Star Trek Brings Back Deep Space Nine's Defiant

The USS Defiant from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine just made its first appearance in Star Trek canon since the show went off the air in 1999. SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Prodigy episode "Supernova, Part 1" follow. In "Supernova, Part 1," the first half of Star Trek: Prodigy's first season finale, the Diviner's plan comes to fruition. The USS Protostar has returned to the United Federation of Planets space with the booby trap placed aboard by the Vau N'Akat still intact. A contingent of Starfleet vessels arrives to meet the ship, playing right into the Diviner's hands, as well as the Vindicator's hands.

The Starfleet ships begin firing on the Protostar. The ship does a decent job of dodging fire until the USS Defiant, Starfleet's first true warship shows up and opens fire. Unfortunately for the nearby Starfleet ships, that gives the Living Construct the chance to send its signal. Soon all the Starfleet ships nearby, including the Defiant, are firing on each other, with more coming in response to distress calls.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans will remember the Defiant making its debut about midway through the show's run. Benjamin Sisko, who helped design the experimental ship, took command of the vessel and brought it to Deep Space 9 to help defend against the emerging Dominion threat. There, it served throughout the Dominion War, but until now, its post-war activities were unknown.

The USS Defiant will be further featured in the upcoming Star Trek: Defiant comic book series. The book sees Worf, after a falling out with Sisko, forming a splinter crew and going rogue with the USS Defiant. The two will collide in the upcoming "Day of Blood" crossover.

"Ever since I made my dad take me to my first Star Trek convention when I was ten, I have been waiting for this moment," writer Christopher Cantwell said in a statement. "When Heather Antos, Jackson Lanzing, and Collin Kelly reached out to me about writing the first book to spin out of their flagship Star Trek title, I wanted the quality to match my massive wells of enthusiasm; I knew this book needed to be undeniably Star Trek first and foremost, but also something new and complex that would have readers leaning forward as they engaged with a more unexpected journey to the stars. Whereas the new Star Trek book carries forward the grand tradition of Starfleet's saga of discovery and exploration, Defiant immediately sets out to break the rules of the Federation and go on a fugitive run from Starfleet with a cast of Trek's best iconoclastic heroes and ne'er-do-wells, each of them straddling worlds in their identities and calibrations in their moral compasses as they embark on a high-stakes galactic manhunt…the Prime Directive be damned."

Star Trek: Prodigy is streaming now on Paramount+. The season finale debuts on Thursday.