Dax, Bashir, and a Station That Sounds Alive
Jadzia Dax's and Julian Bashir's quarters are open on the habitat ring, every room now has its own sound, and locked doors finally tell you off.
Two more crew members have moved in. The habitat ring now has Jadzia Dax’s quarters and Julian Bashir’s quarters, both behind doors on the inner wall of the corridor that used to be blank.
Jadzia Dax’s quarters
Dax’s rooms are dressed the way they looked in season 6, and they feel nothing like Kira’s gold or Odo’s spare blue. They’re dark and candlelit, all browns and greens. One wall is a stepped black shelf unit full of leather books, a brass box, a blue vase and little brass instruments, with a paisley hanging beside it. There are Klingon braziers glowing by the window, a wooden table with a bowl of fruit, a teal sofa, and the stained-glass replicator.
While researching, I also looked into building Worf’s quarters. It turns out that in the later seasons, Worf’s room on the station is the same set as Dax’s, because after the wedding it’s their room. So Dax’s quarters cover both of them, and I’m not building a separate room for Worf.
Julian Bashir’s quarters
Bashir’s place is further east along the habitat corridor, near the bulkhead at its end. It’s darker, in teal and red: a long teal sofa with purple cushions under two oval windows, matching armchairs, an octagonal coffee table and a small dining table. On the wall is his sculpture of interlocking rings and gears. Kukalaka, his much-loved teddy bear, is in there too, if you know where to look.
The stars that ran out
My favourite bug today was in Dax’s window. The stars you see through a quarters window are painted on a big card that stands out behind the glass. When you looked straight out, all good. But if you stood off to one side and looked through the window at a steep angle, about one sight line in twelve went past the edge of the card and ended on nothing at all, a patch of plain black.
The fix was to move the card much closer, just behind the wall, so it covers every angle you can actually see through the oval from inside the room. Bashir’s two windows got the same treatment.
The station got its sound
Until today, a lot of rooms only had the station’s general hum, and that makes a place feel like a set with the lights on. Now every area has its own quiet background tone, made up by code rather than from recordings.
The Promenade and Quark’s go a step further. There’s a crowd murmur and the clink of glasses at the bar, and the sounds come from where they happen. Walk toward Quark’s and the bar gets louder, walk away and it fades.
And locked doors finally have a voice. Walk up to one and press E, and you get a proper “access denied” chirp instead of the sound of a door opening on you.
What’s next
The next new place has its plan approved: a runabout landing pad, reached by its own new turbolift stop. It’s the walk out to the pad, ending at the big hatch. There’s no runabout to board in this first version. You can follow along on the roadmap, and the home page shows what I’m working on right now.
See you tomorrow.