The turncoat officer who stole numerous replicators bound for Cardassia. When the episode first aired, I accepted it as is.
But now that I was fortunate enough to win seasons 3 & 4 of DS9 for $120-some, and I've viewed much of them, the defection rings a bit hollow. First off, we didn't see Eddington that much - maybe eight episodes from both seasons. Given his speech to Sisko in "The Adversary", it seems to me that sometime in season IV he went "off track."
I wish the series had explored this a bit more - in season 3, he was the second highest ranking Starfleet officer on the station, after Sisko. Roll around season IV, and both Dax (a recently promoted officer) and Worf outrank him (even though Eddington was senior to both of them).
I guess what I'm saying is that Eddington's defection could have been foreshadowed so much better than it actually was. I'm dissapointed.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Yeah, that came out of left field. Eddington's defection was supposed to be shocking, but it just felt... unwarranted, because the story never explained *why* he was so taken by the Maquis' plight, or *why* he was so angry at the Federation.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
I agree that the character was one of the most interesting of all. The mysteries of his actions and motives are the reason. A complex Man. A study in personality and reasoning. Worthy of investigation.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I acn't agree. The most shocking betrayals are the ones with no foreshadowing. I sure was suprised when eddington hosed Kira with the Phaser!
He was a "mole" and the oppournity was so good to steal those Replicators that he decided to blow his cover (leading a double life must ahve been difficult as well).
Some mention of the hardships causd by the loss of the Replicators (in folow-up to the episode)would have been nice though.
Or mabye finding out exactly what the maquis did with two Industrial replicators!
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
The simple answer is that the producers never planned to do anything with him until someone had the brilliant idea of writting an episode in which he defected.
Don't get me wrong, I thought the twist was good and the continuing story line solid. But what I would love to see just once in a while in Trek is a little forethought. One of the better things Voyager did (and then dropped) was have a continuing, intentional sub plot running during the second season with Jonas and the Kazon and Seska. I'll grant you, Seska was probably never meant to be any more than an extra when she first appeared, but they did pretty good with her development.
I would love to be able to look back on Eddignton's appearances and see him do things that apparently had no motive when he did them, but then suddenly add up when we find out what he really is. Maybe he's caught doing something and explains his way out of it... reasonable enough. He's a Starfleet Officer. We trust him. So he picks up a stray pad in one episode or sneaks a peek at Odo's console in another... He's our friend... we don't think a thing of it. Until WHAM! It all comes together. That's what I would like to have seen.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:I guess what I'm saying is that Eddington's defection could have been foreshadowed so much better than it actually was. I'm dissapointed.
Have you read the DS9 Companion at all, Jeff? They go into a bit of detail about what they'd had in mind for Eddington.
Basically, their idea behind that conversation in "The Adversary" was that Eddington already KNEW that he would never get to make Captain himself (gold uniform aside) because of his role in the Maquis.
I'm not sure that's a complete justification -- I agree, the defection really did seem a bit too sudden and arbitrary. I was shocked mainly because I'd never seen any Starfleet officer shoot a main character in cold blood before. (Yeah yeah, the stun setting is mostly inconsequential, but still...) And of course, I suppose it's understandable to not notice it, if Eddington was supposed to fool Sisko, Dax, Odo, and everyone else so completely. (Or was that just retconning after the fact?)
*sigh* Oh well. I don't mind too much, because "For the Uniform" and "Blaze of Glory" are two of my favorite episodes.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:
Basically, their idea behind that conversation in "The Adversary" was that Eddington already KNEW that he would never get to make Captain himself (gold uniform aside) because of his role in the Maquis.
Y'now...I just watched that episode the other day and noticed how odd that scene was (once you know about Edditington's seret, that is).
I'd think edditington havinga secret life was always in the cards (at least all throught season 4) but his exact secret might have evolved before he shot Kra.
On a sorta related note, I always thought Cassidy Yates was a changling: She disappears for weeks at a time, got close to Sisko (really close!) and was always asking suspicous questions ("what are all those work crews doing in the docking ring" was a line from WOTW).
That would have had both shock and foreshadowing!
