I also have this problem when replacing a table with a view of the same name. It tries to create the view before dropping the table and fails with a ORA-00955 name is already used by an object error.
This can also happen when changing a stored proc to a function and vice versa.

I take it that sometimes we don't clear out the pre-existing object name before creating the new name that clashes.

It appears this sometimes works so the drop must have been ran first in that instance.