Star Trek: Deep Space 9 & The U.S.S Defiant Illustrated Handbook

by Ben Robinson (Series Editor)

Fourth in the series of STAR TREK ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS , this guide takes an in-depth look at the space station Deep Space 9 and the starship U.S.S. Defiant .

The perfect gift for the Star Trek fan in your life!

Exploring the former Cardassian space station in detail, this volume looks at Deep Space 9's history and operation under the command of Captain Benjamin Sisko of the United Federation of Planets. The chapters feature the station, the warship the U.S.S. Defiant, and the small, multi-purpose runabouts used as transport by the crew. With technical information from official sources, annotated exterior views and isometric illustrations of key locations, this handbook provides an extraordinary reference guide to 24th century Federation life on the diplomatic outpost.

With technical information from official sources, annotated exterior views and isometric illustrations of key locations, this volume provides an extraordinary reference guide to 24th century Federation life on the diplomatic outpost.

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction, Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 18, 2020

Reviews

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

Preface: I've seen every episode of DS9 at least three times. Once when it was first airing, second time about 15 years ago and a third time just a few years back when the series became available on Netflix. It is also my favorite Star Trek series of all time.

Hence, I delved into this book in order to find new information, interesting bits of lore that I did not know and reliving some very good memories.

Unfortunately the book didn't deliver very well on any of these. A large portion of the book are schematics of the station, the runabouts and Defiant and the various technologies contained within them. It's definitely a comprehensive list, but also a list that likely any (semi-HC) Trek fan will already know. Some have a bit of extra detail, but most just regurgitate information that was learned in one episode or another. The cross section graphics are very nice, but also only cover the sections that I already know - the parts that we've seen in the show. In "reality" DS9 is a very large space station (1.5km across and almost 1km high), and the sets available to the show covered a very small portion of it. I was really hoping to get a glimpse into the parts we never saw. Alas, there's very little of that here.

The cross sections and details on various technologies are nice but again, very little is said that was not revealed in the show (which for most things is actually not that much). On several I got a feeling that there was a minimum word limit that the author was shooting for, even when the source material did not really extend that far.

For the tie-in, there's a good smattering of various episodes thrown in various places. A lot of time this felt a bit forced though. Some even feel flipped - the whole section was written just because there happened to be an episode about it (Zek's call center did not really need a cross section treatment).

As the book is written from in-universe perspective, I would have hoped for a more general treatment of DS9, not too focused on the episodes we saw. Again the station is big, and the time span of the series is long. It makes the universe feel small if no interesting things of note ever happened that did not happen to our principal crew.

Still, I did enjoy this trip down the memory lane, I was just left hoping for more. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's okay. Pretty graphics and a nice layout of places used in the show, for the most part. While the author screws up a few plot details in the introduction, the schematics are cool. I never totally got a good sense of what stations did what in Ops in DS9, so it is actually kinda nice to get a better understanding. Some parts of the schematics on the Defiant are also interesting (it really is a very compact overpowered ship!) Otherwise, it's mostly stuff a hardcore DS9 fan already knows. A good coffeetable book.

[Scott Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This came in very handy during my recent rewatch of DS9.