Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Danube-class Runabout

As mentioned earlier, the runabout cockpit was created by set designer Joseph Hodges under the direction of production designer Herman Zimmerman.

Unlike the standing sets for other 24th century Federation vessels at the time (like the USS Enterprise-D and its own shuttles), the runabout cockpit included several working video monitors which allowed for graphic displays (created by Mike and Denise Okuda) to be played back live during filming, rather than comped in during editing. Nevertheless, the cockpit still featured numerous traditional backlit graphics (aka Okudagrams), with the two front consoles functioning as operations (Ops) and flight control (Con), tactical and engineering consoles located to port, and navigation and science to starboard.

Another unique feature of the runabout cockpit was its ability to move: Constructed on rollers to set could be repositioned around the stage for ease of filming and even directly attached to the DS9 airlock set for the rare continuous shot following various crewmembers from the cockpit, through the airlocks, and onto the station. The runabout cockpit could also shake... or kind of gently vibrate under the power of a few stage hands.

Throughout production on Deep Space Nine, the runabout set would receive minor upgrades including refinements to its transporter platform, the addition of a standing console at the rear, and blast shields for the side viewports.

The addition of these blast shields was actually done for practical, real world purposes as the producers found adding moving stars or other visual effects outside of these windows to be unnecessarily costly. Early attempts to mitigate this cost included simply covering the windows with plain beige wood (first seen in "Whispers"), until stylized shutters reflecting the design of the runabout's interior airlocks were designed and inserted into the set (first seen in "Crossover").

Like nearly every other Star Trek set, the runabout cockpit was redressed numerous times to stand in for other small Federation (and non-Federation) vessels, but we'll get to that...