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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 6, Episode 22

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Cast & crew.

Avery Brooks

Capt. Benjamin Sisko

Rene Auberjonois

Michael Dorn

Lt. Cmdr. Worf

Terry Farrell

Lt. Cmdr. Jadzia Dax

Cirroc Lofton

Colm Meaney

Chief Miles O'Brien

Episode Info

The Original Series
The Next Generation
Deep Space Nine
Strange New Worlds

Such Sweet Sorrow (Part 2)

Unification iii, battle at the binary stars.

The battle for the future of the United Federation of Planets begins on the cardassian space station Deep Space Nine. Commander Benjamin Sisko and his crew are tasked with discovering the truth behind a mysterious message left by a group known as the Valiant.

The Valiant have been sending out distress calls for years, but their exact identity and location have remained a mystery. When the crew of Deep Space Nine investigate the Valiant’s call, they come across a ship that has been taken over by a group of aliens known as the Jem’Hadar.

The Jem’Hadar have taken control of the vessel and are using it as a base to launch attacks against the Federation. In order to stop the Jem’Hadar and save the Valiant, Sisko and crew must uncover the deep secrets of the past and work together to free the captive crew members.

Meanwhile, the Jem’Hadar have their own agenda, and they are determined to prevent any Federation interference. As the crew of Deep Space Nine struggle against their enemies, they come to realize that the Valiant holds the key to their victory.

The crew must work together to uncover the secrets of the Valiant, battle the Jem’Hadar, and rescue the prisoners in order to save the Federation from a future of destruction. As the battle rages on, Sisko and crew must remember the true meaning of the mission: to protect the freedom of the Federation.

Aboard the Valiant, the crew discovers a new and powerful weapon. This weapon has the potential to be used against the Federation, and must be kept out of the wrong hands at all costs. With the help of the Valiant’s captain, the crew discovers a way to use the weapon to their advantage.

Sisko and crew must now find a way to protect the Valiant and its crew from the Jem’Hadar in order to prevent the weapon from being used against the Federation. In a dramatic battle against the Jem’Hadar and their allies, the crew of Deep Space Nine must trust in each other and their own courage to prevail.

The future of the Federation hangs in the balance as the crew of Deep Space Nine take on the fight of their lives. In the end, Sisko and his crew must find the courage to face the unknown and protect the Valiant and its crew from the forces of evil. Only then will the Federation remain safe and the Valiant’s message of hope be heard throughout the galaxy.

Infinite regress, past prologue, blaze of glory.

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

On their way to Ferenginar, Jake and Nog's runabout comes under attack from the Jem'Hadar, and they are rescued by the Valiant, a ship manned by an elite group of over-eager Starfleet cadets who have bitten off more than they can chew.

Aron Eisenberg

David Drew Gallagher

Courtney Peldon

Paul Popowich

Ashley Brianne McDonogh

Majel Barrett Roddenberry

Mark Allen Shepherd

Cast appearances.

René Auberjonois

Alexander Siddig

Cirroc Lofton

Armin Shimerman

Nana Visitor

Michael Dorn

Avery Brooks

Terry Farrell

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Published May 4, 2023

'Valiant' Was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine At Its Darkest

The episode highlights how the pageantry of Starfleet can disguise the painful realities of war and duty.

Illustrated banner of the U.S.S. Valiant

StarTrek.com / Rob DeHart

I can’t place the exact film or series that first awoke my childhood obsession with space travel; maybe it was always coded in my DNA to look longingly skyward and imagine what adventures could happen there. In contrast to the excitement of Star Wars ’ dogfights and Doctor Who ’s anarchic sense of adventure, Star Trek promised in its Starfleet crew a teamwork, camaraderie and efficacy that the others lacked, which for a rambunctious and over-energetic child felt really badass.

"Valiant"

StarTrek.com

When I imagined captaining my own starship (realistically, I’d be lucky to make it to the Bridge), my crew rarely consisted of seasoned officers but of my own peers — kids like me. Maybe we’d be a little older, at a stretch late teens, but there wouldn’t be any stuffy adults. My crew would be people I could recognize and relate to, the type of folk kids want to have adventures with. It’s easy enough to understand; when you play, you imagine yourself with your friends, without the imposing supervision of adults, in worlds where you can do anything.

The creation of Wesley Crusher capitalized this idea to an extent, offering a surrogate for the next generation of Star Trek ’s younger fans. Wesley’s exciting and often dangerous life amongst the stars was one we all wished we could live. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ’s “ Valiant ,” however, this dream is pushed to its logical conclusion, turning it into a nightmare.

Jake and Nog look out of the viewscreen of the runabout U.S.S. Shenandoah and see Jem'Hadar fighters in 'Valiant'

Nog and Jake Sisko are on a diplomatic mission to Ferenginar. While Jake has a tenuous reason for joining, Nog is trying to resist the boyish energy that colors their runabout trip. After a violent skirmish with the Jem’Hadar, they’re beamed aboard the U.S.S. Valiant , a Defiant -class ship used to train elite cadets. The cadets are all that’s left of its crew; their captain and the rest of the adult officers were killed in a Cardassian encounter that severely weakened their warp capabilities.

The new acting captain, Tim Watters, has been leading the cadet-only crew for months behind enemy lines. Watters is made of classic Star Trek captain stuff — charm, discipline, a confidence that stays on the right side of arrogance. He commands strong respect from his young crew, some of whom are only 17 years old. Nog quickly idolizes him, even more so after Watters makes him chief engineering officer. The only one skeptical of the Valiant ’s situation is Jake, who’s able to see through the unreasonable demands placed on a young crew. Their mission is to gather intel on a new enemy battlecruiser, and Watters is willing to die trying to complete it.

Dorian Collins and Tim Watters consult with Nog in 'Valiant'

It doesn’t take long for the excitement of your childhood fantasies to lose their glimmer, especially when depicted in the Star Trek series most willing to take the viewer to uncomfortable places. It’s initially exhilarating when you see your dream of a crew made up of young peers, with no boring adults in sight – that is, until you think through their situation. These are unchecked and unprotected youngsters who have ingested all of Starfleet's values without the choice to retreat or liaise with superiors, in a war they believe they must keep fighting until its end or theirs. They are child soldiers, and the pageantry of Starfleet can disguise that painful reality only so much.

Close-up of Tim Watters in the captain's chair in 'Valiant'

“Valiant” is an episode about duty — the ways it can poison people eager for authority, and how difficult it is to resist cultish leadership, especially without contact to the outside world. Seeing the Red Squad conduct themselves like the pristine crew of the Defiant or Enterprise has an uncanny effect. They act with a confidence and conviction that’s only earned from working through Starfleet ranks, yet they’re only in charge because they’ve been totally separated from that network. Watters commands like he’s giving a performance of Star Trek leadership without the experience to back it up; he’s clearly emulating the ghosts from his training with his former captain. Running the Valiant is like doing the Kobayashi Maru and never being told to stop. Watters certainly thinks his courage and initiative would be commended, but it’s very convenient no higher authority is present to question him. Would they have sanctioned Watters' dangerous attack on the Dominion cruiser?

Kirk, Picard, Sisko — these are all captains who take risks; but with every risk comes the consideration of ethics, and with every captain comes a crew of adults. The U.S.S. Valiant isn’t just manned by young people; they're a select crop of advanced cadets who have clearly internalized how often they’ve been told how unique and capable they are. Seeing his peers excel at their shared ethos is what makes Nog so willing to be absorbed into Watters’ ranks; unwavering duty is the primary way he can valorize himself.

Close-up of Nog's hands as he holds the Red Squadron pin handed to him in 'Valiant'

In a way, the Valiant represents so many of Nog’s personal values. He needs it to work, and doesn’t understand Jake’s criticisms of his hasty promotion and instant loyalty. His best friend is an outsider to the one cause the young Ferengi feels elevates him, proclaiming, “I care about something larger than myself!” The gratitude Nog feels at his promotion only fuses himself closer to Watters; he’s unable to see past their shared principles. It’s difficult to shake an ideology once you think it righteous.

Jake’s presence in the episode is a prescient one. He too is surrounded by his peers, but he engages with them, not as a member of Starfleet, but as a fellow adolescent. He’s reprimanded for talking about home with Chief Petty Officer Dorian Collins after their chat makes her homesick; too unprofessional and babyish a concept for any of Watters’ crew. Jake is ostracized by Valiant ’s crew for not being “one of [them],” as if he doesn’t himself understand sacrifice and grief on the battlefield — something he experienced at a young age from losing his mother to the enemy. It’s because of Jake that Dorian is reminded of her terror-free youth, and that she can’t be expected to live as an ultra-disciplined, unfeeling officer.

In a hospital bed, Dorian Collins looks over at the solemn Jake Sisko and Nog in Sickbay in 'Valiant'

But even by the episode’s end, it’s hard to shake her faith in Watters. Lying in a hospital bed, the only survivor of Valiant ’s crew, she insists they did the right thing by following him. “If he failed, it’s because we failed him,” Dorian rationalizes. Jake can’t understand this; and even though Nog disavows Watters’ command, he still holds fast to Starfleet values. The contradiction encapsulated with Nog's words, “He may have been a hero. He may even have been a great man. But in the end, he was a bad captain.” Maybe it’s too complex an issue for the three of them to decipher. After all, they’re just kids.

The U.S.S. Valiant explodes following destruction in 'Valiant'

“Valiant” is terrifying because it shows a captain who’s not dangerous because he’s gone insane, or harbors a secret allegiance with the enemy, but because he followed what he had been taught to a terrifying degree. Starfleet put the cadets in danger and did not give them a clear path out should things go wrong, instead instilling in them the idea that they were capable of pulling off the impossible.

"The First Duty"

The dream of flying around with your best friends unburdened by adult authority becomes a distressing concept when you see how fervently young people can commit to an authority they haven’t learned to question yet. The episode brings to mind Wesley Crusher’s crisis in Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s “ The First Duty ,” (an episode also written by Ronald D. Moore), where special cadets, in Nova Squadron, act immorally to preserve their reputation in Starfleet. This ethical dilemma is a lot more clearcut than what Red Squad find themselves in — lost in space with only an ideology to keep them alive, one that corrupts its crew more every day. Nova Squadron failed Starfleet, but it was Starfleet that failed Red Squad.

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Rory Doherty (he/him) is a screenwriter, playwright and film critic, who loves all things Star Trek since he watched First Contact way too young. He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is developing film and play scripts for future production.

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Recap / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 06 E 22 Valiant

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Nog and Jake are heading to Ferenginar with what Jake suspects is a proposal for an alliance against the Dominion. Unfortunately they stumble across a wing of Jem'Hadar attack fighters, but just before their runabout can be destroyed, they are rescued by a Defiant -class starship, the USS Valiant . There, they find that the crew is entirely composed of cadets from Red Squad, an elite training unit from Starfleet Academy that Nog idolized and wanted to join . The captain, Tim Watters, takes an immediate liking to Nog, as he's the only actual Starfleet officer on the ship. Meanwhile, Chief Petty Officer Dorian Collins is befriended by Jake.

The two reveal to Jake and Nog the backstory of the Valiant : it was a training ship built solely for Red Squad, and while on a mission to circumnavigate the entire Federation, the Dominion War broke out, and they became Trapped Behind Enemy Lines . While engaging a Cardassian cruiser, all the commissioned officers were killed, leaving the cadets in command . Watters reveals to Nog what are, ostensibly, their orders: to gather intelligence on a new Dominion battleship . However, their inexperience has left the Valiant unable to catch up with the enemy ship. Being an Operations division ensign, a star-struck Nog is immediately given a field promotion to lieutenant commander and put in charge of engineering.

Jake gets Collins to open up, revealing her backstory and how she misses her family. This is brought before Watters and executive officer Karen Farris, who lash at Jake for "emotionally compromising" a member of the crew and order him to stay away from Collins. Jake is taken aback at this, seeing that while the cadets are highly trained, they are still New Meat and unfamiliar with how to truly handle themselves in war. Meanwhile, Nog manages to solve the vessel's propulsion problems, allowing them to track the battleship.

