Editing USS Defiant (section)

==Design and development==
For the first two seasons of ''Deep Space Nine'', stories requiring characters to travel off-station typically involved small [[Runabout (Star Trek)|runabout]] vessels. Producer [[Ira Steven Behr]] and writer [[Robert Hewitt Wolfe]] believed runabouts would be insufficient to confront the adversarial [[Dominion (Star Trek)|Dominion]] introduced in the second season, and they convinced executive producer [[Rick Berman]] of the need for a new ship. Additionally, the ''Defiant'' was intended to solve the problem of cramped runabout sets.

The ''Defiant'' was initially designed by art illustrator Jim Martin, with contributions from visual effects supervisor [[Gary Hutzel]] and modelmaker Tony Meininger. Original designs called for a "beefed-up" runabout-type ship, but this gave way to a full-fledged starship design initially called ''Valiant''. This name was dropped out of fear that it would conflict with ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]''<nowiki/>'s titular starship, also beginning with a "V".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/10/star-trek-deep-space-nine-rewatch-the-search-part-i|title=Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch: "The Search, Part I"|access-date=October 18, 2013|date=October 18, 2013|first=Keith|last=DeCandido|author-link=Keith DeCandido|publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers]]|work=[[Tor Books]]}}</ref>

An early screenplay for ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]'' (1996) called for the ''Defiant'' to be destroyed, but Behr objected and the idea was dropped.<ref name="braga">Braga & Moore.{{full citation needed|date=July 2019}}</ref>

Following the ''Defiant''<nowiki/>'s destruction in "The Changing Face of Evil", the writers had wanted a new type of successor ship but the budget wasn't available. As a result, they replaced the ''Defiant'' with the same spacecraft design for the USS ''São Paulo'' in "The Dogs of War".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2La2rMJJKzQC |title=Beyond the Final Frontier: An Unauthorised Review of the Trek Universe on Television and Film; Season Summaries, Characters, Episodes, Movies |last2=Parkin |first2=Lance |date=2003 |publisher=[[Contender Books]] |location=London |isbn=978-1-84357-080-6 |pages=269}}</ref> [[Ronald D. Moore|Ron Moore]] said in the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion]]'' that the new ship was intended to be designated "''Defiant''-A", but it would have been too costly to redo the CG model for one episode because stock shots from earlier episodes had to be used as well for budgetary reasons.