Even just a mention of the EntE in dialog in action during the Dominion War arc would be enough to satisfy Trek fans without taking away from DS9 itself. The taking of Betazed would have been perfect aa perfect opportunity for this. Or an update on the repairs to the Defiant after the Battle of Sector 001, or again just dialog to explain the ship's absence along with Worf. Just tie it in through dialog without having to show the Enterprise screen.

In my headcannon, Starfleet recognized that Picard was a better diplomat than warfighter. That's why they had the Enterprise-E (which was powerful enough not to need escorts) doing diplomatic and core security missions. What I didn't understand was why Riker and Data were allowed to remain on the Enterprise. Starfleet needed experienced command officers to replace the ones lost in battle. Why didn't they have commands of their own?

Still should have seen at least one sovereign in the 'Final' battle.

Wanting DS9 to be its own thing is totally understandable but you could have naturally included some passing mentions of what the Enterprise had been up to since O’Brien and Worf would naturally have been curious.

2:05 This is the only time we see the USS Defiant do what it was designed to do - fighting Borg. Also the place where the Sovereign, Saber, Akira and Steamrunner did "what they were made to do".

We should consider the fact that during first contact much of the Enterprise interior was completly assimilated and when they got back to earth they would have had to strip away all the borg stuff. Remember that the borg assimilate walls floors and ceilings as well, so a large portion of the interior would have had to have been completely rebuilt from scratch, which im just guessing could have taken months or longer.

I think Enterprise was the command ship of THIRD Fleet that remained in position to protect Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, Denobula etc whilst SECOND, FIFTH, and NINTH Fleets moved to retake DS9 during "Operation Return" It's almost certain that Enterprise participated in destroying the Breen attack fleet that attacked Starfleet HQ in early 2375

Frankly, the Enterprise E was sidelined most of the time with repairs.. Starfleet had to undo the damage and partial assimilation by the Borg and loss of the main deflector dish. Later, after the battle with the Son’A, it was damaged, lost its Warp Core, and probably burned out the engines that weren’t built for Briar Patch operations. And of course after the war, it was severely damaged in a battle against the Scimitar, losing half its saucer section.

The absence of the Enterprise from the war makes sense (except maybe during critical all-or-nothing battles) considering that dozens of vessels had to be diverted away from their regular duties to fight the Dominion. A war might be going on, but in the meantime the Federation still exists and has other issues that can't just be forgotten. A lot of slack needs picking up, and an ultra-advanced flagship with a near-legendary crew goes a long way towards doing that.

I like the idea that the EntE was the peacekeeper, either for diplomatic reasons, to prevent other species from joining the Dominion, or to keep others in line given the instability the Dominion war was causing.

I think that the big E suffered the same fate as the Yamato during WW2. While they were the pride of the fleet, they were too precious to waste on front line battles where they'd be a morale target. I assume after the battle of sector 001, she was kept near Earth as a "big stick" to defend the planet, though in truth the fleet was afraid to lose the ship. She'd be sent on the occassional "show of force" tour or used for diplomatic purposes, but deliberately kept out of the thick of combat on the front lines.

Along with the galaxy x class, the lack of sovereign class ships in the dominion war was a missed opportunity. They could have at least mentioned the enterprise in battle reports.

Here's my explanation: Bajor was near the edge of Federation-explored space, so while most of the fleet was sent to Bajoran and Cardassian territory to deal with the Dominion War, _someone_ had to patrol the other side of Federation space, which was weeks away at high warp. It made perfect sense for the flagship to patrol the "safe" half of Federation space while it underwent its shakedown, while the ships that were already combat-ready handled the Dominion War. Not to mention, if the Dominion had managed to destroy the Enterprise-E, it would've been a huge PR victory for them and an equally huge PR defeat for the Federation. So there are multiple reasons why it was too risky for the Enterprise-E to get involved with the Dominion War without several years of dependable service under its belt already.

I would also like to add: it was my understanding that both the Intrepid and Sovereign class vessels had maximum warp "cruising" speeds that exceeded a majority of the fleet. As such, those vessels were used in roles that didn't "slow them down" so that other ships could keep pace. Whether that was diplomacy, scouting, or even on occasion some skirmishing.

Two of the Star Trek: Dominion War series of books deals with the Enterprise-E's activities. Book 1 is Behind Enemy Lines and Book 3 is Tunnel Through the Stars. The crew of the Enterprise-E has to prevent the creation of an artificial wormhole by the Dominion.