Watters and Farris assemble the crew and reveal that their scans depict a weakness in the ship: a flawed antimatter storage system that can be easily ruptured with the right type of attack. Watters announces that they will stage the risky attack themselves. Jake tries to talk them out of it by saying that his own famous father, Benjamin Sisko, would not take on a mission this suicidal. Of course, Red Squad can do anything , and he is ignored. Jake tries to talk sense into Nog, who has let his new rank go to his head and for this, Jake is thrown in the brig.

This episode provides examples of:

Abandon Ship : At the climax, at least four escape pods deploy but most of them are either destroyed by the Jem'hadar or caught in the Valiant's explosion. Only Jake, Nog, and Collins survive the attempt due to the same explosion concealing them.
All for Nothing : Red Squad spent almost a year behind enemy lines, holding off the Dominion and gathering intel. They finally get a mission that would provide crucial information for the war effort. But Captain Watters' arrogance and misplaced confidence convinces the crew to take on a battle they can't win, and gets practically all of them killed.
Alpha Bitch : Commander Farris, very much so, though somewhat subverted as she is still the Number Two to Captain Watters.
Ambiguous Situation : The episode doesn't specify exactly why Red Squad's plan to destroy the Dominion warship failed, and the characters aren't given a chance to ponder it before the warship retaliates. It could be that Red Squad made a miscalculation somewhere or that the Dominion had already anticipated the vulnerability and compensated for it, but it's ultimately left unsaid.
Artistic License – Gun Safety : When Shepard and an unnamed fellow officer arrive outside the engine room to arrest Jake, both of them point their hand phasers right in his face. Not only is this dangerous in the event of a misfire, but The Undiscovered Country , released a few years prior, also established that even when set on stun, a point-blank phaser hit to the head is fatal.
Invoked. In modern military protocol, being a commissioned officer, Nog would have immediately outranked everyone on board the Valiant . However, Ron Moore based his writing on 19th century naval tradition, where an acting captain could only be removed from command by a flag officer, a tradition also followed in the TNG episode "The Arsenal of Freedom" , where Geordi refused to cede command to then-Chief Engineer Logan.
Nog is "promoted" by Watters to Lieutenant Commander but only has the insignia of a junior-grade lieutenant.
Ascended Fanboy : In-Universe — it's no secret that Nog was a Red Squad fanboy at the Academy, and now he gets to be one of them. Too bad it doesn't last.
Attack Pattern Alpha : Used in the skirmish with the first Jem'Hadar fighter. Watters: Helm, initiate Attack Pattern Sierra-4. Shepard: Sierra-4, aye, sir!
Awesome Mc Cool Name : The USS Valiant . Jake certainly thinks so, right until a console explodes in his face. " Valiant ? Great name, and I hope they tear that Jem'Hadar ship apart piece by—" (BOOM)
Back for the Dead : Cadet (acting Lieutenant) Riley Shepard first showed up as part of Red Squad in the fourth season episode " Paradise Lost ". He returns, still in Red Squad, but dies in the final battle.
Bait-and-Switch : As the Valiant is finally getting destroyed, the view of the outside of the ship focuses in on two escape pods launching from near the vessel's bow, but both get blown to bits by the Jem'Hadar battleship. Then two more escape pods launch from aft of the bridge, although one of them gets caught in the continuing explosions. The surviving escape pod (the third out of the four we see launching) is the one carrying Jake, Nog and Collins.
Be Careful What You Wish For : Nog has wanted to join Red Squad since he first heard of them. He finally gets his wish — and it goes terribly, horribly wrong.
Believing Their Own Lies : Watters believes that Red Squad was destined for something great in the Dominion War, and taking on a battleship ten times their size is just the thing that will propel him to legendary status. Nog also starts doing this even as Jake tries to snap him out of it. Nog: I am chief engineer of the starship Valiant ! Jake: I'll have them put that on your tombstone.
Blind Obedience : The entirety of Red Squad (including Nog once he drinks the Kool-Aid) has absolute loyalty to Watters, with Collins even refusing to consider that he sucked as a captain after the plan fails horribly and Watters dies in the process, followed by the rest of the crew .
Break the Cutie : Dorian Collins gets this from start to finish. By the time Jake and Nog come aboard, she's already depressed and deeply homesick. By the end of the episode, she's had what confidence she had as a Red Squad member downright pulverized, while all of her shipmates were killed around her and the Valiant itself, presumably her first space assignment, was blown to pieces in a Curb-Stomp Battle .
Nog's admiration for Red Squad is shattered.
Subverted with Collins. Even after all that happened, she refuses to blame Watters, claiming they all failed him .
Call-Back : Odo teases Quark, saying he's in love with Jadzia after Quark fusses over her doing lowly tech work. Quark immediately denies it. Similarly, Quark knew Odo was in love with Kira back in "Crossfire" and pushed him to confess while Odo angrily denied it.
Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough : Watters and Farris, especially in their interactions with Jake, such as in the ready room.
Characters Dropping Like Flies : Near the end of the episode, when the Dominion battleship deals a fatal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the Valiant . And what would you expect, with a name like Red Squad ?
The USS Republic , the ship that Kirk served on as a cadet, is implied to still be doing duty as an academy ship — though given that it's over a century old by this point, it hasn't left the Sol system for several decades.
Cadet Riley Shepard is still with Red Squad. He dies along with everyone else.
Crazy Enough to Work : The Plan to destroy the Dominion battleship requires an Airstrike Impossible on a specific component that they have to close to within 300 meters to hit due to the modified torpedo lacking a guidance system. All while a ship ten times as powerful as their own is shooting back. Subverted as it doesn't work.
Critical Staffing Shortage : One reason why Watters is eager to have Nog as part of the crew, as the cadets are lacking in both numbers and competence.
Curbstomp Battle : Even before the torpedo failure, the Jem'Hadar ship thrashes the Valiant . And after it fails, they really let them have it.
Curb-Stomp Cushion : Jake and Nog's runabout is clearly overmatched by the Jem'Hadar fighter, but they manage to score a few hits before the Valiant arrives in the nick of time to finish off the Jem'Hadar.
David Versus Goliath : The small Valiant against the gargantuan Dominion battleship. This time, Goliath wins.
Of the entire concept of the "plucky young band that overcomes a great evil" found in so much of adventure fiction (e.g. Star Wars or Space Battleship Yamato ). The cadets are inexperienced and overworked, leading to a series of poor decisions that get almost all of them killed.
Also of technobabble and hare-brained schemes saving the day. This time, the Dominion evidently anticipated the problem, and the ship survives the failure of that specific component.
Didn't Think This Through : If Watters wants to call himself a captain, it's his job to not only weigh the risks of failure, but also to ask whether the rewards of success are really worth it. In his best case scenario, the Valiant would succeed in destroying the battleship and return to Federation space crowned with glory - but his actions would alert the Dominion to the flaw in their battleship and prompt them to correct it, making the intelligence on its "weakness" useless by the time these ships appear on the battlefront; at best, the Valiant might cause a slight delay in these ships being deployed. Watters and the crew would have been left with nothing but the glory of their derring-do effort, and a severe reprimand from Starfleet Command for going AWOL. Watters didn't even stop to consider the worst-case scenario, which ended up being the one that happened.
Dirty Coward : Subverted. Red Squad views Jake as one for questioning their plan and calling it suicidal, with Nog chewing him out for it. Jake is, of course, absolutely right.
The Dissenter Is Always Right : Jake is the only one on the Valiant who thinks that attacking the Dominion battleship is a really stupid idea. He's proven right when the Valiant is blasted to pieces.
Downer Ending : Red Squad and the Valiant get absolutely annihilated by the Jem'Hadar ship. It's a miracle that Jake and Nog even survive, much less Collins . And to rub salt in it, Collins still refuses to acknowledge her Captain's utter failure.
The Dreaded Dreadnought : The Dominion battleship, one of the largest warships in the franchise.
Elites Are More Glamorous : Deconstructed. The elite Red Squad eventually reveal themselves to just be terrified kids who are well out of their league. In fact their "elite" status actively works against them; they've been so ingrained with the idea that they're the best of the best of all the cadets that they lose sight of the important fact that they still are inexperienced cadets.
Emergency Trainee Battle Deployment : Subverted, while the crew of the Valiant are cadets in a combat situation, they are mostly there because acting Captain Watters won't admit he is out of his depth.
Captain Watters. He obviously doesn't want to go back to being a cadet, even though they are in a war and advancement could be quick.
The rest of the cadets as well, most of whom are doing jobs that would normally take years of service to be promoted into. Watters actually boasts about this fact, and it flies over his head that they're too incompetent to properly repair the vessel they're in charge of precisely because they lack the experience Nog has accumulated by putting the work in.
Everybody's Dead, Dave : Nog telling Collins that their attack has failed and everyone else is dead when she tries to suggest they continue to fight a hopeless battle.
"Everybody Dies" Ending : Of everyone on the Valiant in the episode, only Jake and Nog — two series regulars — manage to survive, along with the sole survivor Collins.
During the attack on the runabout, a console explodes in Jake's face. Fortunately, he's a main character, so he only ends up a little dazed and burnt on the arm.
During the Valiant 's failed attack on the Dominion battleship, the explosive consoles take out one Red Squad member after another .
Expy : Tim Watters is basically Nick Locarno 2.0 — he's the charismatic leader of an elite group of Starfleet cadets, and he talks them into pulling a super risky stunt under the belief that they can do anything. It goes horribly wrong , with even more fatal results than the Kolvoord Starburst.
Field Promotion : The entire crew of the Valiant , due to the senior officers being killed in the line of duty. Captain Ramirez, while dying, gave command of the ship to Cadet Watters, who in turn promoted the rest of the cadets. "Captain" Watters even gives Nog a field promotion to lieutenant commander, due to his experience with the Defiant .
Get Out! : Nog says this to Jake, when Jake calls Red Squad "a bunch of delusional fanatics looking for martyrdom".
Glory Hound : Watters and the rest of Red Squad, pursuing a massive Jem'Hadar battleship instead of taking their undermanned and damaged warship back to rejoin the rest of Starfleet.
Gunship Rescue : The Valiant rescuing Jake and Nog.
Watters in particular is speechless, even as Shepherd appeals to him for orders.
Hope Spot : The crew of the Valiant get this when The Plan appears to work on the Dominion battleship. Which degenerates into a huge Mass "Oh, Crap!" when it doesn't.
Hubris : The whole crew succumbs to this, but Watters most especially. He's completed his mission of gathering intel, and the rational thing to do is to take this intel back to Starfleet so it can be analyzed in detail by a team of experts. Instead, Watters decides that their own quick overview of the intel is sufficient to warrant a solo attack using quickly-improvised technobabble. We've seen this sort of solution work before on Star Trek many times — by teams of officers with years or decades of experience in the field, many of whom have additional advantages like being a sentient computer (Data), having advanced mental discipline and a brain with superhuman computational speed (Spock), access to the Borg Collective's vast technical library (Seven of Nine), a genetically-enhanced intellect (Bashir), or seven lifetimes of accumulated knowledge (Dax). This time, we see the result when a few students who haven't even graduated from the Academy yet take the "brand new technobabble on the fly" path.
Ignored Expert : Jake isn't Starfleet, but he does know his father better than anyone. Nonetheless, his insistence that his father would never attempt the cadets' plan is completely ignored (even by Nog, who has served under Sisko).
Insignia Rip-Off Ritual : After the fiasco is over, Nog ditches his Red Squad pin, giving it to Collins as a Tragic Keepsake .
I Reject Your Reality : Jake makes an appeal to Watters and the Valiant crew's reason, pointing out that no matter how good Red Squad may be, they're still just cadets, and the Valiant , despite its extra firepower, was originally designed as an escort vessel. Jake argues that even the most experienced officer (like his father) with a full crew complement wouldn't try taking on a battleship even larger than a Galaxy -class, much less the Defiant . Watters dismisses him out of hand.
Jerkass : Most of the Red Squad crew, but especially Karen Farris . In her attempt to assert authority to Jake, she comes across as an arrogant bully. She even sarcastically says he's not been invited to the bridge, even after Watters invited him to watch "their story" unfold.
Killed Mid-Sentence : Watters: Lay in a new course! 127-mark — ( BOOM )

