USS Defiant

The USS ''Defiant'' is the name of two starships in the Star Trek media franchise, most notably featured in the television series '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' (1993–1999) and the film '' Star Trek: First Contact'' (1996). Introduced in ''Deep Space Nine'''s third season, it is a warship attached to the show's eponymous space station. The original ''Defiant'' is destroyed during the Dominion War in the seventh season and replaced with a largely identical ship.

The ''Defiant'' was designed by Jim Martin, Gary Hutzel and Tony Meinger.

Design and development

For the first two seasons of ''Deep Space Nine'', stories requiring characters to travel off-station typically involved small runabout vessels. Producer Ira Steven Behr and writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe believed runabouts would be insufficient to confront the adversarial Dominion introduced in the second season, and they convinced executive producer Rick Berman of the need for a new ship. Additionally, the ''Defiant'' was intended to solve the problem of cramped runabout sets.

The ''Defiant'' was initially designed by art illustrator Jim Martin, with contributions from visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel and modelmaker Tony Meininger. Original designs called for a "beefed-up" runabout-type ship, but this gave way to a full-fledged starship design initially called ''Valiant''. This name was dropped out of fear that it would conflict with '' Star Trek: Voyager'''s titular starship, also beginning with a "V".

An early screenplay for '' Star Trek: First Contact'' (1996) called for the ''Defiant'' to be destroyed, but Behr objected and the idea was dropped.Braga & Moore.

Following the ''Defiant'''s destruction in "The Changing Face of Evil", the writers had wanted a new type of successor ship but the budget wasn't available. As a result, they replaced the ''Defiant'' with the same spacecraft design for the USS ''São Paulo'' in "The Dogs of War". Ron Moore said in the '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion'' that the new ship was intended to be designated "''Defiant''-A", but it would have been too costly to redo the CG model for one episode because stock shots from earlier episodes had to be used as well for budgetary reasons.

Depiction

Benjamin Sisko helped design the ''Defiant'', which was conceived as a prototype vessel to counter the Borg. Sisko receives command of the ''Defiant'' in 2370 to make contact with the Dominion in the show's third-season premiere. Unlike most Starfleet ships, the ''Defiant'' is built for combat rather than science and exploration. The ''Defiant'' remains attached to ''Deep Space Nine'' under Sisko's command for the remainder of the series, carrying the crew on missions beyond the space station. It appears briefly in ''Star Trek: First Contact'' under the command of Worf where it's left badly damaged and the crew has to evacuate to the ''Enterprise''-E after life support fails. The Breen destroy the ''Defiant'' during the show's finale arc. Starfleet gives Sisko command of a new ship of the same class, the USS ''Sao Paulo'', of which he is given special dispensation to change the name and registry to be the same as the previous ''Defiant''. The ''Defiant'' is seen briefly in the '' Star Trek: Picard'' third season episode "The Bounty", out-of-commission and docked at Starfleet's Fleet Museum. It's also amongst the ships that fall under the control of the living construct in '' Star Trek: Prodigy's'' two-part season one finale "Supernova."

The ''Defiant'' also appears in numerous spin-off books, comics, and video games.

Reception

The ''USS Defiant'' is noted as a powerful spacecraft vessel of the ''Star Trek'' science fiction universe in the late 24th century. CBR compared the maneuverable and powerful ''Defiant'' to the '' Millennium Falcon''. Space.com also noted the ''Defiant'' as one of the more agile science fiction spacecraft, compared to some of the slower, almost-nautical movement of larger spacecraft of ''Star Trek''.

The moment when Sisko decloaks the ''Defiant'' spacecraft for the first time in "The Search" was rated by Geek.com in 2015 as one of the top 35 moments in ''Star Trek''; they said it marked a "great start" to the third season of ''Deep Space Nine''. The addition of the ''Defiant'' helped the show dig deeper into stories set in the Gamma Quadrant, as well as the long war-saga arc of the show's later seasons.

A miniature model of the USS ''Defiant'' sold for 106,000 USD in 2006 at auction.

References

Further reading

*'' Star Trek: Defiant'', comic book by IDW
*''Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and the U. S. S Defiant Illustrated Handbook,'' Eaglemoss Publications Limited, Jan 12, 2021. 192 pages.

External links

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Defiant
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Fictional elements introduced in 1994
Fictional military vehicles