Other Stations?

[Bry_Sinclair]

I remember reading that during the development process for DS9, before settling on a Cardassian station, they looked at either making the station a planetary one on Bajor itself or a much older space station of alien origin.

Am I alone in thinking that either of those would have been great to see (not that I don't love the station we ultimately got on the show)?

A planet-based facility would be a great way to delve more into Bajor, its people and what they were going through after the Occupation, whilst an alien station also has lots of scope for exploring the base itself and the secrets it might hide.

 

[DonIago]

A totally alien space station might have been interesting, though quite possibly could have led to a very different show...possibly a worse one.

Not much interest in a planet-based facility here. Among other things I like Our Heroes being able to look out the windows and see the wormhole. Plus the last shot of the series wouldn't have been nearly as great.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I definitely prefer a space based station.

They could have made the station totally alien, and if they did it could have opened up some 'Space station has a mind of its own' style storylines or at least some 'Hidden ancient secrets' stuff. In the long run it probably wouldn't have changed the show much except maybe to make the sets more exotic.

 

[Melakon]

A planet-based station likely would have meant building a backlot facade and a lot of outdoor shooting, as well as soundstage interior sets. As much fun as that might have been for fans and actors alike, outdoor shooting every week would have been very expensive, taking money away from other things like extras, costumes, effects, etc.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

An episode of Wonder Woman filmed just a few doors down from where I lived when I was a kid. All the boys in the neighborhood came down on their bikes to watch Linda Carter do a little running, ask a passer-by a question, and run off frame. And we watched religiously in order to spot the scene we saw filmed.

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

 

[Timo]

The "totally alien space station" angle was IMHO pretty well covered by all that Cardassian stuff: lethal and paranoid security systems, lethal and paranoid doorways, lethal and paranoid elevators... Plus a clientele and personnel mainly consisting of aliens outside the usual UFP range.

With a surface-based station, with things like trees right next to doorways, TPTB would also have had to do a more careful job with scale. Certain partial-set and prop solutions to the hero and villain vehicles used would have been ruled out by that very requirement...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[IrishNero]

An episode of Wonder Woman filmed just a few doors down from where I lived when I was a kid. All the boys in the neighborhood came down on their bikes to watch Linda Carter do a little running, ask a passer-by a question, and run off frame. And we watched religiously in order to spot the scene we saw filmed.

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

That's an awesome story! It's funny you mentioned that because I took a business trip to L.A. a few years ago (I'm in the D.C. area) and while I was there, my corporate compatriots kept pointing out "This is where they filmed that..." You just never realize how often they return to the same places, move some stuff around and film another movie. We get some of that in D.C., but they're only allowed to do so much because that's the nature of our wooden Government. But I digress...

Anyway, while stationed in Korea some years ago, I went into a bar and not long after going into the bar, a beautiful Australian woman approached me. -My lucky day, right? Well, she was actually a casting person with a Korean daily Soap Opera, and she asked me if I'd like to be part of a couple of scenes, and told me they'd pay me about a hundred dollars. It sounded like fun so I said I'd come down. I figured I'd be an 'extra,' make a few bucks, have a few laughs and score with the hot Australian chick.

Anyway, I showed up the next day and it all blew my mind. It was at a park in Seoul, and there were a couple of hundred people milling about. Cameras were all over the place too. It was quite intimidating really. I thought I was going to be an 'extra' but it turned out I had a speaking role. -Really a bizarre way to cast an actor, but they didn't need anyone with real acting skills because it was two lines and I'd be speaking English anyway. They just needed an American and they were in a pinch.

So they handed me a page from a script and told me they would be filming in about an hour. I started to memorize my two measly lines. Heck, it happened so fast that I didn't even get a chance to think about how scared and nervous I was. I remember thinking: I can't believe I'm going to be on TV!" I just knew I was going to choke when the time came.

When I stepped in front of the camera, a light went on, several cast members said their dialogue, and when they pointed at me, I said my lines to the Korean actress in English. She turned to me and answered in perfect English, then the lights went off. - I was handed a Korean bank check for about $75 and I was out of there. This is all compressed but that was the gist of it. It was over in a flash.
-Or so I thought.

Turns out that I was really popular with a few of the Korean women who were watching the show when it aired and I was invited back for a larger, re-occurring role a few weeks later. I was given dialogue and was coached in Korean. All told, I was in six or seven episodes that year. I was getting noticed all over the place too; restaurants, bars, the zoo. I was even invited to be on a talk show. I went on and described my experience and it was translated by a Korean lady as we filmed in front of a live studio audience. The host of the show even told me I looked like Harrison Ford (This was in 1992 or 1993, I think) and all of the Korean audience members began to go nuts, because apparently, Harrison Ford was really popular there. Although I don't think I looked like Harrison Ford, apparently, I was a star. LOL I signed autographs and gave out pictures to the audience. It was kind of fun really.

