Bajor

Bajor was an inhabited eleventh planet of the Bajoran system. This system was located inside Bajoran space in the Bajor sector of the Alpha Quadrant. This was the largest planet in the system and had five moons, including Derna and Jeraddo. The planet was the homeworld of the Bajorans, a warp-capable humanoid species. After decades of Cardassian rule, the planet regained its independence under the Bajoran Republic and became affiliated with the United Federation of Planets in 2369, with the intention of joining. In 3191, Bajor was a Federation member.
== History ==
:See also: Bajoran history
===Early history===
Bajor was the homeworld of the Bajorans, one of the oldest Alpha Quadrant civilizations, which began to flourish about half a million years ago and undertook its first interstellar flights around the 16th century. (; )
The planet was once a center of learning, with non-Bajorans attracted by the cultural aspects of the planet. ()
=== Cardassian occupation and recovery ===
From about 2319 to 2369 (), Bajor was occupied by the Cardassian Union. During this time, the Cardassians not only decimated the Bajoran population and destroyed large parts of its infrastructure, but also poisoned several areas of the planet in order to compromise the food supply after their withdrawal. Affected regions included the Dahkur and Rakantha Provinces as well as the Northwest peninsula. Following the occupation, the Bajoran Provisional Government took steps to revitalize the planet's agricultural sector, such as using special grain processing centers and irrigating the Trilar Peninsula. In 2371, the Bajoran Agricultural Ministry developed soil reclamators that could detoxify the soil, but their number was limited, causing quarrels about their usage. ()
The Federation also assisted in reclaiming the planet's full natural potential, e.g. in 2369, when the assisted in the reconstruction of the Bajoran aqueduct system. () Later measures included conducting an agrobiology expedition to the Janitza Mountains in 2371, during which it was discovered that the ecosystem was much more diverse than orbital scans had indicated. () Signs of progress in healing Bajor's wounds included the opening of a new nature preserve in Hedrikspool Province in 2370 and the fruitful katterpod season of 2373. () That year, Bajor almost became a Federation member but halted the process at the last moment at the behest of the Emissary of the Prophets Captain Sisko. () When the Dominion War broke out later that year, this allowed Bajor to remain neutral and thereby avoid a Dominion occupation. ()
Jack Crusher, under his alias "James Cole", was charged with possession of unregistered liquors on Bajor in the late 24th century. ()
In 2402, Deanna Troi and William T. Riker considered taking a beach vacation on Bajor. ()
== Political structure ==
During the occupation, the Cardassians installed a puppet regime called the Bajoran Occupational Government. Following their withdrawal from Bajor in 2369, a Provisional Government (later known as the Bajoran Republic) was established, which consisted of Ministers who were organized in the Bajoran Council, the Board of Ministers, the Chamber of Ministers, and the Council of Ministers. (, , ) Some Bajoran organizations, like the Kohn-Ma or the Alliance for Global Unity, also criticized or even openly opposed the Provisional Government. ()
The planet was also further divided into different Provinces. Additionally, nation-like factions, like the Paqu and the Navot, continued to exist on Bajor after the occupation and maintained clearly defined borders between each other. (, et al.)
Although Bajor maintained a secular government, religious leadership, personified by the Kai as the head of the Vedek Assembly, was also an important aspect of social cohesion on Bajor and, thus, also held great political influence. (, et al.)
