This episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series.
Alexander Siddig commented that "Distant Voices" was "a massive challenge for me as an actor".
Director Alexander Singer shot the scene in the wardroom in one continuous uninterrupted take. When the episode was edited together, the scene was intercut with various close-ups and reverse angles, but the master shot of the scene was filmed as one long take.
Despite the fact that Bashir was an avid tennis player in his youth, this is the only episode of DS9 in which we see Bashir actually playing tennis. Inferring from Garak's "your service" line that Garak was serving, Bashir won the abbreviated match love-fifteen.
Dennis McCarthy based the musical score for the episode on the music of Krzysztof Penderecki and György Ligeti.