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...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
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?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
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.
posted
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".
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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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...
posted
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.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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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.
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 11000÷40.) 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?
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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...
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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
Actually, Snay, I agree. I neglected to mention at the end that I was calculating a minimum figure there.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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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!"
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