Star Trek Cast Rock Icon Because Of An Injury

Even before he had anything to do professionally with Star Trek, the future DS9 showrunner Ira Steven Behr was an Iggy Pop fanboy desperate to get the icon cast in one of his series.

According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, Behr had previously tried and failed to book the singer for a guest spot on the eighties series Fame. Later he tried to get Iggy Pop for DS9‘s Season two-parter “Past Tense.”

Behr finally lucked out when he was able to cast Iggy Pop in the part of Yelgrun—a Vorta ambassador from the hostile Dominion—because Iggy was injured. The former Stooges frontman had dislocated his shoulder in a mosh pit, opening a hole in his schedule.

“The Magnificent Ferengi”—the episode in which Iggy Pop was cast—revolves around the titular big-eared aliens. Brothers Quark and Rom learn their mother (aka Moogie) has been kidnapped by the Dominion. As the main squeeze of the Grand Nagus, she’s a big get for the Gamma Quadrant aliens.

Quark and Rom put together a squad of Ferengi made up of themselves, Rom’s son Nog, their disgraced cousin Gaila, the freshly unemployed Liquidator Brunt, and the assassin Leck. They set up a prisoner exchange—Moogie in exchange for the Keevan, a Vorta captured in “Rocks and Shoals”—at the abandoned Cardassian station Empok Nor.

In “The Magnificent Ferengi,” Iggy Pop plays Yelgrun, the Vorta handling the Dominion side of the prisoner exchange, and who the Ferengi are convinced plans to murder them all once the exchange is made.

As bad as things look for the Ferengi, they get even worse when an argument between them leads to the accidental killing of their prisoner, Keevan. Things get weird with a very Weekend at Bernie’s flavor once Nog develops a method to puppeteer the Vorta’s corpse with the use of electrodes, just long enough to make the exchange.

Behr told the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion writers that while overall Yelgrun was the last kind of character you would want Iggy Pop to play, because of his injury, it worked out well.

Iggy Pop is known for his physicality. On stage, he makes Mick Jagger look comatose in comparison, so you would normally want to cast him in a very physically active role. As Yelgrun, however, he does little more than stand in the same spot in Empok Nor and spar verbally with Quark.

Behr said that because of Iggy Pop’s shoulder injury, casting him as Yelgrun worked out for the best. Behr said that in spite of the singer not having much to do in terms of physical action, he could tell Iggy Pop’s shoulder injury made it difficult for the singer to be on set. Still, he never complained.