Stupid sexy Defiant.
He’s not wrong, I did expect some flak for the cannons being forward facing. Fighting giant cubes seems like flying laterally around it shooting broadside style seems like it would make more sense.
I love that dear laser pig. I will die on this hill to protect our Piggly wiggly.
Defiant is easily my third favorite starfleet ship. Its a tiny overpowered truck that fires enough quantum torpedos to fuck up an entire fleet.
I do too. Love the Mighty Mouse.
And it gave Obrien a project… outside of a station that hated fed equipment lol.
I’m not in a position to watch the video right now, but my DS9 head cannon has always been that Starfleet continued to treat the station like a back water for WAY longer than it should have. Even after it became obvious how important a location it was for traffic to and from the Gamma quadrant.
Why send them the Defiant? It’s this experimental ship that barely works that no one else needs or wants and threatens to tear itself apart any time it goes faster than full impulse.
I don’t know if it’s badmirals at work, or just bureaucracy rearing its ugly head. But it’s one of the most realistic parts of the show that Starfleet would be like “How little can we possibly invest in this area and get away with it?”
I think Sisko specifically requested the Defiant. It’s what he was working on while stationed at Utopia Planitia between Wolf 359 and DS9. No wonder he was still hung up on the death of his wife when he met the Prophets, he had spent the last three years working on a ship to avenge her.
Is that right? If so, I have totally forgotten about that!
Even so, it still kind of fits the basic narrative that this area of space is a place that Starfleet is just DONE with and is actively trying not to care about, despite the reality of the situation.
I don’t think anyone says it directly but the implication seems to be that the experimental Defiant is not considered to be a successful design.
Why send them the Defiant?
Wasn’t it for the intelligence value from the one Federation ship with cloaking technology? I do remember they explaining this, but don’t remember where.
I remember the Romulans lending the Feds a cloaking device on the condition that they share intel on the other side of the worm hole and that Starfleet not use it in the Alpha quadrant.
Presumably the cloak could have been fitted on to any Starfleet ship of a certain size/class though, from an in-universe perspective.
Cloaking devices do seem to be very plug-and-play across starship types.
Scotty gets a Romulan cloak to work on the Enterprise. The Enterprise-D crew quickly adapt a phasing cloak designed for a different class of starship. The Titan-A uses the Klingon cloak from the Bounty.
The cloaking bit was a late entry only provided to the Federation after the discovery of the wormhole. Sisko probably was asking for a ship since the first incursion with the Cardassians but Starfleet was spread thin. After the entire shenanigans with Odessy being destroyed by the Jem’hadar and the very real threat the Dominion was proving to be, Sisko probably threw a fit at being told there were no ships available to be stationed at DS9 that could carry out the mission. To which he probably pointed at the Defiant he knew to be in prototype phase and probably mothballed in a drydock.
At some point in the conversation the Romulan deal to supply a cloaking ship for use in the Gamma Quadrant in exchange for all the information gathered using it was probably made known to Sisko and he would have pointed out the Defiant was the only ship powerful enough to utilize it given the oversized reactor. So in universe it’s all just a happy accident they sent the one guy to look over the wormhole who had first hand knowledge about an unused prototype ship and vague theories on how to get it working on top of figuring out how to get a favor out of the Romulans in a way that pleased both sides.
Don’t blame me, I stan the São Paulo…
*destroy, not decimate. Decimate means to reduce by 1/10th.
