Star Trek: How TNG’s First Contact And DS9 Mocked Each Other (& Why)

Star Trek: The Next Generationand Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had some fun mocking each other during the 1990s. After becoming a blockbuster and Emmy nominee after 7 seasons in syndication, TNG graduated to feature films with 1994’s Star Trek Generations. Premiering in 1992, DS9 was the first spinoff of TNG and kept the TV fires of the franchise burning along with Star Trek: Voyager. While neither show got movies of their own, certain characters did appear in cameos in the TNG movies. But DS9‘s first cameo in 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact wasn’t well-received by DS9‘s producers.

Worf (Michael Dorn) joined the cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during season 4 in 1995 but the Klingon was also contractually part of the ongoing TNG movie franchise. For Star Trek: First Contact, the solution for how to bring Worf into the movie involved having him command the U.S.S. Defiant,DS9‘s starship, in the film’s opening battle against the Borg. However, the original plan was for the Borg to destroy the Defiant as the Klingon joined his original crew aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. But when word of the Defiant’s intended demise reached Ira Steven Behr, DS9′s executive producer and showrunner, he understandably balked that his show’s starship was going to be casually destroyed in a TNG movie (and without his prior knowledge). To appease Behr’s objections, the fate of the Defiant was changed to being “adrift, but salvageable” after failing to defeat the mighty Borg Cube.

DS9 never forgot TNG‘s slight but, at first, their revenge was simply that the Defiant‘s appearance in Star Trek: First Contact (or that it was badly damaged) was never mentioned in any way in the series. In fact, Trekkers who only followed Deep Space Nine would have never known Worf took the Defiant to Earth at all and the show snubbed any extra boost it might have gotten from the Defiant having a small part in the hit Star Trek movie. On DS9, it was as if the events of Star Trek: First Contact never happened – at least for a while. After Star Trek: First Contact became the biggest hit of the TNG movies with fans, critics, and at the box office, the film’s co-writer, Ronald D. Moore, joined the DS9 writing team. Little by little, the series headlined by Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) began to casually hit back at TNG and Star Trek: First Contact.

In the DS9 season 5 episode, “In The Cards”, Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) outright quoted Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in Star Trek: First Contact verbatim when the Enterprise-E’s commander explained how humanity changed in the 24th century to Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard). Picard proudly told Lily that “the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” To which Lily replied, “No money? You mean you don’t get paid?”

On DS9, Jake and Nog (Aron Eisenberg) planned to bid on a Willie Mays baseball card as a gift to Jake’s father, Captain Sisko, but Jake had no money. When Nog mocked how humans abandoned currency-based economics, Jake retorted with Captain Picard’s own words from the film: “We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” But when the Ferengi pressed and asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”, Jake, amusingly, couldn’t explain mankind’s n0-money philosophy any further.

But DS9‘s most hilariously pointed dig at Star Trek: First Contact was in the season 7 episode, “The Dogs of War”, when Quark (Armin Shimerman) was under the mistaken belief he would become the next Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. Railing against how Ferengi society had changed for the worse, Quark boasted to his brother Rom (Max Grodenchik) that he would make changes to return the Ferengi to greatness, and he underlined his speech by promising, “The line has to be drawn here! This far, no further!” Of course, this was an (almost) verbatim swipe of Picard’s most famous dialogue from Star Trek: First Contact.

Ronald D. Moore co-wrote both of those DS9 episodes and, in an AOL chat in 1999, he admitted that “I take great glee in mocking my own work.” After years of working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as co-writing the first two TNG movies, Moore had come to see Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as his “home team”, so a friendly jab at the most successful TNG movie here and there was a welcome bit of revenge by DS9 for how the U.S.S. Defiant was treated in Star Trek: First Contact.

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