Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of Deep Space 9 You Need To Know
4. Alien Tower Of Babel
Along with the abandoned Promenade monorail, numerous configurations, even backstories for the station itself were toyed with and discarded during the pre-production stages of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Early in the show's conception, Deep Space 9 was imagined not as an abandoned Cardassian installation but as an "alien Tower of Babel" – a hodgepodge of technologies and cultural stylings constructed over thousands of years. Numerous pieces of concept artwork were produced depicting the station in various forms of random collections of interconnected modules, however none of these designs stuck with the producers.
In order to create something that would both contrast with and also complement Star Trek: The Next Generation, producer Rick Berman requested a more easily recognizable design resulting in the Tower of Babel concept being thrown out.
Production designer Herman Zimmerman suggested interconnected hoops, which were later broken up into the iconic docking arms, resulting in the Cardassian "monstrosity" that the producers referred to as "a combination of an atom, a Mercedes emblem, and a gyroscope".