==== Districts ====
* Northeastern District
* Northwestern District
==== Provinces ====
* Dahkur Province
* Eastern Province
* Hedrikspool Province
* Hill Province
* Kendra Province
* Lonar Province
* Musilla Province
* Rakantha Province
* Tozhat Province
====Settlements====
* B'hala
* Hathon
* Ilvia
* Jalanda City
* Janir
* Jo'Kala
* Kran-Tobol
* Lasuma
* Relliketh
* Tamulna
* Tempasa
* Unnamed
** Bajoran capital
** Dahkur Province city
** Faren Kag's village
====Internment centers====
* Batal
* Elemspur Detention Center
* Gallitep
* Kran-Tobol prison
* Singha refugee camp
=== Points of interest===
* Aqueduct at H'erat
* Bajoran Archaeological Institute
* Bajoran Center for Science
* Bajoran Foreign Affairs Building
* Bajoran Institute of Science
* Bajoran Military Academy
* Bajoran State Museum
* Calash Monastery
* Central Bank of Bajor
* Dakeen Monastery
* Ilvian Medical Complex
* Jalanda Forum
* Kenda Shrine
* Kiessa Monastery
* Monastery of the Kai
* Temple of Iponu
* Tozhat Resettlement Center
* University of Bajor
== Environment ==
=== Geographical ===
* Bestri Woods
* Cliffs of Undalar
* Dahkur Hills
* Fire Caves
* Janitza Mountains
* Kendra Valley
* Kola Mountain
* Northern peninsula
* Northwest peninsula
* Perikian Peninsula
* Ratosha Pass
* Sahving Valley
* Southern islands
* Tanis Canyon
* Trilar Peninsula
=== Hydrological ===
The oceans of Bajor have a greenish tint when seen from space. ()
* Glyrhond River
* Holana River
* Yolja River
** Qui'al Dam
=== Botanical ===
* Alvas
* Boton
* Feloran bromeliad
* Jumja tree
* Katterpod
* Kava
* Lilac
* Makara herb
* Moba tree
**Moba
* Moreka
* Salam grass
* Spiny basil
* Wheat
=== Zoological ===
* Barrowbug
* Bat
* Carnivorous rastipod
* Dal'Rok (non-corporeal)
* Hara cat
* Palukoo (moon)
* Shrimp
* Sinoraptor
* Snake (various)
== Parallel universes ==
In another quantum reality, Bajor defeated the Cardassian Union. Following their success, the Bajorans became more aggressive towards the Federation. In 2370, they destroyed a subspace telescope, believing that it was being used to spy on them. ()
In the mirror universe, Bajor was occupied by the Terran Empire before being liberated by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. Following the end of the occupation, Bajor petitioned the Alliance for membership, was accepted, and ultimately became an influential member world. The space station orbited Bajor. In 2370, the Intendant of Bajor was . ()
== Stellar Cartography ==
The distance between Bajor and the Denorios belt was approximately 160 million kilometers. ()
In 2259, the location of this planet was labeled on a stellar cartography chart that was seen on the 's ready room viewscreen. This planet's symbol had a color, indicating that it was affiliated with Cardassia Prime. ()
In 2372, the location of Bajor was labeled on a tactical cartography map that was displayed in the wardroom of Deep Space 9. The planet was located near the Badlands and the Demilitarized Zone. (, okudagram)
In 2375, the location of Bajor was labeled on another tactical cartography map that was displayed in Deep Space 9's wardroom. Bajor was located approximately five light years from Cardassia Prime, twenty-five light years from Starbase 375, and sixty light years from Ferenginar. (, okudagram)
The system's location was labeled in a Federation star chart that was in Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy's office at Starfleet Headquarters in 2399 and on the bridge of the in 2401. Bajor was in or near to Federation space. ()
In 2401, this planet's position was labeled on a star chart used by Captain William T. Riker during his attempt at finding the last known location of the . ()
In 3191, the position of Bajor was labeled on a Federation star chart. Like other key members of the Federation, its position was denoted by a five-pointed star. ()
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=== Background information ===
==== Name ====
In a personnel file displayed for Ensign Ro Laren in , her place of birth was listed as "Bajora". This term was also used to refer to the Bajorans as a race in and some early episodes of . For the remastered "Conundrum", for Ro's personnel file, the name of the planet was changed from "Bajora" to "Bajor".
"BAY-jor" was the pronunciation for this planet's name from the script pronunciation guide for . 
