I've done an extensive write-up on Setlik III, as well as a look at Cardassian infiltration techniques (with the segue thanks to a Cardassian agent placed there).
I figured this group might find it interesting. It may be annoying to some, since the 2347 date for Setlik III is dispensed with.
I know I need to update it to include a comment on O'Brien's reference from "Rules of Engagement"[DS9-4] that he'd been in the fleet 22 years, but beyond that I think little if anything is missing.
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posted
Setlik III may have been a colony along the border that was reinforced by Starfleet (thus the outpost) as relations deteoriated between the two powers. THe massacre of 100 civillians seems to me as the first step in an invasion of the larger colony (no small "squad" of cardassians would have given the Rutledge's landing parties such troubles and O'Brien mentions being part of "a squad" denoting more than one), besides, even civillians could probably have put up some resistance against a squad of only 12 cardassians.
I'd speculate this: -Cardassians place a spy in the (now militarily fortified) colony. -Cardassians wait untill starfleet presence is very low (possibly via a distraction for the locally-patrolling USS Rutledge) to insert a commando squad to wipe out the outpost. (based on faulty cardassian intel, these guys would not have been taking prisoners or asking questions). -Someone in the colony gets off a distress message. -Rutledge returns as a second (larger) wave of forces land/invade the colony. -Rutledge engages/destroys whatever ship brought Cardassian invaders- outpost and civillians wiped out meanwhile. -Rutledge lands forces that engage Cardassian forces in bloody street to street battle. Obrien and "Stompy" included. -Some colonists hid/fled as the invasion began and survive but federation losses are shockingly high (or just the thought of such a massacre is unknown to the complacent Federation of the time).
This assumes that the cardassians wanted to wipe out the outpost rather than occupy the planet and that the incident was either the first act of outright war or led up to it but that the war had not started prior to this.
Sound right, Guardian?
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Good work, although controversial... I'll play the inconsistencies against the 2362 date and for the 2347 here, although the case certainly isn't watertight.
The "The Wounded" and "Emissary" references stress the "surprise" and "atrocity" nature of the attack, something that would hardly be applicable to an incident during a declared war. Indeed, the very fact that the Cardassian population (or at least the lot being trained for the Cardassian military, including Daro) was "told" about the incident suggests that it was a politically significant event, a status this "one-squad mission of sabotage" could not achieve during an ongoing war.
And surely the Cardassians must have attacked PLENTY of Federation outposts during the actual war - thus, Bashir's expression of disbelief must apply to attacks in peacetime, such as the one facing the station in "Emissary".
But then comes the confusion of the later episodes which describe a much larger-scale engagement which Starfleet apparently lost...
It would of course be convenient to assume there were two attacks on Setlik III, especially if the Cardassians considered it strategically interesting in the first place. One before the war in 2347, one during the war in 2362... The problem with that is that "Paradise" seems to describe an event that happened some 22 years ago, yet via the "Realm of Fear" connection, this is the one that involved POWs and Starfleet withdrawal.
The solution would be to handwave those 22 years away. Which is what you do, too! Let's get back to that later on...
Regarding the "Hero of Setlik III", perhaps O'Brien distinguished himself both at Setlik and at Barrica, two completely different places? Not very likely, but possible.
In any case, there is no reason to believe the "I don't remember how many I killed" thing would refer to Setlik III alone (or to either of the two possible engagements there): O'Brien fought in a bloody war, not just in that single engagement! He may have killed thousands if his hand pressed the trigger every time the Rutledge blew up Cardassian warships. He may have killed hundreds in surface combat on other planets. He may have gone hand to hand with dozens all across the war sectors.
In summation, my take on the timeline:
2347: In the middle of seeming peace, Cardassian militia stage a raid at Setlik III, an essentially undefended "civilian" world that could still plausibly be a staging post for a Starfleet offensive (heck, Organia could, too!). They kill a lot of people, until the Rutledge arrives and mops up by sending a squad to receive the assault of the militia. The squad and the starship easily deal with the militia, and O'Brien kills one Cardassian, his first. No UFP prisoners are taken, and O'Brien doesn't have to flee via transporter. The Cardassians do claim responsibility for the actions of their militia, but dismiss the incident as a minor if tragic mistake in their propaganda (internal propaganda at least - perhaps they tell the UFP a different version?). The Feds are satisfied enough with the "apology" that they don't start a war.
