Revisiting the DS9 Tech Manual: Internal Deck Structures

[Boris Skrbic]

Revisiting the p.15 scale drawing of the Enterprise-D, Defiant 74656 and DS9 together, I can certainly believe that each pylon "rises" or "falls" 126 decks in each "direction". I wonder what the view from inside Ops would have been of the upper pylons.

Yes, 969.26 meters (p.16) divided by 252 levels yields 3.85 meters per level, a fairly typical Rick Sternbach deck height. On the other hand, Doug Drexler was making his cross-section look good by visually matching the Core spacing which became much higher than expected due to the upscaling, so his own extrapolation suggests a much lower number of levels, especially since they seem to be double-height in places. (Drexler posted a digital version of the diagram at ArtStation.)

 

[Tuskin38]

Did the show ever say ore processing was in the pylons like the tech manual says it is?

Star Trek Online also put it in a pylon.

 

[DonIago]

It makes a certain amount of sense, but does "Civil Defense" even work under that supposition?

 

[Tuskin38]

I don't see why it couldn't work.

 

[DonIago]

Well, because the Siskos and O'Brien would have to get from one of the pylons into the lower core without turbolifts in a limited period of time, primarily.

 

[Timo]

Could be a three-lefts-make-a-right type situation there: the fact that the heroes are in extreme hurry, combined with the fact that they nevertheless fail to run, isn't due to the sets being too small for running scenes after all - but due to them indeed having done a lot of running that has made them so winded that their every dialogue scene has to take place at a walking pace...

(Alternately, the long horizontal stretch of their journey involved riding on a noisy Cardassian ore conveyor that was still working even when the turbolifts weren't, but didn't allow for any dialogue, this thus being left for the walking scenes.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DonIago]

It would be interesting to do a logistical breakdown of the episode, but not something that I have the time or inclination to do on my own.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Weirdly enough, the script asks for a Docking Ring corridor as the setting of the attempt to climb up to Ops from Level 29, Section D, but that could just be the writer visualizing a specific set. Even though ore processing in the pylons appears in the early DS9 schematics also, even though the writer seems to have been familiar with the basic layout, they simply added nothing to suggest a pylon location or a horizontal trip in the dialogue. Sisko’s party leaves a level above 33, eventually reaches 29, then goes to 34 without Jake, who proceeds alone to a runabout pad.