Question for Dominion War Space Battle Buffs

DS9 is never on tv anymore and I don't have the dvds so I must ask this question here:

Did we see any Intrepid class starships in any of the conflicts, or even throughout the series?

I'm trying to remember all the classes of Federation starships that were shown onscreen during the battles: Excelsior-, Akira-, Defiant-, Nebula-, Miranda-, and Galaxy-class ships were shown.

IIRC, we never saw Sovereign-, Constitution-, Constellation-, Oberth-, Nova-, Prometheus-, or Intrepid-class ships.

The reason I ask is because I was trying to imagine what Voyager's role in the war would've been if they'd made it back in time (or never left)... either fighting with the "bigger" ships or some support/supply role (perhaps with other smaller ships). Wasn't the size of the Intrepid class comparable to the Miranda class, also in terms of firepower?

 

The only time we saw an Intrepid that wasn't the Voyager was in "Inter Arma Enim Silet Leges", where a USS Bellerophon ferried some VIPs to Romulus and back for an important wartime conference. Outside that, the producers of both DS9 and VOY must have made a conscious decision not to use the model or computer graphic of the Intrepid class for any purpose.

We might take this to indicate that this ship class doesn't fare well in combat - but we saw far sorrier ships in the big battles.

We might also choose to believe that this ship fares best in things other than big battles, and is never wasted on such battles for just this reason. This rather makes sense: the ship was stated to be superfast and supermaneuverable in "Caretaker" already, so perhaps reserving her for ferry missions or long range solo operations would be the smart thing to do. Forcing the ship to maneuver at the pace of older and clumsier ships would be wasteful.

Or we might simply choose to say that Starfleet never built many of these ships, and thus simple statistics would dictate that we never saw them in battle.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Intrepid class images were seen on computer screens on the Defiant in Sacrifice of Angels, What You Leave behind etc. Although the orbital complex from The Motion Picture was also seen as well.

 

I thought the Bellerophon was actually named as Ross' flagship? I was under the impression it was chosen for the Intrepid's ability to cheese it in the event of an overwhelming Dominion victory.

We see a few other classes the OP doesn't mention, like the Curry class (heh) and whatever the Centaur was supposed to be (pseudo-Miranda-thing, although good looking).

We didn't see any Ambassador class ships, which I felt was unfortunate.

It is of course a very wrongheaded shame that they wanted to hoard the Sovereign for the films.

 

There were six hundred starships in the Operation Return fleet. More than enough such that various starship classes could be there and simply not seen. For example, apparently the Centaur was there (Captain Reynolds was referenced in dialogue) and was seen mustering before they left Starbase 375, but we didn't actually see her in battle.

Mark

 

^We can definitely assume that dozens to hundreds of Sovereigns took part in the war (for that matter all the available Ambassadors). I'm just saying it's a pity that they didn't want to "waste" the E-E's cachet on pitiful ol' DS9.

 

Not in any episode, no (although I'd guess Diane Carey's novelization might make that claim).

As far as we can tell, Ross was merely a onetime passenger aboard that ship, without any access to the bridge or anything.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Except the briefing room.

 

I'm pretty sure any admiral would have access to pretty much any bridge in the fleet.

 

^^ unless it had an illegal cloak, like the Prometheus

 

You get that a lot, though. It's a big sci-fi/fantasy trope. Mass production is always worse than a single prototype in fiction. The Sovereign thing is a watered-down version of this same notion (we know, abstractly, that there at least two and maybe hundreds, but as long as the only one we see is the E-E, it's still special and mystical).

Funny, that they didn't do that so much in TNG and TOS. We see Constitutions all over the place, and a Galaxy sister in Contagion and Where Silence Has Lease. DS9, however, while fine with showcasing a dozen Galaxies, didn't want to mass-produce its hero ship, either... so instead of whole wings of Defiants, we get whole wings of Mirandas led by the Defiant.

 

Well, the fact that the Bellerophon became an Intrepid was almost wholly down to the fact that they had no money for a new set, so they asked the VOY showrunners if they could borrow their sets for the shooting [If they'd demurred, it would have been a Defiant-class]

As for "mass-production"... I do seem to recall that the DS9 showrunners weren't entirely happy about multiple Defiant-class ships appearing in "Message in a Bottle", but they weren't consulted about it. I'll look it up later when I get the chance.

 

It was the Pegasus not the Prometheus.

In TOS we see almost nothing but Constitutions, there's no variety. So TNG shows Galaxy sister ships in two episodes, well DS9 equals that with Call to Arms and Valiant and if you count mirror universe Defiant as a sister ship you also have Shattered Mirror and The Emperor's New Cloak and Sao Paulo, you also then have Dogs of War and What You Leave Behind.

 

The thing with Call to Arms is that if you don't squint, then you'll see the other Defiants. The Valiant, well, y'know what happened to the Valiant

From a narrative point of view, having the hero ship be unique makes it easier to track in those huge chaotic battles and further elevates the main cast above the rest of the combatants. It was a trick that Voyager and Enterprise also employed, but probably to less controversy since they would join with non-Starfleet fleets.

 

It is logical to assume that some of them did see action during the war. We are talking about a massive conflict that ravaged the Alpha Quadrant for about two years. Based on some of the quotes that were given to the fans during the 6th season the UFP was close to defeat a couple of times. I think Star Fleet would have pushed every possible vessel into service it could. Oberth, Constitution, Saber....everything they could muster would have gone into the war effort.

 

^ Add to it the fact that most of the fighting was not even centred on DS9 we missed a lot of the war and out of the thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of ships involved we only saw a couple of hundred and often (with the Feds) we saw quite a few of the same ships again and again.

 

Not only did it save money using the Voyager sets for IAESL, but it also made the mission feel a bit more important, than if they used the Defiant, which is a warship, not a diplomatic ship.

 

I still say Ross wanted to be on the fastest ship in Starfleet just in case.

I severely doubt that they'd have brought Oberths into combat. Those things were meat in the 23d century. Other than remote-controlled bombs, I can't see them being anything other than a liability. Even Mirandas and (to a degree) Excelsiors were stretching it. The Mirandas can be kind of rationalized as hastily combat-activated torpedo-boat-type swarmers whose main purpose was to harass Jem bugs and present as many individual targets as possible to Jem capships. You've got to feel for the poor saps/semi-trained volunteers who got assigned Miranda duty. As for the Excelsiors, the huge reg numbers of the ones we see have possibly suggests a second batch from the mid-23d century, presumably significantly upgraded, making the Excelsior is the B-52 of Starfleet.

As for Constitutions, they appeared obsolete at least as early as the advent of the Excelsior, and maybe before. Flying bombs, there, too--maybe M-5 got Kirk's job after all.

 

Oh, I get the feeling that quite a few Mirandas survived the war itself (and not just a few battles), more than we might be inclined to believe. They could run interference, engage quick-ship to quick-ship (as you pointed out), or as general backup. Every ship type has a purpose, after all.

Of the Excelsiors, I'm quite happy with the Hood. A couple years ago I made a respect thread for her when I found out that not only had she been in the Dominion War, but she was originally going to be in Nemesis as well (part of Battle Group Omega), showing that she did survive the war. To me that proved how resilient and tough the aged Excelsiors could be.