Melora

Stardate 47229.1: The first Elaysian officer in Starfleet, Ensign Melora Pazlar, is assigned to DS9. Bashir and O’Brien have had to modify various passageways to permit Melora – whose low-gravity home world leaves her body reliant on a wheelchair in normal gravity – access to as much of the station as possible. In the meantime, Quark’s former partner, who he once sold out to the Romulans in order to save his own skin, has finally been released by his captors and has come aboard the station to exact vengeance upon Quark. Bashir decides to make an effort to cut through Melora’s oversensitivity and defensiveness in order to help her, and even discovers that there may be a way to reverse her handicap.

teleplay by Evan Carlos Somers and Steven Baum and Michael Piller & James Crocker
story by Evan Carlos Somers
directed by Winrich Kolbe
music by Dennis McCarthy

Cast: Avery Brooks (Commander Benjamin Sisko), Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Siddig El Fadil (Dr. Julian Bashir), Terry Farrell (Lt. Jadzia Dax), Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko), Colm Meaney (Chief O’Brien), Armin Shimerman (Quark), Nana Visitor (Major Kira Nerys), Daphne Ashbrook (Melora), Peter Crombie (Fallit Kot), Don Stark (Ashrock), Ron Taylor (Klingon Chef)

Notes: The concept of a regular character most at home in a low-gravity environment was part of the original series concept for Deep Space Nine, but was abandoned due to the cost and time involved in doing wire work on a routine basis; that character was replaced by Dax in the series bible. Guest star Daphne Ashbrook later boarded the TARDIS as a one-time companion of the Doctor in Fox’s 1996 Doctor Who TV movie.