Lock-and-Load Montage : Before the battle.
Macross Missile Massacre : The Dominion battleship really doesn't pull its punches against the Valiant .
The Main Characters Do Everything : Some examples in the Valiant 's crew: Collins takes Jake to sickbay and heals his burns; Shepard is the helmsman yet also gets tasked by Watters with apprehending Jake; and Farris is not only the first officer but operates the ship's weapons systems and receives Damage Control reports. Justified, to an extent, because the Valiant is lacking all of the commissioned Starfleet officers (and probably a few of the cadets as well) that the ship started off with, leaving them undermanned.
Mandatory Line : Everyone who's not Jake or Nog appears either at the very beginning or the very end of the episode. Except O'Brien, who gets mentioned but doesn't appear at all.
Mass "Oh, Crap!" : When the explosion clears and the Jem'Hadar ship is without a scratch, all the cadets' bravado vanishes and they look like the terrified kids they really are.
Meaningful Name : "Red Squad", when the elite cadets at the Academy were being groomed for futures in command — and Command division officers wear red. Also out-of-universe, in that they end up a bunch of redshirts .
Mighty Glacier : The Dominion battleship is much larger and slower than their battlecruisers but has much greater firepower. The Valiant starts off this way, unable to go at a reasonable warp factor, because the engines aren't configured properly for the ship type; doing so actually breaks quite a few Starfleet regulations, but Nog points out the necessity, and also points out that the Defiant hasn't had any problems due to this configuration.
Miles Gloriosus : Watters is taking stimulants to stay awake; judging by his initial reactions to Jake and Nog he's a sycophant, and judging by his later reactions he's a fragile egotist. Several times throughout the episode, when interacting with Jake (and to a lesser extent Nog), all the named cadets demonstrate that they're not the seasoned officers they're pretending to be (you can't imagine even TOS-era officers treating a nosy civilian how Jake is treated here) at Watters' urging, and some of them can't even see how poorly Watters led them , even when recovering from serious injuries after being pulled from an escape pod. Watters even seems to believe his own bullshit , right up until they catch their prey, when he's among the first to realise that they now have no choice but to go through with the plan, and if it goes wrong they'll all die. And they do.
Mood Whiplash : When the Dominion battleship is seemingly consumed by explosions, the mood on the bridge is triumphant — and then the battleship emerges unscathed and the triumphant mood collapses. Cue the Sad Battle Music as the Valiant gets curb-stomped.
Morton's Fork : Jake and Nog find themselves in this situation when the Jem'Hadar first attack the station. Nog immediately tries to warp to safety, but a single fighter pursues them. The runabout isn't fast enough to outrun it to begin with, and in his haste Nog has pointed them directly at Jem'Hadar-controlled territory. If they try to change course, the fighter will catch them that much quicker, but if they do nothing they'll either be intercepted eventually or another ship from another direction will see them. Once the former enters weapons range, Nog drops out of warp to fight back, figuring a lopsided battle on their terms is better than nothing, giving the Valiant the chance to pull a rescue.
Mr. Fixit : Nog can get the Valiant 's engine working properly because he's had field experience working with Chief O'Brien on the Defiant , whereas the rest of the engineers haven't had that opportunity.
The Neidermeyer : "Captain" Watters and executive officer "Commander" Farris. Farris is a bully barking orders like a bad parody of a Starfleet officer. Watters lets his ego blind him to the fact that he's way out of his depth in a fashion not unlike Nick Locarno. The crew was the best: special missions, training, even their own ship . But they were still cadets, and furthermore were following terrible and idiotic orders.
Never Speak Ill of the Dead : Zig-Zagged by Nog in one sentence when talking about the late Watters: "He may have been a hero; he may even have been a great man ... but in the end, he was a bad captain ."
Oh, Crap! : Watters (and several other cadets) has a silent one when the Valiant approaches the Dominion battleship and they all see it directly for the first time. His expression is one of silent awe and horror and it's clear he is seriously reconsidering trying to fight it, but at this point it's too late to back out.
The Only One : Valiant is apparently the only ship still caught behind enemy lines. Part of Watters' reasoning for taking on the battleship is to prevent someone else from getting that glory .
Only Sane Man : Jake tries to reason with the cadets, and all it gets him is thrown in the brig.
Outrun the Fireball : The escape pod with Jake, Nog, and Collins does this as the Valiant explodes. Another pod isn't so lucky.
Planet Terra : Of the "calling the moon 'Luna'" variant. Jake thinks his grandfather (who lives on Earth) is old-fashioned for calling it "the moon, like it's the only one or something," but apparently nobody who lives there calls the moon "Luna" either.
Plot Armor : It's such a given that our heroes are in the only escape pod to survive that once it's rescued by the Defiant , there's no big reveal as to who was inside. Jake, Nog and Collins all show up in later scenes with no fanfare.
Point Defenseless : Red Squad tries to pull this off. It turned out that the Dominion ship's antimatter storage system was better-protected than they thought.
Radio Silence : The USS Valiant is operating under radio silence behind enemy lines of the Dominion War. When Watters takes it over after the adult Captain is killed, he conveniently continues operating this way, thus Starfleet doesn't have to know the cadets are now running the ship.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech : Nog gives Jake one for thinking about his own survival instead of being willing to risk his life in battle against the Dominion battleship. Nog's drunk the Kool-Aid at this point so he's thoroughly in the wrong.
Redshirt Army : The group is called " Red Squad." They really should've seen it coming.
Repeat to Confirm : The Red Squad kids do this a lot, more so than more seasoned officers. It serves as another way of demonstrating that they lack the experience they should have to be doing this job.
Rousing Speech : Watters makes one talking about how important their mission is and how they're Red Squad, and Red Squad can do anything . It backfires spectacularly. "This is the captain. We are about to engage the enemy. For eight months, I've told you to stay focused on one thing. Your duty. But now, I want you to step back from your duty. Take a look around. And I don't mean look at the walls. I want you to look at this moment in your life. Take it in. Appreciate the fact that you are on this ship, with this group of people, at this point in history. But understand one thing above all else. This moment will never come again. Hold on to it. Savor it for as long as you can. You're Starfleet, you're Red Squad, and you're the best. Now, let's get that battleship and we can all go home. Captain out."
Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale : The cadets' original mission was supposedly to circumnavigate the entire Federation. Just getting from one end of it to the other in a straight line would take years. Circling the perimeter would take decades .
Short Teens, Tall Adults : To convey the youth of the cadets, they're all average to below average in height, which is especially noticeable when Jake towers over everyone in the room.
Sigil Spam : The Valiant , assigned to Red Squad, has the group's emblem all over the ship. It even has red trim along the walls that doesn't appear on the Defiant .
Sink the Lifeboats : The Jem'Hadar don't even spare the escape pods after the Valiant goes down for the count. Only one escape pod with the main characters aboard escapes because the explosion of the Valiant hides it.
Small Name, Big Ego : Played for Drama . Watters and Red Squad's belief that they are truly the best of the best when they're really a bunch of stressed out rookies led by a very much in over his head Glory Hound only serves to make the fully predictable conclusion to them deciding to stage a suicidal assault on a much more powerful enemy ship all the more tragic and horrifying.
Sole Survivor : Collins is the only member of the original Valiant crew to escape the ship before the Jem'Hadar destroy it.
Surprisingly Realistic Outcome : This Crazy Enough to Work plan is too crazy and doesn't work.
Stealth Insult : Upon meeting Jake, Captain Watters snidely points out that he didn't follow in his father's footsteps of joining Starfleet.
Straw Civilian : In-Universe , Jake is viewed as one by the Red Squad cadets for not going along with the plan to attack the Jem'Hadar battleship. Watters, in particular, shows disdain for Jake not joining Starfleet like his father. Turns out that in this case, Strawman Has a Point . More so because Jake actually got to experience the actual horrors of war a season earlier .

Tagalong Reporter : Jake, who initially tries to get the scoop on what Nog's "secret diplomatic mission" is about. Watters initially wants him to sit back and watch Red Squad fulfill their destiny, at least until Jake tries to convince them that their attack plan is suicidal.
Teenage Wasteland : There are no adults on the Valiant anymore, all of them died in a previous attack. The ship is entirely crewed by teenagers.
Tempting Fate : In one of his first meetings with Jake, Watters tells him that he's about to witness one of the biggest stories of the entire Dominion War. Which Jake does , just not in anything like the manner that Watters was hoping for.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill : Valiant has been shot to hell, her shields are down, weapons disabled, power has failed, almost the entire crew is dead, and all of her systems are inoperative. For all intents and purposes the Jem'Hadar have rendered her a lifeless hulk in space. Yet they continue to pound away at her with torpedoes until every last nut and bolt still holding her together comes undone and she disappears into a rapidly-expanding ball of gas and fire. Then, just to Kick the Dog , they mercilessly gun down every escape pod they can see trying to flee from the disintegrating ship, with the escape pod containing Jake, Nog and Collins only getting away because it was apparently obscured by the explosion.
This Is Reality : For the last eight months, the Valiant has been living in its own little bubble of space, with the cadets relishing their roles as the actual crew of an actual starship. Then their heroic gambit fails miserably, leaving them all a moment to wake up to the inescapable facts that they are one undermanned ship, deep inside enemy territory, cut off from home or help, facing off at point-blank range with a very large, very pissed-off Dominion battleship, and the suddenly real possibility that their young lives could come to an abrupt, violent end - which they do.
Watters. At no point does he consider that the intel they've gathered on the battleship, which was specified in their supposed orders, won't do Starfleet any good if they don't survive to bring it back.
Red Squad on the whole. A combination of inexperience , stress and misplaced bravado leads to a stupid plan that fails miserably.
Undying Loyalty : Collins has this for Watters, claiming that Red Squad failed him. It's not presented in a positive light.
War Is Glorious : Watters seems to think so, reminiscing very fondly of the Valiant 's first battle with a Cardassian cruiser. He also pushes for Red Squad to take on the battleship with the justification that if they don't, someone else will claim the glory of destroying it.
Well-Trained, but Inexperienced : The cadets may have special training and have been fighting for eight months, but they also lack the many years of experience that actual Starfleet officers would have taking their roles. Nog notably recalls working under the veteran Chief O'Brien when discussing his knowledge of Defiant -class engines.
Wham Shot : Amidst the bridge crew's cheers, the Jem'Hadar battleship emerges from the fireball, completely intact. The stunned silence is then punctuated by the Wham Line : Watters : Did we miss the target? Farris : No, sir, it was a direct hit. It just... it didn't work.
What Happened to the Mouse? : Jake and Nog's original mission to Ferenginar, an important but far less dangerous mission that the Valiant could still carry out, is never mentioned after the first act.
The Worf Effect : The Defiant -class ship was specifically built to kick ass and has consistently done so. This episode, however, proves that this breed of Pint-Sized Powerhouse is not, in fact, invincible. While its crew manages to take down a Jem'Hadar fighter with minimal damage, against the much larger battleship, they get obliterated in minutes.
You Are in Command Now : In a Call-Back to the talk with Chief O'Brien in "Behind the Lines" , Nog receives command of the Valiant after Watters and Farris are killed. But by then, nearly the entire bridge crew is dead and the ship is about to be blown to hell, so all Nog can do is order the surviving crew to Abandon Ship .
Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb : Red Squad, a group of Starfleet Academy cadets in their early twenties, believe their youthful zest and elite status makes them practically invincible. Reality bites them hard and doesn't let go.
Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 06 E 21 The Reckoning
Recap/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S06 E23 "Profit and Lace"

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine : “Valiant”/“Profit And Lace”

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Valiant (Review)

Valiant is a very bitter and mean-spirited little episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , and all the more effective for that fact.

Some of that bitterness is baked into the basic premise. Valiant is an episode about a bunch of plucky young cadets who get brutally murdered for daring to believe in themselves. The final act of Valiant is a brutal piece of television, the camera lingering over the death and destruction on familiar sets, panning across the dead bodies of these promising young recruits. No matter how arrogant or inexperienced Red Squad might be, no matter how eager their participation in an attempted fascist coup in Homefront and Paradise Lost , it is still an unsettling image.

A legend in his own mind.