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Actually, many of the Maquis Starfleet never seemed like they should be Maquis, if you see what I mean. Really the whole Maquis storyline was a bit botched even before Voyager got their hands on it. . . Because really they were right, dammit! That peace treaty was bullshit. The Federation obviously hoped the Demilitarised Zone would be another Neutral Zone they could just forget about - for many Starfleet it was a Zone Too Far! 8)
Trek doesn't do evolving/foreshadowing/building storylines very well. They tried with the Seska/Jonas/Kazon/Paris thing. To this day no-one can agree how long the Bashir Changeling thing was meant to have been running for - did he operate on Sisko? Did he deliver Kira's baby?
Posted by Middy Seafort (Member # 951) on :
Eddington's defection to the Maquis was a bit easier to swallow than Bashir turning out to be a changling, especially with the whole Sisko operation two or three episodes before we met the real Bashir locked away in a Dominion prision, wearing the outdated Starfleet uni.
I, however, wish they gave Eddington more of a personnel connection to the Maquis or something that would justify his defection in his backstory other than a desire to be Jean Val Jean.
Modern Trek holds onto outdated television storytelling techniques a bit too much at times, especially the lack of foreshadowing. I have hopes that Enterprise will, in this coming season, begin to change a bit they way Trek stories are told.
M.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
The thing I always wondered about changling infiltration was the Martok in 'WOTW'. The more I think about it the more it seems like he WAS a changling, pressing on the battle, but then again he passed the blood-letting test...was that test botched all along or was that the REAL Martok who was lost somewhere in the mix after we first met.
As for Eddington, it wasn't when he shot Kira that gave it away for me, but moreso when he and Odo were suspecting Kassidy as a Maqui conspirator to Sisko. It seemed like such an act, as it was, the first step in what initally let him get away scot-free with the replicators.
Next the speal about not wanting to be responsible for Kassidys safety, duh, so Sisko takes it upon himself to go sealing the deal....the rest has been already discussed. But it was those other little things I could see foreshadowing something at least as much as the way he was acting in "The Die is Cast" and "The Advisary"....
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
The idea of having Eddington defect to the Maquis was okay, although it was very over-used by then.
I wonder at which point they have come up with that twist. Eddington had a smaller role than most of the other minor characters of that time (Garak, Nog, Rom, Leeta), he had no private life and maybe this was the reason why he never appeared particularly likeable. So it seems to me that they had no more ideas what he could do (especially since there were Odo and Worf who were doing essentially the same job), and it was the best they could do with him - better than just sending him back to Earth.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: The thing I always wondered about changling infiltration was the Martok in 'WOTW'. The more I think about it the more it seems like he WAS a changling, pressing on the battle, but then again he passed the blood-letting test...was that test botched all along or was that the REAL Martok who was lost somewhere in the mix after we first met.
The martok in WOTW was the changling. When Worf and Martok meet in the Dominion prison, Martok had only heard of worf- not met him. The blood the changling used in WOTW was probably from the real martok though and just held in a internal pocket of the changling for such an occasion.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Probably in the way that Joe Sisko theorized.
And I suspect that the Seska plotline was planned. It happens early in the series, where everyone is full of bright ideas and enthusiasm.
"Hey, everyone, let's have one of the Maquis turn out to be a Cardassian spy!"
"Cool. But you know what, let's have her in a couple of episodes before hand, as a regular, that way SHOCK WILL HAPPEN!!!"
Possibly they didn't say all three exclamation marks.
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: And I suspect that the Seska plotline was planned. It happens early in the series, where everyone is full of bright ideas and enthusiasm.
Actually, it happened when the series was a house divided. Piller pushed really hard to modernize the show somewhat, making it seem more contemporary in storytelling technique, but encountered huge resistance (I'm guessing from Jeri Taylor, who in her own way seems to have gotten Hurley-esque with adherence to trek middle of the road stuff), which is why the arc stuff only takes place over several episodes rather than a whole season. Piller jumped ship after year 2. All that stuff is documented in the CINEFANTASTIQUE and SCI FI UNIVERSE coverage from those years.
While I agree with Piller's notions, the thing is you still need to tell really good stories with involving characters to make the arc stuff live, and most ModernTrek stuff didn't have the meat & potatoes stuff that story arcs work best off of. So it came off more like a gimmick, but was a decent try.
As for Eddington ... my hero. The only human in the 24th century that I wholeheartedly like. I just wish they'd done a lot more shows with him 'at large' after his defection. I'd have had it end with Sisko joining up with him on HIS side, since the Maquis were maybe the only really admirable folk around.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Except when they murdered people and almost caused a war between the Federation and the Cardassians and then helped Dukat get the Dominion to take over Cardassia, yeah, they were great.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Phhht. Minor stuff compared with some of Voyager's crew. Murdering sentient lifeforms for fuel, capturing and then redirecting a WMD back at a populated area etc...
Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Except when they murdered people and almost caused a war between the Federation and the Cardassians and then helped Dukat get the Dominion to take over Cardassia, yeah, they were great.
If the cause is just ...
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
... then it's worth plunging the entire Quadrant into ... what would they call it, a Quadrant War? Billions of dead. Well, at least they exterminated the Cardassians in the process ...
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aban Rune: He's a Starfleet Officer. We trust him. So he picks up a stray pad in one episode or sneaks a peek at Odo's console in another... He's our friend... we don't think a thing of it. Until WHAM! It all comes together. That's what I would like to have seen.
But that is so trite!! We would have been going... oh ohhh! Too obvious.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Except when they murdered people and almost caused a war between the Federation and the Cardassians and then helped Dukat get the Dominion to take over Cardassia, yeah, they were great.
As if those bloody Spoonheads weren't planning to incite another war with the Federation all by themselves. The Maquis were the only ones who got it right, while the Federation was busy appeasing the Cardassians. Nothing the Federation did in TNG or DS9 helped improve relations with the Cardassians, all it did was to give the Cardassians the impression that it was weak and ripe for the pickings.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
So the fact that they went around killing innocent civilians was okay?
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Oh, no more than the UFP abandoning its citizens.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
far greater horrors have been swept under the rug of history during times of upheaval..
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Shouldn't we have had this conversation about 6 years ago?
Actually, the Federation NOT abandoning them was what caused the problems. If they'd have done what they did to the Indian-planet-where-Wesley-Went, and said "You can stay, but you aren't Federation citizens anymore", then there wouldn't have been a problem. But no, they put their planets in Cardassian space, and kept them as Federation citizens. Thereby dragging the Federation into the whole sorry mess.
I wonder if the Federation offered to move them?
And I wonder how many people that supported the Maquis also supported Strangely Dubbed Man in "The Ensigns Of Command", and believe that he should also have started a terrorist campaign.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The Enterprise was sent to that planet in "Journey's End" specifically to relocate the population, was it not? Or at least to organize such a relocation?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Yes, I just got TNG season 7 on DVD on Wednesday, and "Journey's End" was the first episode I watched. Indeed, Picard's orders are to move the colonists by whatever means neccessary - Picard is troubled by this to such a degree that Admiral Ice Cold Bitch offers to find another captain to command Enterprise for the mission. Anyway, the A-story revolves around the elder Native American's belief that Picard was sent on the mission to erase a stain on his family's honor from when a Spaniard by the name of Picard participated in a massacre of Native Americans. And then all of a sudden our token Cardie friend -Gul Eveck (who along with Neyechev popped up in quite a few of the Maquis-related episodes: "Playing God", "Maquis pt. 1", "Tribunal", "Journey's End" and "Preemptive Strike" and most famously - "Caretaker") shows up to do a nifty little survey of the planet. Eventually he and Picard negotiate a deal which will allow the Native Americans to remain on the planet, telling their leader, "...I suspect that you will find that if you leave us alone, we will leave you alone..." (HAH!)
Now, it should be noted that Eveck tells Picard something along the lines of "Well, I should be able to convince Command that this is a good idea" and not "I WILL be able..." So maybe Command didn't think it was such a great idea ...
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Them was probably some seriously dead indians once the Cardassians and Dominion hooked up. I doubt Gul Evek donned his Lone ranger mask and rode to their rescue.... Funny as that might be to envision.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Gul Eveck was dead for a couple of years by the time the Dominion moved into Cardassia - he was the commander of the ship pursuing Chakotay's Maquis raider in "Caretaker."
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
I thought that Galor was only damaged, not destroyed. There's also the possibility of multiple 'Gul Eveck'.
Though, even if he wasn't dead, I doubt it would have made any difference.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: Gul Eveck was dead for a couple of years by the time the Dominion moved into Cardassia - he was the commander of the ship pursuing Chakotay's Maquis raider in "Caretaker."
That ship was not destroyed (according to dialogue in Caretaker, anyway).
...although a zombie cardassian Gul in a Lone Ranger costume commanding a silvery-white warship is kinda houmorous.....
