The Star Trek series of TV shows did futuristic technology well enough. If what you needed was a computer display, ship controls or energy weapons, someone had the designs covered. What telly Star Trek wasn’t especially remarkable for was its sets. Most outdoor locations on alien worlds looked far too similar to Earth to suspend disbelief. Any cave or rock formation the crew happened to stumble across was unconvincing and a lot of interiors looked plastic-y.

The Deep Space 9 series had those shortcomings as well as an added challenge, taking place as it did on a space station, and not a very attractive one at that. Scenes on the station were limited to a few living quarters, a couple of shops and offices and Quark’s bar. It would be easy to grow tired of the confines of the sets and if you wanted a change of scenery you’d have to get the shuttle out of there.

But the drawback of a stagnant station also gave DS9 what is, for our gold-pressed latinum, its greatest design accomplishment – its costumes.

Because each weekly show did not have to venture out to find alien races and the various lifeforms made their way to the station, the show always featured many costumed actors, all decked out in their alien finery. And a great deal of effort went into each design, whether they featured on the episode for a good chunk of its runtime, or merely passed behind leads and were gone in seconds. (It’s satisfyingly fitting that a main character of the show, Garak, pictured first below, was an accomplished tailor and sometime spy.)