Classic Star Trek Episode All About Getting Nasty In Zero Gravity

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 9 seconds ago

For better or for worse, NuTrek shows like Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy have gone out of their way to get their characters laid. Back in the Golden Age of Star Trek, however, it was notoriously difficult for even the most important characters to get any onscreen action. In fact, when Patrick Stewart first met superstar TNG writer Ronald D. Moore, he gave him one piece of advice about scripting: “The captain doesn’t do nearly enough screwing and shooting on this show.”

Dr. Bashir actor Siddig El Fadil felt the same way, and he spent the early days of Deep Space Nine jokingly asking writers and producers when his character would get a girlfriend. Forgotten Trek writer Evan Carlos Somers rose to the challenge by writing “Melora,” an episode in which the titular character would fall in love with the station’s handsome doctor. However, the young writer went the extra mile, later revealing that a primary reason for writing this script was to give the good doctor some kinky zero-gravity sex!

Computer: Defy Gravity

If it’s been a while since you have seen this less-than-beloved episode, here’s a recap: “Melora” is about a Starfleet officer (Melora Pazlar) who visits Deep Space Nine and has trouble moving around because she is from a planet with very low gravity. Her fancy anti-grav chair is incompatible with Cardassian technology, so Dr. Bashir replicates her an old-fashioned wheelchair. He also falls in love with her, and they eventually have some freaky sex in the special low gravity of her cabin on the station.

One of the writers of this episode was Evan Carlos Somers, and he told The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine about how one of his biggest goals with this episode was to give Dr. Bashir a particularly kinky sexual encounter. “The producers had always thought the wheelchair officer would be a man, but I always thought of her as a woman,” he said. He then dropped a hilarious bombshell: “’Zero-gravity sex with Bashir’ was a prime element to the story in my mind.”

Tossed In Space

Does this mean that “Melora” was about nothing more than two characters boldly hoeing where nobody has hoed before? Not exactly: in that same interview, Somers revealed that he wanted Melora’s relationship with Bashir (including those two defying gravity in an especially wicked way) to represent a major temptation for her character. You see, Bashir develops a “cure” for Melora that would allow her to walk around places like DS9, but it would preclude her from ever returning to her homeworld.

Meloa, Somers says, is someone tempted by the cure because it is “presented to her concomitant to a growing love affair,” and she eventually realizes she is considering accepting the cure because she doesn’t want to disappoint the man who created it. Bashir developed the cure because “he loves her, and he would never want to do anything wrong for her.” She eventually realizes that “she doesn’t have to be cured” because there is nothing inherently wrong with her, and fully accepting herself is more important than making her new lover happy.

In that way, this Deep Space Nine episode told a very progressive story, leaving the groundwork open for Bashir and Melora to hook up yet again. She never returned to the show, though, which is for the best. Even when they were together, these two had a particularly topsy-turvy relationship. Of course, their relationship began the same way as everyone with an “it’s complicated” tag on Facebook: with a night of really freaky physicality!