Talk:Runabout (Star Trek)

By Inferno's Light
I've just watched 'By Inferno's Light' from DS9's 5th season. Its the one where the Dominion have come through the wormhole and changeling Bashir dies. Anyway, I noticed something odd about the runabouts in that episode. As the runabouts are lauched ready for battle the second time, O'Brien's comm voice can be heard saying the names of the runabouts; Rio Grande, Volga and Yukon. That makes three, but Worf and Garak still had one in Gamma Quadrant (presumably the Rubicon), so that makes four. Since when did DS9 have more than three runabouts?

Also in this episode, when the runabouts are launched for the first time (just before Dukat joins the Dominion fleet), only two are shown joining the fleet (as it should be with one in the Gamma Quadrant). One of these two has a rollbar pod, however none of the three named runabouts were ever shown with rollbars, so is this a fifth runabout, in addition to Rio Grande, Volga, Yukon and Rubicon? And where was the other runabout(s) then? I presume that this rollbar runabout would be the one eventually destroyed at Empok Nor later in the series.

Early in the series, there were three runabouts assigned to DS9. By season three, there had been several losses and additions, but the number still remained at three. After the Meikong was lost in "By Inferno's Light", runnabouts began appearring and disappeared with regularity, and the total number of runabouts assigned to the station was never again clear. There's nothing wrong with that, DS9 was a busy place, and Starfleet assigned runabouts (perminantly or temporarily) accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.135.220.49 (talk) 00:59, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

"Runabouts assigned to Deep Space Nine are named for rivers on Earth because this was Captain Sisko's preference."

Umm.. unless he was in charge of naming the pathfinder vessel? Since it's named Danube, it makes sense that the ships are named after rivers. I don't see any evidence that this was Sisko's idea. Can you justify? --Golbez 05:15, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
 * When the Rubicon was first delivered to DS9, it had been unamed until Sisko requested Chief O'Brien name the new ship Rubicon. While that suggests that Captain Sisko had some leeway in naming the vessels, it doesn't mean that he had a free hand in naming runabouts.  There still may have been naming conventions in place for the naming of runabouts.
 * JesseG 08:42, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Sisko, either wanted to follow and continue the trend of having river named Runabouts of his own choice because of the class name, or he was allowed to name them what he wanted as long as it was a river.

Changes
I made a couple changes to the article, such as adding a few sentences on the runabout that was destroyed by the Orion Syndicate in an attempt to keep Quark from testifying against the syndicate. Would anyone know the name and registry number of that ship?


 * I believe you mean the Runabout from "Ascent". If so, I think that in some shots of the crashed runabout you can see that the name has two sections (i.e. Rio Grande) and we know the Rio Grande was never lost. Also, although non-canon, the Fact Files mentions that the Rio Grande was the ship in question and was recovered by the Defiant. This would seem logical, as apart from being unable to fly, the runabout appeared intact and repairable given time. (This screencap from "Ascent" shows the crashed runabout, with a fairly clear name: [])

It seemed to me that after the introduction of the Defiant that runabouts weren't seen as much on Deep Space Nine anymore. Especially in later seasons, it seems as though runabouts had little on screen time when compared to earlier seasons of the series. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed this? JesseG 08:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge and redirect
I've started working on a merge-and-redirect to an amalgamated list of Starfleet starship classes; you can track the work in progress here. I've explained the rationale for a merge/redirect, and solicited responses to a few questions, on the Star Trek wikiproject talk page here; if you're at all interested, please take a moment to read and respond. --EEMIV (talk) 02:53, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

size.
in the episode Playing God, Dax says that one of these is 14 meter wide, which means it's 21m long and 6m wide, given the scale of the models. 72.243.192.113 (talk) 08:03, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Better image
The image we have now is very dark, and the ship indistinct. It'd be great it someone can get hold of a brighter, clearer image. --EEMIV (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)