The Orb is a Trek.fm podcast dedicated entirely to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, hosted since 2013 by C Bryan Jones and Matthew Rushing. In January 2023, we begin a 30th-anniversary retrospective that will take you through all of DS9, one episode at a time, as we shift from our format of exploring the minutiae of the show to celebrating 30 years of the greatest chapter in the Star Trek franchise with an episode-by-episode examination.
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The Orb 15: Some Sort of Weird Cage
The Visual Design of Deep Space Nine.
The mandate going into DS9 was to create something very different from previous incarnations of Star Trek. Setting the show in a non-Federation environment at the junction of interstellar traffic meant that the station would be a strange and busy place. What was needed was something a bit darker, a bit sinister—and completely alien. Picking up on the threads first laid out in TNG’s “The Wounded,” Herman Zimmerman, Marvin Rush, and the rest of the creative team fleshed out Cardassian design and architecture to create an incredibly real environment and some of the most elaborate sets every built for television. In this episode of The Orb hosts Christopher Jones and Matthew Rushing discuss various elements of Deep Space Nine’s visual design including the interiors, the lighting, Cardassian technology, the meshing of Cardassian and Bajoran aesthetics, the Defiant, and of course the uniforms.