Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is for many the best series the franchise ever produced. And that apparently includes Swiss watchmakers, because they just made a Deep Space Nine clock called the Starfleet Machine as a tribute.
This isn’t some sort of obscure watchmaker looking for attention, either. This was made by L’Epee, a clock and watch company with a 150 year history, and MB&F, who specialize in making “performance art” clocks and in microengineering. So, why the “Starfleet Machine?” Apparently for giggles, according to the official site:
When conceiving Starfleet Machine, MB&F founder Maximilian Büsser set out to boldly go where no clock designer had gone before, and L’Epée has enthusiastically enjoyed the ride. CEO Arnaud Nicolas says: “MB&F’s idea for Starfleet Machine blew my mind. Like Max, I am a big sci-fi fan so when MB&F came to us with the design, we had to accept the challenge.
In other words, this is what the Swiss do for fun. Well, we guess it’s more productive than most of the other things the Swiss are famous for.
You do have to manually wind this, and it is a “table clock”, meaning you have to put it on a flat surface or else gravity is inevitably going to mess with the movement. Oh, it will also cost you as much as a car: It’s retailing for 28,000 CHF, which works out, at current exchange rates, to nearly $32,000. And there are only 175 of them. Because of course there are.
Still, this thing is pretty awesome, even if we’ll never own it. And, hey, it’s nice to see Deep Space Nine getting an expensive tribute. Just don’t take this as a request to reboot it as a film series, Paramount.