This policy is similar to what happened during WW1 here: the major ocean liners were not used on the field of battle, but were given "auxiliary" duties such as neutral hospital ships (though they did later on become troop transports). The reasoning was the same: they were too valuable and important to be risked to a U-Boat or mine. The LUSITANIA was kept on the route through the danger zone, and we all know what happened to her. A MAURETANIA, AQUITANIA or OLYMPIC was too valuable an asset to risk, and it was avoided to put them in harms way if possible.

I think we sorta get an answer in, of all things, Discovery season 2. In the 2256 Klingon War, the Admiral Cornwall tells Pike that Federation sent the original Enterprise into deep space as a continuity-of-civilization plan. The Enterprise was kept in deep space to continue her scientific mission, and if the Federation fell, it was to start a new one. I suspect that something somewhat similar happened here.

I just always assumed the Enterprise was running their own vital war missions at the time but we never got to see the scenes where the DS-9 crew mentioned them. I can't believe they would have intentionally kept them out of the fight.

I actually noticed in the last season of DS9 they do mention the Sona a fair few times. I think that films released before ds9 ended but based after the war.

So a simple answer is that any ship commanded by Picard was for diplomacy, not battle, and while he would engage from time to time it was his battle-savvy crew that won the day. Picard while respected is not relied upon as a wartime captain.

One thing not specifically mentioned in the video that I think contributed to this, was that star fleet saw the sovereign class as kind of a “one ship fleet”. It was powerful enough to hold its own and could carry out various missions in federation space without the need of an escort, allowing star fleet to divert more resources to the front lines.

I really enjoyed the Battle of Betazed book, it added a lot of interesting detail to the Betazoids and the Dominion War

It also makes sense to use one of the fastest (and most well armed) ships in the fleet as a patrol ship/first responder to cover for several posts left vulnerable to opportunist attackers with the majority of the fleet called to the front lines. The Sovereign class is a well rounded powerhouse on its own, but most of its advantages aren't as useful in a large scale battle. It can do more when working on its own to quell smaller conflicts. And then there's the mental state of Picard. While he was still capable of regular duty, the years had clearly taken their toll on him. His irrational behavior during First Contact when faced with the Borg again would have reached the ears of the admiralty, even if just by way of crew member reports. Sending him into a similar situation with the Cardassians (due to his trauma from the imprisonment and torture) may have been too much of a risk for them - but it's not something to revoke a person's command over just to have a specific ship in the battle.

If you're going non-canon, there are books that talk about the Enterprise being involved in numerous skirmishes at the beginning of the Dominion War. As well as Captain Picard going undercover with Ro Laren to destroy an artificial wormhole the Dominion was trying to create.

Insurrection implies that the Enterprise was on diplomatic duty during the war, which honestly makes sense to me as someone would have had to do it and it plays to Picard's particular strengths as a captain. Between the two, Riker has always been depicted as more of the combat officer.

The Sovereign class, like the Defiant, was built specifically to fight Borg cubes. It would make sense that the Federation wouldn't leave itself vulnerable to another Borg rush to Sector 001 by sending its Sovereign battleships to fight the Dominion. The Sovereign class was state of the art at the time, and given its size and complexity, it makes sense they were few in number, and thus kept in reserve, Enterprise-E included. But, in all reality, the real reason why the Enterprise didn't show up in DS9 was because as soon as Picard & crew would show up, Picard would have pulled all the strings and taken command of the whole thing like he did against the Cube in First Contact, leaving the DS9 cast as sidekicks in their own show. Sisko may be a badass and all that, but he has nowhere near the respect and influence that Picard had at the time.

It's criminal that they didn't do a 2 part episode on DS9 that had a crossover with the TNG crew and Enterprise during season 6 or 7 of DS9. I think many of us were sincerely hoping for that!

9:30 "Another Enterprise" is a phrase I can't hear without thinking of the season 1 finale of Lower Decks when the Titan arrives to save the day.

I have this headcanon that Insurrection took place shortly after the war. This would explain the relaxed attitude of the Enterprise crew towards the Dominion. There is the "Word agrument". It was said that he would return to DS9 after the end of the Briar Patch mission. But at the end of DS9 he left for Q'onos to become ambassador. However this either never came to be (in Nemesis he serving under Picard again) or he just didn't immediately left for Q'onos.