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Oh. I thought Evek was killed. Maybe Command was so pissed at his ineptness that they made him a Vole Catcher.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
they never did specify.. his ship got a hole blown through it in the Badlands, and then he never appeared again.
draw your own conclusions...
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
I thought Evek's cruiser got sucked into the DQ, as per The Voyager Conspiracy.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cartman: I thought Evek's cruiser got sucked into the DQ, as per The Voyager Conspiracy.
Yeah, it crashed into the Santa Monica Dairy Queen. Softserve vanilla everywhere, man...
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I also just saw "Journey's End" on the reruns just last week. It's correct that in the original setup, the colonists were supposed to renounce their Federation citizenship. And that little fact somehow got forgotten after a while.
Of course, it's possible that they really DID ditch their citizenship, but were persecuted by the Central Command anyway, regardless of Gul Evek's assurances. That doesn't explain why the Federation was still involved, or why the dialogue continued to indicate their status as Federation citizens.
My favorite line, though, is the very definition of the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone:
quote:NECHEYEV (continuing) These will be the official boundaries... you'll notice that a demilitarized zone has also been created along the border. Neither side will be permitted to place military outposts, conduct fleet exercises, or station warships anywhere in the demilitarized area.
Gee, THAT really went over quite well, didn't it? I wonder just what the definition of "warships" was supposed to be, anyway. I remember that Picard's task force in "Preemptive Strike" was careful to stay out of the DMZ, and did not pursue the Maquis ships when they broke off before leaving that region... but considering that Voyager, Gul Evek's ship, the Defiant, the Malinche, and probably a few others were all cruising around in there at various points, that seems to be a rather porous restriction.
As for that Cardassian ship mentioned in "The Voyager Conspiracy"... that COULDN'T have been Evek's ship, because Evek would have to have been taken at the same time as Chakotay's ship. And why would the Cardassians have been sent back and not the Maquis? Especially considering the Caretaker's weakened state?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
I'm still not convinced that the Dorvan V case is representative of the DMZ situation in general. Dorvan V was in what was unequivocally called "Cardassian space", whereas nothing really established that all of the DMZ would be "Cardassian space" (or even that Dorvan V would be in the DMZ at all - for all we know, it was actually on the far side).
And to comment on a comment on the previous page, "a war that claimed billions of lives" sounds a bit dubious. It could just as well be that the UFP side lost less than a million people. After all, we never heard of orbital bombardment, and the few planets captured by the Jemmies might have been treated just as civilly as Bajor was. Jemmies are unlike real-world soldiers in the respect that they don't have an inborn yearning for atrocities...
Somehow, the Cardassians did end up losing millions of troops. Perhaps they were in the receiving end of orbital bombardment, while nobody else (least of all Cardassian civilians) was? The total death toll without those killed on Cardassia Prime could well stay below ten million.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Add to the totals all the combined Romulan, Klingon, Breen and Maqui casualties and the number goes waaaay up. Plus shipyards, whatever ground action there was on Chintoka and a few assorted Weyouns and Keevans.
...and of course, all those Dominion ships the Phrophets "took care of". Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Why would the Breen or the Romulans lose anybody? Save for some insignificant four- or five-digit number in ship crews. We'd need solid proof of massacre-type orbital bombardment to get six-digit casualties out of a Trek-style space war, and that proof is still missing.
The Maquis seemed to live in a communities of a few thousand people at most, apparently one community per planet. Lose a Maquis planet, lose a starship, you still don't get much in the way of casualties.
I'm sure the Klingons or the Jem'Hadar were sent to die in surface action by the millions. But would those count as casualties? Both would be sent to die in surface action even during the solidest peace, just for the fun of it!
The "Jack Pack" estimate of hundreds of billions of dead never was backed by satisfactory dialogue. Our heroes spoke of "occupied" planets, but never of civilian dead. Even if Klingons or Romulans don't believe in bushido, it would suffice if the Feds and the Jem'Hadar did...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Just because Betazed surrendered like the pussies they are does'nt mean those other occupied planets did. I'm sure those worlds the Klingons occupied in cardassian space were wiped out as payback. cardies were big on the payback aspect IIRC.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Timo,
World War II on Earth took between 38 and 65 million lives. I don't understand why you believe the Dominion War - perhaps the most MASSIVE war the Federation has ever fought - would result in less lives, considering that the numbers involved are so elevated. Personally, I'm surprised ONLY 800 million Cardies died on Cardassia - then again, I guess colonization does wonders to keep the population low.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Posted by Timo: ...the few planets captured by the Jemmies might have been treated just as civilly as Bajor was...
