Breen (Star Trek) - Production Information

Production Information

The Breen were first mentioned in "The Loss", a fourth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that first aired in 1990. The episode established their race as one of several alien species to be unreadable by empaths, much like the Ferengi. References to them were made in a number of other Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager episodes but they were not seen onscreen until the 1996 Deep Space Nine episode "Indiscretion", which aired as part of that show's fourth season. In that episode, they were depicted as running a mining facility from which Gul Dukat and Major Kira rescued Dukat's daughter, Tora Ziyal. According to DS9 writer/producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, after having previously been treated as red herrings since their first mention on Next Generation, and as a running joke by the production staff because "they were these people who were out there who were dangerous but were never really responsible for any of the trouble going on", they would finally be used as the villains in an episode. Their true appearance would be concealed beneath masks, according to writer/producer Ira Steven Behr, because "I wasn't really in the mood to come up with a new alien race. So I said, 'Let's not see them. Let's just put them in costume because they normally live in the cold.'"

The look of the Breen masks, which includes a "snout", was derived from the visual suggestion that they are a snouted species, like an arctic wolf.

The Breen costumes were problematic for the actors playing them, since they made both seeing and breathing difficult: there was only a single small hole in the beak, about eight inches from the actor's nose, according to stand-in and stunt double Todd Slayton, who played Thot Gor. The costumes also included big, clumsy boots, and the outfits were layered like an armadillo, making movement difficult. The helmets, which were complicated to put on and remove, were held together with magnets, and were prone to falling off when someone bumped into them. The switches for the lights on the helmets were inside the helmets, requiring the actor to remove the helmet in order to turn the lights on and off. For reasons unknown to production personnel, the nine-volt batteries that powered the lights only lasted minutes before burning out.

In keeping with the Breen as a mysterious race, the sounds of the Breen's speech were inspired by the Lou Reed album Metal Machine Music, which the postproduction sound staff were instructed to listen to when creating the electronic cackle that served as the Breen's voices.