Excellent premise Rick, I'm super excited to see this one

Thanks for this video - very much appreciated!

Thank you for this. I've always wondered about the exploits of the Enterprise during that time.

So the Enterprise was kept away from the Dominion because it was so new it wasn't fully paid off yet?

It never made much sense to me that Starfleet would seek out races like the Evora during the Dominion War. Why waste valuable time, resources (and the flagship!) on vowing to protect a race with next to 0 strategic importance? You're having trouble enough not losing the actual Federation to the enemy. Win the war, then expand again...

You mentioned that Insurrection takes place before the Battle of Sol, but the dialogue in Insurrection contradicts that. "The diplomatic corps is busy with Dominion Negotiations", which presumably occur *after* the war was over, since the dominion was not negotiating much of anything in 2375 until after the end of the war.

Great presentation chaps.

The explaination that always made the most sense to me was that eh Federation wanted to pretend that it still cared about it's morals and values, and Picard Tacitly understood this and so accepted peaceful internal missions, and federation high command explicito understood this and kept it out of the fighting. That way it all looked good on paper. Effectively it was a political move more than tactical.

Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) passed away. 89 years old. May she rest in peace.

No the real reason is not that DS9 didn't want to add the Enterprise to its own story, it had nothing to do with the Enterprise at all. The reason we didn't see the Sovereign class take part in the Dominion war as because the Viacom split had occurred at the time (the event that started the irreparable damage to Star Trek) and the rights to DS9 were owned by CBS, the rights to the Sovereign class were owned by Paramount, and Paramount knocking its own TNG movies out at the time wanted exclusivity on the Sovereign which was their poster child for the movies. It was simply a rights issue.

This was a really good video! I was really invested! 😁

Solid content, thxs!

Excellent video sir, thank you very much! I’ve been quite curious about where the other series’ ships/stations were and what their duties comprised of during the large conflicts/events throughout other shows, like you did here for the Dominion War for example. I always wondered what was going on with the Federation while Voyager was on it’s long voyage home too.

An excellent video. Thank you.

I might be misremembering, but I'm fairly certain Star Trek Online confirms that the Enterprise is one of the ships which broke the Breen invasion of Earth during the Dominion War. During the mission "Vorgon Conclusions," where you travel back in time to that invasion, you can read news reports about how the battle is going, and I think it's on one of them that the Enterprise is mentioned specifically.

Awesome essay. Thank you, Rick.

For my understanding it is a HUGE disgrace that the BIG E was kept away from frontline combat! The Sovereign was designed to kick arse! And not using it was just a waste of potential!

I was halfway to mentioning Pike's ship in Discovery, but I see you already have it covered. It's interesting to see the parallels to the situations, and their responses.

Good job putting together this video. 👍🧡🔥

I read the book on the battle for Betazed so many times as a kid. Those stories would've made for a great anthology spinoff, although these days it should probably be animated since the actors are so much older now.

As tough as the Dominion war was on the Federation, I'd think they'd make use of every available starship at their disposal. The thought of the Enterprise sitting out the war and being kept out of harms way for morale is a bit absurd imo. As powerful as the Sovereign class was, I'd think the EntE would take part in numerous important battles regardless.

Thank you!

Damn, of course you're just telling us what the official materials are saying, but it's a bit of a bummer that all the extended universe fiction has to tie things together so 'neatly' with having to make everything a reference to some other canon lore. My issue here is that it really makes no sense that the Dominion space station orbiting Betazed would get a Cardassian name. Like, sure, Cardassia was an ally of the Dominion, but it the show made it extremely clear that it was not an alliance built on trust or respect, just a means for the Dominion to divide and conquer the Alpha Quadrant, they would help Cardassia play out their little war against Bajor, but did not actually want Cardassia to be a significant power. It really just sounds like the writer of that story loved the Terok Nor and Empok Nor station names so much that they had to go with the same naming convention for the Dominion station even though it really made no lore sense (unless it was thoroughly explained in the story, which I admit I haven't read).

🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and very well informatively explained and executed in every way shape and form and every detail possibly provided indeed👌.

