A small part of the great Monac shipyard facility which met a spectacular fate in the DS9 episode “Shadows and Symbols”.
This sprawling Cardassian spacestation\shipyard made great use of architectural details established by the DS9 station. It was used numerous times over the run of Deep Space, and even made it’s way into “Enterprise” as a Tellarite space station.
From a sketch by John Eaves.
Side
Front
Back
Top
Bottom
Episodic notes courtesy Jörg -
In “Shadows and symbols”, 5 long docking arms with smaller drydocks were attached to the central hub-stations.
In “Tacking into the wind”, the model was seen as the Kelvas repair facility. The docking arms were completely removed.
In “What you leave behind”, several space-stations of this type were seen in orbit of Cardassia, again, the docking arms are nowhere to be seen.
Finally, the model appeared as a Tellarite space station in “Bounty”. For this appearance, the low-res model from “Shadows and Symbols” was used again (is that correct? It certainly seems the region with the small docking bays where the Cardassian shuttle lands in “Tacking into the wind” is much less detailed here). The station again has 3 docking arms, without the smaller drydocks however.
(Incidentally, in ‘Shadows and Symbols” we saw the “Monac” shipyards, named after on set Special Effects supervisor Gary Monak – Doug)
Screen caps coutesy Jörg.
Very cool entry Doug, that was a favorite from the get go!
Very cool looking, I don’t really remember this so it’s sort of new me
This is an example of how DS9 really started raising the bar on TV FX for Star Trek. 3D opened new story-telling possibilities like this. I remember being blown away by this stuff on first viewing. VERY cool, Doug!
You can see the echoes of DS9 in the horizontal outer bars that run from the end of the bars that come out of the hub.
On DS9, the characters typically seemed to find their station ugly, but I rather appreciate some of the Cardassian design cues. This big brother to DS9 has its own interesting blend of the organic and the utilitarian, and I like it as well. A duller color scheme for the stations was a good idea; the yellow-ochre sort of color from the Galor-class ship might have looked obnoxious on a grand scale.
Building starships! What a cool job!!
I’ve always loved shots of the Trek universe that depict a hub of starships doing their thing. The space battles are mega-cool of course, particularly the epic battles that DS9 were kicking out throughout the second half of its run but to see such hubs of activity that don’t require high velocities, lots of weapons fire, loud soundtracks etc. and yet still give the audience it’s jaw-drop factor you can always count on a shipyard scene. The spacedock shots from Star Trek III is arguably my favourite example of this (he sez now!) but then my mind wanders to Utopia Planitia in the Voyager episode: “Relativity” and I think… Oh wow baby!! And who doesn’t go weak at the knees before the immortal drydock scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture?
The detail in this Cardassian shipyard is awesome, there’s a surprise in pretty much every shot! Thanks for posting Doug!!
Nice entry today! Not only an interesting topic but the screen caps allow for an examination that I wasn’t able to enjoy during the live viewing.
I appreciate the construction of the Cardassian ship as it demonstrates the effort and detail toward expanding the storyline while remaining consistent to the previous ideas. The mark of mature creativity; restraint yet clear skill.
When I see these posts, I really miss DS-9.
The DC
I really miss DS9!
(Everyone think: “TV Movie!”)
OMG i love this one! I remember how i used to spend hours and hours on the internet trying to find nice images like these from the Star Trek and sci fi world years ago with my 56k modem. It´s great to have these shots now coming everyday and it inspired me to get on my 3D programm again and start learning about modeling again. Everytime i get a look at these shots i save them and i will spend surely a lot of months in the future modeling star trek stuff again
I´m always surprised how much the final renderings differ from the more lightened schematic views here 
But i´m curios and i don´t know if this was discussed here earlier, but i recently watched a lot of Enterprise episodes and even i´m amazed by a lot of those shots there, i can´t shake the feeling that there was more time spend on the shots from DS9 and Voyager. Or is it just that the Enterprise effects were made just different to have another style to them? Maybe a different type of budget? I´m really curious about that.
Hey Doug, I just stumbled on to your website and your work is amazing! It’s great to see items and models up close and personal and to hear your awesome stories! Thanks for sharing all of this with us!
Hi Dambold! Thanks buddy! I’m glad you are enjoying the blog along with the incredible work of my mad, koo koo friends… plus a few things I’ve done here and there as well! Put your feet up! Set a spell!
Ha! Thanks. Seriously I love the detail put into all of you guys’ work, even if it wasn’t seen that close on screen!
Wow, excellent detail. The shuttlebays next to the docked Jem’Hadar ship and the Galor-class under construction are especially neat.
So this was a new model then purpose built for DS9? I always thought it was a recolored/retooled version of the Galaxy-class spacedock frame.
-Stefan-
Can’t beat seeing a vast and complex shipyard… oh, unless you blow it up as well. With a supernova.
Klingons really don’t know have a word for “overkill”.
Just finished watching the last bit of the 7th season of DS9 earlier this week and remember this one well! Great scene where Kira, Garak, Damar and Odo sneak on to the station to take over a Jem’Hadar fighter.
The stations made a great way to send Jadzia off to sto-vo-kor in true Klingon fashion in “Shadows and Symbols.”
All in all, Cardassian architecture at its best!
Great to see this design up close. There’s a lot of detail in there – I’d love to see DS9 (and TNG) come out in high def sometime soon. Do you think the effects shots would need to be re-rendered or would the originals hold up in the new format? Would the model shots be ok? I know their are concerns as much of the TNG and DS9 effects were shot on video.
I’m curious how this with be tackled when the inevitable HD releases come out, especially for TNG. I’m guessing re-shooting with models is (sadly) prohibitively expensive, but even redoing effects for however many hundreds of hours these series in CG would certainly be no small challenge. Will we have to wait until scenes can be rendered in a few minutes?
I always liked the Space Docks and Space Stations. Don’t get me wrong. The starships were cool for combat and exploring, but what about the “world” that they exist in? What was the everyday Federation like? It’s why I thought DS9 was a really good show. It helped in filling in those blanks.
In the 7th Screen Cap, is that a Vulcan ship by the Cardassian Station?
It is a Vulcan ship, but I don’t believe the station was intended to be Cardassian in that appearance.
In the shot of the Kelvas, named kelvas-repair-facility-tacking-into-the-wind-3.jpg you can barely see two shuttles in the bay prior to the larger shuttle´s entry. Any caps of those Jörg? any idea what they are Doug?
Jorg – You deserve a hug or something! Or a handshake! Handshakes are good! A handshake with a grin!! – Hey, why not all three? A hug, a handshake and a big grin, but lets keep the physical contact down to less than 5 seconds, I don’t want to be spilling too much love! (what was that all about??)
No really, I don’t think I ever thank you enough for your submission of the screen grabs which up to now I admit I have probably been taking them for granted, but after seeing that you’ve provided us with screen-grabs from four separate episodes…
I appreciate that to zero in on what, where and when exactly all this stuff scores its screen time must cost you a fair amount of time and effort on your part. Because this model is a huge high detail effort I’d say that the screen captures on this one are as informative as Doug’s renders! – Cheers dude!!
I’m a bit late to the game due internet problems, but I have a question if you’re still monitoring this topic; You call the enterprise version of the station a tellarite space station. Was that the intention of the writers? We never learned anything about it except that a Tellarite lived there, and since we know at least the vulcans had some contacts with cardassia during the era and I quite liked the idea that Enterprise had reached the border of Cardassian Space. After all, it’s not that much of a stretch that space stations could be continued to be used for 200 years.