But I wasn't given any quarter back at my military post in Taegu, Korea. They ran me over the coals night and day. "Hey movie star, get a mop." LOL. I was never going to be allowed to have a big head about it with those guys.

-And that was my fifteen minutes of fame. It was great fun. I really wish I had some footage from that show today, but these were the days before the Internet, and I didn't even own a VCR at the time. All of this came from going to bars in Korea, and trying to score with a hot Australian lady. I never saw her again, but she looked a lot like Kylie Minogue. Well, at least in my mind, she did.

And I don't mean to offend any women on the forum with the word 'chick.' it was the vernacular of the time and I was getting into the story. I was having a moment while reliving my glory days.

So, anyway, it's actually great fun (and apparently big business) to go to these places. It's unfortunate that Star Trek shows have been largely filmed on a sound stage or a studio lot that has since been dismantled, because Id like to see some of those places.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The "totally alien space station" angle was IMHO pretty well covered by all that Cardassian stuff: lethal and paranoid security systems, lethal and paranoid doorways, lethal and paranoid elevators... Plus a clientele and personnel mainly consisting of aliens outside the usual UFP range.

Yeah, but they only really did that in Civil Defense.

 

[SPCTRE]

 

[Timo]

The paranoid doorways also featured in "Captive Pursuit", and the set-building overall reflected alien ideas (open lift cabs, sudden pits, precarious half-rails for the sole protection against fall, the dialogue-mentioned lack of redundancies).

I'm not sure the show could have taken all that many episodes of "the station bites back". But one or two more besides "Civil Defense" would have been fun, preferably in the early seasons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bad Thoughts]

An episode of Wonder Woman filmed just a few doors down from where I lived when I was a kid. All the boys in the neighborhood came down on their bikes to watch Linda Carter do a little running, ask a passer-by a question, and run off frame. And we watched religiously in order to spot the scene we saw filmed.

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

That's an awesome story! It's funny you mentioned that because I took a business trip to L.A. a few years ago (I'm in the D.C. area) and while I was there, my corporate compatriots kept pointing out "This is where they filmed that..." You just never realize how often they return to the same places, move some stuff around and film another movie. We get some of that in D.C., but they're only allowed to do so much because that's the nature of our wooden Government. But I digress...

Anyway, while stationed in Korea some years ago, I went into a bar and not long after going into the bar, a beautiful Australian woman approached me. -My lucky day, right? Well, she was actually a casting person with a Korean daily Soap Opera, and she asked me if I'd like to be part of a couple of scenes, and told me they'd pay me about a hundred dollars. It sounded like fun so I said I'd come down. I figured I'd be an 'extra,' make a few bucks, have a few laughs and score with the hot Australian chick.

Anyway, I showed up the next day and it all blew my mind. It was at a park in Seoul, and there were a couple of hundred people milling about. Cameras were all over the place too. It was quite intimidating really. I thought I was going to be an 'extra' but it turned out I had a speaking role. -Really a bizarre way to cast an actor, but they didn't need anyone with real acting skills because it was two lines and I'd be speaking English anyway. They just needed an American and they were in a pinch.

So they handed me a page from a script and told me they would be filming in about an hour. I started to memorize my two measly lines. Heck, it happened so fast that I didn't even get a chance to think about how scared and nervous I was. I remember thinking: I can't believe I'm going to be on TV!" I just knew I was going to choke when the time came.

When I stepped in front of the camera, a light went on, several cast members said their dialogue, and when they pointed at me, I said my lines to the Korean actress in English. She turned to me and answered in perfect English, then the lights went off. - I was handed a Korean bank check for about $75 and I was out of there. This is all compressed but that was the gist of it. It was over in a flash.
-Or so I thought.

Turns out that I was really popular with a few of the Korean women who were watching the show when it aired and I was invited back for a larger, re-occurring role a few weeks later. I was given dialogue and was coached in Korean. All told, I was in six or seven episodes that year. I was getting noticed all over the place too; restaurants, bars, the zoo. I was even invited to be on a talk show. I went on and described my experience and it was translated by a Korean lady as we filmed in front of a live studio audience. The host of the show even told me I looked like Harrison Ford (This was in 1992 or 1993, I think) and all of the Korean audience members began to go nuts, because apparently, Harrison Ford was really popular there. Although I don't think I looked like Harrison Ford, apparently, I was a star. LOL I signed autographs and gave out pictures to the audience. It was kind of fun really.

But I wasn't given any quarter back at my military post in Taegu, Korea. They ran me over the coals night and day. "Hey movie star, get a mop." LOL. I was never going to be allowed to have a big head about it with those guys.

-And that was my fifteen minutes of fame. It was great fun. I really wish I had some footage from that show today, but these were the days before the Internet, and I didn't even own a VCR at the time. All of this came from going to bars in Korea, and trying to score with a hot Australian lady. I never saw her again, but she looked a lot like Kylie Minogue. Well, at least in my mind, she did.

And I don't mean to offend any women on the forum with the word 'chick.' it was the vernacular of the time and I was getting into the story. I was having a moment while reliving my glory days.

