Michelle Forbes Completely Changed Star Trek: DS9 By Refusing To Return As Ro Laren
The premise for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is a little complex for the non-Trekkie, but ripe for drama when one delves in.
The titular station, Deep Space Nine, was in orbit around the non-Federation world of Bajor. For the past several decades, Bajor had been militarily occupied by the Nazi-like Cardassians, a species that regularly enslaved and mass-murdered Bajoran citizens. At the outset of the series, the Cardassian occupation had just ended, and Bajor inherited their disused station. In order to aid the Bajoran restoration, Starfleet was assigned to run Deep Space Nine and to oversee the rebuilding of Bajor's government (which was already tilting dangerously close to a corrupt theocracy).
Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) was the Starfleet officer put in charge of the broken-down DS9 and his first officer was the haughty former Bajoran resistance fighter, Major Kira (Nana Visitor). "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was unique in that it wasn't about the peerless utopia of previous "Star Trek" shows. It was about what happens when idealists in Starfleet are forced to consistently butt heads with war-mongering individuals, suffering individuals, religious individuals, and capitalists.
In order to "bridge the gap" between "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" (which ran concurrently for two years), the showrunners wanted to include some familiar faces. Chief O'Brien (Colm Meany) was ported over from the former series. In the oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams," edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, "Deep Space Nine" co-creator Michael Piller said that the Bajoran "NextGen" character Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) was also originally intended to join the new cast.
It wasn't until Forbes refused to reprise Ro that Major Kira would have to be invented.
Ro Laren vs. Kira Nerys
Piller noted the natural assumptions many had about Forbes. Since Ro Laren was a Bajoran character, it seemed logical that she would be part of a show about the Bajoran homeworld. Forbes, however, was tired of acting on television and wanted to make feature films instead. This was in the early 1990s, and Forbes would soon be moving on to notable indies like "Kalifornia" and "Swimming with Sharks." Piller recalled Forbes' ambitions:
"Michelle Forbes is a wonderful actress, and her character of Ensign Ro created the entire canvas for this new series. It had always been assumed that she would be one of the people spun off and moved over to 'DS9,' but she wanted to be a feature actress."
Ro Laren, it should be noted, was a Starfleet officer, while Kira Nerys was not. When Piller realized he could no longer write Ensign Ro as a counterpart to Commander Sisko, he was struck by what he felt was a much better idea. If Sisko's Bajoran first officer wasn't part of Starfleet, she would feel less beholden to his authority, causing more opportunities for interpersonal drama. As Piller put it:
"I found there was a great deal more conflict in having the Bajoran not be Starfleet. Immediately you have different priorities and agendas, and the two people immediately have a conflict with each other the moment they step onto the station. The one between Sisko and Ro would have been a much different one, because ultimately she's Starfleet and has to do what the boss says. Kira Nerys could do things that are not appropriate Starfleet behavior."
A lot of Ro's old dialogue was handed to Kira, and a dynamic new entity was born.
Ro One: A Star Trek Story
A lot of the original series bible for "Deep Space Nine" was printed in the 1994 book "The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and it seems that the series evolved quite a bit from its inception. The series bible originally describes a science officer in a wheelchair, a non-Starfleet law enforcement agent (the character who would become the Changeling Odo), a bar owner, the station commander, and the commander's son. In the original version of the show, Ro was to have been promoted to Lieutenant and was specifically assigned to Deep Space Nine as a liaison officer between Starfleet and the Bajoran people. In the final draft of the show, there was no specially allocated liaison officer. Sisko and Kira just had to figure it out.
Ro Laren was to become good friends with Odo, the character eventually played by René Auberjonois. This relationship was altered for Kira, as she and Odo would eventually form a romance. Ro was also to be taken under the wing of Jadzia Dax (eventually Terry Farrell), a young woman who possessed centuries of wisdom from an alien worm implanted in her stomach. Dax and Kira eventually formed a light friendship.
Forbes reportedly felt a little overwhelmed by the idea of continuing to be associated with "Star Trek." In addition to the time commitment, she was likely wary of everything that came with being a regular "Star Trek" cast member (that is, convention appearances and signing autographs). Kira was invented to be as much like Ro Laren as possible, so Piller and his co-creator Rick Berman wouldn't have to change their script or bible too much.