Why Star Trek’s Colm Meaney Accused Deep Space Nine of Racism, And Changed Its Way
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Although we stand in the fact that Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek series, its first season was as difficult in some areas as the first season The Next Generation. This is especially true in the episode “If Wishes Were Horses,” which features the imaginations of the station staff running around and making strange dreams come true.
As it turns out, this episode is effectively ruined by not one but two fantasy creatures. Those were the annoying leprechaun at first Deep Space Nine script and replacing him with trying not to stumble, Rumpelstiltskin. The changed character brought its own major problems; his scenes with Chief O’Brien were extremely challenging to shoot.
It Started With A Very Bad Idea Colm Meaney Refused To Do
When the writers wrote “If Wishes Were Horses,” they liked the idea of a leprechaun coming to life because O’Brien read the fairy tale to his young daughter (because they’re aliens, of course). Little did they know that this might upset them until their Irish actor Colm Meaney, who played Miles O’Brien, summed up his problem with the prechaun plot to them this way: “It’s really racist, and I don’t want to do it. .”
Colm Meaney is offended on several different levels by the leprechaun in the original script. As the actor told producer Rick Berman at the time, “Every Irish actor I know has worked his whole life to overcome the superstition of Irish people and prechauns.”
After Meaney told Berman that this was racist, the writers and producers set out to find a fantasy creature to replace the leprechaun. Later, Meaney reflected on how the original idea might have been as offensive to fans of the franchise as it was to him: “Using caricatures or cliches of any race is not something Star Trek is or should be.”
As for then-showrunner Michael Piller recalled, “We didn’t know there was a leprechaun sensibility in Irish culture, and we certainly didn’t want to force Colm Meaney to do a leprechaun, but what are you going to do when you’ve got a story built around a leprechaun stealing a child?” It was an understandable puzzle because the script was mostly finished by the time Meaney saw it. Piller and his team had to find a way to make the necessary changes to keep Meaney happy while not changing things so dramatically that it would require an extensive rewrite.
Allegations of Racism From Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Are Strangely Forced
A major solution to this problem came from author Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who suggested that the leprechaun be replaced by Rumpelstiltskin, another fictional character Chief O’Brien might read about to his young daughter. Piller admitted that this wasn’t the best solution because “Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t the same thing and he wouldn’t work in the structure we had.”
Piller was in charge of rewriting the script to incorporate the new creature and later admitted, “I had no idea how I was going to solve it or where it was going to go” and “I wrote each episode to see if it worked and to be happy with it.”
When the replacement was made, Colm Meaney was happy that the leprechaun structure was removed, but revealed that Rumpelstiltskin presented his problems when it came to shooting because the character “had the ability to appear and disappear”. This meant that they had to do a “very complicated” shot, which involved him talking forward to the actor behind him. Still, Meaney felt that the episode “came out well.”
Not all fans agree with that assessment, mainly because Rumpelstiltskin still visually studies as a leprechaun. Meaney himself seemed happy with the change, but some fans still felt that this was an odd omission in the middle of a fun Star Trek episode. Maybe if you have a few rounds at Quark’s bar first, you can find a pot of gold (or down some bottles) in this hot summer of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode.
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