However, there is something even nastier lurking beneath the surface of this episode. On a superficial level, Valiant suggests that the guest characters fail in their daring mission because they lack the self-awareness to recognise the folly of their plan, but this is disingenuous. Countless Star Trek episodes have been built around far more reckless and audacious schemes, generally paying off the heroes. Valiant does not punish these young cadets for doing something that the main characters would never have attempted, it punishes them for not being the main characters.

Valiant is in some ways a brutal deconstruction of the typical Star Trek storytelling framework, an episode built around a selection of guest characters whose biggest mistake is assuming that they are the stars of the show rather than simply bit players. Valiant comes down hard on these would-be heroes, a reminder that life does not always operate according to familiar storytelling structures.

Hard to pin it on just one person.

Deep Space Nine is closer to the end than to the beginning. The series is approaching the close of its sixth season. There are just over thirty episodes left to air before the show will be retired. In the era of prestige television and ten-episode seasons, that might seem like a long time. In the era of syndication, Deep Space Nine was staring down the barrel of the proverbial gun. The production team were coming to terms with that, as episodes like His Way and The Reckoning consciously moved pieces into position for the end game.

Under the direction of Ira Steven Behr, the writers on Deep Space Nine had pushed the Star Trek franchise further than it had ever gone before. The production team on Deep Space Nine had changed the way that Star Trek could tell stories, embracing long-form storytelling and subversive plot beats while experimenting with a genuinely multicultural perspective. The fifth season of Deep Space Nine had shattered many of the expectations for a Star Trek show, breaking out of the proverbial Roddenberry Box.

Watters under (or beside) the Bridge.

In some ways, the fifth season was so successful at redefining and reworking the Star Trek template that the sixth season struggled to push further. At various points in the sixth season, especially after Sacrifice of Angels , the series seemed to lose its sense of direction. The series had already shattered so many of the norms associated with Star Trek that there was very little left to subvert or undermine. Indeed, the sixth season seemed as likely to brush against unbreakable barriers as it was to push through expectations.

The sixth season featured any number of classic episodes, many of which pushed the franchise in new and interesting directions; Far Beyond the Stars and In the Pale Moonlight are two of the best (and most unconventional) episodes of Star Trek ever produced. However, the series seemed just as likely to discover barriers that it could not break; the cast was the awkward shoehorned into Honour Among Thieves , a brutal execution in One Little Ship was vetoed by the executives, the perfect point to write Terry Farrell out of the show was squandered in Change of Heart .

While there was a sense that Deep Space Nine had perhaps reached the limits of what could be done within the framework of a nineties Star Trek series, there was also a sense that some members of staff were already looking beyond the franchise. This was especially true of Ronald D. Moore, who would become perhaps the most influential of the writers to work on Deep Space Nine . While most of the writers on Deep Space Nine would enjoy long and productive careers after the show ended, Moore would leave the biggest pop cultural footprint.

Moore is an interesting case. The young writer had been drafted on to the franchise at the start of the third season to Star Trek: The Next Generation . Despite the fact that he had no real experience in screenwriting, his script for The Bonding inspired Michael Piller to cast open the production officer to outside (and unrepresented) script writers. Moore would become something of a superstar within the franchise, co-writing the series finale All Good Things… and the feature films Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact .

Jake Sisko, master of the socially awkward lunch date.

Although Moore would move on to Star Trek: Voyager after production wrapped, he would not stay there for long. Moore would spend several years bouncing around mid-tier genre television, observing that his franchise experience counted for very little in the wider world of television production :

The thing that you run into is that if you haven’t generated a lot of other material, you don’t have anything that they’ll read. No one will read a Star Trek script. When you’re going out for other jobs or other shows or you’re pitching something… typically, people will want to read a sample of your writing, but no one will want to read a Star Trek script. They just won’t. They’re like, “Oh, I don’t understand Star Trek.” Or, “Star Trek’s its own particular animal.” You know, it’s just its own thing. Whereas I think if you did, like, ER for 10 years or something, you really wouldn’t run into that. But Star Trek is sort of… No one understands why it’s there. “How does that show work?” And they’re all kind of held back by, “Well, I don’t understand all the science stuff, so I don’t want to read it.” So that’s the problem that you run into. I find it’s more of a positive, because people are just impressed. I mean, I tell people I was at Star Trek for 10 years, and they all kind of do a double-take and they go, “Oh my god! That’s unheard of!”

Moore would spend time as a writer on shows like G vs. E , Roswell and Carnivale . However, Moore would make his biggest mark on popular culture as a showrunner on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica .

Necessary attention.

Although Battlestar Galactica was more than half a decade away at this point, the seeds of Moore’s critically praised reimagining were sewn during the sixth season of Deep Space Nine . Writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle trace the genesis of the series to a single deleted scene from Moore’s rewrite on One Little Ship . Writer Michael Taylor sees the series as an extrapolation of the darkness that Moore brought to bear on In the Pale Moonlight . There was a clear sense that Moore was reaching the edge of what was possible in Star Trek , but wanted to push further.

At a surface level, there was considerable overlap between Deep Space Nine and the reboot of Battlestar Galactica . Both were extensions of existing properties that looked to use familiar trappings to explore more provocative (and perhaps darker) ideas. Both were considered iconoclastic to vocal segments of the original fandom for daring to challenge or subvert expectations. Both played with ideas of religion and politics in a way that the original material had largely avoided.

A Valiant effort.

At the same time, Battlestar Galactica went further than Deep Space Nine ever could. There was a legitimate argument to be made that it was the anti- Star Trek , rejecting many of the assumptions that the Star Trek franchise took for granted. As John Hodgman summarised :

If you have seen Battlestar Galactica, which began its second season on the Sci Fi Channel on Friday, you will know that this Galactica only vaguely resembles the ship that previously bore that name, when Battlestar Galactica first flew on prime time in 1978, square in the shadow of Star Wars. And it certainly does not resemble the Enterprise, the Star Trek vehicle that has defined the visual and thematic vocabulary of television science fiction for four decades. On the Galactica, there is no captain’s chair; there are no windows full of stars. The command center is busy and dark, protected deep within the ship the way it would be on an actual military vessel. As the actors move from room to room, hand-held cameras swoop behind them, closing in on them claustrophobically. The characters do not travel heroically from planet to planet, solving the problems of aliens. There are, in fact, no aliens at all.

Even the series bible made repeated references to the Star Trek franchise, largely as a set of counter-examples . Battlestar Galactica was quite consciously “not Star Trek” , a challenge to the franchise’s dominance over the televised space-based science-fiction subgenre.

Nog the battle to the strong.

Particularly notable was the energy that Battlestar Galactica invested in a pseudo-realistic military command structure that existed quite distinct from operations on Starfleet ships. The sets looked more like modern battle ships than the sterile surroundings of the Enterprise, often looking more like a low-budget DIY project than a top-of-line design. Similarly, the command structure was much more rigid and the dynamics more convincing. Discipline was strictly enforced, Adama rarely left the ship, everybody had rigidly-defined roles.

Despite the science-fiction trappings, critics and commentators praised the portrayal of military life on Battlestar Galactica . At io9 , Andrew Litak praised Battlestar Galactica for its “stunning array of realistic military tactics.” Writing at Pathos , Joe Carter described Battlestar Galactica as “the best show on television about the military – ever.” At the United States veteran-focused magazine Task and Purpose , Carl Forslong argued that “any veteran will see people from their service coming to life on screen.”

Operations officer in more sense than one.

Part of this was down to Moore’s pet interests. Moore had enlisted in the navy during his youth, serving on the USS W.S. Sims for a month during the summer of his freshman year . Although he did not pursue a career in the armed forces, he remained fascinated by the culture and the trappings :

Ultimately, this is clearly what I was meant to do. But there’s a part of me, yeah… I took a trip out to an aircraft carrier maybe going on 9, 10 years ago, now, and the Navy public relations office in L.A. arranged for me to do a fly-out to the Constellation, and I spent a weekend out there watching them do flight operations, and the whole thing. I got a real charge out of that. I was just like, “Wow.” There’s just something amazing about standing on a carrier deck, watching them fly on and off of it, and thinking of what I could have done. Or stand on the bridge… I don’t know.

There is a sense that Moore brings a lot that interest in the military to his work, particularly on the Star Trek franchise and on the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica .

Watters feels like he owes Captain Ramirez a ca-blood-det.

Of course, Moore is far from the first Star Trek writer to be fascinated with military trappings. Gene Roddenberry was a veteran of the air force, and his time in the service undoubtedly inspired his writing. His script for The Savage Curtain luxuriated in the idea that the Enterprise would have a proper set of procedures for welcoming on board the long-deceased head of state of a country that no longer existed, having just stumbled across him floating in space. Star Trek: The Motion Picture spent an inordinate amount of time on the process of the ship leaving dock.

That said, the Star Trek franchise has long had an awkward relationship with its military elements. In Peak Performance , Captain Picard insisted that Starfleet was not a military organisation. This was always something of a pretense, as explored in episodes like Chain of Command, Part I , Chain of Command, Part II , Call to Arms and A Time to Stand . The franchise might not have been comfortable with the idea, but Starfleet had always been something of a hybrid between the air force and the navy for deep space exploration.

Don’t harm the brand.

Indeed, during his time on The Next Generation , Moore made a conscious effort to impose a more military command structure upon the series in a variety of low-key ways :

I started referring to watches and bridge officers and being certified as a deck officer. Just all those things I wanted to infuse the ship with because that is how Navy ships run and that is the tradition all the way back to the beginning. It was set up as a Navy command structure and Gene [Roddenberry] always mentioned Horatio Hornblower as one of the inspirations for Captain Kirk and I always thought of the Naval lineage as an important component of Star Trek.

Tellingly, Moore would write both Chain of Command, Part I and Thine Own Self , episodes that made a conscious effort to integrate Deanna Troi into that framework by (respectively) putting her in a standard uniform and making her status as a bridge officer official.

“Okay, so maybe Star Trek is not entirely realistic.”

Still, there are certain aspects of the Star Trek template that make very little sense in the context of a futuristic space-age military. Leaving aside questions of why ships tend to approach one another on the same plane or why combat has not evolved to keep pace with technology like transporters and warp drives, it is hard to justify the way in which Starfleet employs its officers. Senior officers lead away missions on unknown planets and into hostile territory, treating key individuals like the captain or the medical officer as expendable.

More than that, Starfleet seems to reject any notion of specialisation. It seems like Starfleet Intelligence does little more than poach staff from high-profile installations to engage in the sort of dangerous espionage work that should be the domain of experienced field agents. Captain Picard is the commanding officer of the flagship, but he is apparently also the only man who lead a dangerous (and covert) mission behind enemy lines in Chain of Command, Part I . Miles Edward O’Brien is an enlisted engineer, but only he can infiltrate the Orion Syndicate in Honour Among Thieves .

Pour choice.

The lead characters on Star Trek shows spend as much time breaking rules as following them. The original series bible for The Next Generation insisted that away teams should generally be led by the first officer , but Captain Picard gradually evolved into something of an unlikely action hero by the time of Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis . More often than not, the characters on Star Trek bring up the subject of the prime directive in the hopes of finding a way to skirt around it, as in The Apple or Pen Pals .

Characters on Star Trek only seem to mention limitations so that they might surpass them. Even the laws of physics were often suggestions to our heroes. Kirk’s Enterprise regularly broke its maximum warp speeds, in episodes like The Changeling , By Any Other Name , That Which Survives , and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield . In episodes like In Affliction , Archer’s Enterprise is traveling at maximum warp and then pushes past it. Star Trek characters regularly travel backwards and forwards in time. Tom Paris broke the transwarp barrier in the Delta Quadrant in Threshold .

Okay, NOW it’s Watters under the Bridge.

Star Trek characters tend to beat impossible odds on a regular basis. In Ethics , Worf successfully lives through a risky medical procedure with only a thirty-seven percent success rate. In Descent, Part II , Geordi survives an experiment with a sixty percent chances of fatality. In Statistical Probabilities , Bashir repeatedly stresses just how unlikely the Federation are to win the Dominion War. In Scientific Method , Janeway gambles on a five percent chance of flying through a set of binary pulsars and wins.