I sincerely doubt it, since Bajor was never occupied. Based on the dialogue during the opening Season 6 arc, not a single Jem'Hadar soldier ever set foot on Bajor.
Plus, don't forget that Starfleet was practically hemorrhaging ships throughout the entire war. There were 98 ships lost just in the opening episode. Also, the script indicates (yeah yeah) that the bashed-up fleet the Defiant was leading at the beginning of that same episode, "A Time to Stand," was supposed to be the same fleet that we saw in the end of "Call to Arms." That would be another hundred ships lost, although probably over a longer period of time.
I'm going to go back for a minute to the classic source of all Starfleet references, Wolf 359. If we assume that starships haven't really had a major change in crew complements (which is reasonable; there's only been 7 or 8 years between BoBW and DS9's war), then Starfleet would still lose, at a minimum, around 275 crew members per starship destroyed. (That's 11000รท40.) Now, factor in that at least some people definitely got to escape pods in BoBW, and that they didn't have to go far since they were in Federation space and the Borg ship immediately left the vicinity. However, many of the Dominion War battles were fought inside Cardassian territory, or else in territory where Starfleet was forced to retreat. Not all of the escape pods were necessarily recovered, and the Dominion was clearly never above killing survivors. So up that figure to a rough average of 400 casualties per lost ship. (Remember, for example, the lost USS Grissom with 1200+ dead, mentioned in "Field of Fire.")
Then take into account the big battle in the finale. The story indicated that there were supposed to be over a thousand allied ships involved in that attack, and Admiral Ross directly stated that they'd lost a third of their fleet. Multiply 400 by a thousand, then divide by three... and you're left with 130,000+ casualties, just in that one battle.
Then, moving over to the recurring casualty lists during the war... the closest we get to a solid number is the figure of 1,730 during the week of "The Siege of AR-558." However, that doesn't take into account the frequent lulls in the fighting during the war, and the inconsistent offensive campaigns waged by either side. I'd actually say that "AR-558" had to have been in a "lull" period, and that whole episode's battle could only have been considered a minor skirmish. Therefore, that would probably be the minimum weekly total for most of the war -- not counting the Occupation Arc and the Final Chapter.
Based on Ross's reaction to the percentage of casualties in the WYLB battle, I would wager that those losses were higher than average, but not unheard-of. So, say that Starfleet lost a good quarter of their fleet from "Sacrifice of Angels." And probably there'd be similar proportions of losses in the other major battles. And finally, we can't leave out the Dominion's attack on starbases, like in "Valiant."
Therefore, I would estimate that we could tally up the following:
-- 104 weeks of combat (2 full seasons/years) at a rough average of 2000 casualties a week: 208,000. -- Add in the WYLB battle: 130,000. -- And the "Angels" battle: 60,000. -- The Tyra System battle in "Stand": 39,200.
...leading to a minimum of 437,000 casualties.
And THAT doesnt factor in ground combat -- at Chin'toka, at Betazed, at Benzar, and however many other dozens of planets the Jem'Hadar attacked. Or civilian casualties, for that matter.
One final aside: don't forget that Weyoun wanted to eradicate the ENTIRE population of Earth after it was taken... would that have been the only "example" they'd have made, though?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: And THAT doesnt factor in ground combat -- at Chin'toka, at Betazed, at Benzar, and however many other dozens of planets the Jem'Hadar attacked. Or civilian casualties, for that matter.
Or any other major battles, which may have taken place. Although I suppose that's probably an impossibility without the main characters present... Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I think that number is VERY low.
In "Journey's End", Picard states that million of people had died during the Cardassian border wars. And we know that the fighting wasn't only in Cardassian space during those wars - Federation colonies were attacked, too. Given that the Cardassian Wars were border skirmishes, a major offensive by the Dominion would (I imagine) rack up the casualties MUCH faster. I mean, if we guesstimate that each Federation planet has a population of say 2 billion, that puts the Federation citizenship at 300 billion people. Add on colonies and the like, and the population may well be several TIMES that number.
