The reason I think Defiant is my favorite Trek ship.....

I've grappled with this over the last couple days, ever since having a discussion with a fellow of my acquaintance along these lines.

I think the reason I think Defiant was my favourite of all the TV Trek ships is because it's the one that I felt captured most perfectly, inside and out, what a lot of ships in an actual real-life Starfleet would actually be like.

Defiant's a "tough little ship". It's got all the sleekness of larger Starfleet ships, but with a design that feels more realistic to me: less decks, less in the way of turbolifts, crew quarters that are barely adequate with multiple bunks, etc. It's the submarine type of Starfleet ship. And there's just something about that I find more believable in design.

Not to disparage the larger ships by any means. Their designs are fine. But I do think in a real-life Starfleet, your Constitutions, Excelsiors, Galaxies and Sovereigns would all be larger ships with a specialist mission statement. Constitutions and Excelsiors would maybe be more like aircraft carriers, larger vessels from which smaller ones would deploy, while Galaxies and Sovereigns would be destroyers. I think in a 'real' Starfleet it'd be almost the exact opposite of what we were presented with on-screen: the larger ships would be used for specific tasks, rather than being the "broad mission" type ships that we actually saw; and I honestly believe that the general runabout would be more like the Defiant (or maybe the Intrepid class).

Defiant's submarine feel is, apart perhaps from ENT's warp five vessel, the Starfleet ship from which I can positively believe in the design as a day-to-day vessel. It feels like a much more real extrapolation of our current days technologies and navy's than perhaps the other Star Treks, which tended to have a more romantic "18th century English navy" base to them.

Am I making any sense, or am I just speaking from the heart? Anyone else here feel the same way about Defiant as I do?

 

You managed to go six paragraphs without even once mentioning the main reason the Sisko had it built; to blow stuff up. Impressive.

 

I too love the Defiant. It's performance in IAMD in ENT was awesome.


Oh wait this is the DS9 Thread. Endless Looping Defiant!

 

I liked the Defiant but I'd hardly call it my favorite Trek ship. It really had none of the character or the beauty that the Constitutions, Galaxies, or Excelsiors had. It's certainly up there, but it's not my favorite.

 

well Defiant spelled backwards is "Badass Motherf**ker" after all

 

Well, you know. Some things go without saying.

 

The Defiant = submarine analogy is very apt, especially since Defiant (and as far as I can recall no other Starfleet ship during the DS9 time period) had a cloak.

All the ships had specialist missions. The Defiant and her sister ships were highly capable in combat, but had limited maintenance facilities for their machinery and medical and recreational facilities for their crew to be suitable for long deployments. The Defiant was like a submarine and her sister ships were like particularly capable destroyers, in WW II terms.

The Galaxy and other large classes were more multipurpose in design: capable of maintaining their ships and crews for multiyear missions away from any base, research facilities for science and exploration missions. Yet also capable of going into battle. They are like cruisers and battleships in WW II terms.

 

The Defiant-Class is the Samuel L. Jackson of starships

 

As in it get's its arm chopped off, zapped by lighting, and force pushed out of a high rise window? Or shot in the back of the head by Joe Pesci? Or shot by Michael Keaton? Or eaten by a dinosaur? Or a genetically engineered super smart shark? Or is hired to be a musician at a wedding and gets massacred?

 

I've never been much of a Defiant fan. They tried to make it cool at the expense of making it look like a Starfleet ship - take off the pennants and it'd fit just as well flying next to the Millennium Falcon as it does next to the Excelsiors and Mirandas during the Dominion War.

Nacelles on pylons would have made all the difference.

 

The Defiant is a fine ship but if I had to pick one to serve on it would probably be a Sovereign, Intrepid or Luna Class... But the Defiant is up there among my favourite ships.

 

I like the interiors of the Defiant- they have that 'essential function' vibe you do get from military equipment. The exterior leaves me cold though- the warp engines should be at least parallel and the underside shows more decking windows that there are in that area. Personally it reminds me of a shampoo bottle more that a heavy assault craft.
Voyager with the added armor in 'End Game' was a good look- it still had that Starfleet configuration but looked protected and aggressive.

 

I would hope that after the war no-one gets to serve on a Defiant class exclusively, more they're assigned to starbases and colonies in more risky areas of the quadrant that need a bit of beefing up, security wise.
So its officers/crew would be assigned to that starbase or other facility and the Defiant would be their ship the way DS9 used runabouts in its early seasons.

I'd hope the days of building/acquiring a space station and leaving it with 4 or 5 Runabouts to defend itself are LONG gone

 

Remember that the ship design they were originally thinking of using for USS Defiant was later modified and used as USS Equanox. So for those that think its nacelles should be on pylons, that was what it would look like, just with torpedo tubes in the forward bit.

 

IIRC the Equinox/Defiant was created for the DS9 Tech manual to fill out the backstory- the sketches showing the development of the Defiant started off as a ship based on the Runabout shapes and evolved to the compacted one used. There was a grat one with the Name of Valiant which I think was implied to be Mirror-Sisko's ship- it followed the Defiant hull shape but he warp pods housings were shorter and aggressively swept forward.

 

It's not my favorite ship, but I think it's cool.

I really think it would be awesome for a large starship to have 4 or more defiant-class ships tastefully and strategically attached to its hull so they could detatch during battle as needed. I could see that working well with the flat, sleek, smaller design of that class of ship.

 

once the classic saucer/engineering hull design gets big enough instead of a captain's yacht or aeroshuttle it'd be the captain's defiant and it'd be docked in the same place

 

Like this thread about the Defiant...one of my favorite ships as well. I think the Archer Class (from the Vanguard/Seekers series rates up there), I think the Archer class as too few crew member to do a 24 hour duty shift (even with computer autotmation).....

I don't know what the crew complement of the Defiant class is, but I get the impression it at least 50 people.

Also, does anyone know if the Defiant is able to land on planets (or should i say without crashlanding!!!! LOL).

I've always thought the "Adventures of a Defiant Crew" stories would be great.

 

The schematics in the DS-9 Tech Manual show landing gear on the Defiant so it could land on planets, they just did not have it do that on screen

 

oh that would have been cool to see!