Did they get all of it backwards? Does the station’s design make no logical sense? We beam over and get a solution.
Is Deep Area 9 constructed incorrect? That’s a query many Star Trek followers have requested for a very long time.
If it’s an argument you haven’t heard, properly its most likely as a result of you’ve gotten a job and youngsters and issues and haven’t spent sufficient of your time interested by the pylons.
However some Star Trek followers have. And even in case you haven’t, you’re going to wish to know what’s occurring right here, earlier than you spend any extra time watching Deep Area 9.
The argument towards Star Trek’s most iconic area station goes this manner.
These haters, declare it is unnecessary for the station’s pylons to curve inward since that limits the scale of the ship that may match within the area between the docking port on every pylon. A correct station, some argue, ought to have the pylons curving outward, and in actuality, nobody would ever design an area station this manner.
Right here’s why that’s completely incorrect. The station was designed by Cardassians. Cardassians, as a folks, usually are not solely warlike however extraordinarily strategic thinkers. Curving pylons outward makes it a lot tougher for the station to defend all the ships docked at it.
With a purpose to shield ships on outward curving pylons, the station must generate a a lot greater defend bubble. A bigger defend bubble ends in extra energy utilization and in consequence, additionally in a a lot weaker defend.
By designing their station in order that the pylons curve inward, the Cardassians got here up with a option to permit ships to dock and in addition maintain them secure beneath Terok Nor’s (the Cardassian identify for Deep Area 9) shields. Deep Area 9 doesn’t simply look cool, it’s a design that’s completely practical and logical given the station’s meant goal.
It was manufacturing designer Herman Zimmerman who initially got here up with the design for Deep Area 9. The station was designed to be Cardassian in origin from the start, which is why it appears so totally different from all of the Federation expertise we’re used to seeing in different Star Trek collection.
The ultimate look of the station wasn’t the primary thought pitched, nonetheless. Speaking to Star Trek Journal in 1999, Zimmerman had this to say about developing with DS9’s look…
“We began out charged with getting a “Tower of Babel” idea of an area station constructed over a pair thousand years of separate, disparate cultures, so the expertise from one a part of the station to a different can be of varied ages and varied cultures, not essentially interfacing one with the opposite, and there was this sense of confusion due to that.”
Early idea artwork drawn by DS9 co-creator Rick Sternbach displays that preliminary path.
“The preliminary tackle it was that it was a really previous, historical sort of station — possibly not symmetrical in form”, Sternbach explains.
Finally, they realized the tower of Babel thought was too messy. As a substitute, they determined to start out over and go for one thing as alien and non-Federation as potential. That design developed right into a collection of hoops…
That hoop aesthetic means they by no means thought of having the docking ports aptitude outward. Why is unclear, maybe they merely realized early on that curving them inward made extra logical sense…
From there, these sketches ultimately developed into the Terok Nor everyone knows and love. This, eventually, was the primary picture of Deep Area 9 ever seen by the general public. It was utilized in a collection of publicity pictures selling the present…
Deep Area 9 is a superb design, one of the vital distinctive in science fiction historical past. There’s by no means been something fairly prefer it, earlier than or since.
Now, give the station its due. Circle round, and fake you’re in awe of the pylons.