So, anyway, it's actually great fun (and apparently big business) to go to these places. It's unfortunate that Star Trek shows have been largely filmed on a sound stage or a studio lot that has since been dismantled, because Id like to see some of those places.

Thanks for the compliment. Your story is much better than mine. I must admit that I had some "acting experience," being in commercial a few years after the Wonder Woman incident. Those were mostly on sound stages (one was on a mock up of a DC-10 interior at the Douglas production facility).

I wish the DS9 set still existed. It did not initially dawn on me how its physicality played into the atmosphere of the show.

 

[danielcw]

Among other things I like Our Heroes being able to look out the windows and see the wormhole. Plus the last shot of the series wouldn't have been nearly as great.

Imagine the crew looking up a dark night sky and seeing the wormhole,
assuming it would have been closer to Bajor, or bigger, or whatever.
Imagine a wormhole so big and so bright, it can be seen from Bajor at day, and random sightings/openings of it actually influenced ancient Bajoran religion and history


For the finale: Imagine a zoom from Jake along Bajoran buildings, that were the homes of our heroes.
If you wanna aim for spectacle instead loneliness add a zoom through the clouds, enter orbit, see some Federation ships in Orbit, pan to space, where the wormhole might be.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

Or it could have become one of the Canadian Forest Planet shows. Where every alien planet is Vancouver, every building is Simon Fraser University, etc.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

Or it could have become one of the Canadian Forest Planet shows. Where every alien planet is Vancouver, every building is Simon Fraser University, etc.

I believe they had only started doing heavy sci-fi filming in Canada after DS9 premiered? Would that have been better or worse that the exteriors of Northrup, LMU,UCLA, the LA River basin, Vazquez Rocks, Sepulveda Pass,etc?

I think sci-fi needs a new city to film. Vancouver, IMO, was a breath of fresh air, but it is time to move on. The great thing about rapidly developing cities is that there is more vanguard architecture, which would look more futuristic.

ETA: Ironically, I watched the pilot of the old BSG with my son, pointing out where all the exteriors were filmed.

 

[maneth]

As cool as that was, it made me very aware how much the look of Los Angeles had infiltrated televised media. It wasn't so bad for cop shows or dramas, which may well have been set in LA. It did, though, ruin the experience of shows that were filmed "on location" when the location was visibly familiar: MASH, Logan's Run, Battlestar Galactica, etc. I particularly hated how every forest was Griffith Park, every desert was the San Fernando Valley, every ranch was some playboys getaway in Thousand Oaks. If DS9 has been a planet based show, I suspect that it would too look very Southern California to the detriment to the show.

Or it could have become one of the Canadian Forest Planet shows. Where every alien planet is Vancouver, every building is Simon Fraser University, etc.

I believe they had only started doing heavy sci-fi filming in Canada after DS9 premiered? Would that have been better or worse that the exteriors of Northrup, LMU,UCLA, the LA River basin, Vazquez Rocks, Sepulveda Pass,etc?

I think sci-fi needs a new city to film. Vancouver, IMO, was a breath of fresh air, but it is time to move on. The great thing about rapidly developing cities is that there is more vanguard architecture, which would look more futuristic.

ETA: Ironically, I watched the pilot of the old BSG with my son, pointing out where all the exteriors were filmed.

It does get tiring to see the same locations over and over in different shows or even multiple times in the same show, and supposedly on different planets, (I'm looking at you SG-1 and you, Andromeda), whether it's California or British Columbia.
At least the following sci-fi shows were shot in and around Vancouver: Andromeda, NuBSG, SG-1, SGA, SGU (although the desert scenes were shot in New Mexico) and much of The X-Files.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

A planet-based station might have been interesting had the producers decided to do something similar to what was seen on Alias, with a hidden station or headquarters that's not visible to the public.

--Sran

 

[DonIago]

Among other things I like Our Heroes being able to look out the windows and see the wormhole. Plus the last shot of the series wouldn't have been nearly as great.

Imagine the crew looking up a dark night sky and seeing the wormhole,
assuming it would have been closer to Bajor, or bigger, or whatever.
Imagine a wormhole so big and so bright, it can be seen from Bajor at day, and random sightings/openings of it actually influenced ancient Bajoran religion and history


For the finale: Imagine a zoom from Jake along Bajoran buildings, that were the homes of our heroes.
If you wanna aim for spectacle instead loneliness add a zoom through the clouds, enter orbit, see some Federation ships in Orbit, pan to space, where the wormhole might be.

I appreciate your desire to come up with options, but I'm afraid they're not really doing it for me.

 

[Reaper63]

although at this point, I'm sold on the Station idea, I think the planet based Station could have worked. I enjoyed Stargate Atlantis, And can see it working in a similar way. Even with the Defiant making a landing outside the base.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think a lot of Star Trek's aesthetic depends on the starry background, so it would have been hard to pull off the planetary station.