Trekipedia

U.S.S. Defiant NCC-1764

Construction began on the Constitution-class Starship Defiant at Tranquility Base, Luna,^[7] in the 2250s. During the early years of her service, the Defiant conducted many missions of importance for Starfleet, and constantly patrolled the Klingon Neutral Zone as tensions between the two powers continued to rise. During that time, the Defiant became the sixth Federation starship to encounter the N’shaii, and was easily able to dispatch them.^[3]

In late 2265, the Defiant returned from her first five-year mission, and Captain Serling stepped down as commanding officer. He was replaced by Captain Thomas Blair, who took the Defiant out on her second five-year mission in early 2266. With increasing tensions with the Klingons, the Defiant was once again posted along the Neutral Zone. By 2267, the Defiant had been assigned to operations in the Taurus Reach. That year, it accompanied the U.S.S. Endeavor NCC-1895 and the U.S.S. Akhiel on a mission to drive Klingon forces off of Golmira, a low-tech planet where a Shedai conduit had been discovered.^[10]

In 2268, the Defiant was called to the Klingon colony on Traelus II after receiving a distress call. A landing party discovered no Klingon survivors left on the colony, but they recover a land-based web generator of Tholian origin. The Defiant set a course back for Federation space, but soon found themselves being pursued by three Tholian vessels. Trying to escape the Tholians, the Defiant entered a spatial interphase and became trapped. This interphase had an adverse effect on humanoid neurophysiology and caused mass insanity among the crew. Captain Blair managed to get a distress call out to the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 before the crew succumbed to madness and started to kill each other.^{[4, 5]}

By the time the Enterprise arrived at the Defiant‘s location, three weeks had passed. The crew of the Defiant was dead, and the ship had been drawn deeper into the interphase rift. Interference from the Tholians prevented the Enterprise from retrieving the Defiant and the ship was left behind. The Defiant was last seen shimmering, suspended between two dimensions, until it faded into interspace.^[1]

Mirror Universe

The interphase, however, was actually a rift between realities created by the Tholians of the Mirror Universe in 2155. The Defiant, after disappearing from its universe of origin, appeared in that universe and was taken to a drydock in the Vintaak system by the Tholians for study. Word of this eventually reached Commander Jonathan Archer, first officer of the I.S.S. Enterprise NX-01, who saw the ship as an opportunity to seize power for himself within the Terran Empire. He seized control of the Enterprise from Captain Forrest long enough to reach the Defiant. While Archer led a boarding party to the Defiant, the Enterprise was detected by the Tholians and destroyed.^[7] Using the Defiant‘s advanced weapons, Archer was able to rescue most of the Enterprise crew and escape back to Imperial space, where it quickly became obvious that the balance had just tipped back in favor of the Empire in an ongoing civil war, led by Vulcans and Andorians who sought to unseat the Humans in control of the Empire. The Defiant rendezvoused with an assault fleet, but discovered the I.S.S. Avenger NX-09 was the only ship remaining. Destroying the rebels, Archer proceeded to assassinate Admiral Black and decided he was going to use the ship from the future to overthrow the Emperor. The alien crew members on the Avenger, however, led by T’Pol and Soval—inspired by the Defiant‘s database, which described a United Federation of Planets in the other universe—convinced Dr. Phlox—the only remaining non-Terran aboard the Defiant—to disable the ship, allowing the Avenger to attack. However, the crew was able to restore the ship’s systems and destroy the Avenger, killing Soval. Shortly after arriving at Earth, Archer was poisoned by Hoshi Sato, formerly the Captain’s Woman to Forrest and an old flame of Archer’s as well, who then declared herself empress.^[8]

When Starfleet refused to surrender, the Defiant engaged a fleet of seven Terran vessels; including the dreadnought I.S.S. Imperator, four NX-class battlecruisers, including the I.S.S. Broadsword and I.S.S. Khan’s Wrath as well as a pair of destroyers. Despite this, the Defiant was able to disable the Imperator and destroy three of the NX-class ships before bombarding Starfleet Headquarters from orbit, eliminating Fleet Admiral Gardner.^[9]

MACO Sergeant Travis Mayweather was appointed the ship’s captain, and over the next few months the interior and exterior appearance of the Defiant was modified to reflect Empress Sato’s propaganda that the ship was from the future of the Mirror Universe, where the Terran Empire flourished into the 23rd century. The Defiant was also the subject of a massive attempt to reverse-engineer its weapons systems for installation on other Terran vessels. The Defiant was sent to the Devolin system to search for a potential rebel base. This was revealed later to be a ploy by General Shran to get the powerful ship away from Earth, leaving it vulnerable to a rebel attack. The ship later participated in battle over Aldus Prime against rebel ships in an attempt to rescue Empress Sato. After her successful rescue, Empress Sato discussed with T’Pol, now the Regent of Vulcan, about sending the Defiant into an unexplored region of space to make first contact with a race believed to inhabit the area known as the Romulans.^[9] The Defiant also apparently set a trend in the Mirror Universe for a number of ships named Defiant.

Prime Universe

Another iteration of the Defiant, possibly originating from an alternate timeline nearly identical to the Prime timeline, was found drifting near the interspace rift in 2298 by the U.S.S. Excelsior NCC-2000^[7] and retrieved in 2375 by the U.S.S. da Vinci NCC-77623 after having been rediscovered by a passing Tholian vessel.^{[5, 6]}

OSDCS2 Universe

Yet another iteration of the Defiant was retrieved by the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A of the OSDCS2 timeline in 2290.^[10]

ST11 Timeline

The U.S.S. Defiant NCC-1764 was a Federation starship in service to Starfleet in the mid-23rd century. Its class was unknown, but strongly resembled a Miranda class starship from the Prime timeline. In 2258, the Defiant was destroyed by the Narada during the Battle of Vulcan.^[11]

The special features on the DVD/BluRay release revealed that the ship pictured was the Defiant, and that it shared the same registry number as its Prime universe counterpart, if not its class. Additionally, although the novelization stated that the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 narrowly avoided colliding with the wreckage of the Defiant‘s saucer as it came out of warp, on-screen evidence shows that the saucer, in fact, belonged to the U.S.S. Mayflower NCC-1621, which was of the same class.^{[11, 12]}