10 Times Star Trek Hit The Reset Button

Gene Roddenberry is the creator of Star Trek and one of the key figures for ensuring it ever reached the air waves at all. He, along with a dedicated team of writers and producers, crafted the Star Trek that is so often referred to when people say that the franchise has veered sharply away from it. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was something that he was aware of, but his ill-health prevented him from seeking any active participation.

One of Roddenberry's golden rules for Star Trek was that the main characters were not to face conflict with each other, as his utopian future would not allow for any such strife. With his influence removed, Michael Pillar and Rick Berman crafted Deep Space Nine to be a show featuring many different viewpoints and beliefs, which only became stronger in their differences when Ira Stephen Behr took over as showrunner.

The first couple of seasons stuck a bit closer to The Next Generation and the Original Series, while from season three onward, Deep Space Nine was the darkest iteration of the franchise. Officers fought with each other, humans betrayed Starfleet, terrorist cells were given legitimacy and many other examples of the cracks in Roddenberry's utopia began to appear.

The Dominion War is possibly the biggest 'upset' in the Star Trek universe, insofar as the impact it had on both storytelling and consequences was nothing that had been seen before. While Majel Barrett held the opinion that Gene would have hated the arc, others claimed that the only thing that prevented a war in the Original Series was the lack of budget.

The war arc defined the latter half of Deep Space Nine, pushing Star Trek into murkier territories than it had before and opening up a Pandora's Box that, for better or worse, has never truly been shut.