The lead characters on Star Trek shows take massive risks in every episode and they almost always pay off. Even when desperate gambits fail, such as the attempt to seal the wormhole in In Purgatory’s Shadow or Rom’s attempt to stop Duakt from taking down the mines in Sacrifice of Angels , these are not fatal errors. Our heroes always survive to fight another day. As the title of Favour the Bold suggests, fortune tend to smile upon our protagonists, even in the most impossible of situations.

“New Dominion warship you say? Eats Defiant-class ships for breakfast, you say? Count the number of f$%ks I do not give.”

This not unique to Star Trek . As much as fans might like to mock the poor design choices made during the construction of the Death Star , Garth Sundem has suggested that Luke Skywalker had “a 0.0168% or a 1-in-5946 chance of success” when taking that shot at the climax of Star Wars . Quite a few statisticians have tried to crack the math involved in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , but the odds of finding a golden ticket were somewhere between one in forty two million and five in a billion , but Charlie wins despite only making three attempts.

Of course, the truth is that something other than fortune smiles on our heroes. Storytelling conventions also favour our protagonists. Audiences expect their protagonists to be exceptional, particularly in epic adventure narratives. Why waste time following an average ship populated by an average crew? Surely the audience deserves an exceptional ship staffed by an exceptional crew? The Next Generation was explicitly about Starfleet’s standard-bearer, but even the misfit crews of Deep Space Nine and Voyager tended to be staffed by hyper-competent experts in their given fields.

Just cruising.

However, there are also production realities at play. The primary characters tend to do everything because the show is consciously built around them, Picard and O’Brien are recruited for Starfleet Intelligence missions because they are already paid to appear in the episode and because the audience has a pre-existing emotional connection to them. Regular characters beat unlikely odds because they have to return for the next episode, with the standing sets intact. The characters can never fail spectacularly, because that would break the show.

(Indeed, when the characters do lose badly, there tends to be some concession to these production realities. When Voyager is destroyed in Deadlock , there just happens to be an exact replica staffed by duplicates of the crew to continue the journey home. When the Defiant is destroyed in The Changing Face of Evil , it just so happens that Sisko is issued a replacement Defiant-class ship in The Dogs of War , because it allowed the production team to recycle the existing sets without have to budget for an entirely new collection of standing sets in the penultimate episode of the series.)

Defiant ’til the last.

In some ways, Valiant feels like a brutal subversion of these narrative conventions. It could be read as a reminder of just how privileged the characters are by their position in the narrative, of just how favoured they are by the expectations of the plot. The crew of Deep Space Nine often pull off a one-in-a-million shot. Valiant plays very much like a story about what happens the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousand, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine times. It is certainly not pretty.

Valiant feels like a brutally subversion of the Star Trek format, a reminder of why no military organisations behave like those presented in the franchise. The episode demonstrates why real-world institutions seldom gamble on convoluted high-stakes plans, instead relying upon the security of experience and technique. Valiant is essentially a story about a bunch of eager young recruits who presume to act like a bunch of Star Trek characters, only to realise their folly. Battles fought by soldiers behaving like Star Trek characters tend to be battles that are lost.

A nice warm cup of “I told you so.”

To be fair, Valiant makes a few slight nods to the idea that Red Squad are effectively doomed by their inexperience. “You all probably know who my father is,” Jake warns the crew. “Benjamin Sisko. So you know I’m not exaggerating when I say that he’s considered to be one of the best combat officers in the fleet. And I’m telling you right now that even with the entire crew of the Defiant with him, my father would never try to pull off something like this. And if he can’t do it, it can’t be done.” However, that seems somewhat disingenuous.

Sisko has taken massive risks in the past. Although his hand was forced, he rode the Defiant into the wormhole in Sacrifice of Angels to stare down the Dominion fleet without a back-up plan. In In the Pale Moonlight , Sisko concocted and executed a plan that could easily have pushed the Romulans into the Dominion camp and effectively doomed the Federation. The lead characters on Star Trek shows take these sorts of risks all the time. After all, as Kirk asserted in By Any Other Name , they earnestly believe that “risk is [their] business.”

Too Farris?

Valiant repeatedly draws attention to the fact that the cadets are essentially role-playing as Star Trek characters. The episode plays up the parallels. The Valiant is identical to the Defiant. This is obviously a budget-saving measure, but it invites comparisons between the two. Similarly, the Valiant even inherited the Defiant’s original name. As Ronald D. Moore explained to The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion , he was asked to name the ship in The Search, Part I :

“One of the first things I had to do, as I started working on the episode, was come up with the name for the ship, which they’d graciously left to me,” says Moore. “And my first choice was Valiant, after one of the original series starships.” But the producers nixed the name because it was too close to Voyager. “They didn’t want another ‘V’ name,” explains Moore, who quickly came up with the name of a different ship from the oridinal series: Defiant, a vessel that had been swallowed up by interspace in The Tholian Web.

Indeed, writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens had incorporated this piece of background information into their work on The Art of Star Trek , asserting that the Defiant was in fact “a Valiant-class starship.” This was obviously explicitly contradicted by later episodes, including Valiant itself, but it does suggest the strong thematic connection that exists between the Defiant and the Valiant, even beyond the reuse of the sets.

Quark is a glass half-full kinda guy.

The young cadets seem to desperately trying to emulate the more iconic Star Trek characters, hoping to recreate the mythic valour associated with Starfleet officers. Watters explains the crew’s back story to Nog in mythic terms, “We had lost main power and we were adrift, but the Cardassian cruiser was no better off. So it was a race against the clock. The ship that got main power back online first would have a decisive advantage. The Captain, he was amazing. He directed the entire damage control effort with a punctured lung and massive internal injuries.”

Similarly, Watters is prone to spout familiar clichés, lines that could easily have been cribbed from the motivational speeches of Picard or Sisko or Janeway. “You can do this, Mister Nog,” he assures his newest recruit. “Just have faith in yourself, faith in your shipmates, and everything will be fine.” He tries a similar line on Jake, promising, “This ship is special, Jake. This crew is special. And whatever fates guide this universe, they’ve have chosen us to achieve some purpose in this conflict. I know that.”

Watters even tries his best Picard face palm.

Watters seems to see himself as the heir to the mantle of Picard or Sisko or Janeway, the literal next generation. “You’re Benjamin Sisko’s son?” Watters asks of Jake, suddenly taking an interest. “I’ve heard a lot about your father. I see you’re not following in his footsteps.” Watters finds that hard to imagine, almost as if Jake has squandered his potential. As the Valiant prepares to make its attack run on the new Dominion war ship, Watters even offers his best impersonation of Picard. “Engage.”

Like the protagonists of these stories, Watters believes that he can somehow do everything. “I heard you were on the bridge during the midwatch again last night,” Farris remarks at one point. “You haven’t been getting much sleep lately, sir.” However, in order to keep pace with the demands of doing everything, Watters has to resort to using stimulants. According to Jake, who heard it from Collins, Watters has been helping himself to cordafin stimulants for the previous two months.

Of course Watters doesn’t understand how the military works. He’s been watching too much Star Trek .

When Watters decides to go after the new warship, he concocts a plan that could easily have been lifted from Star Wars . Using date from a probe, Farris identifies one key structural weakness in the enemy cruiser. “We’ve found a flaw in the design of their antimatter storage system,” she states. “The primary support braces are made of viterium.” She explains, “A single torpedo rigged with a radiogenic warhead could reduce those braces to the consistency of wet pasta.” It’s a nice plan, recalling the fatal design weakness in the Death Star.

Once again, Watters is following familiar narrative beats and trying to fill a familiar narrative role. No matter how strong the opponent, Star Trek heroes always figure out a way to outwit or outmanoeuvre them. Picard, Data and Riker weaponise the Borg’s “sleep” command in The Best of Both Worlds, Part II . O’Brien figures out a way to get the Cardassian weapon platforms in Tears of the Prophets to fire upon their own power generator. In Shadows and Symbols , Worf and company figure out how to use a sun to destroy a Dominion shipyard.

All fired up.

This is how these stories tend to go, with a plucky intelligent crew out-thinking a much stronger opponent. On paper, the plan in Valiant seems sound. In fact, it seems more than likely that it would have worked if executed by Picard, Sisko or Janeway. However, in practice, the plan goes horribly wrong. One of the more delightfully clever (and mean-spirited) aspects of Valiant is its refusal to explain how or why the plan failed. There is no exposition that neatly explains what part of the process failed. As Farris reflects, “It just… it didn’t work.”

There are any number of reasons why the attack might not have worked. Maybe Farris missed the target with the torpedo. Maybe Nog did not properly calibrate the radiogenic warhead on the torpedo. Maybe the data returned from the probe was incorrect. Maybe the data returned from the probe was misinterpreted. Maybe the tactical weakness on the enemy ship was identified and corrected between the return of the probe and the launch of the attack. Valiant is quite consciously ambiguous on where everything went wrong, declining to provide any easy answers.

“… it all blew up in their faces.”

Even the closing scene acknowledges this ambiguity. To be clear, Watters is ultimately responsible for the failure of the mission by virtue of his position as commanding officer, and the episode is very clear that the correct course of action would have been for Watters to follow the orders given by Starfleet Command and retreat back to Federation space with the scans of the new enemy warship. However, the episode pointedly refuses to offer a clear-cut answer for why this plan failed for Watters when it would have worked for Picard or Janeway or Sisko.

“What do you think I should say?” Jake asks Nog as they sit together in sickbay. Nog responds, “That it was a good ship with a good crew that made a mistake. We let ourselves blindly follow Captain Watters and he led us over a cliff.” However, Collins objects to this charactersation. “That’s not true. Captain Watters was a great man.” She states, “If he failed it’s because we failed him.” Nog doesn’t fight the point too hard. “Put that in your story too. Let people read it and decide for themselves.”

Feeling sick about it.

Valiant provides any number of reasons why the mission might have failed; Watters was reckless, his crew were incompetent, the ship was unlucky. Ultimately, though, it seems like the biggest error that Watters makes is to assume that he occupies a position of privilege in the narrative, to assume that he is a Star Trek captain rather than a military officer. He is a guest star who is stuck down for daring to claim the spotlight. In the grand tradition of tragedy, Watters’ original sin is one of sheer and unbridled hubris.

Valiant repeatedly emphasises how destructive and self-centred these characters are, about how so many of their problems are rooted in the characters’ mistaken belief that they are the most important (and most special) people in the universe. In response to Jake’s critique of their daredevil plan to destroy a prototype enemy warship, Watters simply responds, “We’re Red Squad and we can do anything.” The group’s response to anything that contradicts their belief in their own cosmic importance is to simply chant “Red Squad!”

Sometime, you don’t know what goes through that Nog-gin.

There is sense that Red Squad are driven by a powerful sense of superiority. Notably, although it is not discussed in the episode itself, Red Squad appears to be comprised primarily of human cadets, with a few token Vulcans in non-speaking background roles, a rejection of the diversity that the Federation is supposed to embody. Within Valiant itself, all of the major Red Squad characters are white, which positions both Nog and Jake as outsiders. The human-centric nature of Red Squad was also suggested in Homefront and Paradise Lost through Nog’s social anxiety about joining them, but it remains a through-line in Valiant .

It may be possible to read this as another commentary on something that the Star Trek franchise has taken for granted, the repeated suggestion that mankind are somehow special and unique in the wider cosmos. At certain points, most notably early in The Next Generation with episodes like The Last Outpost or Lonely Among Us , the Star Trek franchise seems to suggest that humanity are inherently better any other species. While this human chauvinism makes some sense in that Star Trek exists for a human audience and Klingons don’t exist, it can still be suffocating.

No need to get bent out of shape about it.

While perfectly understandable, this human-centric approach to science-fiction can be quite unsettling. As Duncan and Michèle Barrett outline in The Human Frontier :

As with most science fiction television, Star Trek tends to present us with ‘good’ aliens who look more or less human (Vulcans, Betazoids and Bajorans, for example) and ‘bad’ aliens who look ugly and disorienting (such as the Jem’Hadar, the Borg, and the disease-ridden Vidiians). The contrast is drawn most starkly in the film Insurrection, in which two groups of aliens who turn out to be from ‘the same race’ are visibly marked very differently: the peace-loving, gentle Ba’ku look entirely human, while the film’s villains, the Son’a, through extensive plastic surgery and skin-stretching, have turned themselves into hideous monsters.

