Even if you’re able-bodied having to step over giant pointless raised ramps every 5 m must get annoying. It basically necessitates you have hover trolleys. You sure can’t use anything with wheels.
The whole station is badly designed
I bet the cardassians designed it to piss off the Bajoran builders.
Hell, maybe the bajorans built it wrong out of malicious compliance
“Wait, the Bajorans somehow managed to install every hallway on the station upside down and you somehow only noticed when the entire thing was finished?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want us to execute them all?”
“No, I’m actually kind of impressed. Well do nothing to them; they earned this one. But do assign that jackass Dukat to the planet and move his office up here.”
“You want his office to be on a shoddily built orbital ore progressing facility instead of the planetary capital?”
“If you’d ever met him you’d know why.”
This is my new head canon
I’ve always thought that was a nice subtle visual reinforcement of the problems in Cardassian culture.
It’s such a basic courtesy to flatten or ramp areas like that.
And violating it is such asshole design. It fits the Cardassian vibe.
Plus, you know some Cardassian engineer got promoted for the money savings of having one-size-fits-nothing hull sections.
I recall moments in the first episode where Federation officers have to consciously remember to step over. It’s such a nice touch, and fits the vibe of the episode.
I might be giving too much credit, but the set and props designers in Trek do have a history of doing cool stuff like this that goes largely unnoticed.
To be fair, the station was built by Cardassians and they don’t seem like the type of people to give a shit about the disabled. I feel like they cull anyone unable to be useful to the government.
Bloody ableist Cardassians. There was even an episode with a wheelchair-bound character. I guess they just avoided certain sets.
I remember hearing/reading at some point that they wanted to make her a re-occurring character, but it got kiboshed by the network because of the costs of doing the low-grav scenes or some other bs.
Little (and current me) loved that episode. They didn’t get everything “right” but it still had some steong disability ideals, and that representation of not trusting why people are wanting to help you is so real, because sometimes they really are infantalizing you for no reason and you have to be so firm to get it to stop.
A side note though: a friendly heads up that a lot of people these days prefer to be referred to as wheelchair users instead of being wheelchair-bound. The idea being that mobility devices give freedom, and without them that’s when you’re bound to a place.
(Edit: I guess if you don’t count the kinky wheelchair users the other issue is that nobody is literally bound to their chairs :D)
I could’ve sworn this came up in the episode, but I don’t remember the details
