Empok Nor

[Bryan Moore]

I love this episode, but the station's abandonment doesn't make a lot of sense to me: Why only leave 3 of these shock troops behind an abandoned station? If it's important enough to protect, protect it right. If it's not important and you don't plan on reusing the station, scuttle the thing beyond repair.

Moreover, if they abandoned it a year before the episode (as is stated), then you can assume the Klingons drove them out. This suggests the Klingons didn't try to capture or destroy the station either.

I can understand the idea of "okay, we'll keep it for later, in case we come back" especially for something that size. But in that case, protect it better!

[stitch626]

Why was the station always shown to be tilted? That bothered me.

[Bryan Moore]

Why was the station always shown to be tilted? That bothered me.

Tilted means evil/ominous, don't you know?! They can't give the station a goatee like they can people =)

[Mikey]

I never really thought about it, but you're right. Either abandon it completely, or garrison it appropriately.

[Mark]

And why didn't starfleet move in and occupy THIS station as well?

[Reliant121]

Probably had no tactical value. Remember, Terok Nor/DS9 had a pitiful armament before starfleet upgraded it. I imagine it was the same with Empok Nor.

[thelordharry]

Why was the station always shown to be tilted? That bothered me.

To immediately visually distinguish it from Terok Nor which was populated and stabilised? It's another Trek cliche, like when they show people as exhausted or having had no sleep, they just ruffle the character's hair a bit

[Sionnach Glic]

I love this episode, but the station's abandonment doesn't make a lot of sense to me: Why only leave 3 of these shock troops behind an abandoned station? If it's important enough to protect, protect it right. If it's not important and you don't plan on reusing the station, scuttle the thing beyond repair.

You're right. 3 soldiers is nowhere near enough to garrison something. Maybe they were suffering severe manpower shortages?

[Bryan Moore]

And why didn't starfleet move in and occupy THIS station as well?

From what I gather from the episode, it was unclaimed space, but clearly the Cardassians had some sort of value to it. Now this is right before the start of the Dominion War, but Starfleet likely knew that with tensions building, they'd likely have no resources to spare. Remember, DS9, until Season 4 was extremely vulnerable. We can assume between seasons 3-4, the upgrades to DS9 took a few months and were VERY extensive, to an already running station. Empok Nor, likely would have taken even longer. And if there was no tactical necessity, such as the wormhole or the planet below that was home to something fun like Cotton Candy flavored aliens or perhaps Quantum Chakats, it wasn't worth the resource cost.

[Tsukiyumi]

...Quantum Chakats...

Check, please.

[Bryan Moore]

I am curious why the Cardassians would leave the station so undergunned for its size. I understand its just ore processing mostly, but you'd think they'd want to defend something with that much resources put into it with more teeth. This goes for DS9 too.

[kostmayer]

Was it undergunned by Cardassian standards? Their ships have been shown to be inferior to Federation ships in terms of firepower.

Though, given what DS9 could do after it was upgraded by the Federation, perhaps it should have had more guns even as a Cardassian mining station.

[Mikey]

Here's a question: why wouldn't the Feds have taken Empok Nor, if only to cannibalize it for parts fro Terok Nor/DS9?

[Sionnach Glic]

Maybe they just wanted to replace damaged components with UFP tech instead?

[Tyyr]

Maybe DS9 was well armed but when the Cardassians pulled out they took all the weapons with them.