[duckroll]

It's not all technobabble. Obviously it's not hard scifi since it takes a lot of liberties with how things work simply because technology is "advanced enough", but the SF designer on the series seems to know what he's talking about in the interview.

Basically Avalon is a colony ship. It's not a space station, but a moving emigrant ship. The super mass is indeed supposed to mimic a black hole, and the entire structure of the ship is based on the concept of relativistic jets. The accretion disk caused by the black hole creates the plasma jet which runs through the entire structure. The plasma jet is used as an energy source which powers everything. The electromagnetic shield at the top is like an umbrella, sheltering the rest of the structure as it moves through space at near light speed.

Based on the explanation given, I'll say the thrust reverser and the electromagnetic shield are meant to bounce and filter everything off the "front" of the ship as it moves in that direction, to prevent any damage to the housing units further down the structure.

The black hole device is used as both a central mass as well as a central power source generating the plasma jet. The rings around the plasma jet probably draw power from the plasma directly to power the parts of the structure they control. He doesn't really go into any detail regarding the rings, but I think it makes sense.

As for how everything is secured, every piece of the structure rotates around the plasma jet, and centrifugal force from the constant rotations creates artificial gravity. Think of it as the black hole like thing being the main body of the ship, and as it moves, everything moves with it because it all rotates around parts of the plasma jet stream.


Edit: On second thought, the electromagnetic shield itself should be more than enough to protect against stray debris. The thrust reverser component is probably literally that - to slow down the ship or to bring it to a halt if they want to stop moving. Silly me. :P