==== Depictions ====
The planet Bajor was originally invented by Rick Berman and Michael Piller. They conceived the planet while writing the episode "Ensign Ro". ()
In the pre-production stages of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Rick Berman and Michael Piller, who created the series together, worked on the idea of a starbase on the surface of Bajor, before deciding to set the series aboard a space station. "We wanted to center the show around Bajor," recalled Berman, "which was part of the Cardassian Empire." The creative duo even considered building a live-set Bajoran refugee camp on location, though the cost of leaving the Paramount studio lot was ultimately decided to be prohibitively high. (Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before, paperback ed., pp. 154 & 155) Briefly under discussion was the prospect of building a street out in Northern California to represent part of the futuristic colony. (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine issue 3, p. 6) Michael Piller remembered, "We talked about the planet's surface for a while, doing a Wild West town, but we realized that we were going to wind up having to shoot on location up in the mountains above Hollywood and thought that was untenable." (The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, p. 412) The fact that the outpost's interiors wouldn't be shot in the more hospitable confines of a Paramount soundstage was one of several reasons why the plan was scrapped. Others included not only the high expense of the proposed regular location shoot but also that the setting might have limited story potential. "It was going to be very hard to do something convincing on the ground that would give you the same excitement that the Enterprise has," Piller observed. (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine issue 3, p. 6)
Bajor first appeared in . It was to have featured again in a scene deleted from the end of the episode. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, Nos. 3/4, p. 101)
On a dry/erase board in his office, Robert Hewitt Wolfe started to illustrate a map of Bajor, deciding to continually update it with the places mentioned in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He explained, "After staring at the blank board for months, it occurred to me that unlike planets we'd visited on previous Star Trek shows, Bajor was there and wasn't going to go away. So I felt like it might be fun to create a map. I drew some arbitrary continents, two large land masses and one small one, with an equator down the middle," Wolfe laughed. "I thought that probably would do it […] I tried to put a lot of interesting coastlines on there, but the decision-making process was pretty arbitrary." Hence, the shorelines in the map turned out to be quite random. For a long time after he began creating the map, Wolfe arranged everywhere that the series referenced as being on Bajor in the map's northern hemisphere. He then deliberately started trying to designate more places in the map's southern hemisphere. This time differential obviously impacted on where sites were located on the map. Wolfe also organized the illustration so that the places where Kira Nerys had a personal interest in or went during the Occupation were basically all clustered in roughly the same region as each other, with places less related to her positioned elsewhere. Observing that Faren Kag's village appeared to be extremely different, culturally, from the Paqu and Navot territories influenced Wolfe to place it at a very far distance from them, a range Wolfe called "as far away from them as possible." He went on to say, "The map reminded us of places that we'd mentioned before so we could mention them again. It made Bajor more of a physical reality for me. It became a real place." ()
For , a Bajoran village was depicted on Paramount Stage 18. A set for the 's living quarters therein was in the same room as had been used as a meeting place for Commander Sisko and Kai Opaka on Bajor in "Emissary". Director David Livingston described the Bajoran village as "a big set." () "We had […] wind, lighting, and it had a couple of major effects going on," Livingston reflected. "They were really difficult working conditions […] The actors had to have big wind machines blowing in their faces, and it was very debilitating, but we got through it." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 51) Creating the lighting, which was done to resemble lightning, and wind effects was also extremely noisy. () Ira Steven Behr liked how Bajor is depicted in "The Storyteller". "It […] shows that Bajor is indeed a very strange place," he remarked. "There are things happening in those little hamlets and villages that are certainly not your average Federation attitude towards life, religion and spirituality." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 24, Nos. 3/4, p. 102) An establishing shot of the Bajoran village in "The Storyteller" had previously been used in , portraying a Romulan prison camp on Carraya IV.
Some concept art of the planet was created by Illustrator Jim Martin. "When I took over from Ricardo Delgado at the beginning of season two," said Martin, "I did some illustrations of the surface of Bajor, and what the architecture and the city might look like." The art was influenced by the fact that Martin was meanwhile going through an artistic phase of doing a lot of ink scratch illustration. One of the concept images he did of Bajor was an extremely early example. It portrayed a street in the planet's capital city and included lots of crosshatching. Regarding the image, Martin noted, "I remember [Production Designer] Herman [Zimmerman] telling me to just calm down and [keep in mind] I'm not drawing the Kasbah." ("Jim Martin Sketchbook", DS9 Season 4 DVD special features)
In , a matte painting of Bajor was used to depict the planet, including a large pool of water which appears to ripple and sparkle on-camera, and a set designed by Ron Wilkinson was used as a war room for the Bajoran Militia. The matte painting was created non-digitally, by Illusion Arts, Inc.'s Robert Stromberg. Regarding the pool in the illustrated vista, Syd Dutton, also from Illusion Arts, explained, "We did that through an old technique developed by Albert Whitlock […] It's a gag created by backlighting two sheets of glass with holes scratched in them and filming them as they are rubbed against each other." The sparkles were double-exposed over the footage of the painted water, bringing light and movement to what otherwise would have been a static part of the painting. The image additionally incorporated a foreground miniature and a camera pan. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 25/26, No. 6/1, pp. 97, 71 & 73) In , another matte painting of the planet, done by Syd Dutton, was incorporated into an in-atmosphere battle over Bajor. ()
