The Defiant Should Have Had Its Own Crew

[HotRod]

I was thinking back on the previous discussions ove Kira taking command of the Defiant and it got me thinking: the Defiant should have had its own crew. It was a fully autonomous starship, so it never made much sense that the command staff of DS9 pulled double duty as the command staff of a starship as well. Especially a non commissioned officer like O'Brien seemingly serving as the Chief Engineer of the Defiant. Hell, even Sisko commanding both the station and the ship stretches credibility.

Now sure, I know that would certainly change the narrative a lot, and the Defiant would no longer be seen as "Sisko's pimp hand," but it could have opened up a whole new narrative with what really should have happened: the Defiant having its own crew. Sisko should have been promoted to captain earlier and placed in full command of the station, with the Defiant assigned to defend DS9 under the command of a full commander in the captain’s chair.

It would have created an interesting dynamic by exploring the contrast between the mixed bag crew of the station and the fully Starfleet crew of the Defiant. Later, once the full scale Dominion War was underway, Sisko could have been promoted to commodore or rear admiral, which would have made sense since he was essentially doing an admiral’s job in the later seasons, while the commander of the Defiant could have been promoted to full captain.

Considering they had Sisko commanding massive fleets of starships, it would have made far more sense if he had been an admiral with the Defiant assigned as his flagship.

Thoughts?

 

[kkt]

Well, yeah. That would be the most realistic way. The Defiant's regular crew would be doing drills and learning how to use that amazing ship when they weren't in combat - training is what makes it effective in combat.

And, yes, Sisko should have been higher ranked. Commanding a station with the added complexity of it being a Bajoran station and a large civilian population makes it more complex duty than just commanding a small warship like a Commander. I'd have made him a captain in season 1, and a commodore when he got the Defiant with her crew under him, and a rear or even vice admiral when hw was Ross's aid and commanding a whole front of the war.

I don't think the Defiant would make a good flagship. She was small. A flagship needs space for the admiral's staff and larger meeting rooms. They need something larger than the Defiant, and smaller than a Galaxy.

 

[Dukhat]

Logistically, I agree with you 100%. But like with the conundrum of constantly sending the command staff on away missions when lower-ranking (and more expendable) personnel should logically have made up an away team, it just doesn’t work within the confines of storytelling. The writers are only going to write for the main characters, not a guest crew that the audience cares less about.

 

[HotRod]

I don't think the Defiant would make a good flagship. She was small. A flagship needs space for the admiral's staff and larger meeting rooms. They need something larger than the Defiant, and smaller than a Galaxy.

We usually see Admiral's running around on Excelsior's. I just figure due to Sisko's connection with the Defiant, plus his tendency to lead from the front, the Defiant would be his likely choice. We could've seen an interior refit of the ship with the addition of a Combat Information Center for fleet operations.

 

[HotRod]

The writers are only going to write for the main characters, not a guest crew that the audience cares less about.

Under most circumstances, i'd agree with you. But wasn't DS9 pretty damn big on its secondary characters?

 

[AntonyF]

The 'real' answer is of course that it was a device for the crew to go out and do stuff. It was effectively a souped up runabout.

But delving into the idea a bit, perhaps it's more the other way around. The Defiant was the Sisko and his crew's, and the station was their second duty on behalf of the Bajorans. I always liked how Worf was first officer on the Defiant. When the station was attacked, they all buggered off on the Defiant and stayed on there as that was their ship.

Then they slept and ate on the station, as that was effectively like a dock/town they were at.

 

[The Wormhole]

They sort of took a step in the right direction when Worf arrived in that the Defiant was supposed to be his ship to command, though they muddled this up a bit with Sisko able to assume command when he was on board and Worf becoming XO.

Realistically, yes, the Defiant should have had its own crew. Though from the perspective of television production, it basically served the purpose of being a gigantic shuttle. It was sort of to DS9 what the Delta Flyer was to Voyager. But oh well, not the first time TV logic has overruled realism and it won't be the last.

As for Sisko using it as his flagship when he led fleets, Ron Moore has claimed that was rooted in a WWII naval tradition where Admirals or Commodores or whatever would lead fleets from the ship they were most comfortable aboard rather than from the ship most suited to be the flagship. IE, an officer who served mostly on destroyers or frigates might be more comfortable leading a fleet from there as opposed to a carrier or battleship. Though others familiar with naval traditions have over the years denied this was ever a thing, so who knows?

