Did Dukat steal a shuttlecraft in "Waltz?"

[TroiFan4ever]

Toward the end of "Waltz" a Type 6 Shuttlecraft can be seen on that stormy planet. Sisko was about to get in it but Dukat pounced on him from behind and they fight each other and ended with Dukat throwing Sisko out of the shuttle and flying off the planet in it, leaving Sisko in the dust... until the Defiant picked up Sisko anyway.
What I'm unclear on is how the shuttle even got there to begin with? When Dukat and Sisko were stranded on that planet, they took shelter in a cave in which there was a device they were using to send out a distress beacon. Did Starfleet respond and fetch them the shuttle?

Slightly off-topic but it's kind of bothersome to me that Worf, Jadzia, and O'Brien (using the Defiant) only had a limited number of hours to keep looking for Sisko and eventually had to abandon the search for him, but I guess that's a good thing Dukat inadvertently helped them find him by flying off the planet in the shuttle.

 

[USS Firefly]

Didn't Sisko land the shuttlecraft when they abandoned the Nebula class Starship( I forget It's name)

 

[TroiFan4ever]

Didn't Sisko land the shuttlecraft when they abandoned the Nebula class Starship( I forget It's name)

OH! I never saw that! From what i did see though, Dukat was in a prison cell and Sisko was having him transferred elsewhere to stand trial when they crashed. I thought the starship they were on at the start of the episode was the ship they crashed.

 

[frankieteardrop]

When the USS Honshu is attacked, Sisko gets knocked out by a plasma conduit explosion. When he regains consciousness in the cave, Dukat tells him that he and a Honshu crewman carried Sisko to an escape shuttle, and that their shuttle was damaged by shock waves so they had to make an emergency landing. IIRC, it's never 100% clear how truthful Dukat is being, and in fact, it turns out their shuttle is still operational at the end of the episode, enabling his escape.

 

[Timo]

It was pretty clearly explicated: the Honshu was attacked and destroyed, there were survivors in escape pods and shuttlecraft, and at the start of Act 1, the other heroes still lack the complete picture and trust that Sisko may have survived, either in a pod or in a shuttle. Turns out it was a shuttle - and yes, Dukat stole it.

Although he said he dragged the wounded Sisko there together with a Lieutenant McConnell, whose fate we only learn through Dukat's story. For all we know, Dukat killed, sawed to pieces and ate McConnell. Or then it all happened like he told, and the poor Lieutenant was lost to shrapnel just before salvation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TroiFan4ever]

Oh okay, i get it now. Apologies for wasting a thread.

Moderator, please close.

 

[Voth commando1]

I don't think it was ever made clear exactly how Dukat escaped that planet.

 

[Timo]

Using something the heroes in the closing scene call "Gul Dukat's shuttle".

Since we saw a single shuttle down on the planet for most of the adventure; since we then at the end of the adventure saw Sisko and Dukat struggling for the control of that shuttle; and since we saw Dukat win and close the hatch with himself inside... It's not that much of a mystery.

Okay, we can do details if we want to. The heroes say they "didn't have time to locate" Dukat's shuttle, which allows us to believe in all sorts of escape trajectories. Perhaps Dukat dove into a nearby nebula and thus could not be located by subsequent searches? Perhaps there never was time for such a search before Dukat's presumably warp-capable craft had had the time it needed to get well out of Dodge? Or perhaps Dukat's friends could have been assumed to have picked him up in that time, since he did send signals, including at least the one that alerted the heroes to Sisko's plight.

I guess the writers needed to make this one explicit, as Dukat had not previously been established as an escape artist. (Not so with Harry Mudd, whose various escapes are never quite explained to us... But those tend to happen between episodes, not at their conclusion.)

Timo Saloniemi