The Tale of a Little Ship

The USS Defiant was introduced in season three's "The Search." Unlike past ships in the other Star Trek shows, the Defiant was not intended to be an exploratory vessel. It was a warship, through and through. A prototype originally built to fight the Borg, the ship was quickly given a new purpose with the introduction of the Dominion. The Defiant was sent to Deep Space Nine under the command of Benjamin Sisko to protect and defend the station, and Bajor, from the Dominion threat.

Armed to the teeth, the Defiant was small, but carried a powerful punch. Unlike other starships in Starfleet, she lacked such luxuries as water showers, bars and restaurants, holosuites, and extra space. There were no families onboard, no planned recreational activities, no unnecessary personnel. Everything about the Defiant was as compact and functional as possible, from the crew quarters to the replimat to the bridge and even, much to Dr. Bashir's chagrin, the sickbay.

Over the duration of five years, the Defiant took a lot of hard knocks. She fought against the Cardassians, the Klingons, and the Dominion. She went from being the only ship of her kind, to being the first of many in an entire class of sister ships. One distinction the Defiant always had over others in her class was a Romulan cloaking device. Though the Romulan officer sent to oversee the cloak's operation, as well as the rules laid forth by the Romulans concerning its use (it was originally only supposed to be used inside the Gamma Quadrant), quickly disappeared from the scene without explanation, the cloak itself remained a constant throughout the ship's existence. With the combined power of her weaponry and invisibility afforded to her by the cloak, the Defiant was a tough ship to beat. Until she met up with the Breen.

One fateful day in the course of the war with the Dominion, Captain Sisko took his beloved ship off to do battle against the enemy and their new Breen allies. But unlike the numerous battles the Defiant faced before in the years we knew her, this was the battle in which she would not return. She went down in one of the last episodes of the series, "The Changing Face of Evil." Hit by an energy weapon that drained all her systems of power and left her a defenseless target floating in space, the Defiant was ordered abandoned by her captain. Our last look at the original Defiant was of her destruction at the hands of the Dominion ships shortly after ejecting the lifepods carrying the crew. A quick, tragic death for the tough-as-nails ship many believed to be

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