"Tough little ship..."

[Angry Fanboy]

When Worf is rescued from the Defiant in First Contact, Riker comments that it's a "tough little ship."

"LITTLE!?" Worf replies.

Why so much emphasis on 'little'? The Defiant IS little. Worf's reacts as if the Defiant is a huge ship, like a tall person being called "shorty".

Never understood that bit of dialog! :-)

 

[Mage]

Penis joke.

 

[NCC-73515]

No one wants their ship insulted, certainly not a Klingon

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

It's not the size of the ship that counts, it's the size of her guns that matters.

 

[Qonundrum]

Because the Defiant class was designed exclusively to fight Borg cubes with, which didn't pan out that way? At least in theory, since they didn't have any real Cubes to test it on earlier and since then they'd made larger starships like the Easy-E anyway.

 

[KerbalStarfleet]

"Tough little ship" is also the exact same thing Tom Riker says in the DS9 S3 episode "Defiant," which came out almost 2 years before FC.

 

[Timo]

As for "she IS little", well, she's apparently about the size of a Miranda. That is, if only the substance matters, and not the vacuum bits in between, also the size of Kirk's rides.

But yeah, among the smallest anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

As for "she IS little", well, she's apparently about the size of a Miranda.

655,000 tons (Miranda Refit) v 355,000 metric tons (Defiant)... seems pretty different to me?

also the size of Kirk's rides.

~600,000 tons (Constitution Refit)... so, no?

But yeah, among the smallest anyway.

That's true though, particularly in comparison to the Sovereign class (suggested as ~3.2 million tons).

 

[Timo]

There's no known mass to the Defiant, but the dimensions can be easily eyeballed, and they match those of Kirk's ship, or Terrell's/Khan's. That is, there's about as much hull to Sisko's ship, if not more so, even if the warp coils are packaged slightly differently.

Alas, there's a known mass to Kirk's Enterprise now, thanks to DSC "Brother", and it's the fan favorite 170,000 tons, rather than something more in line with Scotty's "Nearly a million gross tons".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

170,000 tons

Okay... the 600k might be speculation, but 170k seems a little low. Particularly given that the Excelsior is supposed to be about 2.35M according to the DS9TM.

Further, I'd suggest that even if they are similar lengths, the Defiant's four (maybe five...) decks put it at considerably smaller than the Connie (generally assumed to have 21 decks). The fact that the Connie had a minimum of about 5 times the crew up to about 10x the crew also supports this.

 

[Imaus]

Connies are smaller than Mirandas volumne wise, the Miranda stuffs it all in the back. It's also probably why Mirandas are still used far more than Connies for far longer. You need a cargo ship? Miranda. Transport? Miranda. Comfortable patrol ship? Miranda. Need to arm it up? Put a torpedo pod on it. The Miranda is the jeep of the fleet while the Connie was the specialized camper that could rough it a bit outdoors.

Defiants are tiny in comparison to nearly any other ship in the fleet. It's four and a half decks shoved between a warp core, impulse engines, two big warp pods, and a dish in front. Which is sort of fine, they're to be wolf-packs based on key worlds or bases.

And considering the Defiant apparently lasted long against the cube, it did ONE part of its job well. The thing is you need four, five Defiants working in tandem, that was what they were designed for.

 

[Oddish]

WORF: "Perhaps today IS a good day to die... PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!!"

That epic line forgives all less than stellar Worf lines.

That and: "Assimilate this!"

 

[arch101]

"Tough little ship" is also the exact same thing Tom Riker says in the DS9 S3 episode "Defiant," which came out almost 2 years before FC.

THANK YOU- it’s a DS9 “in joke” and the DS9 fans who saw the film -like me- laughed pretty hard about it.

 

[diankra]

I always read it as Riker expressing surprise that the Defiant had survived at all, and Worf joking back at him. Worf has a good, dry, sense of humour.

 

[Vger23]

I always read it as Riker expressing surprise that the Defiant had survived at all, and Worf joking back at him. Worf has a good, dry, sense of humour.

I think it’s just that simple. It’s just a fun line in a movie.

 

[Thomas_Sullivan]

When Worf is rescued from the Defiant in First Contact, Riker comments that it's a "tough little ship."

From the perspective of the writers, I imagine this was just a nice reference, an in-joke for the fans that also served to show us that Thomas and Will Riker are the same, even though one "brother" has ended up on a very different path in life because of his divergent experience.

Why so much emphasis on 'little'? The Defiant IS little. Worf's reacts as if the Defiant is a huge ship, like a tall person being called "shorty".

Or like a short person being called shorty.

Klingons value strength and power, and for many people the word "little" is synonymous with the word "weak." How would most human males in the real world react if someone said their sports car was a "nice little car?"

-- Tom

 

[Oddish]

Maybe, but with the resources it would take to produce a single Galaxy or Soverign Class starship, you could probably make ten Defiants. The difference in firepower would be unbelievable.

 

[Thomas_Sullivan]

Maybe, but with the resources it would take to produce a single Galaxy or Soverign Class starship, you could probably make ten Defiants. The difference in firepower would be unbelievable.

Agreed. There must be a significant difference in the resources put into a smaller ship like the Defiant, especially given her dedicated nature cuts out a lot of unnecessary (for her mission statement) rooms and equipment.

The Sovereign is a powerful ship that would be exceptional for a variety of mission profiles, combat included, and I wouldn't want to be sitting in any starship looking to do combat with it, but the multiple Defiant class vessels you could make with the same resources would not only have exponentially more power output, but would be exponentially more dangerous for being able to swarm a larger ship.

It seems that post the Borg encounter at Wolf 359, a reduction in the size and increase in the speed and maneuverability of their starships was something on the minds of a lot of Starfleet's designers and engineers -- the Nova class, the Intrepid class, and the Defiant class being great examples of this change in design features. Of course, the Nova isn't as powerful as the Intrepid, let alone the Defiant, but like them she seems to punch above her weight class, making up for a lot in mobility.

 

[Oddish]

In the novelization of "The Search", Kira expresses her admiration for Sisko's new toy. She basically says that the Jem'Hadar made short work of one of the most versatile starships ever made (the Odyssey, which was fortunately evacuated of families and other nonessential personnel). She says the Defiant is "fast, maneuverable, and packs one hell of a punch." And if the Dominion tries again... "I want them to know we have teeth this time."

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

It could also be Riker's inflated sense of self-worth. Picard got the whole gang back together to serve on the brand new Sovereign-Class ship, the biggest and best Starfleet has to offer, but Worf opted to remain on a floating bicycle wheel and suped-up runabout.