Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Danube-class Runabout

Early scripts for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine referred to the three runabouts docked at the station as "Runabout-class" vessels. However, this designation was never spoken on screen and Michael and Denise Okuda's 1994 first edition Star Trek Encyclopedia referred to them as "Danube-class" runabouts – a term which eventually found its way into the series during the fourth season episode "Hippocratic Oath".

Of course, the Danube-class designation refers to the second-longest river in Europe, the Danube River, and (just speculating here) possibly Johann Strauss' "The Blue Danube", famously used in 2001: A Space Odyssey and long a go-to source for Star Trek easter eggs.

Individual runabouts were also named for rivers, each given a "USS" prefix and unique "NCC" registry, indicating that runabouts are their own individual starships and not simply shuttlecraft attached to larger motherships. Named runabouts appearing in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine included the USS Gander, USS Ganges, USS Mekong, USS Orinoco, USS Rio Grande, USS Rubicon, USS Shenandoah, USS Volga, USS Yangtzee Kiang, and the USS Yukon.

While Star Trek's producers generally preferred not to use exclusively Earth-centric names and references (generally following the rule that if there are three proper names, two can be from Earth but one must be alien), each of these ships was named for a river found on Earth.

According to DS9 co-creator Michael Piller, the writers had hoped to name runabouts after alien rivers too, but found it difficult to incorporate these names into scripts without unnecessary tangents to explain where they came from.