Star Trek: 10 Design Secrets Behind Iconic Ships

While yes, Deep Space 9 is a space station and not a starship, the design is as iconic as both Enterprise and Voyager, and so this list would not be complete without it.

When conceptualizing Deep Space Nine’s new setting, producer Rick Berman wanted a design slick enough and alien enough that it would not complete with The Next Generation, nor be derivative of anything seen in The Original Series.

The initial concept certainly was alien. The idea was to create a Tower of Babel-type structure, one that had been in continuous use for thousands of years and had been expanded upon by myriad successive cultures, resulting in a sprawling melting pot of disparate looks and technologies.

But Berman wanted something even more alien, yet still simple in shape. This led the team to an earlier offering by production designer Herman Zimmerman, a series of nested hoop structures around a central core. The designers then iterated upon this, incorporating elements of an atom and a gyroscope. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Berman suggested that the tops and bottoms of the hoops be broken off, and DS9 was born.

Interestingly, the station’s hidden weapon platforms were not original but added specially for the episode The Way of the Warrior, a nasty surprise that turned DS9 into a badass presence to equal its USS Defiant showmate.