What do you think?
Rate this book
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual
UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF TEROK NOR!
It was once a battered Cardassian ore-processing facility orbiting the planet Bajor. But Terok Nor took on new life when the Cardassians evacuated and were replaced by Starfleet personnel. With the discovery of a nearby stable wormhole connecting the Alpha Quadrant with the Gamma Quadrant, the newly christened Space Station Deep Space 9 became one of the most important installations in known space.
Filled with hundreds of schematic diagrams and illustrations, the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual" is essential for anyone interested in the ships, technology and weapons of Starfleet and the many different species, who frequent the station, including the Klingons, the Bajorans, the Romulans, the Cardassians, and the Jem'Hadar.
As an added bonus, four full-color gatefolds have been specially created for this book. In addition to providing an in-depth look at the exteriors of the station, these illustrations also show the Promenade, and highlight the U.S.S. Defiant.
Turning the ravaged outpost into a fully operational station involved much more than a simple name change. The transformation represented an arduous challenge to the Starfleet engineers who were required to merge two divergent technologies. How they achieved that feat, and how the Federation helps the Bajoran government keep the station running smoothly, is revealed in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual".
178 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1998
8 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 12, 2018
When I was younger I really enjoyed the DK's Star Wars Ultimate Cross Sections series. They were fascinating looks at the inner-workings of innumerable vehicles, devices, and places set in the Star Wars universe. A million little details added not just to the illuminated nuts and bolts of the transports and technology depicted within but, a whole new dimension to the overall narrative as well.
I expected the same from Sternbach's Deep Space Nine Manual. Boy was I was mistaken.
In contradistinction to the aforementioned series which is heavy on the images and the details, this DS9 manual (as it were) is quite the opposite - saturated with horribly outdated CGI imagery and meaty on the useless details. On the other hand, DK's cross sections added thoughtful and interesting tidbits of data such as, the location of holding cells and sleeping bunks on Boba Fett's Slave I (because where else is he gonna toss those phat bounties for Jabba during interstellar travel?); and the location of further secret compartments under the erstwhile floorboards of Solo's Millenium Falcon (leads us to believe he's done this before and often). These cool littler interstices grant more depth to the story and the characters within. DS9's manual, to the contrary presents us with stale info such as on page 25, "A typical hull plate 2.8 meters by 3.7 meters by 37 centimeters was fabricated from a directionally grown, single crystal kelindide core 15.4 centimeters thick."
This choice of tone and minutiae epitomizes this book perfectly. Instead of an analogue to Tolkein's The Silmarillion, it feels more like it's title would actually suggest (surprisingly enough) an owner-operator's manual. Since I'm not manning the helm at DS9, and neither are you presumably, this doesn't help us, nor does it add to our enjoyment of the series. These pseudo-scientific jargons (much like the illusory gold-pressed Latinum) and the boring excerpts they fill bring me to my next point which recalls my first experiences with Star Trek, and most relevantly, the first Motion Picture.
On a whim, during my first return from overseas adventures, I checked out and watched (for the first time) the entirety of the Original Series in the span of a month. I enjoyed the characters, the settings, and the sheer humanity of Homo Sapiens just a few short centuries into the future. Human Nature still hadn't changed much and I delighted in Roddenberry's, “Wagon Train to the Stars;” a true testament to the height of Humanistic fables/cautionary tales that still remained fresh decades later. The original three seasons were a delight, the same cannot be said (for me at least) in regards to The Motion Picture.
Needless to say I was first startled, then increasingly bored with the first nigh 30 minutes of the film which amounted to, Enterprise porn. With every goddamn close up possible of every goddamn nook and cranny of Kirk's USS Enterprise, I was irritated until the irritation begot an important shaft of (Wikipedia granted) illumination. The movie had been released almost a decade after the original series had met its untimely end. This movie wasn't for the casuals (like yours truly) but for the generation of boys and girls that had grown up loving every moment of the original series. Star Trek had become a cultural touchstone that remained unforgotten for those children. It all made sense then, it was a movie for Trekkies by Trekkies.
Just like this book.
Again, if you're a Trekkie, this book is for you. Tons of, otherwise boring details that caused me to toss it down halfway through (ok more like a third, but my point still stands) must be intriguing to a whole other set of people. What seemed masturbatory in the first film, was/is still cool as shit for the true believers, who are always trying to return to that bygone golden age, no matter how ephemeral.
No thumbs for this one.
If you're a Trekkie, dig it as you surely shall.
Casuals, elsewhere you should look.
