Memory Alpha:AOL chats/Ronald D. Moore/ron101.txt

Subject: Answers Date: Tue, Apr 14, 1998 14:20 EDT From: RonDMoore Message-id: <1998041418205901.OAA10926@ladder01.news.aol.com>

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Who told you about Section 31? There is no Section 31. What's your name, anyway?

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"Wrongs Darker..." began life as a story about something completely different. It was pitched as a tale about a group of Bajoran children in the Occupation being sent into the future as a way of rescuing them from a brutal, Mengele-esque Cardassian doctor. "Ghosts" of the children start appearing on the Promenade in DS9's present, Kira figures out the time travel angle, and then goes back in time herself to help the escape of the Bajoran children into the present. (Don't ask how -- trust me, it was long and complicated).

As that story began to evolve, it turned darker and darker with every passing moment. Kira started working in the lab of "Mengele" as her cover while the Cardassian hero of the story desperately works to finish his time portal. Eventually, the story of Kira having to work in this chamber of horrors got so grim and so depressing that we decided to punt. The episode was becoming an exercise in character (and audience) torture, and we needed to go in another direction. Dukat had always been in the story, albeit in the background. When we began re-evaluating the episode, we naturally gravitated toward making it more of a Kira/Dukat show. The notion of using Kira's mother was born at this stage of the game. We researched the timeline very carefully and found nothing that would contradict having Meru and Dukat on Terok Nor at the same time. The idea of Meru working as a "comfort woman" was something that came up late in the process.

So, in answer to your question, we never started out to tell a "comfort women" story and then bent the timeline to that end. "Wrongs..." developed from something else entirely, as do many episodes.

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Not at the moment.

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I believe they did get divorced, and I'm not sure if we'll see Lwaxana again.

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The role was originally written for Odo, with Martok as the editor. We switched them as the editor grew to be a larger and more important player in the drama. The reference to Cardassians rather than Klingons was a deliberate choice that said in a subtle way that these people were not literal inspirations for the characters that Benny was creating.