USS Defiant

{{short description|Fictional starship from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine}}

{{about|the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ship|the U.S. Navy tug|Defiant (YT-804){{!}}Defiant (YT-804)|text=For the Star Trek ship USS Defiant that appears in episodes of the original series and Enterprise spin-off, see "The Tholian Web" and "In a Mirror, Darkly"}}

{{distinguish|USS Defiance{{!}}USS Defiance}}

{{Infobox fictional vehicle

| name = USS Defiant

| image = DefiantDS9.jpg

| caption = The USS Defiant NX-74205

| first = First: "The Search" (1994)
(Deep Space Nine)
Second: "The Dogs of War" (1999)
(Deep Space Nine)

| last = First: "The Changing Face of Evil" (1999)
(Deep Space Nine)
Second: "The Bounty" (2023)
(Picard)

| affiliation = United Federation of Planets
Starfleet

| launched = First: 2370
Second: 2375

| decommissioned =

| class = Defiant

| registry = NX-74205 (as the first Defiant)
NCC-75633 (as the second Defiant, originally the USS São Paulo)

| max_speed = Warp factor 9.5 (Upgraded 2371)

| fighters =

| aux_vehicle =

| armaments = Pulsed and beam phasers
Photon torpedoes
Quantum torpedoes

| defense = Deflector shields
Cloaking device
Ablative armor

| propulsion = Impulse drive
Warp drive
RCS Thrusters

| power =

| length = {{convert|170|m|ft}}

| width = {{convert|134|m|ft}}

| height = {{convert|30|m|ft}}

}}

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".{{cite web|url=http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/10/star-trek-deep-space-nine-rewatch-the-search-part-i|title=Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch: "The Search, Part I"|access-date=October 18, 2013|date=October 18, 2013|first=Keith|last=DeCandido|author-link=Keith DeCandido|publisher=Macmillan Publishers|work=Tor Books}}

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.{{full citation needed|date=July 2019}}

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".{{Cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2La2rMJJKzQC |title=Beyond the Final Frontier: An Unauthorised Review of the Trek Universe on Television and Film; Season Summaries, Characters, Episodes, Movies |last2=Parkin |first2=Lance |date=2003 |publisher=Contender Books |location=London |isbn=978-1-84357-080-6 |pages=269}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Baugher |first=Lacy |date=2023-03-23 |title=Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 6 Review - The Bounty |url=https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-picard-season-3-episode-6-review/ |access-date=2023-03-24 |website=Den of Geek |language=en-US}} 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.cbr.com/powerful-star-trek-ships/|title=Star Trek: The 20 Most Powerful Ships In The Galaxy, Ranked|date=2018-12-17|website=CBR|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-23}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Snowden |first=Scott |date=2019-04-19 |title=The Star Trek: Discovery Finale Leaves a Confusing Conclusion to Season 2 |url=https://www.space.com/star-trek-discovery-season-2-episode-14.html |access-date=2019-06-23 |website=Space.com}}

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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/top-star-trek-moments-1611810/|title=The top 35 moments in Star Trek history|date=2015-01-02|website=Geek.com|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-23|archive-date=January 4, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104235022/https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/top-star-trek-moments-1611810/|url-status=dead}} 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.{{Cite web|url=https://screenrant.com/star-trek-deep-space-nine-documentary-reveals/|title=What We Left Behind: Biggest Reveals From The Deep Space Nine Documentary|date=2019-05-15|website=ScreenRant|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-23}}

A miniature model of the USS Defiant sold for 106,000 USD in 2006 at auction.{{Cite web |title=STARSHIP DEFIANT MODEL |url=https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-starship-defiant-model-4780061/?from=salesummary&intObjectID=4780061&lid=1 |access-date=2021-02-16 |website=www.christies.com}}

References

External links

Defiant

Category:Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Category:Fictional elements introduced in 1994

Category:Fictional military vehicles