 

[Dukhat]

Under most circumstances, i'd agree with you. But wasn't DS9 pretty damn big on its secondary characters?

Yes, but they already had a core group of secondary characters, who were ill-suited to be starship personnel (even though that didn’t stop them.) To create yet another third group as the regular Defiant crew would have added more stew to the already overflowing pot. Mind you, realistically I would have loved for that to happen, but you can only work with so many characters before the main characters start to get overshadowed.

 

[kkt]

Really, an admiral who came up from destroyers would use a destroyer as his flagship? I guess I won't swear it never happened, but I've never heard of it.

As far as I know admirals of 1930s to 21st century fleets have generally been on the carrier. The airplanes are the fastest moving and fastest changing element of a battle (well maybe not now that drones are a thing). The carrier is the best protected ship of the fleet, except submarines, and communication between a submerged sub and the rest of a fleet would be problematic.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Isn't there a joke that goes:

In the ideal world, the cooks are French, the policemen are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and the bankers are Swiss..

In the real world, the cooks are English, the policemen are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and the bankers are Italian.

In the Science Fiction world, the cooks are the crew, the policemen are the crew, the mechanics are the crew, the lovers are the crew, and the bankers are the Ferengi.

 

[TheAdmiralty]

Logistically, I agree with you 100%. But like with the conundrum of constantly sending the command staff on away missions when lower-ranking (and more expendable) personnel should logically have made up an away team, it just doesn’t work within the confines of storytelling. The writers are only going to write for the main characters, not a guest crew that the audience cares less about.

Also section chiefs who have nothing to do with the away mission like the engineer or pilot.

 

[26138]

We usually see Admiral's running around on Excelsior's. I just figure due to Sisko's connection with the Defiant, plus his tendency to lead from the front, the Defiant would be his likely choice. We could've seen an interior refit of the ship with the addition of a Combat Information Center for fleet operations.

Usually they just showed up in an Excelsior because that's the model the production crew had on hand to show another ship next to the Ent-D. Can't have two Galaxy classes because it'd confuse the audience (and weren't there only 6 or 12 of them at the start?). I think someone has likened it to "oh Excelsiors were the kick-ass ship back in the day when the Admirals were little, so they grew up and now think they're neat to use as personal shuttles" or something like that. Or it lets them cruise around in a decent ship without having to divert one of the biggest and most modern ships they have out mapping a distant star sector for babysitting duty.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Defiant was unsuited for any humanitarian missions, so I don't think that the majority of Star Fleet appreciated a ship that had only ever been designed to murder people.

Maybe the reason that the Defiant did not have it's own crew, is that none of the peace loving hippies the star fleet academy cookie cutters generated by the score had any interest in blowing up stars and ending civilizations?

%90 of the time it just sat there crewless, until the war really started, docked to DS9.

 

[Farscape One]

I think Sisko should have been promoted to captain in the beginning of season 3 when he got the Defiant stationed there full time. He had by that point found himself more and moved on from his grief and was fully committed to the job again. (Though we would have missed his promotion ceremony when Jake puts that 4th pip on his dress uniform, and I would never want to take away any Ben/Jake scenes like that.)

However, while I can see why he should have been given a promotion to commodore or lower admiral after he became Ross' adjutant, two things make it believeable why he wasn't.

First, less than a year earlier, he directly stopped Bajor from becoming part of the Federation. Not only was that a massive violation of the Prime Directive, but it went completely against his original orders when he was assigned to DS9. Very likely put a reprimand or major mark on his record that would make him ineligible, officially, for a promotion past captain for a LONG time... certainly not so soon after the events of "RAPTURE".

Second, Ross' previous adjutant was a captain, so it makes sense another of such rank would fill that gap. Further, as we've seen many times in the franchise, rank is not necessarily the final say on who has the final authority of a mission or operation. It's position/title. In other words, the authority given by whoever is in a higher authority of that command structure. (Probably the best example of this: in "Pen Pals", Riker puts Wesley in charge of the mineral/geological survey. Every single officer he's in charge of is a higher rank since he's only an ACTING ensign. But his word was final on that team, since he was given that authority by the ship's XO.) And since Sisko is Ross' adjutant, and has been given the authority by Ross to command those operations with large fleets, he gets to be in command of those missions.