Late 2350s or early 2360s: The UFP is in heated war with the CU, one that was already ongoing in 2354 ("The Wounded" and Picard's "peace offering"). O'Brien is one of the (non-goldshirt - perhaps redshirt/redstripe like Burke from "Nor the Battle"?) grunts, having shown his mettle in the prewar incident. Cardassians still covet Setlik III, and send more than a regiment of troops there. O'Brien is in a position to lead a squad, and scores a minor victory at Barrica. He is then besieged, but saves half his squad via transporter, and becomes a goldshirt tactical officer (a temporary mustang?) for his crew-starved ship - but the other half of the squad is left behind, dead or captured. Boone is among the Rutledge casualties, too, although not necessarily from O'Brien's squad.
2362: Boone is released by the CU, perhaps because the war is already winding down towards a Federation victory, and the Cardassians want to make gestures. Or perhaps Boone is forcibly broken out when the world of his imprisonment is taken by Starfleet? Except that this isn't the real Boone any more... (Like all Cardassians and all POWs, he's missing a molar - and our heroes serendipitously mistake this as sign of a false identity, which leads them to dig up more concrete evidence.)
Just one problem with this one: the "Realm of Fear" suggestion of O'Brien working with transporters since the era of the first Setlik III engagement, not the second. But it's a handicap of your dating, too.
(Incidentally, the SCE novels feature a third battle of Setlik III, during the Dominion war. The implication is that controlling this dirtball is worth trying, and trying again!)
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Setlik III may have been a colony along the border that was reinforced by Starfleet (thus the outpost) as relations deteoriated between the two powers.
Possible, but it seems less likely given the descriptions. And besides, you'd generally not want to build your military targets right next to civilian ones when relations are deteriorating.
quote:THe massacre of 100 civillians seems to me as the first step in an invasion of the larger colony
I pondered the possibility of a larger Federation installation than just my theorized comm/sensor array with a few guys operating it. However, there is a limit to how many Starfleet personnel can be present.
The idea of additional colonial towns on the surface is a valid one. But none besides "the settlement" are mentioned, and of course we'd eventually reach the point where the Cardassians would've had to send an army.
quote:(no small "squad" of cardassians would have given the Rutledge's landing parties such troubles
Hence the presumption of a supporting regiment.
(I had to go look to make sure I left that in. I kept having to re-write the thing, mainly one big fat rewrite occurring after I realized that Boone's capture was known at the time, a fact I somehow missed in the first go-round.)
quote:and O'Brien mentions being part of "a squad" denoting more than one)
Possibly, though the context leaves that presumption inconclusive. I've tried to keep Occam as happy as possible.
quote:, besides, even civillians could probably have put up some resistance against a squad of only 12 cardassians.
Well, we don't know the precise definition of "squad" as used in the 24th Century, so pinning it to exactly 12 seems a bit unreasonable.
As for resistance, I'm sure there was some. However, I doubt that a well-equipped squad of battle-hardened Cardassian militia would've had much trouble against a handful of Starfleet guys and a bunch of civilians in the middle of the night.
quote:-Someone in the colony gets off a distress message.
Looks like I forgot to leave this idea in. I'll have to fix that.
quote:This assumes that the cardassians wanted to wipe out the outpost rather than occupy the planet
Well, we don't know what they were planning precisely. They thought that the planet was a staging area for an attack, so they could've merely planned to blow it up if it was too deep in Federation space, or hold it if it was close enough to their lines to allow for supplies.
quote:and that the incident was either the first act of outright war or led up to it but that the war had not started prior to this.
Sound right, Guardian? [/QB]
Actually, how I ended up doing Setlik III is convoluted. I started doing a big write-up on Pathways, which involved Chakotay's Maquis backstory, which turned into a huge research effort to pin down the dates of the Cardassian conflict, and so on and so forth until the detail of Setlik III popped up, resulting in a surprisingly-complicated project all its own.
(whew)
Anywho, from the look of things at this time, the Cardassian Conflict (since it was not a declared war according to Pathways) took place from 2358-2362, but there was plenty of Cardassian aggression and whatnot prior to 2358. I'm not gonna go into how I came to that date, because that's what the soon-to-appear pages are for.
Suffice it to say that this places Setlik III toward the end of the Cardassian Conflict, possibly after a truce of some sort to allow the "sneak".
I'm also working on a chronology of the peace, since various treaties and armistices (armestii?) and whatnot are mentioned.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Timo: The "The Wounded" and "Emissary" references stress the "surprise" and "atrocity" nature of the attack, something that would hardly be applicable to an incident during a declared war. Indeed, the very fact that the Cardassian population (or at least the lot being trained for the Cardassian military, including Daro) was "told" about the incident suggests that it was a politically significant event, a status this "one-squad mission of sabotage" could not achieve during an ongoing war.
Agreed, hence the "truce" theory just mentioned in my last post. This would also serve as an interesting irony . . . it would mean that Maxwell did to the Cardassians what the Cardassians did to Setlik.
