Ok, I usually love answering these type of questions. I figured I would ask one for once. And this may have been addressed before, but here goes... Why wouldn't the Federation or the Cardassians (or later the Dominion) reactivate Empok Nor? I mean, there is a whole huge space station just sitting there. And they could have always moved it somewhere else if it was in an undesirable locale. Thoughts?
Well, no, they couldn't really relocate it. The best O'Brien could do to move DS9 in "Emissary" was about impulse power and it was nearly shaken to bits. The Cardassians did plan to reactivate it if they had the resources (hence leaving the stasis troops to defend it) but those circumstances never arrived. As for the Federation, it's likely in a contested region - salvage rights might apply if the Cardassians had abandoned their claim on it as property, but claiming it as their own might kickstart new arguments over treaties, etc.
I suppose the engineering effort would be too much for them to deal with - in early DS9 the station was always breaking down because cardassian and starfleet tech weren’t designed to work together. Maybe starfleet thought it wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to do that a second time? Or nobody could deal with the crazy angle Empok Nor was apparently stuck at - all the pictures hung weird on the walls...
P.s. on Terok Nor, starfleet had the added incentive of it being in the Bajor system (which was a protectorate and a potential new member planet further down the line). The only thing near Empok Nor was the inspiration for the lighting levels in space on DSC.
It's probably not in a strategically meaningful location. What I think is a better question is why Cardassia didn't self destruct any of these stations when abandoning them. I guess it could have been a statement of wishing to return, or maybe the person in charge of the decision didn't want either to spend the cost of evacuating the station or the bad PR of murdering all the people living there. But Empok Nor was completely abandoned and all they did was leave behind a Cardassian rage virus?
Upgrading Terrok Nor to UFP standards seems to have been a lengthy and labor consuming process. Without a concrete reason to be in the space of Empok Nor, I doubt Starfleet would make the investment.
Good points. I tend to lean toward the fact it was probably in an area that was no longer of strategic importance. But, to your point about self destructing the station, one would wonder why they didn't just dismantle and reuse the components. But, if they left those soldiers there, I guess they were really planning to come back at some point.
Cardassia pulled out when they didn't have the resources to keep it going and I suspect the Dominion (and Starfleet) ignored it because it wasn't a strategic enough position. Had the Allied Forces made a move to reactive it then they'd open up a new front for them to defend. I would've liked it if the base had become some kind of alien bazaar, a trading station where all sorts of weird and wonderful things could be bought and sold, a haven for wanderers and criminals to get lost at, it would've helped add another layer to the wonderfully complex tapestry that is DS9.
I never thought about it opening up a new front, good point. Also, that would have been pretty awesome if they made it into a weird trade port or bazaar. As it was, they made some pretty good episodes out of it. I love the Magnificent Ferengi (as a humorous episode) and Covenant is one of my favorite stand alone S7 episodes.
That was a thoroughly sabotaged station, though, with just six thrusters out of 36 working and just four actually firing (it's telling that the Cardassians thought it worthwhile to sabotage the station's propulsive capabilities - perhaps they thought the Feds would fly the station away for closer study inside UFP space?). And the very "Emissary" showed how easy it is to tow things in Trek: Sisko's tiny runabout was pulling the Cardassian warship on a tractor beam leash like a docile chihuahua. Empok Nor sits in the middle of nowhere. Yet it is supposed to be 100% identical to Terok Nor (O'Brien bets everybody's lives on Empok yielding all the necessary spares for Terok, without ever having visited Empok), and Terok Nor was dedicated to ore refining on low orbit around the mining planet. Perhaps the Cardassians tried to tow Empok to a safer or richer location, but had to give it up for reason X? (Candidates for X very much include the ongoing war and the fact that the Feds can get there in a jiffy in a vulnerable runabout!) In any case, Terok Nor appeared big and impressive when we first saw it. But apparently it is peanuts for the Cardassian Union, which sports gigantic space structures in the last two seasons, and (as discussed here) can and will spare a station the size and type of Terok Nor like a spent box of tissue paper. Timo Saloniemi
Yes, towing it AT IMPULSE. We've seen warp tows before, but typically with a larger ship towing a smaller one. Towing a station? That isn't shaped for a warp field? The Borg seem to have some experience warping large, oddly shaped objects but I doubt they offer a haulage service.
I'm sure there would be a way for the federation/cardassians/dominion to do it, but then the question then becomes is it all worth it? Or would it be better to dismantle and use the parts...or abandon it...as they did. So, I guess that kind of answers the original question. It may have become strategically viable again, so they left the possibility for it to be reactivated, but it must have not been worth it enough to try and move or dismantle it.
I'd think that moving a station at warp would be do-able, not very easy but with the right number of ships, modified warp bubbles, and maintaining a low speed then they could get a station from one site to another if they get the logistics just right. In some instances it might be a sounder option to tow an older station to a new location for a time instead of going to the 'expense' of building one from scratch.
I just always figured it was located in an area that no longer held importance and, as above, the crazy angle. That would surely give people headaches in the long run
If the writers were daring thy could have destroyed DS9 then have Empok Nor tractored to the wormhole by Federation ships to take its place. Of course, they did a similar thing blowing up the Defiant and conveniently replacing it.
But then it would have been all a mess like when the show first started. They all would have been back to sleeping on those uncomfortable looking triangular thin pillows, oh wait, nevermind. I think the trashed out station and having to move it would have just been rehashing what was done already.
Would it have been worth it? Probably not. If the station was worthy, Quark, or one of his magnificent Ferengi buddies, might have gotten the idea that they could make a few bucks (latinum) by claiming the station and then selling it off to some sucker.
The station was used for spare parts in one episode if I remember right, and in the books its fusion core was used for DS9 as well. In the books, the entire station was towed at warp by a small armada to the Bajor system for use for other spare parts over time as well. Spoiler Of course, this was all rendered moot with the destruction of the original DS9 and the construction of a new one made with Federation tech.
I always thought the name Empok Nor was really cool. Regarding the tilt of the station, does that really matter in space? TV makes us forget that in space, you can go at any angle and it will still be normal for whoever is inside. Empok Nor was tilted like that as another way, visually, of saying our characters are in a different place.