Given some of the lines that are given in DS9, it'd actually be hard to have the Enterprise not involved in the Dominion War. For, while they never get into specifics in DS9, they do mention that the Federation takes heavy losses throughout the Dominion War episodes. And to a degree, a lot of this plays out when they had an episode that shows the actual battles. You end up seeing several Miranda class ships get wrecked, along with an Excelsior, and so on. And in battles that were supposed to be particularly rough, even a Galaxy class ship gets damaged, at least. So, with these kinds of losses, it'd be unlikely that the Federation would really be able to keep ships and crews out of the fight for long. Particularly when noting in the episode that brings the Romulans in that it is mentioned that the Federation was taking losses at a rate that they might not be able to win if the fight kept going. And early in the Dominion War, while they are often rather vague about a lot of the specifics regarding Dominion moves, there are lines that indicate that Dominon had pushed DEEP into the Federation to a point where they were rather close to Vulcan by the time that "Operation Return" was launched. So, not only was the Federation taking heavy losses, but a Federation founder world was at least threatened, which would mean that the Federation had lost a LOT of territory early in the war. And while the Federation may have had a large "mothball fleet" that could be reactivated for something like the Dominion War, the loss of so much territory would likely mean that much of those ships in storage (seen in TNG) were destroyed by the Dominon as they passed them. The result... is that I'd actually find it probable that the Enterprise would have HAD to have been involved in the conflict in some ways. Perhaps on more minor fronts, but it couldn't avoid the fighting, given the scale and everything else that is mentioned.

Tails of the Dominion War changed how I viewed "Trek Warfare" - I read that book long before I had access to Memory Alpha, and the internet in general and it answered a ton of "questions" - and it was quite sad if you know what happened to Mr Homn. Still - reading about the Enterprise E leading the charge in the defense of Earth just picturing in my mind what that would look like - Starbase One and its space doors blasting open to reveal the makeshift avengers of Starfleet - BOOM! Now THAT would be amazing to see! If anyone on here enjoying the always epic content from C I and you have not read the book - please do so! ;)

Very cool video.

On the one hand, I don't think the Dominion would particularly recognize the Enterprise's fame and specifically target her over the rest of Fleet. The Cardassians, on the other hand, might.

There is precdnce for this in Real world history too the USS Iowa and the IJN Yamato never fought each other as both were keep away from serous combat as they both meant more to their respective navies alive and safe then in Combat and maybe dead. Still odd in Star trek though that you don't see soverens fighting in the dominon war at all dispite the fact the Iowas did fight in WW2 just not the name sake.

The Enterprise-E Was A Rechristen Because That Particular Ship Was Initially Named Something Else

The Sovereign class is the most beautiful Trek ship ever. I've loved it ever since that first scene of First Contact.

1:07 I really like the deisng of THAT Sovereign, with the blue deflector dish, though I also have to giggle a little that the glow on the hull is yellow rather then coresponding blue, and I like the hull colouring too. I actually wonder where the prototype itself, the Sovereign was during the Dominion War, maybe staying close to Earth or undergoing more upgrades with developing technologies - and of course refitting with more phaser arrays and torpedo launchers. 4:12 I have yet to see a ship in STO with the name Please Shoot Me - I might have to do one just for a laugh. don't know what the registry will be though

I felt like Discovery Season 2s explanation retroactively helped me understand this

Starfleet: If we're going to beat the Dominion we need commanders with skill and experience in space combat Enterprise crew: We volunteer Starfleet: You just lost the Federation flagship in a battle with an outdated bird of prey, Riker: But they found a way to match our shield frequency Starfleet: What kind of security protocol allows a camera on a visor into engineering!? and WHY didn't you remodulate your shields!? Riker: ummmmmm Starfleet: GET OUTA MY OFFICE!!!!

In theory The Sovereign Class was the best of the best and The Federation wanted to keep that under wraps, so they dispatched older ships to deal with The Dominion! Why blow your load all in 1 go? Just grind down your enemies with older equipment then bring on the good stuff later on.

The galaxy class held the lines instead which was a joy to see them in battle..

Nice breakdown, definitely a better use of the Enterprise than as a tank in battle.

