Armin Shimerman's (Quark) wife Kitty Swink plays the female Vorta Luaran. Shimerman himself does not appear in the episode, or the next one because he was busy playing Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997).
The words regarding power being thrust upon the worthy, ascribed to Kahless, are a paraphrase from the William Shakespeare play Twelfth Night (act II, scene 5), where the comic character Malvolio reads in a letter (sent to him in order to mock him): "...be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them." This continues a Klingon tradition of claiming ownership of Shakespeare, as General Chang did in Star Trek VI.
Thot Pran replaces Thot Gor as the leader of the Breen Confederacy in this episode.
The title of this episode is a nautical reference, describing when a ship follows a course against a gale by continually making course corrections.