Let's talk about the USS Yeager!
I was recently in Japan, where I found the Eaglemoss model of the "Frankenstein Fleet" USS Yeager on a peg in the back of a used stuff store (ye gods, I love bargain hunting in this country). I bought the model, though it didn't come with the book or box, and started delving into this oft-chastised offspring of two store-bought ship models used as a background ship on DS9. Strangely, I quite like the silhouette this ship cuts when flying it around my office, in spite of the insanity of meshing two models together with some pretty different scales.
I was surprised to learn that despite its thrown-together origins, it was seen quite frequently outside DS9, appearing in over twenty episodes as recycled footage of a couple station shots. This makes it one of the most commonly-seen allied ships in the show after the station itself, the Defiant and assorted runabouts. Some have even ventured to say that it was permanently assigned to the station as a picket ship or monitor, adding extra oomph to the defences should DS9 ever come under attack again - which it wasn't, so maybe the assignment worked.
[ A "picket ship" is historically a smaller boat used for patrol around harbors or naval bases, used to signal the alarm in case of attack and then to offer support or rescue services for the big ships in a conflict. Alternatively, a "radar picket " describes a ship or plane that mounts sensors to extend detection range around a fleet or instalation. A monitor meanwhile was used as a small ship carrying bigger guns than would normally mounted on a craft her size, used for mobile picket defence or for shore bombardment. Interestingly, 20th century monitors had a tendency to be cobbled together ships using turrets from larger warships, which is in part an apt description for the Yeager. ]
I'm inclined to accept this sort of reasoning, really - the Yeager was never seen in any fleet shots, though apparently the name and number showed her as part of the fleet that took the station back from the Dominion in Operation Return. She was first seen three times late in the fifth season, but was absent when the station was lost to the Dominion in the first place - possibly off on maneuvers that resulted in the destruction of some shipyards as noted in "A Call To Arms". But since then, she was seen in almost half of the remaining episodes of the show! Arguably, those particular clips were seen more often than other stock footage of the station with the Defiant docked or orbiting, meaning that the Yeager was seen more often than the DS9's "known" assigned ships.
She was notably absent in the final, ten-episode arc of the series, though she did appear in a Borg-related comic set a few years after. Really quite an interesting service record, assuming it wasn't multiple ships of the same class (which is just as acceptable as any other theory, given the repurposing of footage for multiple named ships over the course of the franchise).
Mark
I was recently in Japan, where I found the Eaglemoss model of the "Frankenstein Fleet" USS Yeager on a peg in the back of a used stuff store (ye gods, I love bargain hunting in this country). I bought the model, though it didn't come with the book or box, and started delving into this oft-chastised offspring of two store-bought ship models used as a background ship on DS9. Strangely, I quite like the silhouette this ship cuts when flying it around my office, in spite of the insanity of meshing two models together with some pretty different scales.
I was surprised to learn that despite its thrown-together origins, it was seen quite frequently outside DS9, appearing in over twenty episodes as recycled footage of a couple station shots. This makes it one of the most commonly-seen allied ships in the show after the station itself, the Defiant and assorted runabouts. Some have even ventured to say that it was permanently assigned to the station as a picket ship or monitor, adding extra oomph to the defences should DS9 ever come under attack again - which it wasn't, so maybe the assignment worked.
[ A "picket ship" is historically a smaller boat used for patrol around harbors or naval bases, used to signal the alarm in case of attack and then to offer support or rescue services for the big ships in a conflict. Alternatively, a "radar picket " describes a ship or plane that mounts sensors to extend detection range around a fleet or instalation. A monitor meanwhile was used as a small ship carrying bigger guns than would normally mounted on a craft her size, used for mobile picket defence or for shore bombardment. Interestingly, 20th century monitors had a tendency to be cobbled together ships using turrets from larger warships, which is in part an apt description for the Yeager. ]
I'm inclined to accept this sort of reasoning, really - the Yeager was never seen in any fleet shots, though apparently the name and number showed her as part of the fleet that took the station back from the Dominion in Operation Return. She was first seen three times late in the fifth season, but was absent when the station was lost to the Dominion in the first place - possibly off on maneuvers that resulted in the destruction of some shipyards as noted in "A Call To Arms". But since then, she was seen in almost half of the remaining episodes of the show! Arguably, those particular clips were seen more often than other stock footage of the station with the Defiant docked or orbiting, meaning that the Yeager was seen more often than the DS9's "known" assigned ships.
She was notably absent in the final, ten-episode arc of the series, though she did appear in a Borg-related comic set a few years after. Really quite an interesting service record, assuming it wasn't multiple ships of the same class (which is just as acceptable as any other theory, given the repurposing of footage for multiple named ships over the course of the franchise).
Mark
