Meh. Most of DS9's secondary character were most interesting than the main characters.
I think of Adam Scott, who played the helm officer in First Contact, as purely Defiant crew. I presume he survived the film, and we'd never seen him before or after because the Defiant missions we saw always involved the main cast, but he's somewhere on the ship.
A thought I was mulling over recently, it's possible that aside from the senior officers, it's possible the rest of the ship's crew were strictly Defiant personnel. Though thinking that over, it's never reflected on the show. We have seen O'Brien's engineers from Starship Down serving on the station as well. And if the ship did have it's own separate crew, you'd think they'd still be aboard the ship when it's docked at the station, even sleeping aboard it as opposed to the ship being completely empty and Worf being stated to be the only one who actually lives aboard the ship.
Okay, given the spartan accommodations on the ship, I guess it's possible that even if the Defiant had its own crew, they might still be given quarters aboard the station, not unlike today Navy and Coast Guard personnel can spend their off duty at home if their ship is at its home port or they can stay at a hotel if it's at a different port. Still, the fact the ship was always empty when it was at the station is kind of odd. You'd think that'd be the perfect time to conduct all manner of maintenance work.
Okay, given the spartan accommodations on the ship, I guess it's possible that even if the Defiant had its own crew, they might still be given quarters aboard the station, not unlike today Navy and Coast Guard personnel can spend their off duty at home if their ship is at its home port or they can stay at a hotel if it's at a different port. Still, the fact the ship was always empty when it was at the station is kind of odd. You'd think that'd be the perfect time to conduct all manner of maintenance work.
For at least up until the war started, I can see the Defiant crew actually not living there. It WAS a classified ship.
As for maintenance and repairs, almost certainly still happened regularly, even when Worf made his quarters permanent there.
As for maintenance and repairs, almost certainly still happened regularly, even when Worf made his quarters permanent there.
Or out performing maneuvers or combat drills.
But then you don't get those cool "backing away from the station and turning the running lights on" shots.
How very dare you!
I assume it comes from Admiral Fletcher, a cruiser/destroyerman who often used the cruiser USS Indianapolis as his flagship. Presumably on the grounds that the Carriers were massive targets that tended to catch fire when hit, knocking them out and also they needed to stay in their subdivisions to operate together, The Battleships were either too slow or needed to be able to group together should the need arise, while a cruiser could be detached from one sub-fleet to another as required (The Pacific fleet was very large and covered a large area). However, the Indianapolis was still a large ship and had been fitted out when building as a fleet flagship, therefore had the necessary accommodation for the admirals staff etc.
Obviously there are plenty of examples of admirals operating from cruisers where they were the largest ships in the fleet that were present. Scott and Callaghan at Guadalcanal or Burnett at the North Cape. Note that the ships chosen as their flagships were not always the largest, but the newest or most recently refitted, as their radars and communications systems were better.
The Berman Era reboot/remix I created gave the Defiant its own crew.
The DS9 crew
The Enterprise and Voyager crews
Even if you want to make the argument that "realistically" it should have had its own crew (debatable!), it would have been appallingly awful from a dramatic, TV show point of view.
The DS9 cast was large and had a huge cast of important supporting characters. Throwing in a Defiant crew would be utterly redundant and unnecessary and would have crowded the already-crowded field of important players.
And for what reason, exactly? None. No advantage whatsoever except Sisko occasionally "disagreeing" with the Defiant captain? So what? What a pointless, dramatically inert idea.
Either Sisko's in command or he's not. Having another subordinate would be pointless.
And if the Defiant captain can overrule him, then shouldn't that person be the star of the show?
Awful idea.
The DS9 cast was large and had a huge cast of important supporting characters. Throwing in a Defiant crew would be utterly redundant and unnecessary and would have crowded the already-crowded field of important players.
And for what reason, exactly? None. No advantage whatsoever except Sisko occasionally "disagreeing" with the Defiant captain? So what? What a pointless, dramatically inert idea.
Either Sisko's in command or he's not. Having another subordinate would be pointless.
And if the Defiant captain can overrule him, then shouldn't that person be the star of the show?
Awful idea.
In season one, according to the bible, Sisko showed up with 20 people. With a three shift rotation, that means at most 7 Starfleet officers on duty at any point. Then he was given a few hundred more after the worm hole was discovered, and then thousands once the war really started, if also you count the 12 starships docked, he can draw reserves from.
My point is what about the 200 Bajorans running the station in the pilot, when Starfleet were just a few administrators, helping a savage child race play with their shiny toy they stole off the Cardassians?
As time went by were the Bajorans one by one, asked to go home to make room for more well educated aliens, or did Kira want a few people that looked like her on the Defiant so she didn't freak out from being assimilated by rootbeer swilling overlords?
My point is what about the 200 Bajorans running the station in the pilot, when Starfleet were just a few administrators, helping a savage child race play with their shiny toy they stole off the Cardassians?
As time went by were the Bajorans one by one, asked to go home to make room for more well educated aliens, or did Kira want a few people that looked like her on the Defiant so she didn't freak out from being assimilated by rootbeer swilling overlords?
Well, he did, and then he fired on a decloaking ship without positive identification.
Realistically, the Defiant should never have been going far from the station to begin with. If the whole point of the ship is defend the station and the wormhole entrance then you don't be going out on jaunts to star systems days or weeks away. We know why they did it though for story driven narrative, but it was still a dumb tactical idea.
Can you imagine how much black-market profiteering Quark got done every time they made Odo fly along on those Defiant missions?
I don't feel like that the Station feeds "power" to ships docked on the pylons, like your gandparent's RV camper hooks up to the grid at the trailer park, when they are touring the national parks, but the reverse is certainly possible that every ship latticed to Deep Space Nine increases the stations shield strength.
Similar threads