It does sort of make sense given the Enterprise crew's track record: They are galactic-class 'problem solvers' and given a powerful ship can often do the work of many vessels and a whole mission by themselves, solving crises and incidents alone and handling dangerous but not front line situations themselves. Having a *very* powerful ship solving issues behind the lines with an ace crew who are very experienced is a great way to take the strain off of logistics while also keeping them safe. The criticisms about Riker and Data are valid to be honest, though. In reality they likely *would* have been ordered to take commands. I can *maybe* see this not happening if Starfleet views the crew of Enterprise as a whole as being too 'legendary' to risk their individual lives- by this point both Riker and Data likely have very significant notoriety. There is also some argument to be made that if they are going to hold Enterprise back but still want it to be useful that they may want her to have her absolute most capable crew since there is less chance of backup during the war when they are problem solving. I think if you combine all these reasons it's just enough justification for it to make sense to Starfleet in cannon. If this is the case though I would expect Enterprise to be operating *just behind* the front lines solving actual real crises and taking on some significant level of risk, as well as being sent solo well behind friendly lines to solve serious issues within the Federation when needed. Despite being the flagship if they're going to keep everyone together they do *need* to get significant value out of them, as it *was* a full scale war, so I do hope we get some cannon expansion of the lore stating as such

It feels like the Enterprise was prevented from living up to her name. That is a tragedy.

i love that description of the enterprise "especially if it already has a name of please shot me"

I really wish we coulda seen the Ent-E kicking ass a lot more on screen, or even just pottering around and looking at spatial anomalies, honestly. It's a real shame we didn't!

Voyager didn’t skip over the war per se, it was referenced in a Starfleet communique but because no one knew anything about it, it was only mentioned this one time.

Niiice great QUESTION.Watching....👍🏾

04:10 this made me just die laughing because it caught me off guard and then made me imagine a ship with that name just flying into the fight.

8:12 In Star Trek Online it was at Earth, Organizing and leading the Counterattack. Mission "Vorgon Conclusions". Not the same details as what the Comic had, but mentioned.

I wonder how long the E went without its core after its ejections in the Briar Patch. Does the fleet just have extra Sovereign cores in reserve and special speedy craft to ship them across the quadrant? Impulse power wouldn't get the E anywhere to rendezvous. Did it get a warp-tugboat to drag it to a shipyard?

The Dominion war was also a turning point in how battles were fought - the USS Odyssey was sent in with escorts - and it was quickly realised that this much larger vessel had enough firepower and shielding to deal with a considerable number of attacking vessels, regardless of where they came from. So, instead of just firing, ships were directed to ram the larger vessel. The shields on the Odyssey were quickly depleted, and it was destroyed soon after. This gave the Dominion a lot of information on how to deal with larger starships - the Federation shields are not designed to stop vessels intent on ramming - or at least, not for very long. Granted, no shields would hold out against such tactics forever, but it was something that the Federation hadn't expected. Whilst the Enterprise 'E' had a lot more firepower and much heavier shielding - the Dominion would have just directed more ships to ram, and keep it up - and that would have given them even more information on how to deal with this new threat.

"I've been Rick..." Hell yeah you have 🤘

Answers the question I didnt know I had

USS Enterprise and USS Soverign were also engaged in another skirmish as shown in Star Trek Bridge Commander.

I seem to recall that when Worf first came to DS9 the Enterprise had been destroyed when it crashed into Veridian in the movies Star Trek Generations.

In high school I recall them going on a lot of undercover missions during the dominion war. Where the E would always wipe the floor with the ships at the end despite not being finished

This was a fun episode. It would be cool to see the fight against the Breen over Earth on the screen one day. Thank you very much for this thoughtful video. It makes a lot of sense. Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you, friends. ✝️ :)

In my head cannon, the Enterprise was assigned to the 10th fleet and was part of the training exercises when Betazed was taken and integral in taking back the planet is season long arc.

3:00 always hated the whole flagship of the federation thing. There is no reason to ever do that, why make every other ship in the fleet feel smaller? Flagship is an admiral's ship leading a fleet not a random ship that 'is better than the rest because reasons'. It's nonsense for the exact reason you list for not having it in a battle. In fact if a flagship is damaged an admiral can 'transfer his flag' to another ship that becomes the flagship. Was done on both sides in the war of the Pacific in ww2.

How about the fact that the Borg caused it major damage in First Contact and it took time to repair the ship.

A name that practically says "kill me." That was pretty good. I think a problem with DS9 and the movie series at the time was that, the producers didn't want the Enterprise to overshadow DS9, however it would have been fun to have a call out like they would do in Voyager, and was pretty clear in that show the Enterprise did hang around Earth for a while after the war, meaning it was probably assigned to a defensive fleet for some time. Nemesis even hints that this is pretty much the first time the ship leaves on a non-combat mission after the war. But I do believe that the death of Judzia should have been integrated more into Insurrection which I think takes place around that same time...I think. That would have been enough of a shout out for both series. Trek needed a central head like the MCU to manage all their stories. Had they had them, I think they could have found all sorts of ways to include the ship, even if in name only.

