Automated Repair Station

The Automated Repair Station is a large, fully automated alien space station whose origins are enclosed in mystery. It contains two hollow cylinders which can adjust their size to accommodate larger ships. The central part of the station is usually filled with a cold atmosphere of liquid helium. Whenever a new spaceship arrives, the Repair Station's computer scans it and downloads all information stored on the ship's computer, thus acquired full knowledge of the technology and the species it is dealing with. It then quickly removes its helium atmosphere and replaces with one of adequate temperature and composition, so that the ship's commissioners can be transported aboard to talk to the Repair Station's computer and chose a form of payment for the repairs. After this, the Station proceeds to detect and fix all damage the ship has suffered, including even minor scratches in the hull. It will also treat injuries of crewmembers. Besides the quality of its work, two great advantages offered by the Automated Repair Station are that it repairs damages extremely fast and for a considerably small price (the Enterprise, which had been heavily damaged by a Romulan minefield, was fully repaired in 32 hours and for 200 liters of warp plasma). As of the 22nd century, the Automated Repair Station was equipped with large mechanical arms, and several technologies which were at the time still unknown to Humans and Vulcans, such as organic replicators and protoplasers. The Enterprise's encounter with the Repair Station in 2152 ended surprisingly, as the crew found out that the station is not as harmless as it seemed to be. It turns out that the station is not run by a supercomputer in the traditional sense, but by the interconnected brains of several species which had been secretly abducted by the station while their ships were being repaired. It appears that the Station takes one crewmember from each ship that visits it, and replaces them by dead corpse replicas in a way that it seemed to be an accidental death. The beings are kept alive, but unconscious, with cables connecting their brains to the Station's computer core, which makes use of the synaptic activity to enhance its processing capabilities. After rescuing Ensign Mayweather, which had been replaced by a dead replica in this fashion, the Enterprise crew destroys the Repair Station. After their departure, however, it is shown that the Station is still operant and it proceeds to repair itself.

Among the several species seen integrated to the Station's central computer are: an Axanar, a Cardassian, a Human (Mayweather, who was later rescued), a Klingon, a Kreetassan, a Vulcan and a Xepolite, among many others. No Tellarite was seen, which seems odd because it was the Tellarites who suggested the Enterprise visit the Repair Station, implying that they'd been there themselves. One possible, if unlikely, explanation is that the Tellarites were the species which built the Repair Station, which would explain how the food replicators and other technologies were later acquired by the United Federation of Planets, as the Tellarites were one of the Federation's founding species. This is just speculation, though, as the Station is capable of sustaining itself and performing auto-repairs, it may be extremely old, perhaps built by a civilization which no longer exists.

Appearances

 * Enterprise: "Dead Stop"