Somehow, 400,000 casualties in a Federation with hundreds of billions of citizens seems easy to ignore, and implausable considering with what strides the Dominion was invading Federation space. I don't think Betazed was the only member world to be conquered.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Actually, Snay, I agree. I neglected to mention at the end that I was calculating a minimum figure there. Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
I shoulda clarified, my beef wasn't as much with your numbers as much as it was with the concept that the Dominion War was of such minor impact to the Federation that it would be regarded like the Tzenkethi War - y'know, at a dinner party, "Hey, you guys remember that time we went to war with the Tzekethi?" "You call that a war? Shiiiiiit, we lost more ships at Wolf 359!"
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
the way the DW was presented, it was supposed o represent the upcoming end of Federation civilization.. if it were a very short battle (like the Borg invasions) i could accept low casualties, but since it dragged on for two years i think the numbers should reflect the disastrous nature..
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
It's the mechanism of Trek-style space war that makes me disbelieve in massive casualties. Even if all of Starfleet (let's say 10,000 ships, with 500 crew and 5,000 troops on each/shore personnel backing each) was lost at once, that would still *only* be roughly on par with what we managed to do on our own planet in a full century of war and misery.
We need a clear mechanism by which people would die in great numbers. Trek basically offers two: orbital bombardment, or massive punitive surface slaughter of a population already subdued. Yet why did the heroes NEVER mention anything like that? They spoke of the thousand-people-a-week casualties as if those were a bad thing, or of the loss and retaking of a planet without mentioning the population. Only the bad guys spoke of losing millions, for some weird reason.
It is entirely possible that billions were vaporised when the camera looked the other way. But it smells to high heaven. Why did the heroes look the other way, too? Why did they pay *zero* attention to such losses?
It would be quite plausible for the Dominion to want to sterilize the entire quadrant, saving perhaps just a few planets for spoils-of-war type compensation. The hundreds of billions predicted in "Statistical Probabilities" would then make sense. But from what we heard, this never came to be. Nobody mentioned a Dominion intent to erase all life. Nobody mentioned a planet bombarded to such an end. Weoyun's designs for Earth came as a big surprise to his compadres, who thought that the planet would be conquered. Why would they think that, if the modus operandi of the Dominion was to kill kill kill?
And the other side "played fair" by all accounts. When Damar worried about massive casualties, those were troops he spoke of. It sounded more like the Western Front falling in WWII, with Hitler getting all his troops mindlessly slaughtered but with relatively light associated civilian casualties (never mind those civilians that he relabeled as "troops"). And quite unlike the Eastern Front falling...
Frankly, I'm surprised that millions would have died in the border wars as per "Journey's End". "Borders" are supposed to be rather empty in Trek, with all those agrarian colonies that fit in a single matte painting, colonies whose fates can be swayed by a single starship or even a single away team. How did they scrape together the millions?
The war with the Klingons in "Yesterday's Enterprise"... Now that I could accept as claiming billions of lives. From the sounds of it, human species was to be eradicated there (and probably aliens sympathetic to it, too). But "the sounds of it" were so very different during the Dominion war. Were Sisko and pals so detached from reality that the issue never arose in dialogue, that the emotional burden never manifested?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: It is entirely possible that billions were vaporised when the camera looked the other way. But it smells to high heaven. Why did the heroes look the other way, too? Why did they pay *zero* attention to such losses?
Maybe they weren't told. A morale sort of thing; you don't tell your troops that X thousand/million were wiped out in one strike, especially towards the beginning of the war. For example, during Dunkirk a large troop transport was destroyed carrying thousands and the incident was covered up until a few years ago.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
I made much the same observations and have the same problems as Timo. It must have to do with the "looking glass" view that Star Trek presents. Everything happening on camera is supposed to have a very limited scope (single ships with small away teams, Earth colonies with only of a dozen settlers, anyone who dies on camera is made a big deal). That lies in the nature of the medium. This doesn't necessarily get along well with the scaled up figures. Suddenly there are hundreds of starships in the background and billions of casualties are mentioned. Anything that doesn't have immediate consequences on our heroes may be extreme.
What remains to explain, is the discrepancy between the "Dominion want to kill everyone" statement (which for all we know was true), but that never anything like that was shown or mentioned, nor had any consequences. Remember the hystery in "Homefront/Paradise Lost", although no one had been actually harmed? But after the war had started, knowing or even witnessing how the Jem'Hadar slaughtered innocent people, there was nothing like that. For instance, where were the horrified survivors from Federation colonies?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Yes, in a sense, DS9 might not have been the ideal vantage point for the war. Being so close to Cardassia, it actually sat in the eye of the storm most of the time. No refugees would have come through DS9, since there were no planets between Bajor and Cardassia. The admirals sitting at Quark's wouldn't consider planets to be of strategic interest in the style of war they fought. Even the bold Chin'toka assault would to them be like Gallipoli, yet another trench front where nothing much happened even when thousands died weekly.
