10 Star Trek Episodes That Started As Something Completely Different
2. Far Beyond The Stars
This sixth-season episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is often near the top of voters' best episodes lists, and for good reason. The seminal episode deals with the theme of racism and oppression brutally, while still keeping the magic of SciFi. It walks a very fine line, though is an absolute triumph. However, writer Marc Scott Zicree's original pitch featured Jake Sisko as the main protagonist.
In this version of the story, Jake really would travel through time to the 1950s, where he would meet a group of struggling writers. The reveal at the end would be an alien who simply wanted to investigate how humans responded to certain situations. Ira Steven Behr like the premise, though he wasn't interested in having Jake be the lead. He switched it to Ben Sisko, introducing the theme of racism. He then went back to Zicree and asked him to work on a new version of the story with this in mind.
Zicree then handed in a draft that featured Michael Dorn's character, not as a baseball player, but as a boxer. He was seeing a white woman, which infuriated the racist policemen, who subsequently beat him to death, replacing the death of Jimmy. Also in this version, Armin Shimerman's character was inspired by Benny's breakdown to publish the Sisko story anyway.