Most People didn’t know Picard and his crew face the Gorn in that time.

Good sensible argument.

It was the Command ship of the 1st fleet that protected Earth in the later stages of the war and was present during the Breen attack on Earth.

Very good question

The simplest explanation is that the Enterprise was heavily engaged but just not mentioned in the show.

That would a good picard ep. him thinking about dominion war and he goes back to when he had to led fresh cadets into to stop the attack. that would give a nice since of present.

Interesting content about the Big E's involvement against the Breen thanks for sharing! I am curious how she fought against the Breen's Energy Disruptors that disable the vessel? We saw what happens to the USS Defiant and others so in my head the Enterprise was very lucky to have been away from the front lines, otherwise she would have been destroyed. A devastating lost to the Federation if that were to happen from resources, experienced crew, and fame as Rick stated in the video. GL HF Thanks again! :D

Thanks RIck!

0:17 even voyager got word of it and had it mentioned!

Considering TNG was supposed to spin off into a straight Movie franchise I feel the Battle of Betazed would have been a proper TNG movie and a missed opportunity on Paramount's part. If it were released at the proper time, it could have been a naturally flowing plot, and an amazing addition to the Star Trek universe. A whole movie dealing with the Gorn would have been cool too, but in the late 90's and even the early 2000's probably a bridge too far in terms of CGI needed for a full feature movie. That would have been right up there with Borg and First Contact. Way better than what they came up with for Insurrection IMO.

How good can it be for the morale to keep one of the strongest ships in the fleets out of battle while other ship crews die and federation loses important worlds? Diplomatic missions can also be done by an old Nebula or Oberth class if needed but weapons are needed in battle.

Could you imagine....The Dominion won the war. The Alpha Quadrant under Dominion control and then Voyager makes it way home!