Battlestar Galactica would attempt to address this trope head on, by asking the audience to accept the alien Cylon culture as having equivalent value to that of humanity. Of course, given the series opens with the Cylons attempting to commit genocide against humanity, mileage may vary .

This idea is reinforced in Valiant through an early conversation between Jake and Collins. Jake is intrigued to discover that the operations officer was born on the moon. “Oh, a Lunar Schooner,” he teases. When she remarks that she hadn’t heard that in a long time, Jake explains, “I picked it up from my granddad. Of course, he still calls Luna the moon like it’s the only one or something.” It is a nice way to draw attention to how subtly human-centric our thinking about the universe can be, the fact that mankind believes that the moon orbitting Earth must be the definite article.

Valiant feels like a cynical deconstruction of a standard genre narrative – of a standard Star Trek narrative. It is an exploration of what happens if a character acts like the hero of a given narrative without the structural protections afforded to the hero of that narrative. It is a demonstration of how rarely Star Trek characters act like officers in a military organisation, and a reminder of how catastrophically that can go wrong. The climax of Valiant is brutal, with its dead teenagers and the destruction of three-out-of-four of the ship’s escape pods.

Jake torpedoes their plan.

There is a sense that Valiant is the culmination of the sixth season of Deep Space Nine , of the series trying to push past the few remaining barriers that exist around it. Episodes like A Time to Stand and In the Pale Moonlight really pushed past expectations for what a Star Trek series could be, but Valiant somehow pushes even further by essentially shredding the expectations of a Star Trek episode. There is a sense that Ronald D. Moore, perhaps even more than the other Deep Space Nine writers, has reached a point where he needs to move beyond the franchise.

A cynical observer might argue that this was a necessary development for Ronald D. Moore as a writer. It is a cliché that writers should “kill [their] darlings” , but it makes a certain amount of sense in the case of Ronald D. Moore. Moore had been a huge Star Trek fan growing up. His first career in television had been as a writer for The Next Generation . He would work on the franchise for more than a decade, contributing to three television series and two feature films. By the time that Valiant was broadcast, Moore did not have a single credit outside of Star Trek .

Just the right mix.

Indeed, Moore seemed aware of this tendency. Although he co-wrote Generations with Brannon Braga under the supervision of Rick Berman, Moore conceded that it had been his idea to kill off the character of James Tiberius Kirk :

Killing the Big K was, in fact, my idea. I’ve gone over my reasons and thoughts on this subject several times by now, so I won’t go into the details again, but I will say that the reports of Rick and Brannon’s supposed animosity toward TOS being the source of Kirk’s death are wrong. And if you think about it for a moment, you’ll see that there’s no real reason why they would want to damage or harm TOS or the Trek franchise in any way. We were trying to make a movie, and we were trying to make the best movie we could.

Even years after the fact, Moore was still trying to figure out what his decision to kill Kirk meant to him, as somebody who had grown up idolising the character. “He was my childhood hero, and I killed him. What does that mean? What does that say about me?”

A bloody disaster.

Valiant is an episode that takes the conventions of a standard Star Trek plot and just blows them, refusing to offer any easy answers along the way. It is a genuinely unsettling piece of television, and an episode that plays with the audience’s expectations before brutally undercutting them. The sixth season has repeatedly suggested that Deep Space Nine has pushed Star Trek as far as the constraints of nineties genre television will allow. Valiant just blows it all up.

25 Responses

>Notably, although it is not discussed in the episode itself, Red Squad appears to be comprised exclusively of human cadets, a rejection of the diversity that the Federation is supposed to embody.

No, there are two Vulcans visible in the crowd.

With all that we’re talking about (or tweeting about, in your case) populism, there’s an interesting reading to be had about Red Squad’s cult of personality around Watters. Were it written today Farris would have objected to stories about Watters’ use of stimulants as “fake news” and Jake would have been led to the brig with a chant of “lock him up!”

I do kind of love this episode for being such a brutal assault on Trek’s familiar tropes. I love that the impressive-sounding technobabble solution fails. I love how Nog is proud to be a chief engineer under Watters – when in reality he outranks the captain! This might be the best Jake-centric episode. It’s a wonder it wasn’t rewritten to be about his dad. 🙂

>Jake would have been led to the brig with a chant of “lock him up!”

So basically Crimson Tide.

“If someone asked me if we should bomb Romulus, a simple ‘Yes. By all means sir, drop that fucker, twice!'”

>rewritten to be about his dad

I like how Jake is simultaneously in awe of his dad and aware of his limitations. “If he can’t do it, it can’t be done” should have raised alarm bells for the cadets but they’re too sealed in their bubble.

I don’t know. I think that if Sisko had tried to blow up that ship, he would have succeeded at blowing up that ship, even if he used the exact same plan.

Darren–that’s kind of the point of the review, isn’t it?

Thanks for the spot. I didn’t see the Vulcans, but I’ve corrected the text.

I think it’s totally in character for Nog not to usurp command from Watters, particularly given how important Red Squad was to him while he was at the Academy. Moore actually cited naval precedent for Nog not taking command, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary. Valiant is in some ways about the cult of heroism and personality, and I can see Nog falling under that sway. (And that’s why Jake can stand outside it.)

I think another key episode that ties into your argument about Ronald D. Moore’s desire to make Starfleet more military is The First Duty. Here, Roddenbery’s idea of vunderkind children only attending the academy is taken apart, as instead Wesley Crusher and his other classmates are not the best and the brightest, but rather teenagers who are much more like people that actually attend military schools. Thus, I think this episode fundamentally changed the dynamics of what Starfleet academy was. Now, it seemed as if anyone could join, such as Nog, which made it feel more like a military school, whereas before there were many complicated tests to get in which made it seem more like an elite IVY league school.

Yeah, I think The First Duty is very much a companion piece to Valiant, to the point that you can easily imagine the kids from The First Duty doing the exact same thing, while Nick Locarno casts himself in the Watters role.

And Boothby even said Nova Squadron would follow Locarno off a cliff, much like the Valiant crew did with Watters. Nog even gets to say the same line.

The setting reminds me of the very first episode of Japanese anime series Ga-rei Zero, in which a bunch of named characters are introduced as specialty cops with amazing supernatural power, and ending up being infested by the things they’re battling with, eventually being killed by the real main characters. Quite a way to burn the budget and leave audience gaping and gawking. I’m wondering if you play Valiant to someone without a knowledge of anything of DS9, what will they react? Will they think it’s resulted from the system’s (Starfleet/Starfleet academy) failures in nurturing its youngling into mature officers , or just over-confident teenagers being over confident?

Yeah, the default reading of Valiant seems to be that the kids screwed up because they were inexperienced, which is probably true within the universe of Deep Space Nine, metatextual reading aside. A lot of the privilege afforded protagonists can generally be accredited to experience. “Of course Sisko knows exactly what to do, he’s done this like one hundred and fifty times by now!”

Fascinating review.

I agree that on a meta level ‘not being the main characters’ is what trips up Red Squad, but I think there is another aspect you touched on briefly Darren: luck.

Napoleon supposedly once said: “I have plenty of clever generals but just give me a lucky one.”

The concept of good luck – as in being chosen by providence – has fallen out of favour in modern society, but there is a very long tradition of assigning good luck as a virtue itself, a kind of attribute remarkable men and women attract that helps them out. The kind of notion that remarkable people are lucky because they are remarkable rather than vice versa.

There is a great moment in the historical novel ‘Fortune’s Favourites’ by Colleen McCullough where the brilliant (and real) Roman general Sertorious suddenly realises that for all his very genuine gifts he has never been beloved by the goddess Fortuna. Sure enough he isn’t the main character of the book – Sulla, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar are. Whatever that intangible ‘something’ is he didn’t have and neither did Red Squad.

That’s an interesting concept, and it fits rather neatly with what we see. The one-in-a-million chance where we finally get to see one of the nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine outcomes.

DS9’s longstanding tradition of skepticism towards Starfleet really pays off in this episode. The big difference between Sisko and Watters, aside from the inexperience Watters was unable to admit to, is that Sisko isn’t a drug-huffing cult leader captaining a ship to feed his own ego. This was such a good episode because it invites so many questions about Trek’s world.

It really does. And it’s a big moment in Moore’s writing, I think. One that tends to get overlooked in charting the influence of DS9 on BSG.

The premise demands a lot of suspension of belief actually, but I can live with that as well. A very decent and endearing episode. The last scene especially is very melodramatic but still manages to stay believable. And there is, retroactively at least, a sense of foreboding regarding the loss of a Dax.

PS: Cusack was spoken/played by a black actress – but wasn’t the dead body a white woman?

PPS: Yes, this was supposed for “The Sound of her Voice”… Mea culpa.

Valiant is another example of DS9 brutally eviscerating Star Trek’s utopian universe. Scheduled slightly earlier, Valiant would have capped off a perfect trilogy with Inquisition and In the Pale Moonlight.

It begins deceptively on Deep Space Nine with some light filler scenes involving Quark (much like The Quickening and Empok Nor) before Valiant becomes another extremely dark S6 episode.

After being pummelled in a Runabout by a Jem’Hadar fighter, Jake and Nog are rescued by Red Squad, the elite group of Starfleet cadets that tried to overthrow the Federation two years back. They’ve been placed in command of the USS Valiant and have spent the last eight months behind enemy lines trying to collect data about a formidable new Dominion battleship.

Valiant quickly dispels the notion that these cadets are a bunch of Wesley Crushers. They may be the best the Academy has to offer, but they’re not blessed with Wesley’s prodigious brainpower. They take it upon themselves to not just gather intelligence on the Dominion’s latest weapon, they opt to destroy it…and the results are disastrous.

It may not be readily apparent, but Valiant is very much another case of DS9 gleefully trashing the utopian universe that Gene Roddenberry invented. We’ve seen examples of that already this year, but other than Jake and Nog, the regulars take a backseat to the crew of the Valiant. DS9 had great success with that approach in Soldiers of the Empire and it works well (perhaps even better) with Valiant.

I liked what you said Darren that the Valiant crew see themselves as the stars of they’re own show. This isn’t Star Trek: Valiant but the guest cast act like it might be. Captain Tim Watters fancies himself as another Picard or a Sisko (he likes grandiose speeches) while conn officer Riley Shepard from Paradise Lost (excellent continuity) could be this ship’s Wesley Crusher. With her harsh hairdo (and even harsher demeanour) Karen Farris could be another Seven of Nine.

Valiant also makes an excellent companion piece with Nor the Battle to the Strong. We saw in that episode Jake Sisko panic in the heat of Klingon attack, and he tries to appeal to the crew of the Valiant that retreat from a superior force should not be seen as cowardice. But they’re dead set on being the heroes of they’re own narrative (Jake’s outsider status is another example of how humans who have no desire to be in Starfleet are looked down upon in the 24th century) and that’s exactly what it gets them…dead.

They believe they’ve come up with the perfect plan to destroy the Dominion battleship. The final act is particularly skilful the way it sets up the crew for a fall. After confining Jake to the Brig for spreading trouble (speaking the truth), the episode shows them getting ready for battle (with even a heroic montage) before they take on the might of the battleship. They manage to target the braces that are supposed to be this ship’s Achilles Heel, they fire upon it, it goes up in a massive fireball, the crew start to celebrate…and then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the battleship emerges completely unscathed and launches a brutal counterattack.

It’s interesting that Ronald D Moore fails to elaborate on why the attack failed. If it were VGR or TNG, there would have been a whole section of exposition here. The heroes always have to be vindicated on those shows, but the crew of the Valiant are not heroes and they’re not martyrs either. They’re youthful inexperience is what led to they’re downfall. They couldn’t perceive they’re arrogance for what it truly was.

It’s all summed up in the final scene in the Defiant’s infirmary, with Jake, Nog and the crew’s only survivor, Dorian Collins. Even though Dorian witnessed the destruction of the Valiant and the loss of all hands, she’s still fiercely loyal to Watters. Words are banded about like “hero” and “a great man”, but Nog now sees Watters for what he actually was…”a bad captain” (and a pill popper to boot).

