Cult-TV Theme Watch: Space Stations

A space station is a facility constructed to remain in space for a long duration, often in planetary orbit.   A space station doesn’t land, and generally doesn’t boast propulsion. 

In cult-television history, the heyday of space stations arrived in the 1990s, with station-centric series such as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993 – 1999), Babylon 5 (1994 – 1999), and Mercy Point (1998). 

Before that span, space stations were largely the setting for one-off adventures, particularly in the universes of Doctor Who (1963 – 1989) and Star Trek (1966 – 1969).

The original sci-fi anthology The Outer Limits (1963 – 1964) saw its highest rated first season episode, “Specimen: Unknown,” centered on a space station called Adonis.  The episode itself involved an invasive species of space plant spreading like wild-fire, and endangering Earth.

Classic Star Trek (1966 – 1969) also set one of its most popular tales on a space station.  In “The Trouble with Tribbles” by David Gerrold, the U.S.S. Enterprise proceeded with due haste to space station K-7, only to find that its (underwhelming…) mission was to guard storage compartments of grain from covert Klingon agents.  But the real fun began when a space trader, Cyrano Jones, showed up on the station with hungry little, grain-eating tribbles…

My favorite era of original Doctor Who -- the one featuring second doctor Patrick Troughton -- memorably set a Cyberman story on an Earth-made space station.  The serial “The Wheel in Space” (1967-1968) found Jamie, the Doctor and Zoe on an international space station in Earth orbit contending with a Cyberman plot.

In 1980, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979 -1981) featured another horror story on a space station.  Here, a malevolent “space vampire” called a Vorvon boarded a Directorate station from a derelict ship, the Demeter, and began stealing the souls of the space station crew.

The rise of story arcs and even season arcs in television storytelling coincided with the rise of the space station as a regular setting in the 1990s.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was the first Trek series not to center around a starship, but focus instead on a station near Bajor, and near a wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant. 

Babylon 5, meanwhile, saw a futuristic space station as kind of an outer space Casablanca, a place of intrigue and competing, secret agendas. 

On the short-lived Mercy Point, the titular space station was a state-of-the-art medical facility. 

The negative aspect of many space station stories, according to some sci-fi fans, is that the action becomes soap opera-like, with little or new exploration of new territory.  Instead, the focus goes inward, on character development. 

The glory of space station stories, at least on television, however, is that because space stations can’t travel anywhere, their crews must deal with the consequences of their actions, long-term, and not just warp away to a new planet and a new set of variables.