The Orb 18: Quick, Nimble, and Armed to the Teeth

The Defiant. After the disastrous first encounter with the Jem’Hadar left the Galaxy-Class USS Odyssey in ruins, it became clear to Sisko that they would need something more than runabouts to protect the station and to venture into the Gamma Quadrant. So he returned to an old project he had worked on and asked Starfleet to pull a unique warship out of storage—the USS Defiant. It’s a little ship, as Riker would call it, but also one that—as Sisko pointed out—has teeth. In this episode of The Orb hosts Christopher Jones and Matthew Rushing take a close look at the Defiant, the key role it played in both general storytelling and the Dominion War, and whether its introduction to the show was a natural evolution of the DS9 storyline or an admission that the stationary nature of the show wasn’t working.