Valiant shows how far DS9 has travelled this season. It may be set away from the station aboard a state of the art Starfleet vessel, but Valiant again shows how DS9 has become the very antithesis of what a Star Trek show is meant to be about. And I really wouldn’t have it any other way.

Yep. Valiant is sorely overlooked in assessments of the sixth season as a whole. It’s a fantastic piece of television, and an amazing piece of Star Trek.

On re-watch, I usually skip right to Valiant, then The Sound of Her Voice. Suddenly, the season looks a whole lot better.

Great essay, been watching through DS9 for the first time and found your site trying to find info on one of the episodes. Saw this last nite and didn’t even saw the meta-commentary of the franchise, I saw it a bit more literally. Red Squad mirrors the kind of nationalist, prideful mentality conservative teens/young adults have when they sign up for the military. More like signing their deaths…

The thing that strikes me about Valiant is that the crew is entirely made up of Wesley Crushers — a character I would dearly have loved to see shoved out an airlock.

All of them are perfect geniuses as cadets. Insufferable and cocksure. I read this episode as not just blowing up Star Trek convention, but as an absolute repudiation of Wesley.

It probably wasn’t what the writers intended but that’s how I’m experiencing it this time around and it is delicious.

This is an interesting way of looking at the episode, actually. There’s probably something to it, given that Moore was one of the writers who chafed against the Roddenberry Box.

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Screen Rant

Star trek: the defiant's original name (& why ds9 changed it).

DS9's U.S.S. Defiant originally had a different name, but Paramount shot it down because of Star Trek: Voyager — here's how DS9 got the last laugh.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's U.S.S. Defiant originally had a different name — the "tough little ship" was meant to be called the U.S.S. Valiant — but the starship's designation had to be changed because of Star Trek: Voyager . Debuting in 1992, DS9 was the first spinoff of Star Trek: The Next Generation and, because it was set on a space station, it had a unique premise for a Star Trek series — but one that alienated Trekkers who insist that a Star Trek show needs to be set on a starship.

Although Star Trek: Deep Space Nine wasn't entirely without vehicles since the station used three Runabouts, which were warp-capable, shuttle-like vessels, but the meager Runabouts were a far cry from an actual starship, and it hindered the ability of DS9 to tell stories that could explore the adjacent Gamma Quadrant. By DS9 season 2, the writers had introduced the series' Big Bads, the Dominion, which ruled the Gamma Quadrant and consisted of three core races: the shapeshifting rulers called the Founders, their violent legions called Jem'Hadar, and their mouthpieces called the Vorta. It quickly became clear to DS9' s showrunner Ira Steven Behr that the station's Runabouts were insufficient to fight the series' great menace. Further, as executive producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe pointed out, "the Runabout sets sucked" because they were cramped to shoot in and entire episodes couldn't be staged aboard a Runabout as opposed to a real starship.

Related: Star Trek: DS9's Defiant Failed Its True Mission

Deep Space Nine desperately needed a starship to realistically fight the Dominion, but Paramount resisted the idea because the studio felt that DS9 having their own ship would clash with Star Trek: Voyager, which launched in 1995 and was styled as the new flagship Star Trek series and the successor to Star Trek: The Next Generation . Still, Behr and DS9 's writers ultimately won their quest to get their show a starship, even though Star Trek executive producer Rick Berman, who wasn't fond of the idea, insisted it "had to be [a] small [ship]" , i.e. smaller than both Voyager and TNG 's U.S.S. Enterprise-E . DS9 's solution was the starship that would become the U.S.S. Defiant , a tiny but heavily-gunned warcraft. But it wasn't called the Defiant at first; rather, the ship was named the U.S.S . Valiant — a name Paramount shot down.

The studio issued an edict that DS9 's new starship couldn't be called the Valiant because the name starts with the letter V, which is "too similar" to Star Trek: Voyager 's titular vessel. So instead, executive producer Ronald D. Moore pitched the name "Defiant," which is what they went with (and spiritually links DS9 's warship to the identically named Constitution -class starship from Star Trek: The Original Series ' era). Paramount's demand for the name change spoke to the franchise's internal politics and how much the studio valued Star Trek: Voyager as the purported flagbearer of the franchise, as opposed to DS9 , which was considered Star Trek 's "middle child" and a black sheep.

Regardless, DS9 's U.S.S. Defiant was immediately popular with fans, and it even made its big-screen debut in 1996's Star Trek: First Contact . The Defiant opened up vast storytelling possibilities for DS9 and it gave Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) the necessary firepower to fight the Dominion War , which dominated the final seasons of the series. The mighty Defiant was ultimately destroyed in DS9 season 7, but Sisko soon received an identical starship, the U.S.S. Sao Paulo , which was then rechristened to become the new U.S.S. Defiant .

Ironically, DS9 season 6 introduced a Defiant-class starship called the U.S.S. Valiant anyway. In one of the darkest episodes of the series, the Valiant was behind enemy lines and piloted by an elite group of Starfleet Cadets called Red Squad. After rescuing Nog (Aron Eisenberg) and Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton), the fanatical Red Squad underwent a suicide mission against the Jem'Hadar that got almost everyone aboard the ship killed. Despite the grim nature of the episode that led to the destruction of the U.S.S. Valiant , the ingenious Star Trek: Deep Space Nine still got the last laugh over Paramount.

Next: DS9 Did Star Trek Into Darkness' Story First (& Way Better)

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Michael Dorn, Terry Farrell, Colm Meaney, Nana Visitor, Avery Brooks, Armin Shimerman, Rene Auberjonois, and Alexander Siddig in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993)

In the vicinity of the liberated planet of Bajor, the Federation space station Deep Space Nine guards the opening of a stable wormhole to the far side of the galaxy. In the vicinity of the liberated planet of Bajor, the Federation space station Deep Space Nine guards the opening of a stable wormhole to the far side of the galaxy. In the vicinity of the liberated planet of Bajor, the Federation space station Deep Space Nine guards the opening of a stable wormhole to the far side of the galaxy.

Rick Berman
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Trivia Kira was a last-minute addition to the cast. The original plan was to include the Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) character of Ro Laren, but Michelle Forbes didn't want to do a series at the time.
Goofs In the first three seasons, CDR Sisko refers to his father in the past tense, even talking about his slow demise and death from some unknown ailment. But starting in the fourth season ("Homefront"), Joseph Sisko is alive and well running a restaurant in New Orleans. Joseph appears in a total of six episodes throughout the last 4 seasons.

Garak : [Cornered by a group of Klingons in his store] Well, let me guess! You're either lost, or desperately searching for a good tailor.

Crazy credits The opening credits for "Emissary" lacked the wormhole opening that all future episodes featured. Starting with Season 4, the opening credits included additional spacecraft and activity around the station, including the Defiant flying into the wormhole.
Alternate versions Several episodes were originally shown as 2-hour movies. They were later edited into two-part 60 minute episodes for later airings.
Connections Edited into Star Trek: Voyager: Unity (1997)
Soundtracks Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Main Title Written by Dennis McCarthy

User reviews 361

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January 3, 1993 (United States)
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Star Trek's Federation and Klingon relationship is a source of debate among fans over formal membership vs. alliance.
The infamous Eugenics Wars conflict was pushed into the mid-21st century due to timeline discrepancies in the show.
Klingons have undergone significant changes in appearance and behavior throughout the Star Trek franchise.

Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek franchise is full of iconic heroes, aliens, and starships. Set centuries in the future, it imagines a galaxy where the human race has abandoned its worst tendencies in favor of exploring the wonders of the galaxy . This format has proven remarkably successful, as Star Trek: The Original Series overcame initially poor odds to spawn over half a dozen spin-off series, as well as several movies and hundreds of books, comics, and video games.

Star Trek: 7 Alien Civilizations Discovered By Captain Kirk

Yet like every long-running franchise, the universe of Star Trek is full of contradictions, forgetful writers, and behind-the-scenes errors. From Spock's rapidly growing family tree to numerous issues involving the Klingons, it's safe to say that the final frontier is far from set in stone.

The Members of the Federation

How far-reaching is the utopian alliance.

Despite representing the undisputed system of government for Earth and countless other worlds, very little concrete information is divulged about the Federation and its members throughout the Star Trek franchise. The size of the alliance fluctuates wildly depending on the source consulted: while The Original Series implies that there are just over 30 worlds in the Federation, information related to the more-or-less concurrent Kelvin timeline suggests a group at least four times larger. While this discrepancy can be attributed to divergent timelines, one point of contention remains: the status of the Klingon Empire.

While it's undeniable that the Federation and the Klingon Empire were allies during The Next Generation , various set dressing details and throwaway lines hint at a deep relationship. A Klingon starship carries the Federation flag on its bridge in "Heart of Glory", perhaps implying membership, while a later conversation between Picard and Wesley Crusher is even more explicit. In "Samaritan Snare", Wesley refers to a time "before the Klingons joined the Federation". However, many fans discount this line, suggesting that it refers to the Treaty of Alliance rather than formal membership.

The Eugenics Wars

What actually happened (and when).

The infamous Eugenics Wars (first referenced in The Original Series episode "Space Seed") was a devastating conflict that killed millions and resulted in humanity abandoning its research into genetic augmentation. According to a conversation between Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy, the conflict took place between 1992 and 1996—the distant future for viewers of the episode's original broadcast. However, given that the mid-nineties came and went without any global conflict, Star Trek 's writers have subsequently scrambled to reconcile sixties' world-building with contemporary knowledge.

Star Trek Fans Debate Who Deserves Credit For Defeating Khan

In an attempt to make sense of the timeline, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds suggested that temporal interference from various factions pushed the Eugenics War (and the actions of the genocidal Khan ) forward into the mid-twenty-first century. Whether future franchise showrunners will be forced to kick the can further down the road remains to be seen, but it certainly wouldn't be the first retcon to this vital part of Star Trek lore.

Can They Use Transporters?

The Trill are one of Star Trek 's more bizarre aliens, as some of the humanoid species are physically connected to a centuries-old symbiont. When the host dies, their memories live on within the symbiont, which is subsequently transferred into another individual. The Trill's unique physiology was central to their introductory episode "The Host", which saw Beverly Crusher fall in love with one of the aliens only for its host to tragically die.

The decision to foreground the Trill in the subsequent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine meant that the aliens underwent a radical overhaul. In The Next Generation , joined Trill were unable to use transporters because doing so would endanger their symbiont, while DS9 's Dax frequently made use of the technology. Also notable was the change in the Trill's appearance: the show's writers were apparently scandalized that the beautiful Terry Farrell would be given the Trill's original ugly makeup, and suggested using the spots previously seen on the Kriosians in The Next Generation .

Starfleet's Identity

Just who is captain kirk answerable to.

The Federation Starfleet is now so much of a part of nerd culture that the organization's chevron symbol is recognizable even outside its original context. However, both the famous insignia and the identity of Starfleet itself were once very far from concrete, as evidenced by early episodes of The Original Series . In "Charlie X", Captain Kirk makes a report to "UESPA headquarters", rather than Starfleet Command. Then, in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", the acronym is defined as referring to the United Earth Space Probe Agency, and Kirk suggests that this organization is responsible for the Enterprise 's mission.

Star Trek: Best Starships To Work On

The United Earth Space Probe Agency doesn't roll off the tongue in quite the same way as "Starfleet", so the decision to alter the name of Kirk's employers into something punchier makes a lot of sense. Interestingly, future shows did play lip service to the UESPA concept: an unmanned probe launched by the group is discovered by the USS Voyager in "Friendship One", while Star Trek: Enterprise implies that UESPA is part of Starfleet rather than a separate organization.

Spock's Family Tree

How many long-lost siblings can one vulcan have.

The Vulcan Spock may have an impeccable sense of logic, but he also appears to have a terrible memory when it comes to his own family. While this vagueness can be traced back to The Original Series (his claim that a human woman married one of his ancestors is a strange way to refer to his own mother and father), Spock is particularly susceptible to suddenly recalling previously unmentioned siblings. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) introduced audiences to estranged half-brother Sybok , while Star Trek: Discovery saddled Spock with an adopted human sister in the form of Michael Burnham.