NX enterprise was at the core of initial Klingon, xindi, and some romulan conflicts, and even Vulcan vs. andorian. But at that time united earth was still figuring out it's place. Once the federation was founded a lot of the United earth history was lost including what happened with NX enterprise. It might've seen or even been destroyed in the romulan war, but either way it was obselete once the federation members contributed to new ship designs. The original enterprise stayed out of the first kdf war, but in kirks time it was at times a frontline ship against the Klingons, to the point where it built a name. Because of this title of intimidation, it made sense for Kirk to be placed at the center of negotiations after praxis (the initial peace agreement was something entirely different from what happened- in undiscovered country you can piece together that the Klingons had to change but the federation wanted to assimilate them, it ended up being a more cooperative peace and the Klingons we're not assimilated into the federation). 1701 was destroyed as a result of kdf combat, and A was decommissioned. Despite the peaceful times, 1701 B proved to not be a notable enterprise and crew. Probably really just focused on diplomacy, never really gone off to do any major exploration or really live the name "enterprise". If you want to see starfleet breaucracy in action then just look at the 1701 B era. This ship might've seen the start of the cardassian wars? 1701 C probably had the hardest. I'm not exactly sure if the canon, but if I were to guess it was the shortest lived enterprise, but one of the most important, because of it's defence of a Klingon outpost against romulans. The question is what did it do prior? I think it was put into the cardassian conflict almost immediately, then taken out after the conflict has gone too out of control. The ship was probably put into service prematurely too, just to get rid of 1701 B- the galaxy class would come out shortly after and make the ambassador look like an obselete prototype. 1701 D was the pinnacle of starfleet ship design, research, and overall fleet vision for the 24th century. There were some romulan skirmishes and minor wars, but in general this ship was kept out of the cardassian and maqui conflicts, and the dominion intimidation game that starfleet attempted on initial contact, and with good reason too, because the vessel wasnt meant to fight border disputes and exert starfleet power over a region, and also sticking out starfleet biggest gun accomplished nothing prior to the 2360s-70s kdf war. The ship was destroyed in part to the buildup of conflict between starfleet and the Klingons that led to war, but the duras family was acting more independent, where the war was a direct action by the kdf. 1701 E obviously is discussed in this video. One thing to note it is primarily an anti borg ship, so it wouldn't exactly do as good against smaller ships, which is the reason starfleet also developed the defiant class prior. Had starfleet not demilitarized after the kithomer accords then starfleet would've had a proper defence fleet, rather than obselete excelsiors and Miranda workhorses for the dominion war. Ship repairs pretty much halted production of the defiant and sovereign class, although at least two more defiant classes were put into service before the end of the war. But after the war 1701 E was at the center of the Hobus disaster relief, of course leading to Picard's resignation after the relief efforts backlashed. The backlash of the romulans led the federation to ramp up it's defence fleet manufacturing (with it's copy paste ships lol) as a sign of strength against romulans (and to an extent to keep cardassians and breen at bay) which surprisingly proved useful when the romulans turned to extremism and ended up building up their fleet to counter AI and sabotage utopia planetia rather than reinforce their citizens post-hobus and post-reman uprising. According to STO lore at this time Data was put in command of 1701 E (of course with PIC this isn't true anymore, so maybe Geordi or Crusher became captain, or some notable captain from the dominion war), and leading up to 2400s are a series of tensions between starfleet and Klingons, leading to the Klingons expanding their empire against the kithomer accords, and later war. This was when jmpok became chancellor after some dishonorable agreements with martok, but had martok and word remained where they were then tensions might never have broken. Anyways 1701 E was pivotal at keeping peace alive for as long as it did before jmpok formally declared war, but the ship was MIA after engaging with an unknown species, later to be found as species 8472 from the Delta quadrant, given the name Undine by the federation. In 2409 1701 F was launched in the light of the 2800, where the dominion that disappeared in the wormhole in the war reappeared and retook DS9 for some time. After the ship and captain shon we're pivotal in starfleets focus on the romulan republic, who in turn sought to establish themselves as an independent power, and to reunite the federation and Klingons. Though peace wouldn't come until the Undine conflict reached it's height, threatening earth and Kronos, coinciding with the romulan republic pushing for cooperation in using the gateway in their territory for new opportunities in the Delta quadrant. This came just in time when the iconians launched their initial attacks on the alliance in the iconian war. Although the Odyssey class was well established in starfleet by then, the majority of the ships including 1701 F saw frontline action and were heavily damaged or destroyed. 1701 F specifically was refitted into the Yorktown class and reintroduced at the end of the dominion-hurq conflict. The ship and captain now engage in scientific exploration and some diplomacy, and occasionally will see a role in whatever STO mission is active. 1701 J is known for its role in the war with the sphere builders, directly taking a role in the temporal cold war. Starfleet at this time is not very known, but it's likely influenced by the temporal division, and maybe even section 31, to orchestrate the temporal cold war. And some enterprise revision later (maybe 1701 M or something) gets obliterated in the burn, after which some of the federation records are lost, and the name "enterprise" holds an unknown status in starfleet.

I can’t remember exactly which Season of DS9 but I think it was Season 6 When Sisco returned to Earth and learned about the conspiracy of his Admiral putting heavy duty phasers and torpedos on the Excelsior and the female commander in charge to stop the Defiant from coming to Earth to put an end of a debate to putting Defiant weapons on the rest of the Star Ships. It was during this episode that I found very frustrating that we could’ve got some kind of cameo from Picard talking to one of the higher up Admirals in person or on the monitor or the frustration the senior commanders were having about losing Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. We really should’ve seen something like that to at least see the connection or have a cameo of Data or Riker meeting with Star Fleet about orders and showing their disagreements to enter the war effort and having Star Fleet tell them that they have their orders. It really would’ve been nice to have at least one episode with something like that and we already have six other seasons with almost nothing about TNG or Voyager, everybody likes to see old characters from another show in a new show. It mixes things up in a good way and makes you realize that these shows really are inter-connected. I totally get it, the creators wanted to keep everything about the DS9 characters but towards the end of season 6 and 7 I was really getting tired of hearing about Quark and his brother and their mom and the Grand Master. The Mirror universe was another faucet that was over used throughout the show. I was satisfied with “Cross Over” and “Through the Looking Glass” The rest of the following episodes of the mirror universe got ridiculous. The Ferrengee episodes were fine in season 4 and 5 but after a while it was getting old, really old and just dumb. It really should’ve focused more on the Dominion War and the star ship battles, that was cool. The dog fights were just awesome and military parts, undercover and going into the enemy lines was great. I tip my hat off for that.