Farpoint Station was a station built in extremely short time on Deneb IV. The Bandi, a species inhabiting Deneb IV, offered this station to Starfleet. The Bandi were not a very advanced civilization and Starfleet was intrigued by this engineering performance.

Groppler Zorn of the Bandi kept a model of Farpoint Station in his office in the old Bandi City.

In 2364, the crew of the USS Enterprise-D investigated this station and found out that it was, in fact, a spaceborne entity enslaved by the Bandi. Following its liberation by the Enterprise, Captain Jean-Luc Picard worked with the Bandi to schedule the reconstruction of the station. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint")

Appendices Edit

Background information Edit

In an initial story outline that D.C. Fontana wrote for "Encounter at Farpoint", the conceptual origins of Farpoint Station were evidenced. The outline involved an orbital gun platform built around a captured being. The alien's captors intended to use the platform to forward their dreams of expansion, meanwhile feeding the central entity sufficient quantities of the mineral balmine to keep it alive. The Enterprise crew freed the entity by persuading it to crash-land on the planet and by then leading a revolt against its captors. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, p. 24)

Illustrator Rick Sternbach helped design Farpoint Station, creating concept drawings of both the station's exterior and an early version of the interior Farpoint mall. (Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission, p. 49; Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 12, pp. 28 & 29) To create the elevated views of the facility, Farpoint Station was built as a studio model at Industrial Light & Magic. The mall was constructed on Paramount Stage 16, as a set that production designer Herman Zimmerman was instrumental in creating. "Even the biggest stage at Paramount isn't as big as the ordinary shopping mall, so that had to be done with some camera tricks," he said. "We took [Stage] 16 and turned every bit of it into the shopping mall." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 12, pp. 28 & 29)

Apocrypha Edit

In the non-canon Deep Space Nine Millennium novel The Fall of Terok Nor, it is revealed that, by 2374, a real Farpoint Station was constructed, a project that is referenced in dialog at the end of "Encounter at Farpoint".