Had they figured everything out backwards? Did the station’s design not make logical sense? We beamed in and got our answers.
By Joshua Tyler | Published
Was Deep Space Nine built incorrectly? It’s a question that has long plagued many Star Trek fans.
If you haven’t heard that argument, it’s probably because you have a job, kids, and a bunch of other stuff going on and you don’t spend enough time thinking about towers.
But some Star Trek fans have seen it, and even if you haven’t, you’ll want to know what’s going on here before you invest any more time into watching it. Deep Space Nine.
Here’s a rebuttal to Star Trek’s most iconic space station.
Opponents argue that it makes no sense for the station’s pylons to bend inward, because it would limit the size of spacecraft that could fit in the space between the pylons’ docking ports. Some argue that a proper station should have pylons that bend outward, but in reality no one would design a space station this way.
Here’s why this is completely wrong: the station was designed by the Cardassians, who are not only warlike, but also extremely strategically minded people. Bending the pylons outwards would make it much harder to defend against all ships docked at the station.
To protect ships on outward-bending pylons, the station must generate a larger shield bubble. The larger the shield bubble, the more power it consumes and the weaker the shields will be.
The Cardassians came up with a way to dock ships and keep them safely under the shield of Terok Nor (the Cardassian name for Deep Space Nine) by designing the station so that the pylons curve inwards. Deep Space Nine not only looks cool, it’s a perfectly functional and logical design given the original purpose of the station.
The design for Deep Space Nine was first conceived by production designer Herman Zimmerman, and the station was designed from the beginning to be of Cardassian origin, and therefore would look quite different from the Federation technology we’re used to seeing in other Star Trek series.
However, the station’s final look was not the idea originally proposed. Speaking to Star Trek Magazine in 1999, Zimmerman explained how he came up with the look of DS9:
“We were tasked with realizing the ‘Tower of Babel’ concept of a space station that was built over thousands of years in separate, different cultures. So the technology from one part of the space station to another was from different time periods and cultures and didn’t necessarily work together, which created confusion.”
Early concept art by DS9 co-creator Rick Sternbach reflects that original direction.
“The initial impression was that it was a very old, ancient type of station, and that the shape might not be symmetrical,” Sternbach explains.
Eventually, they realized the Tower of Babel idea was too messy. Instead, they decided to start over and make it as heterogeneous and non-Federal as possible. The design evolved into a series of rings…
This ring-shaped aesthetic meant that they never considered flaring the docking ports outwards – it’s unclear why, but perhaps they just realised early on that bending them inwards made more logical sense…
From there, those sketches eventually evolved into the Terok Nor we all know and love. This was finally the first image of Deep Space Nine the public saw. It was used in a series of promotional photos promoting the show…
Deep Space Nine is a brilliant piece of design and one of the most unique in science fiction history – nothing like it has been done before or since.
Now, take a good look at the station, walk all the way around it and pretend to be in awe of the pylons.
