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Deep Space Nine (DS9; also known as Terok Nor) is a fictional space station which appeared in the American science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It is the eponymous primary setting of the series.

Background
Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, being first broadcast in 1966. Although it was cancelled after three seasons, the premise was brought back with a film series starting in 1979 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A further television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation was launched in 1987, becoming an immediate success in broadcast syndication.

In the summer of 1991, Paramount Studios tasked Rick Berman and Michael Piller with creating a new science fiction series, but following initial discussions this was revised to become a spin-off from The Next Generation. At the same time, J. Michael Straczynski had pitched the space station based science fiction series Babylon 5 to Paramount, leading to controversy over the following years about the degree that this influenced Deep Space Nine. Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, with Berman as his chosen successor to lead the franchise forward.

Although some starship designs were created for the new Star Trek series, these were ruled out in order to differentiate the spin-off from The Next Generation which would continue to be broadcast at the same time. It was then suggested to situate the show on a station based on a planet, with Bajor, introduced in the episode "Ensign Ro", chosen as the setting. Due to issues with the cost of production, this was changed to a space station, with the in-universe reason given that the instability of the political situation on Bajor meant that building a station on the planet was not considered safe.

Concept and design
Originally called Starbase 362, the writer's bible stated that the station was constructed "haphazardly" over a number of years by both Cardassian and Bajoran work crews. The population at that point was said to number around 200, and was used to monitor the mining operations on the planet. Prior to the start of the series, when the Cardassians abandon Bajor, they stripped the station of all useful technology and any defensive systems. This was intended to continue to provide issues for the Starfleet engineering teams posted there, thus create potential ideas for episodes going forward.

Roddenberry had always informed his writers to treat the Enterprise as a character. Berman and Piller set out to have the station itself treated in the same manner. Herman F. Zimmerman was recruited as the production designer for the series, having previously worked on the first season of The Next Generation, in addition to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Zimmerman would go on to write the non-canon Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual about the layout of the station, with designs from Doug Drexler. This book was subsequently used by the writers towards the end of the series as a resource. Zimmerman described the creation of Deep Space Nine as the biggest challenge of his career because there was no pre-concieved notion of what the station should look like.

Berman and Piller organised a design group to work on the elements to appear on the new series prior to the green light to go to pilot, as they anticipated not having a great deal of time to do so. This team comprised of themselves, Zimmerman, illustrator Rick Sternbach and graphic designer Michael Okuda, with their main task to create the space station itself. This design work continued for the following three months. While the buildings of other races such as Klingons and Romulans had already been seen in earlier Star Trek series and so had pre-defined rules about how they should look, there were no such restrictions on the creation of a Cardassian space station, and at that point the pitch for the pilot only described it as a "strange, intriguing object in orbit of Bajor". The history of the station was still under discussion at the time that the design work began, with the series creators undecided whether it should be up to 1000 years old, and brought back into question whether it should be Cardassian in origin.

Exterior design
The size of the station was initially expected to be smaller than the USS Enterprise, based on the design in The Next Generation. It was eventually set at just over twice the length of that starship, measuring 1350 m in diameter and was calculated by Okuda and Sternbach to weigh around 10.12 e6t. Sternbach created several pages of quick doodles of designs for space stations, some appeared similar to Spacedock One and Deep Space Station K7, while others had the docking arms which would feature in the finalised design, while Zimmerman likewise worked separately on design proposals. Okuda described this as a difficult process since it was hard to get agreement from Berman and Piller. At one point in a meeting lasting 15 minutes, all the existing designs were thrown out by the producers, and the designers were asked to start again from scratch. The work at that point was based on the premise that the station had been built upon by several different races who had owned it at different times, and was compared by Zimmerman to the Tower of Babel. They had spent seven weeks working on the design when this occurred, and had received daily feedback from Berman as the approach evolved.

It was then confirmed that it was a Cardassian built station, so Zimmerman and the team set about creating a series of rules for how that one race preferred to build things. These included an oval preference over circles, and displaying things in threes rather than any other numbers. Work was coordinated with the costume department as they sought to bring elements of they thought at the time was an external exoskeleton worn by the Cardassians into the design. They decided that while the general lines should be smooth and elegant, that the detail work should be very utilitarian in nature. Sternbach said that the initial work, although rejected due to the change in concept, allowed them to perfect the design work, and establish a series of core elements. While there were several "dead ends" in that work, he added that these were required so that they could refine the finished product. These included designs based on insects based on Scarab beetles, given the insect-like appearance of the Cardassian starship seen in The Next Generation episode "The Wounded", but even those featured a central area common to the other creations. These were eventually refined into a wheel shape which the designers built upon for later designs. They switched to computer aided design work, producing the new versions of the space station collaboratively. The lower side of the central core of the station survived from this stage of the design work into the final version, with the fusion reactor and the terraced appearance. Berman's notes at this point was that he wanted a simple memorable shape for the station, as he felt any child in the United States could draw the Enterprise. Over the course of the following week, the final design for the station was created. A gyroscope-based design was abandoned after Zimmerman pointed out that there was no need to rotate the station to generate gravity, as artificial gravity had long been featured in the franchise. The idea of a rotating wheel space station was first proposed by Herman Potočnik in his 1928 work, The Problem of Space Travel.

The inspiration for Zimmerman in the final design came from an architectural magazine of an air terminal in Moscow which showed the air control tower directly above a series of shops and the parking garage. He felt that this would be the perfect arrangement for the promenade on Deep Space Nine, and combining these with a design based on interlocking rings inspired from the gyroscope ideas. But the designers felt that something wasn't right, which was resolved after Berman suggested that perhaps they shouldn't be complete loops, which resulted in a creation dated April 30 which almost represented the final design after set designer Joseph Hodges created a series of drawings with curved pylons coming out above and below a station formed of two interlinked horizontal loops. It was further detailed over the following weeks, and the design was sent for the physical model to be built. Zimmerman was pleased how well the fabricators had taken their intricate drawings and converted them into the physical 6 ft wide model.

Interior design
Zimmerman began work with set designers at the same time as the work on the external appearance of the began. The pilot proposal called for several different sets, including an operations room (known on the show as "Ops"), a laboratory, some living quarters and the promenade.> Illustrator Ricardo Delgado, was one of those who was tasked with creating the interior of the station, although had also put forward one design for the exterior. He brought a fresh approach and had not previously worked on The Next Generation. Drexler also joined the team for Deep Space Nine to work on the design work for the interior of the station, marking his first job in a television art department, as he had previously worked in makeup. Berman and Piller were more closely involved with the interior design than the exterior, and Piller had a number of ideas for the layout of the sets in order to prompt the manner in which the characters would interact.

Zimmerman had some specific ideas in mind for the Ops set; he envisioned an oval viewscreen which would be hung in the middle of the room and could be seen from both sides, while he wanted to use something he had been seeking to include in his previous work on Star Trek, turbolifts without doors. This would enable the lift itself to be physically moved out of shot in a tube while the actor remained on it, resulting in a multi-level set being built. This also had the effect that there was space to include a computer "pit" in the floor. Zimmerman also felt that as the station was originally built for military purposes by the Cardassians that the commander's office was raised above the rest of the set, requiring his subordinates to physically look up to him. This multi-level approach was followed through onto the promenade, and became a trademark of the design. The curved pylons created by Hodges were another recurring theme, as was a concept by Okuda which he called "shatterframe" in which a series of white lines broke up an otherwise black viewscreen.

Unusually for the time, the decision was made that in order to allow better camera angles that certain sets would be built together. For example, the set for Quark's bar is located physically in the same place off the prominade set as it appears on the show, the same as Doctor Julian Bashir's office and Odo's security suite. However, certain props and walls were mounted on wheels in order to enable them to be moved so that the camera and crew could get into what would otherwise be very tight spaces. One example of this was the actual bar at Quark's, which could be wheeled out of the way when necessary. A further change from earlier Star Trek series was the use of actual television monitors in place of the screens, which hadn't been used on The Next Generation as the televisions at the time didn't look like 24th century technology. But in Deep Space Nine, they were included, specifically for the Ops set, in order to give a constant appearance that information was coming in all the time. The Cardassian graphics seen on those screens were created by Okuda, and given animal related nicknames by the cast and crew. These sets were located on stages 4, 17 and 18 of the Paramount Studios lot.

Appearances
The history of the station prior to Federation involvement was described across several episodes. The second season episode "Cardassians" introduced the original name of the station, Terek Nor. When Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) travels back in time in the episode "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night" to investigate the relationship between her mother, Kira Meru (Leslie Hope) and Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), it is said to be a newly opened ore processing plant. Both Kiras are taken to the station to act as comfort women for the military garrison there.

Non-canon appearances
A number of books have been set on Deep Space Nine as part of the licensed line of novels by publishers Pocket Books and were set during the television series itself. In Devil in the Sky by Greg Cox and John Gregory Betancourt, damage occurs after several Horta eggs hatch and begin to eat part of the station. During the Rebels trilogy, The Conquered, The Courageous and The Liberated, by Dafydd ab Hugh, Bajor is temporarily given full control of the station and Kai Winn Adami is given command. These books continued after the series finale, starting with the Millenium series of novels by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. In those books, a second wormhole is created after opening the three red orbs of Jalbador, destroying the station in The Fall of Terok Nor. The crew are sent 25 years into the future where they find the Federation losing a war against the Bajoran Ascendency, a Pah-wraith influenced combined Bajoran and Dominion force. In the final part, Inferno, the crew are able to travel back in time to various points during the Federation residency on Deep Space Nine in an effort to stop the destruction of the station and the rise of the Ascendency.

Relaunch
After those novels were released, the decision was made to relaunch the novel series with a defined universe following on from the television series. These officially began with the two Avatar books, although it also incorporated the earlier books The Lives of Dax and A Stitch in Time. Writer David R. George III proposed the destruction of the station in his novel Plagues of Night, part of the Typhon Pact series. At the time of the proposal, he wasn't sure if the creation of a replacement station would be warranted. Following his work on the outline for the book, as well as the following novel, Raise the Dawn, he decided that it was required and so a mention of the design for the new station was included towards the end of the book. His subsequent work, Revelation and Dust, is set two years later, beginning at the inauguration of the new Deep Space Nine and forms part of The Fall series of novels.

Drexler was called back to the Deep Space Nine setting to develop the exterior of the replacement station for renderings on the covers of the novels moving forward, starting with Revelation and Dust in The Fall series. He was joined in this task by Andrew Probert, previously the designer of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), as well as veteran Star Trek artist Douglas Graves. Probert did the majority of the initial sketches of the new station, which was designed to be a Federation complex, but with design elements similar to those found in the original station. The CGI work was then initially conducted by Graves to turn Probert's sketches into something that could be manipulated on screen. The final rendering and detail work was then conducted by Drexler.