed Battlestar Galactica<\/a> reboot.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s considered one of Star Trek\u2019s best writers, but that didn\u2019t keep a young intern-turned-writer from calling him out with one of DS9\u2019s craziest episodes. Somers was powered by spite the same way the Enterprise is powered by the warp core, and like Scotty, he was giving it all he\u2019s got with \u201cMelora.\u201d Real talk? As a cranky writer myself, that\u2019s the kind of motivation I can get behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Snellgrove | Published 43 seconds ago Ever learn about someone for the first time and feel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,169859,85,46,169860,12119,140864,143539,66343,169861,169862,6401,411],"class_list":["post-348302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-evan-carlos-somers","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-ronald-d-moore","tag-star-trek","tag-star-trek-trivia","tag-star-trek-deep-space-nine","tag-star-trek-the-next-generation","tag-the-official-star-trek-deep-space-nine-magazine","tag-transformers-beast-wars","tag-trivia","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}