10 Biggest WTF Moments From Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Near the beginning of the episode If Wishes Were Horses, Chief O'Brien was telling a bedtime story to his daughter, Molly, about the fairy tale character Rumpelstiltskin. Moments after O'Brien left her room, Molly came out saying that Rumpelstiltskin was in her room. O'Brien, expecting this to be a figment of Molly's wild imagination, entered to find she was telling the truth. Sat on her bed was the short, pointy eared character from her bedtime story, Rumpelstiltskin.

Later, a historic baseball player from 200 years ago appeared, along with a duplicate of Jadzia who was madly in love with Julien. It apparently even started to snow on the promenade. It was eventually discovered that alien lifeforms were creating these figments to study the imaginations of the station's crew. Rumpelstiltskin's appearance in the beginning was a really confusing moment that set the scene for some of the weirder and darker stuff that would happen later.

This episode was almost a lot worse. According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion reference book, Rumpelstiltskin was originally written as a leprechaun. Colm Meaney objected to this, explaining that 'using caricatures or clichés of any nation is not something Star Trek is or should be into.' Rumpelstiltskin was cringey in this episode, but leprechauns are offensive stereotypes of Irish people, and having an Irish person's imagination create one would've been much worse than what we got. Trek doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to positive Irish representation, so it's great that Meaney was able to prevent another disaster like Up The Long Ladder.