 

[The Wormhole]

Behr wanted to have Sisko promoted to Admiral when the War started, it was Berman who refused saying "Star Trek is about the Captains." When Behr tried to argue the matter further, Berman reminded him that "Star Trek is about the Captains" was the line Behr himself used in order to convince Berman to promote Sisko to Captain at the end of the third season.

 

[BillJ]

I was thinking back on the previous discussions ove Kira taking command of the Defiant and it got me thinking: the Defiant should have had its own crew. It was a fully autonomous starship, so it never made much sense that the command staff of DS9 pulled double duty as the command staff of a starship as well. Especially a non commissioned officer like O'Brien seemingly serving as the Chief Engineer of the Defiant. Hell, even Sisko commanding both the station and the ship stretches credibility.

Now sure, I know that would certainly change the narrative a lot, and the Defiant would no longer be seen as "Sisko's pimp hand," but it could have opened up a whole new narrative with what really should have happened: the Defiant having its own crew. Sisko should have been promoted to captain earlier and placed in full command of the station, with the Defiant assigned to defend DS9 under the command of a full commander in the captain’s chair.

It would have created an interesting dynamic by exploring the contrast between the mixed bag crew of the station and the fully Starfleet crew of the Defiant. Later, once the full scale Dominion War was underway, Sisko could have been promoted to commodore or rear admiral, which would have made sense since he was essentially doing an admiral’s job in the later seasons, while the commander of the Defiant could have been promoted to full captain.

Considering they had Sisko commanding massive fleets of starships, it would have made far more sense if he had been an admiral with the Defiant assigned as his flagship.

Thoughts?

$$$

It would've made an expensive underperforming show cost even more.

 

[Lynx]

I was thinking back on the previous discussions ove Kira taking command of the Defiant and it got me thinking: the Defiant should have had its own crew. It was a fully autonomous starship, so it never made much sense that the command staff of DS9 pulled double duty as the command staff of a starship as well. Especially a non commissioned officer like O'Brien seemingly serving as the Chief Engineer of the Defiant. Hell, even Sisko commanding both the station and the ship stretches credibility.

Now sure, I know that would certainly change the narrative a lot, and the Defiant would no longer be seen as "Sisko's pimp hand," but it could have opened up a whole new narrative with what really should have happened: the Defiant having its own crew. Sisko should have been promoted to captain earlier and placed in full command of the station, with the Defiant assigned to defend DS9 under the command of a full commander in the captain’s chair.

It would have created an interesting dynamic by exploring the contrast between the mixed bag crew of the station and the fully Starfleet crew of the Defiant. Later, once the full scale Dominion War was underway, Sisko could have been promoted to commodore or rear admiral, which would have made sense since he was essentially doing an admiral’s job in the later seasons, while the commander of the Defiant could have been promoted to full captain.

Considering they had Sisko commanding massive fleets of starships, it would have made far more sense if he had been an admiral with the Defiant assigned as his flagship.

Thoughts?

The Defiant actually had it's own crew, the senior crew at the station!

But I can see your point here.

In fact, would Starfleet really approve to the situation in which the Captain on the station regularily took the whole senior staff with him on the Defiant for dangerous missions, leaving thae station in the hands of more unexperienced officers?

However, without those little adventures which Sisko and the others had with the Defiant, the series would have some of what made it exciting.

 

[HotRod]

$$$

It would've made an expensive underperforming show cost even more.

Since when did that slow down DS9's showrunners? They could've nixed Vic and the Vegas Lounge and paid for a few decent character actors to play the roles and probably still have money left over.

 

[BillJ]

Since when did that slow down DS9's showrunners?

To Rick Berman? I'm sure it mattered a great deal. That was his job as executive producer. Though I would've had no problems throwing Worf and Vic Fontaine overboard, whether they added any additional characters or not.

 

[SteveJRogers]

Since when did that slow down DS9's showrunners? They could've nixed Vic and the Vegas Lounge and paid for a few decent character actors to play the roles and probably still have money left over.

True, but then we’d miss out on classic stories of the main cast, or spun out from the main cast on the ship (ie Visitor, Trials and Tribbilations)