Warning: This article contains spoilers from Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3, episode 6.
All of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 has been leading up to "Hear All, Trust Nothing" — the long-promised Deep Space Nine episode. Martok was mentioned in the crew's Klingon role-playing game, Sisko's Creole Kitchen is a location we visit, and series creator Mike McMahan has said he used Tosk as inspiration for a new alien named K'ranch. And now, in episode 6, we get a full-on Deep Space Nine reunion.
Nana Visitor and Armin Shimerman reprise their live-action roles from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Kira Nerys and Quark, in animated form on Lower Decks. Boimler (Jack Quaid), Tendi (Noël Wells), and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) find themselves accompanying their captain to the Deep Space Nine station, which has turned into an attraction, thanks to the franchise-ification of Quark's original bar.
"I think it took until season 3 for me to build up the courage to go up to such a hot show and hit on it. You know what I mean?" McMahan tells EW of the episode. "That first season was me proving that the theory was real: we could do an animated comedy that was funny and original, but still felt like Star Trek. Then we're making the second season before season 1 aired, so I didn't know if it worked for anybody yet. I've said this before, if we have legacy characters come back or if we go to a legacy location, you have to treat it like going to Yosemite where you can enjoy being there."
Star Trek Lower Decks Armin Shimerman reprises his ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ role of Quark on ‘Lower Decks’ season 3 | Credit: PARAMOUNT+
The Yosemite reference is apt given how Quark has essentially turned the Deep Space Nine station into its own Yosemite.
McMahan recalls Shimerman bringing the prosthetic teeth he used to wear as Quark on Deep Space Nine to record his character's return, so that Quark would sound right in the booth. "Which had me crying laughing," the showrunner mentions.
Lower Decks had previously referenced the character and the fact that Quark's had expanded across the quadrant. So McMahan knew he wanted to bring in the Ferengi business owner to show that he's doing quite well these days. "He's a pig in s—," as the writer-producer puts it. That's until the group of Karemman accuse him of stealing their technology in order to do so.
McMahan was binging Deep Space Nine before breaking the episode to determine what he wanted in "Hear All, Trust Nothing." He wanted the antagonist aliens to feel akin to that show, while considering where the universe is post-finale.
"Going back there are a couple episodes with the Karemma that stood out to me. These guys post-Dominion War would still be flirting with doing trade with the Federation through the wormhole," McMahan explains. "Plus, they're so big, they're so tall and noticeable and arch, but very, like, stick up their butt. It felt like utilizing them in a new way that reflected back on the same types of behaviors they had before would fit into the priority I had."
As for Visitor's Kira, McMahan naturally gravitated towards her, given how he estimates Lower Decks takes place roughly six years after the events of the Deep Space Nine finale of 1999. "Kira, wherever her path is going to be taking her, whether she's gonna be, she would probably take the reins and make sure that Deep Space Nine post-Dominion War is up and running. She directly relates to this character Shaxs that I love on the Bridge."
Star Trek Lower Decks Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) and Col. Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) reunite on ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ season 3 | Credit: PARAMOUNT+
When Col. Kira Nerys sees "this scarred-up old barrel bug" that is Fred Tatasciore's character, they immediately start reminiscing about their time in the Resistance together and who saved whose life. For Visitor, she never really felt like she retired the character.
"There have been questions about Kira. There have been people who have told me what the character means to them and how she shifted them," the actress says. "I've explored that question for myself; how she shifted me. It's really never left me. Just simply stepping into her virtual uniform wasn't really that much distance for me to travel."
McMahan didn't want to fundamentally change what fans remembered of Deep Space Nine or who these characters were. Visitor agrees Kira hasn't changed. She's just in a different environment.
"I always thought Deep Space Nine should be an opera. I'm just putting it out there. Someone has got to write an opera," she says with a laugh. "But that's kind of my point. If I was doing it onstage as an opera, the tonality of my performance would change. And that's really the only thing that changed, not where she comes from, not her energy, not her intentions, but just the tone of where the piece sits. Animation sits in a brighter tone than television does."
McMahan isn't the only Star Trek creator feeling the Deep Space Nine nostalgia. Alex Kurtzman, the executive producer of the Trek-verse, said at San Diego Comic-Con that there have been internal discussions about revisiting that show in some way. Visitor dances around the question when asked if she's been approached to reprise Kira in live-action form. She likens the situation to finding out about Michael Dorn coming on Deep Space Nine through a fan at a convention back in the day. She's usually the last to know.
STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE Nana Visitor and Armin Shimerman as Kira and Quark in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.’ | Credit: Everett Collection
"I'm at a different point in my life and there are other things that interest me beyond trying to push a show for myself or one that I would be a part of," she says. "I trust these people and Alex Kurtzman to have their pulse on what people need to hear now. And to me that's the whole thing. What do they need? What do we need as people to contemplate in some safe way? What do we need to put in space that we could see it and not be nervous about having to evolve to something."
"I haven't met a single person involved in this current era that doesn't love Deep Space Nine," McMahan adds. "It doesn't necessarily speak to the characters and shows that we're all currently telling. We're not all fighting over who's gonna get to do Deep Space Nine, but it's not because there's any aversion to it. I think it's because you want it to be the right thing. In the middle of making season 1 of Lower Decks, I remember the documentary came out, What We Left Behind. The last thing I wanna do is pretend that I can take the reins from any of the folks that were making Deep Space Nine back then and take it in a direction that they were going. That's their story to tell in a way."
Referring to what Star Trek has done with shows like Picard, bringing back actors like Gates McFadden and Marina Sirtis, Visitor mentions how interesting it is to see older actors, but especially women, being brought back into the fold. "I'm fascinated in that way," she says. "What I love is collaboration. So if they said, 'Hey, you wanna?' I'd be like, 'Hell, let's play!'"
Star Trek: Lower Decks is currently streaming on Paramount+.