Trivia / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 07 E 23 Extreme Measures

• Creator Backlash: This was the only episode in the closing 9-episode arc that the writers didn't particularly like. They tried to show two topics: a Bashir/Sloan showdown and the Bashir/O'Brien friendship, but, according to David Weddle, "We'd have been better off trying to do one or the other. With the focus so split, it just didn't work, conceptually."
• What Could Have Been:
  • It was originally intended for Bashir and O'Brien to visit a planet where Section 31 was headquartered. However, the budget could not allow for another location, so it was changed to the station. The writers intended to redress the sets and use visual effects to give the regular sets a more surreal quality, but the episode's budget ended up being cut after "The Changing Face of Evil" far exceeded its budget, forcing them to make it up elsewhere.
  • In the early draft for the episode, it would have been revealed that while Section 31 had infected Odo with the morphogenic virus, the direct creator was actually Odo's Bajoran 'father' Dr. Mora Pol. This idea was dropped when the episode was changed from an Odo-centric story to one last Bashir/O'Brien outing.