Why the Discovery writing room decided to draw inspiration from what is widely regarded as the worst Star Trek film remains unclear—it may be that Spock is perceived to be such a cultural heavyweight that linking new characters to the original Vulcan is seen as a way to ensure their popularity. Whether this is actually accurate is up for debate, but with countless other Star Trek projects currently in development, Spock may find his family tree yielding further undisclosed branches.

The Klingons

They do not discuss their retcons with outsiders.

The Klingons are probably Star Trek 's most iconic alien race, but when it comes to internal consistency, the classic species is sorely lacking. The Original Series cast the Klingons as scheming space Soviets; The Next Generation reinvented them as honor-bound warriors . Nor do the Klingons maintain a constant appearance: they didn't grow their craggy foreheads until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), while the recent Star Trek: Discovery chose to depict the Klingons as bald space orcs. While most of these changes can be attributed to behind-the-scenes budget increases, the in-universe logic is far murkier.

Star Trek: Worf's Best Quotes

Star Trek: Enterprise made a valiant effort to explain the change in Klingon appearance and behavior, only to be completely ignored by the subsequent Star Trek: Discovery . Deep Space Nine 's "Trials and Tribble-ations" perhaps puts it best—when asked why he doesn't resemble the Klingons of Kirk's era, Worf shuts down the conversation by saying that it is not a topic that they discuss with outsiders.

Created by Gene Roddenberry

First Film Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Latest Film Star Trek Beyond

First TV Show Star Trek: The Original Series

Latest TV Show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Creation Year 1966

USS Valiant (NCC-74210)

View history

The USS Valiant (NCC-74210) was a 24th century Federation Defiant -class starship operated by Starfleet .

1.1 Valiant personnel
2.1 Background information
2.2 Apocrypha
2.3 External links

History [ ]

The Valiant was launched from the Antares Ship Yards in 2372 on Stardate 49456.5. It was assigned as a training ship for the elite cadet corps Red Squad under the command of Captain Ramirez .

In late- 2373 , the Valiant began a three month training cruise mission to circumnavigate the entire Federation before returning home. The plan was for the cadets to run the ship while the officers aboard observed and critiqued their performance.

The ship was transiting the Kepla sector when the Dominion War began, and subsequently trapped behind enemy lines after a Dominion fleet conquered that sector on the first day. In attempting to return to Federation territory , the Valiant encountered a Cardassian battle cruiser near El-Gatark . In the first fifteen minutes , all seven of the regular officers were killed or critically wounded, including the captain. The Valiant lost main power and was adrift ; fortunately, the Cardassian cruiser was no better off. Despite having a punctured lung and massive internal injuries, Captain Ramirez refused to go to sickbay and instead, stayed on the bridge to direct the entire damage control effort. The cadets got weapons and impulse engines back on-line within three hours , and were able to destroy the cruiser. The next day, just before Ramirez died , he appointed Cadet Tim Watters to take command of the Valiant .

Early in the war , Starfleet ordered the Valiant to track and collect technical data on a previously unidentified Jem'Hadar battleship that was believed to be operating in the area. However, because the Valiant was operating under complete radio silence and limited to a speed of warp 3.2 , Starfleet was unaware that the ship's officers were dead, and Watters decided to undertake the mission.

Around 2374 , on Stardate 51825, the Valiant rescued Jake Sisko and Ensign Nog from the runabout USS Shenandoah , which was fleeing from a Jem'Hadar attack on Starbase 257 . With his experience serving aboard the Defiant -class, Nog assisted the Valiant 's crew in repairing their warp drive , and the ship finally managed to catch up to the Dominion battleship and obtain detailed intelligence concerning the enemy's capabilities.

The Valiant destroyed

Captain Watters' overconfidence, however, proved to be the Valiant 's undoing. Rather than returning the valuable information to Starfleet, Watters decided to attempt to destroy the battleship by exploiting a perceived flaw in her construction.

Vastly outgunned, the Valiant was quickly devastated after an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the enemy's antimatter storage system primary support braces with a specially-modified quantum torpedo . With Captain Watters and most of the bridge crew killed, Nog gave the order to abandon ship . Two of the four escape pods launched were destroyed by the battleship, while a third was destroyed when it was unable to clear the exploding Valiant . The remaining pod was able to flee the battle area and was eventually recovered by the Valiant 's sister ship, the USS Defiant .

Out of a crew of 35 (plus Nog and Jake), only three survived the battle. ( DS9 : " Valiant ")

Valiant personnel [ ]

See USS Valiant personnel

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

The motto on the Valiant 's dedication plaque was " We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won ", a quote by John F. Kennedy .

" Valiant " was the name that Ronald D. Moore originally wanted to give to the Defiant . However, with the development of Star Trek: Voyager , the producers asked him to avoid a name that began with 'V'. ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 158))

Apocrypha [ ]

In the reference book Star Trek: Celebrations , it was established that Starfleet Academy created a service award to cadets who show exceptional teamwork and named it the Valiant commendation to commemorate the Valiant and its crew.

External links [ ]

USS Valiant (NCC-74210) at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
Valiant commendation at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
Drakon Cluster of Courage at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
1 Abdullah bin al-Hussein

IMAGES

Valiant (1998)
Valiant (1998)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6.22 "Valiant" Courtney Peldon as Collins
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998)
6-22: Valiant
Valiant

VIDEO

Ashton (Valiant) Cast Video
Star Trek Legacy Uss Defiant Vs Domion Battle Cruiser
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Saving Star Trek 02-04.24 Where No Man has Gone Before
USS VALOR VS Andromeda Ascendant
13 Characters Who Must Return For A Star Trek DS9 Revival Even If Sisko Doesn’t

COMMENTS

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998)
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998)
Valiant: Directed by Michael Vejar. With Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, Michael Dorn, Terry Farrell. Jake and Nog's runabout come under attack from the Jem'Hadar, and are rescued by the Valiant, a ship manned by Red Squad, an elite group of young Starfleet cadets.
Valiant (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
The Valiant attacks the vessel and successfully hits the targeted area, but the ship remains undamaged. The Valiant is assaulted by the battleship, which critically damages the ship and kills much of the remaining crew. Nog, Collins and Jake leave the Valiant in an escape pod before it explodes; the sole survivors, they are rescued by Jake's ...
Valiant (episode)
(Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (p. 570)) In Moore's original draft of the script, the USS Valiant was discovered by Jake and Kira. The plot was predominantly the same, but as Moore later explained, "It didn't work because you couldn't believe that Kira wouldn't kick every one of their asses and take back the ship single-handedly.
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998)
Chief Dorian Collins : You know, the sun only comes up once a month on the moon. Every lunar morning, my father and I would put on suits and... hike out across the Sea of Clouds. We'd stop at this collection of boulders on the western rim and... just wait for the sun to come up. Dawn is so... shocking on the moon.
"Valiant"
He generally made lean, low budget war movies, all with a strong anti war bent, and clear moralizing. A lot of DS9's "land battle" episodes borrow heavily from Fuller, to good effect. "Valiant" is the first time, though, that Behr gives us Sam Fuller in a spaceship.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Season 6, Episode 22 with a subscription on Paramount+, or buy it on Vudu, Prime Video, Apple TV. While en route to Ferenginar, Jake and Nog are attacked by ...
Valiant
Valiant The battle for the future of the United Federation of Planets begins on the cardassian space station Deep Space Nine. Commander Benjamin Sisko and his c ... Choose Your Star Trek Series. The Original Series; The Next Generation; Deep Space Nine; Voyager; Enterprise; Discovery; Picard; Strange New Worlds; Choose By Year. 1966; 1967; 1968 ...
Valiant
Episode Guide for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 6x22: Valiant. Episode summary, trailer and screencaps; guest stars and main cast list; and more.
'Valiant' Was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine At Its Darkest
In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's " Valiant ," however, this dream is pushed to its logical conclusion, turning it into a nightmare. Nog and Jake Sisko are on a diplomatic mission to Ferenginar. While Jake has a tenuous reason for joining, Nog is trying to resist the boyish energy that colors their runabout trip.
Recap / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 06 E 22 Valiant
Nog and Jake are heading to Ferenginar with what Jake suspects is a proposal for an alliance against the Dominion. Unfortunately they stumble across a wing of Jem'Hadar attack fighters, but just before their runabout can be destroyed, they are rescued by a Defiant -class starship, the USS Valiant. There, they find that the crew is entirely ...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Valiant"/"Profit And Lace"
"Valiant" (season 6, episode 22; originally aired 5/6/1998) In which we can be heroes, but just for one day… (Available on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.). There are explosions and space battles ...
List of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast members
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's cast in season five, after Michael Dorn (Worf) had joined in season four and before Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax) left at the end of season six. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is an American science fiction television series that debuted in broadcast syndication on January 3, 1993. The series ran for seven seasons until 1999. The show was spun off from Star Trek: The Next ...
Paul Popowich
Paul Popowich (born 2 March 1973; age 51) is the actor who played Cadet Tim Watters in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine sixth season episode "Valiant". Hailing from the Stoney Creek neighborhood of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Popowich landed his first professional acting role at the age of 15 when he was cast in the 1988 independent Canadian film Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller. Four years ...
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" Valiant (TV Episode 1998)
Cast & crew; User reviews; Trivia; IMDbPro. All topics. Plot. Valiant Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Edit. Summaries. Jake and Nog's runabout come under attack from the Jem'Hadar, and are rescued by the Valiant, a ship manned by Red Squad, an elite group of young Starfleet cadets. Synopsis.
Courtney Peldon
Courtney Peldon (born 13 April 1981; age 42), is an actress from New York who played Karen Farris in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine sixth season episode "Valiant". Peldon also played parts in the Harry and the Hendersons television series (with Bruce Davison) in 1991, Little Giants in 1994 (with Susanna Thompson), and Mortuary in 2005 (with Denise Crosby), as well as appearing twice on the ...
DS9 Wasn't Supposed To Have A Ship But It Got 3 Defiants
The Defiant was shockingly destroyed by the Breen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 7, episode 20, "The Changing Face of Evil." A casualty of the late stage of the Dominion War, the loss of the Defiant was a serious blow to Captain Sisko and his crew. However, 4 episodes later, DS9 received a second Defiant -class starship, the USS Sao Paulo.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Valiant is a very bitter and mean-spirited little episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and all the more effective for that fact.. Some of that bitterness is baked into the basic premise. Valiant is an episode about a bunch of plucky young cadets who get brutally murdered for daring to believe in themselves. The final act of Valiant is a brutal piece of television, the camera lingering over ...
Star Trek: The Defiant's Original Name (& Why DS9 Changed It)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's U.S.S. Defiant originally had a different name — the "tough little ship" was meant to be called the U.S.S. Valiant — but the starship's designation had to be changed because of Star Trek: Voyager. Debuting in 1992, DS9 was the first spinoff of Star Trek: The Next Generation and, because it was set on a space station, it had a unique premise for a Star Trek ...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series 1993-1999)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series 1993-1999) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
DS9
DS9 - Rewatched Valiant . ... Star Trek: Todd Stashwick Sets Charity D&D Game with Picard, LD Cast. bleedingcool. ... Star Trek DS9 S07E04 "Take Me Out To The Holosuite" is the best feel-good episode ever - change my mind. r/startrek ...
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Series 1993-1999)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller. With Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, Cirroc Lofton, Alexander Siddig. In the vicinity of the liberated planet of Bajor, the Federation space station Deep Space Nine guards the opening of a stable wormhole to the far side of the galaxy.
Biggest Star Trek Retcons
Star Trek: Enterprise made a valiant effort to explain the change in Klingon appearance and behavior, only to be completely ignored by the subsequent Star Trek: Discovery. Deep Space Nine's ...
USS Valiant (NCC-74210)
The USS Valiant (NCC-74210) was a 24th century Federation Defiant-class starship operated by Starfleet. The Valiant was launched from the Antares Ship Yards in 2372 on Stardate 49456.5. It was assigned as a training ship for the elite cadet corps Red Squad under the command of Captain Ramirez. In late-2373, the Valiant began a three month training cruise mission to circumnavigate the entire ...

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Recap / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 06 E 22 Valiant

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