I expected the same from Sternbach's Deep Space Nine Manual. Boy was I was mistaken.
In contradistinction to the aforementioned series which is heavy on the images and the details, this DS9 manual (as it were) is quite the opposite - saturated with horribly outdated CGI imagery and meaty on the useless details. On the other hand, DK's cross sections added thoughtful and interesting tidbits of data such as, the location of holding cells and sleeping bunks on Boba Fett's Slave I (because where else is he gonna toss those phat bounties for Jabba during interstellar travel?); and the location of further secret compartments under the erstwhile floorboards of Solo's Millenium Falcon (leads us to believe he's done this before and often). These cool littler interstices grant more depth to the story and the characters within. DS9's manual, to the contrary presents us with stale info such as on page 25, "A typical hull plate 2.8 meters by 3.7 meters by 37 centimeters was fabricated from a directionally grown, single crystal kelindide core 15.4 centimeters thick."
This choice of tone and minutiae epitomizes this book perfectly. Instead of an analogue to Tolkein's The Silmarillion, it feels more like it's title would actually suggest (surprisingly enough) an owner-operator's manual. Since I'm not manning the helm at DS9, and neither are you presumably, this doesn't help us, nor does it add to our enjoyment of the series. These pseudo-scientific jargons (much like the illusory gold-pressed Latinum) and the boring excerpts they fill bring me to my next point which recalls my first experiences with Star Trek, and most relevantly, the first Motion Picture.
On a whim, during my first return from overseas adventures, I checked out and watched (for the first time) the entirety of the Original Series in the span of a month. I enjoyed the characters, the settings, and the sheer humanity of Homo Sapiens just a few short centuries into the future. Human Nature still hadn't changed much and I delighted in Roddenberry's, “Wagon Train to the Stars;” a true testament to the height of Humanistic fables/cautionary tales that still remained fresh decades later. The original three seasons were a delight, the same cannot be said (for me at least) in regards to The Motion Picture.
Needless to say I was first startled, then increasingly bored with the first nigh 30 minutes of the film which amounted to, Enterprise porn. With every goddamn close up possible of every goddamn nook and cranny of Kirk's USS Enterprise, I was irritated until the irritation begot an important shaft of (Wikipedia granted) illumination. The movie had been released almost a decade after the original series had met its untimely end. This movie wasn't for the casuals (like yours truly) but for the generation of boys and girls that had grown up loving every moment of the original series. Star Trek had become a cultural touchstone that remained unforgotten for those children. It all made sense then, it was a movie for Trekkies by Trekkies.
Just like this book.
Again, if you're a Trekkie, this book is for you. Tons of, otherwise boring details that caused me to toss it down halfway through (ok more like a third, but my point still stands) must be intriguing to a whole other set of people. What seemed masturbatory in the first film, was/is still cool as shit for the true believers, who are always trying to return to that bygone golden age, no matter how ephemeral.
No thumbs for this one.
If you're a Trekkie, dig it as you surely shall.
Casuals, elsewhere you should look.
January 30, 2011
By far the best of the Star Trek tech manuals -- the station itself, the runabouts AND the Defiant! The artwork & cutaway diagrams are incrediblly detailed (and in colour), the fictional backstory is researched to the Nth degree, and every page lives and breathes the care and attention to detail that was obvious in every episode of DS9. Utterly fantastic!
July 10, 2018
Most of this book was pretty good. However my biggest beef with this publication was the starship recognition directory at the end. It appears that they let he intern do that part and the editor missed it because its a disaster. Most of the ship technical data is cut and pasted from previous ships which is obvious because several very different ships will have the very same technical data for all sorts of characteristics. I personally rewrote them to suit what I expected after the Dominion War and left those edited pages in the book. For a major publication to fuck up like this when such a large body of fans are looking for cannon sources to quote from is terrible. Today the cannon nerds are still quoting the stats from this book just because its official. This could have been fixed at the source if someone had let a competent editor look at the last part of the book. I really liked most of the book but you loose two stars for royaly fucking up the ship recognition annex and giving me 18 years of heartache dealing with all the internet cannon nerds who still quote you.
April 12, 2008
Very stylish. Lacking in the Next Generation Technical Manual's devotion to the mythology. This is a good and bad thing.
Read
July 28, 2011Good geek fun, though it could have done with better copy editing.
February 12, 2012
This book is a good time for day dreaming. I would say it is a lot better than most of these supplemental works.
April 26, 2015
Doug Drexler's illustrations are fantastic and this is a must for any Trekie's collection!
March 1, 2016
awesome book.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews