Sunday 05 February 2012

The Cardassian Shipyard That Wasn’t

The first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s seventh and final season called for an extended Cardassian shipyard complex which would appear just twice on the show in total. John Eaves, who worked as a production illustrator on Deep Space Nine, devised a vast installation reminiscent of the Deep Space Nine space station itself, before a rather less ambitious but sprawling design was decided upon.

The earlest designs for what would become known as the “Monac Shipyards,” named after special effects supervisor Gary Monak, were drafted by Greg Jein who was filling in for John Eaves when Deep Space Nine was on hiatus during the summer of 1998. “He was thrown into a concept nightmare with this Cardassian shipyard that was going through some pretty rough approval sessions,” according to Eaves. “Greg’s pieces were brilliant,” he remembers, “with sweeping platforms and docks full of ships under construction. All were getting the boot but in the long run a kluge of his work came to be the final design.”

Eaves went for something completely different: “a spin off from DS9 architecture stylized to be a huge shipyard.” The idea was probably too big for the episode, “Image in the Sand,” which was scheduled to air on 30 September 1998. It was quickly rejected—“but made for a fun marker sketch,” says Eaves.

The computer model of the final shipyard, which was destroyed in the episode “Shadows and Symbols,” would turn up again in “Tacking Into the Wind,” when it appeared as a Kelvas repair facility without its docking arms, and in the season finale “What You Leave Behind,” where it was spotted orbitting Cardassia, again, with the docking arms. The design even made it into another series. In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Bounty,” it made its final appearance as a Tellarite space station. It has three docking arms there but lacks the more detailed features that were originally put into the design.

 

N. Ottens
10 July 2010

Sources for this article include:


• Drexler, D., “Cardassian Shipyard Station,” Drex Files (9 July 2009)
• Eaves, J., “The rejected drawing of the Cardassian ship yards,” Eavesdropping with Johnny (4 May 2009)
• “Monac shipyards,” Memory Alpha