The way I was originally pondering the issue, the surprise factor would've been in relation to distance . . . the attack was brutal, and against a small colony of civilians, and would've been either deep inside Federation territory, or well outside the disputed area. However, I left out such musings altogether in the 'final' version.
It seems possible from Daro's behavior and words that he was actually at Setlik, though I don't commonly like coincidences of that sort.
quote:And surely the Cardassians must have attacked PLENTY of Federation outposts during the actual war - thus, Bashir's expression of disbelief must apply to attacks in peacetime, such as the one facing the station in "Emissary".
Early-DS9-Bashir was an idiot, though. But yes, this would go along with the truce idea.
quote:But then comes the confusion of the later episodes which describe a much larger-scale engagement which Starfleet apparently lost...
A clear victor is hard to determine in regards to the Cardassian Conflict. The treaty (or treaties) seem to have been equally offensive to both sides . . . though again, I'll be returning to this in later pages.
Hence my notion of the Federation just fighting defensively. After all, they'd have also been dealing with the Talarians and the Tzenkethi around this same time.
quote:It would of course be convenient to assume there were two attacks on Setlik III, especially if the Cardassians considered it strategically interesting in the first place.
But (1) they wouldn't have mistakenly thought it was a staging area twice, and (2) this makes Occam itchy.
quote:One before the war in 2347, one during the war in 2362... The problem with that is that "Paradise" seems to describe an event that happened some 22 years ago, yet via the "Realm of Fear" connection, this is the one that involved POWs and Starfleet withdrawal.
The solution would be to handwave those 22 years away. Which is what you do, too!
Didn't see much choice in the matter. Paradise + Realm = 2347, but Tribunal + Paradise = 2362, and seemed stronger than Realm. If that makes sense.
quote:Regarding the "Hero of Setlik III", perhaps O'Brien distinguished himself both at Setlik and at Barrica, two completely different places? Not very likely, but possible.
Garak's goading seemed to suggest that the named encampment was on Setlik, though I suppose it's possible he just pulled some random other battle out of his butt. However, given his intense focus on Setlik throughout the ep, I'd say that Barrica being on another planet would have to be a leap.
quote:In any case, there is no reason to believe the "I don't remember how many I killed" thing would refer to Setlik III alone (or to either of the two possible engagements there): O'Brien fought in a bloody war, not just in that single engagement!
True, and O'Brien gives the "I don't know" in reference to the entire war in "Tribunal". However, the last quoted exchange between he and Garak in "Empok" seems to firmly refer to a specific situation . . . Setlik.
quote:In summation, my take on the timeline:
2347: In the middle of seeming peace, Cardassian militia stage a raid at Setlik III, an essentially undefended "civilian" world that could still plausibly be a staging post for a Starfleet offensive (heck, Organia could, too!).
The Cardassians were known as dangerous and unpredictable within a few years of this. By the mid-2340's, though, the Federation was patrolling the Cardassian border. Hence Captain Hiromi Sulu, Hikaru's grandson, who sponsored Chakotay's Academy bid.
quote:Late 2350s or early 2360s: The UFP is in heated war with the CU, one that was already ongoing in 2354 ("The Wounded" and Picard's "peace offering").
I thought that was just a "truce". In any case, 2354 doesn't work as a start of the war. But again, we're getting outside the scope of the Setlik III page.
quote:O'Brien is in a position to lead a squad, and scores a minor victory at Barrica. He is then besieged, but saves half his squad via transporter,
I tried to work a way for things to happen so that O'Brien's two dozen ended up as 13 beamers. But, that doesn't really work given the O'Brien=hero idea, plus other factors. For instance, if the regiment was attacking O'Brien's men who then had to beam themselves to the Rutledge, then what was the Rutledge doing during this time? Perhaps the comm was jammed, but if so then where was it being jammed from? The encampment that was destroyed? Then why did O'Brien have to lead his men to a field transporter? And what were they attacking an entire regiment for, anyway? And so on. Now you see what I went through.
quote:Just one problem with this one: the "Realm of Fear" suggestion of O'Brien working with transporters since the era of the first Setlik III engagement, not the second. But it's a handicap of your dating, too.
"Rules of Engagement" features O'Brien saying he'd been in the fleet 22 years, or since 2249. That also contradicts the Realm date.
In other words, the "Realm of Fear" statement stands alone, and everything else seems to contradict it.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: I take it that, in light of your usual attitude regarding Canon, you are not attempting to place Pathways in this category...
07.10.2003 How do the Star Trek novels and comic books fit into the Star Trek universe? What is considered Star Trek "canon"?