In , yet another matte painting was involved in depicting Bajor. This illustration, showing a suburban home on the outskirts of the Bajoran capital city, was the second Bajor painting which Robert Stromberg created for DS9. This time, moving elements included Cardassian pedestrians, played by Illusion Arts staff, and a waterfall. It was Stromberg who decided upon detailing the picture with a waterfall. He discovered the embellishment was required to make the illustration more interesting while painting the image. "The waterfall was animated by Lynn Ledgerwood, who used a combination of salt and very fine baking soda of the type that's used in fire hydrants to create the right look for it," Stromberg remembered. "We shot that element with a high-speed camera and then superimposed it over the painted waterfall to make it look real." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 25/26, No. 6/1, p. 72)
Originally, an area of Bajor's war-plundered terrain was intended to be rejuvenated by terraforming Genesis technology, in a story that developed into the DS9 episode . The planet was thereafter conceptually replaced with Epsilon 119. ()
At one point around season two, Paramount asked the DS9 writing staff to focus less on stories featuring the planet Bajor, as market research had suggested that fans of the show found those stories least interesting. (; Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97) "The studio doesn't like Bajor stories in general," commented René Echevarria. "And Bajor's religion is one aspect of Bajor to which they really don't respond." ()
The DS9 writers felt it was important for Bajor to reappear in DS9 Season 3 installment . "We […] wanted to continue playing out some of the stuff going on on Bajor," recalled Robert Hewitt Wolfe. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97) At first, the narrative involved a new massive library or museum, a "great cultural relic," in the words of Ronald D. Moore. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97; ) He added, "It was going to be about a museum on Bajor that was being reopened for the first time since the occupation." Also, production on the episode, a script for which was written in the second season, was set back when, in compliance with the request from Paramount, the producers opted to concentrate on stories further away from Bajor. () When they revived the narrative towards the end of season three, they focused on the notion of it being a kind of homecoming for Kira Nerys. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 97)
Updating developments for Bajor was also a concern during the development of DS9 Season 4 outing . Ronald D. Moore recalled, "We started feeling we had lost sight of Bajor and some of the issues that were going on there." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 113)
Midway through DS9 Season 4, Kira actress Nana Visitor mused about how Bajor was being developed, "Bajor is still coming out of having been under the Occupation […] We're continually discovering things about Bajor." ()
The status of Bajor was also on the writers' minds during the writing of subsequent fourth season offering . "It went through a lot of permutations of what is the impact, politically, on Bajor," said Ronald D. Moore. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 115)
Concerning a prophecy that Bajor would be destroyed if it joined the Federation in DS9 Season 5 instalment , Robert Hewitt Wolfe considered, "I think that the whole thing with Bajor will become pretty clear, and most people who watch the show carefully will get the special delight of saying, 'Ah hah! That's what that prophecy meant." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 47)
At the end of DS9 Season 5, Bajor seemed safer, at least to the show's writing staff, than when it had first been introduced. Robert Hewitt Wolfe remarked, "Bajor is pretty much stable now, which was not true [at the start of the series]." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 102) Although Wolfe departed from DS9 at the end of the series' fifth season, the in-house map of Bajor wasn't discontinued following his tenure on the show, as Bradley Thompson instead adopted it and, like Wolfe had done before him, kept updating the display. ()
In DS9 Season 7 installment , Bajor was shown with CGI supervised by David Stipes; the planet appeared in visual effects footage primarily depicting the Bajoran moon Derna. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 34)
==== Bajor and the Federation ====
In the first draft script of , Elim Garak considered it obvious that, if the Federation Alliance won the Dominion War, Bajor would undoubtedly join the Federation. Later in the same script, however, Odo speculated that, if the Dominion forced Starfleet to retreat during the war, Bajor would most likely become "an occupied planet again."
The DS9 writing staff opted not to have Bajor join the Federation at the end of the series, in feature-length series finalé . "We talked about it a lot, because we didn't want to ignore that," Hans Beimler explained. "It wasn't an oversight. The question was, does that really matter? Ultimately it doesn't really mean that much." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 86) Ira Steven Behr commented, "It was the mandate at the beginning. And as we went through years of doing the show and the multitude of episodes, it was like, 'Why does Bajor have to join the Federation?' Why is that the be-all end-all? Why is that the success story? Isn't it more interesting if what happens isn't said?" Behr also clarified, "The one thing I really wanted to do [at the end of the series] was not have Bajor join the Federation, which was the mission statement in season one. I thought it would be cooler if they didn’t. It was too soon." (The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, pp. 539-540) Hence, Behr, in retrospect, described not having Bajor join the Federation as having ultimately been "the one thing that we did that I know I'm proud of, and I think we're all proud of." (What We Left Behind)
Hans Beimler speculated that Bajor may still have joined the Federation after the events of "What You Leave Behind"; he considered that a major proponent of the planet's admittance into the organization could have been Kira, as she is left in command of Deep Space 9 when the series ends. Regarding Bajor's possible admission, Beimler concluded, "That very well might be part of what she is interested in doing." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 86)
In Bryan Singer's story pitch of Star Trek: Federation, Bajor was "like a planet-sized Tibet" by the year 3000. 