OTOH, imagine the war on other fronts. Dominion fleets roaming within UFP space and striking at random, with the Feds trying to hunt them down... If slaughter did take place, it would happen when Starfleet by definition *wasn't* there. Fleet people wouldn't speak of massacres, but of aftermaths. Which, considering Trek weaponry, might have been relatively sterile. Billions lost could be mere statistics to Starfleet personnel.
And admittedly there's always the possibility of information warfare. Still, DS9 couldn't have been in a *complete* blackout regarding UFP homefront losses. There were many "alternate" information channels in and out, including Quark's and Garak's secret ones, Jake's civilian ones, Klingon rumors, even Bashir and S31. And Adm. Ross seemed to be in on the big picture more than a mere theater commander would be.
IMHO, it wouldn't really hurt the Trek history if the Dominion War was treated as "the one that might have been". Wouldn't it be refreshing if the heroes actually won the war, instead of just losing less than the other guys? Perhaps Starfleet did what it was supposed to do, and heroically died in heaps so others could live?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I'd imagine there were strikes on Romulan and Klingon targets by Dominion forces too....it's not like Gowron to admit defeat or the Romulans to show weakness of any kind to a potential advesary.
Another thing to consider is that the federation has been at relative peace for a looong time: most wars were settled almost exclusively by starfleet and did not incurr casualties on Federation member-worlds: just colonies.
Recall how shocked everybody was at the deathtoll from the Wolf 359 battle, and that was only 11,000. All starfleet. At casualty figures of 10,000 each week, there would be near hysteria among the general populace and crushed morale within starfleet itself. Add to that the shock of an attempted coup by Admiral Leyton and the temprorary martial law on Earth and the fall of Betazed to dominion forces and you've got a recipe for disaster.
I agree that the war was shown on a limited view from the DS9 perspective. The Dominion was trying to show the unalligned alpha powers that they could rule in a benign way by using Bajor as it's example.
All told, I'd imagine the total deathtoll was in excess of a couple- three million tops between the alpha powers - Not including the Cardassians.
Oddly enough, the Breen were likely the big winners when it comes to losses (although their military strength is unknown and definitely far less than the major powers).
I wonder if Benteen was cashiered out of Starfleet or brought back when the war stared going badly and starfleet needed everybody it could get? Anybody know if the Lakota survived the War?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Jason,
I must say that the numbers of 2-3 million dead are EXTREMELY low, in my opinion. I believe the casualty figures from Cardassia were - what, 800 million? And I don't think the Dominion has much cause for concern for putting down rebellions on worlds it has occupied. "Ok, listen, some Betazoid killed a Jem'Hadar yesterday, so now we're going to execute 10,000 of you as a lesson, righti-o!"
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
And I'd guess the Romulan liberation of Benzar would not have been a very clean one either. Probably more something along the lines of last year's Russian theater hostage situation.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yeah, you're right about Cardassia: I ammended my post to reflect that. I'm just pointing out that while LOTS of people died, the typical federation citizen is not jaded to deathtolls so high that they become almost arbitrary numbers....like we unfortunately are. We hear reports of casualties in excess of ten thousand every year by natural disaster alone. And starvation. And disease. So, because the Federation has not had to deal with any of our problems in centuries, they're shocked by what many (assholes) in our military would consider "acceptable losses" in a major battle during wartime.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bernd: But after the war had started, knowing or even witnessing how the Jem'Hadar slaughtered innocent people, there was nothing like that. For instance, where were the horrified survivors from Federation colonies?
Survivors? What survivors? If anyone got off those colonies in time, which would have been before the Jem'Hadar fleet gained orbital superiority, they wouldn't have been able to witness anything. Those who were left behind got a taste of Jem'Hadar efficiency, and dead men tell no tales.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Jason,
I agree with you to a point - but even in the "enlightened" age of TNG/DS9, high casualties aren't unheard of - In "Journey's End", Picard references "millions" of casualties during the Cardassian border wars -- and those have usually been considered little more than than a series of involved skirmishes.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Considering Picard's attitudes throught the TV series, I wouldn't be surprised if there were only between 1 and 2 million casualties in the whole of the Cardassian conflicts, and he'd call that "millions" to make it sound worse. He could also have been including both sides' losses in that figure. And remember that the Cardassian conflict lasted at LEAST 20 years, since the raid on Setlik III was supposed to have taken place a good number of years before TNG -- back in the late 2340's, according to the Chronology.