As a rule of thumb, the events that take place within the live action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, the Animated Adventures, and the various comic lines are not canon. There are only a couple of exceptions to this rule: the Jeri Taylor penned novels "Mosaic" and "Pathways." Many of the events in these two novels feature background details of the main Star Trek: Voyager characters. (Note: There are a few details from an episode of the Animated Adventures that have entered into the Star Trek canon. The episode "Yesteryear," written by D.C. Fontana, features some biographical background on Spock.)
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posted
I know that's "only" a year old, but I always thought that Mosaic and Pathways were struck of the canon list pretty much at the point where Taylor left. People have said that later Voyager episodes quite happily contradict stuff from those novels.
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Y'know, I kinda think that the O'Brien/Garak exchange in "Empok Nor" should be taken fairly lightly. When Garak describes O'Brien's actions, I think he's exaggerating. And when O'Brien claims not to know how many Cardassians he killed there, I think he's lying. If it was the first time he'd ever killed anyone (or anything, as he says), I'm sure he knows precisely how many people he killed that day. But, if you'd been in his situation in "Empok Nor", would you have felt inclined to respond to Garak with "well, it was about five, as I recall..."?
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: Y'know, I kinda think that the O'Brien/Garak exchange in "Empok Nor" should be taken fairly lightly. When Garak describes O'Brien's actions, I think he's exaggerating. And when O'Brien claims not to know how many Cardassians he killed there, I think he's lying.
I'd agree with that.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Garak's goading seemed to suggest that the named encampment was on Setlik, though I suppose it's possible he just pulled some random other battle out of his butt. However, given his intense focus on Setlik throughout the ep, I'd say that Barrica being on another planet would have to be a leap.
Barrica may have been on another entire continent from where the massacre took place though: with 24th century transporter and shuttle tech, even a small Federation colony could have been very spread out.
I still postulate that the Rutledge must have been engaged in combat or called away during the ground battles: a starship can easily pinpoint and remove aliens among a colony of humans.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: I know that's "only" a year old, but I always thought that Mosaic and Pathways were struck of the canon list pretty much at the point where Taylor left. People have said that later Voyager episodes quite happily contradict stuff from those novels.
Precisely. Plus, the people at startrek.com know nothing. That much is obvious from the great majority of the content there.
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And I still think Occam would be quite happy to slice this problem in two neat halves.
There's so much of this dichotomy that it just yells for separation:
"The Wounded" description of Setlik III:
-"sabotage", "incident" -a single militia squad -atrocities against civilians -Starfleet squad defends against advancing militia -no mention of Starfleet withdrawing -no mention of prisoners -no mention of lack of starship support -no mention of war
The other description of Setlik III:
-multiple regiments of troops -no mention of atrocities against civilians -Starfleet squad sallies against fortified troops -Starfleet squad makes nick-of-time escape -prisoners of war mentioned -implied lack of timely starship support -mention of battlefronts and war
The main problem still seems to be that the references to O'Brien's transporter magic plus the "Realm" statement would place the more warlike Setlik events at late 2340s, which is the very implication I want to do away with.
Once we ignore "Realm", though, everything should fall neatly in place. O'Brien is a grunt from the flee-from-cello-lessons-into-Starfleet beginning of his career (2347 or so) to the early sixties, where the war forces his "diversification" into things like transporters and tactical officer work. Once he gets out of the grunt work, he also distances himself from killing. Perhaps he even takes two years off Starfleet, explaining why he has only served for 22 years between 2347 and 2371. He then ends up doing "odd jobs" on the 1st season crew-starved E-D before settling down.
One thing I just can't gulp down is that O'Brien would kill his first baddie in 2362. He's supposed to be a "veteran" in more ways than one, his killing days far behind him. Placing those days in the fifties would be quite satisfactory in terms of character development.
(Incidentally, why's 2354 a bad year to start the Cardassian war? Sounds fine to me... Along with the vague DS9 TM concept that the late fifties were the most intense period of fighting.)
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posted
well, i'd think we'd be more safe saying that there were two phases to the Setlik military action, but they both occurred in the same year (rather than trying to conjecturally make two separate events out of what was intended to be one. Perhaps the initial raid, sabotage, massacre of civilians, then a protracted military confrontation (possibly after a civilian evacuation, a siege could have begun). This would satisfy the current state of the Chronology, but explain the differences in the description of the military action...
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Mabye the Cardassians had a settlement on the planet (on another continent) and when relations broke down, they wiped out their neighbors.
The "staging ground" was just a convient story from Central Command to inspire the troops.
That would mean that the cardassians held some portion of the planet even after the masacre and once the war began, were driven off by starfleet forces (thus a second set of battles later where O'Brien was forced into his "hero" role). Probably all in one very crappy year of fighting for Miles.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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