In a hypothetical Season 8 premiere which the DS9 writing staff devised exclusively for the purposes of including the writing of it in the documentary What We Left Behind, the possibility of Bajor joining the Federation fueled a Section 31 plan to secretly cause the destruction of the Bajoran religion.
==== Trivia ====
The planet model first used for Bajor was later used for Rakhar (in ), a Yaderan colony (in ), a Hur'q planet (in ), and Risa (in ).
Bajor may have a twenty-six-hour day, according to various mentions throughout the series and at the startrek.com database for places. This was never fully confirmed in canon, although it does seem to be alluded to in DS9 episodes including , , , , and . Although Richard Arnold and Chris Childers accepted that the Bajorans had a twenty-six-hour day, they questioned whether that was "based on the length of time it takes Bajor to circle its sun" [sic] or if the duration was counted in Earth hours. They further commented about the notion of twenty-six-hour days, "This was mentioned in one of the first DS9 episodes, and the writers have been fairly consistent about using it, but they haven't really explained it." ()
Bajor was repeatedly embellished with a statue which was designed by Ricardo Delgado. The statue appeared as part of the Monastery of the Kai in as well as in Kai Winn Adami's residence in "What You Leave Behind". ()
Some viewers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were largely uninterested in Bajor. Nana Visitor clarified, "There's a hard-core group of people out there who are interested in Bajor and then there's a lot that aren't." ()
In the original version of , a Prophet who appeared to Sisko as a vision of his mother, Sarah, warned him not to build a house he planned to construct on Bajor. René Echevarria was of the belief that the house was too inconsequential to viewers, though, so the cautioning was changed to being a prohibition of Sisko marrying Kasidy Yates. ()
Writer David Weddle once joked Bajor's "seventh hemisphere became more influential," centuries after ancient Bajoran times. ()
The classified Bajor as a class M planet.
According to the reference book Star Trek: Star Charts (pp. 34 & 42-43), Bajor (B'hava'el VII) was the seventh planet in the Bajoran system. The planet's government was named the "Third Republic of Bajor". It was admitted into the Federation in 2374, but the process was not ratified. Capitals of this world were Dahkur and Sahving. 3.8 billion Bajorans lived on Bajor in 2378. The Bajorans were warp-capable since 2328, and their first interstellar flight was in 1571. Points of interest on the planet were the Calash Retreat, the Dakeen Monastery, Kendra Valley, and the Fire Caves. The planet was occupied by Cardassia from 2328-2369 and 2374-75. Bajor was listed as having five moons and, in a map of the system, the five moons were depicted in orbit about the planet.
According to Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library ("Stellar Cartography" p. 42), Bajor signed a non-aggression pact with the Dominion in December 2373.
For the episode , UI graphic designer Dominique Rossier created an info panel for the mess hall depicting the Milky Way Galaxy with planet and Starfleet space station locations labeled. Identified as a planet, Bajor was one of the locations mentioned on the chart. Although the panel did not appear in the episode, it can be seen at Rossier's artist page at Art Station. 
=== Apocrypha ===
In the continuity established by Pocket Books, Bajor joins the Federation in 2376 (see Cathedral and ). The Bajoran Militia stays in existence, although Kira rejoins Starfleet, as a captain, and Ro Laren also rejoins Starfleet after the admission. In reality, however, Ira Steven Behr commented, "When someone told me that in one of the novels Bajor did become a member of the Federation, I thought, ‘Man, they don't understand Deep Space Nine at all." 
In the first novel, The Last Best Hope, Bajor is mentioned to have joined the Federation.
According to Star Trek Online, Bajor joined the Federation in 2393. During a temporary occupation of Deep Space 9 by rogue Dominion forces in 2409, the city of Hathon served as an organizational hub for the Federation and the Klingon Empire to retake the station. In 2410, Starfleet, the Klingon Defense Forces, and the military of the new Romulan Republic united to rout out disguised members of Species 8472 who had infiltrated Hathon. Even when not playing through the relevant missions, players can use Hathon as a social hub.
According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Narrator's Toolkit, Bajor has six moons named Brelda, Dremal, Durna, Jeraddo, Kelana and Sarmian.
The novel Revelation and Dust established that Bajor has a moon named Baraddo, also known as the Prodigal. Another novel, The Fall of Terok Nor gives Penraddo as the name of another moon. The novel introduces the moon Endalla, which becomes important in later novels of the series.
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