As for the Dominion War, has anyone ever taken a look at the Star Charts and (mentally) overlaid those outline maps of Dominion-occupied territory on top of a map of the Alpha Quadrant? I did that briefly a while back, and according those (admittedly very speculative) images, the Dominion cut a huge swath of territory across the region rimward of Earth, all the way out to the Klingon Empire. That would suggest at LEAST several dozen member worlds were under the gun, and probably colony worlds numbering in the hundreds. Or more.
Remember in the sixth season, how they somewhat frequently mentioned threats to Vulcan, Andor, and Alpha Centauri? They had to have been making serious advances into the Federation core territories in order to threaten those planets -- even not relying on Star Charts, that would be a reasonable assertion to make, IMO.
A big question to ask would be, how cleanly would Starfleet (or Klingons or Romulans, for that matter) be able to clear out a Jem'Hadar occupation force on the surface of a heavily-populated planet, if the Dominion decided to hold their ground and make a protracted fight out of it? What if they chose to adopt a "scorched earth" policy? Not even necessarily on the scale of the destruction of Cardassia, of course, but still very damaging.
And so, I would even suggest that the majority of the Federation losses could quite possibly have been accumulated on the ground -- and that would seriously drive up the casualty numbers. Surface warfare really seemed to be a weakness of Starfleet in the 24th century, based on the operations we've seen. Wouldn't the Jem'Hadar gleefully take advantage of that?
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
IMO, when dealing with surface combat involving colonies and worlds with populations that can reach the billions, to accumulate millions of combatant losses isn't that outrageous an idea, much less when including civilian casualties. Remember how many billions of deaths did those clinically-enhanced brainiacs in DS9 estimate, if the war was to fight out to a Federation defeat?
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:since the raid on Setlik III was supposed to have taken place a good number of years before TNG -- back in the late 2340's, according to the Chronology.
In "Tribunal", O'Brien bumps into a former shipmate of his on the Promenade. The guy doesn't recognize O'Brien, so the Chief tries to jog his memory - "We served together, on the Rutledge, eight years ago." We later learn that this person was a Cardassian surgically altered to replace the real Starfleet officer who was captured on Setlik III, and that he was released from Starfleet not long after his recovery for failing fitness reports.
Anyway, the point is that this puts Setlik III at a year before TNG's first season.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
there are a couple conflicting dates for O'Briens career in general.. that one puts Setlik the latest, some are much earlier.. does anyone have some info on the subject?
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
I think the chronology gives a date of 2347. Will check later but I believe there is a discussion there of the problems with O'Brian's timeline.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
As already hinted, the story here is that this Boone guy was captured by Cardassians at Setlik III in an incident that basically has to be the same one O'Brien describes in "The Wounded". He was later released, and then left Starfleet some eight years before the episode "Tribunal". Except that in reality, this "Boone" was just a Cardassian impostor, sent out to wreak havoc under the Boone guise.
And the controversy lies in two time estimates: 1) how long did Boone spend in a Cardassian jail, and 2) how long did it take for Boone to be kicked out of Starfleet after his release? If he was released and kicked out "soon", then Setlik III must have happened in the 2360s. However, if he spent fifteen years in jail, or perhaps less than ten years in jail but almost ten years in Starfleet before being fired, the 2347 date could hold true.
The last time we argued about this, I remember checking that the time between "Boone's" return and firing was specified as short in the episode. However, the time of his imprisonment was not defined. I'd be quite willing to believe in fifteen years... That would also explain his supposed alienation from his family and friends, and thus make Boone a good cover identity for the Cardassian agent - better, say, than the Crewman Doe captured a week ago, or the Captain Smith from the 2364 harvest.
In any case, Setlik III was explained by the Cardassians as a tragic mistake. If there was a war going on from 2347 on, why would the Cardassians feel the need to explain anything? It seems more likely that such strikes were performed *before* the war, again and again and again, until one side or the other went for open warfare. Each individual Setlik-type raid would probably only have had a moderate death toll, or else the Cardassians wouldn't have been able to explain themselves out of those.
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