The Way of the Warrior

The space battle - wow. I mean, WOW! Especially so when you consider that this episode was made without CGI - the entire battle with the Klingon fleet was done via model work. I cannot express sufficiently just how much kudos the behind the scenes folks deserve for their efforts in this episode.

The original plan was for the end of Season 3 and beginning of season 4 to be a two part episode about Founders infiltrating Earth. The studio executives nixed the idea of a cliffhangar ending, which led to "The Adversary" ending Season 3 on a somewhat ominous note, without being a cliff-hangar as such. This necessitated reworking the Season 4 opening; since raings were falling the studio wanted something that would "shake things up" in the DS9 universe. The initial plan was to have Vulcan leave the Federation, but Ira Steven Behr suggested breaking up the Federation/Klingon alliance, since a Founder had stated in "The Die is Cast" that those two powers were the only real threat to the Dominion in the Alpha Quadrant. This led to the idea of bringing Worf onto the show, since his involvement in a Federation/Klingon conflict would make sense and the character was popular with fans. The original "Founders on Earth" idea would later be turned into the two parter "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost".

Michael Dorn's joining Deep Space Nine leads to Worf becoming the longest running character in all of Star Trek history, having served through eleven seasons (272 episodes in all), and four movies.

When Worf meets Dax, he says "Curzon's name is an honoured one among my people." She replies with a line in Klingon which is untranslated, leading Worf to reply "I suppose so." Dax said "Yeah, but I'm a lot better looking than he was."

More untranslated Klingon, between Martok and Gowron during the battle. Martok says "They fight like Klingons!" Leading Gowron to reply "Then they can die like Klingons! Destroy their shields! Prepare boarding parties!" Martok then says "I understand. All ships, concentrate fire on their shield generators."

And yet more! When the Klingon Drex is hassling Morn on the Promenade, Odo approaches and asks if he can help. Drex says something in Klingon, leading Garak to say "Actually, I'm not sure Constable Odo has a mother." Drex's line is "Does your mother let you talk to adult men?"

The original plan for this episode was to introduce several completely new Klingon warship designs. Alas, budgetary constraints led to the re-use of existing Klingon ship models along with the future Klingon ships from TNG's "All Good Things". One of the proposed Klingon designs would go on to be used as the basis of the retro Bird of Prey used in Enterprise, though.

The episode as filmed turned out to be a little too long, leading to some scenes being cut. One cosidered for deletion was the Garak/Quark root-beer scene. Producer Ronald D. Moore sucessfully fought to keep the scene in the episode; after the episode aired, the scene because a popular fan favourite because of it's wry 'outside look' at the Federation.

Martok introduces himself to Sisko by cutting his palm open and spilling some blood to demonstrate that he is not a Founder infiltrator. In the two parter "Homefront / Paradise Lost", Joseph Sisko points out that the blood test isn't reliable because a changeling could simply hold a quantity of real blood inside its body and dispense it as needed. Since we will learn in "Apocalypse Rising" that the Martok we see in this episode actually is a Founder infiltrator, Joseph was obviously correct - and thus, the blood tests we see performed throughout Deep Space Nine are entirely useless.