This is based on an idea from DarklyInclined, who was wondering how I might rate the rather protracted Dominion War featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine versus the one-season Xindi conflict (a subset of the much larger Temporal Cold War) as shown in Star Trek: Enterprise. I thought I'd also open the topic up to other wars in Trek, since those two weren't quite the only wars shown in all of the series.

This will be a lengthy post. I've been working on it for a while now. I tend to write essays instead of simple replies; apologies in advance. Non-Trekkies who don't really give a shit might want to head for another thread. For those Trekkies not well-versed in the subject matter, I will include links to pertinent data where applicable. Those who do choose read this, please bear with me.

You could make it more fun by taking a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage anytime I bash Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (two of Trek's longtime writers/producers, both of whom were blamed for Star Trek's demise and the early cancellation of Enterprise, if not the near-total downfall of UPN itself) or anytime I mention Ronald D. Moore and Ira Steven Behr (two longtime Trek scribes who later moved on to Battlestar Galactica on SyFy) in a postive light. You'll be happily plastered by post's end.


Which did you think was done best: the Dominion War from DS9 or the Xindi conflict from Enterprise (or a different conflict featured in one of the other series, like the Klingon/Federation Cold War from TOS or the brief war against the Klingons in DS9 that served as a prelude to the Dominion War)?

Or, for a much more broad, open-ended question (if it suits you): do you think Star Trek handles a mature subject such as war well or poorly?


If you really don't care about my lengthy diatribe on the Dominion War vs. the Xindi conflict (maybe because you didn't live your entire life in your parents' basement and you actually did have a social life), just skip past this and post your response already. Otherwise, feel free to keep reading.


I'll open the discussion with my response...


I think Deep Space Nine handled the Dominion War fairly well. They didn't just rush into it head-on. The writers gave it a great build-up, slowly tip-toeing into it, mentioning the Dominion here and there throughout Season Two (the Dominion were first mentioned in "Rules of Acquisition", a Ferengi episode, no less!) before introducing us to their foot soldiers, the genetically-grown [url]=http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Jem'HadarJem'Hadar[/url], in the Season 2 finale. Even after that, the Dominion didn't quite take center stage yet, opting instead for a Cold War against the Alpha Quadrant powers, during which they covertly started two wars involving the Klingons - a war between the Klingons and the Cardassians (which the Maquis would get involved in) and renewed hostilities between the Klingons and the Federation. After destabilizing the Alpha Quadrant's major powers, the Dominion finally invaded. Brilliant tactic! By then, the Federation was so shell-shocked from having to deal with wars on all borders (save the Romulan Neutral Zone) that they barely had the resources to fight the Dominion, a nigh-unstoppable force compared to the Federation. The Dominion seemed militarily superior in all respects: non-stop construction of warships while the Federation was still trying to convert aging exploration vessels into battleships; they could grow Jem'Hadar at an exponential rate (and even tailor-make them for warfare in that part of the galaxy) while Starfleet couldn't recruit new officers fast enough; the Dominion were united while Starfleet was divided between the pacifists and the war-mongers (usually represented by a shadowy "rogue" group of Starfleet Intelligence called Section 31, a sort of Starfleet "Men in Black" that utilized very dirty tactics like assassinations, cover-ups and even genocide to preserve the Federation; this was the series' attempt at exploring a darker side of Starfleet that I, for one, appreciated). Good mix of drama, tension and action all around, plus it was an interesting examination of the Federation through darker lenses than we're used to.

While Deep Space Nine's executive producer, Rick Berman (Roddenberry's hand-picked successor), wanted the Dominion War to last only three or four episodes tops, DS9's lead writers - Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore (themselves chosen by Berman for their outstanding work on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, both of whom would later helm the Battlestar Galactica reboot and create its prequel series Caprica) - conned him into allowing the Dominion War to play out until its "natural" end, which came during the final episode of the series. Say what you will about the Dominion War as a storyline and how it diverges from Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future or about Deep Space Nine as a series, I think the Dominion War worked successfully (mostly), given its purpose as a method of deconstructing Roddenberry's notions of the Federation as a utopian society. Ira Steven Behr re-imagined Deep Space Nine as a darker, grittier version of Roddenberry's vision, and given how the series was written before that (set aboard a Cardassian space station by Michael Pillar - the brain behind some of the best TNG episodes ever, including "The Best of Both Worlds" - who imagined the series as a "frontier town in space" filled with broken individuals, former terrorist "freedom fighters", orphaned aliens and unscrupulous bartender/merchants), the series worked well as such. The Dominion War, while I admit it was rather protracted (and ultimately weakened the hell out of Season 7, when the writers had to figure out a quick way to end the war in only one season after building the story arc to be a lengthy epic), worked overall as the ultimate test of Roddenberry's dream. When such a dream - the notion of humankind striving to better itself through peace and cooperation - is threatened by outside forces, what will humanity endure to protect it? The approach to this was very realistic, from the major portions of the story ("Operation Return", the re-taking of DS9 after it was taken over by the Dominion) to the humdrum day-to-day stuff (Sisko's grim ritual of posting casualty reports from the war every Friday). Ultimately, the war took a bitter toll on everyone involved, especially Captain Sisko; he would later commit acts that many Trek fans consider cardinal sins against Roddenberry's lofty ideals - specifically helping a former Cardassian spy murder a Romulan senator in cold blood and blame the Dominion for it in the masterpiece episode "In the Pale Moonlight" - just to bring a quicker resolution to the war by bringing the Romulans into it. By the series' end, the Federation is saved, and all the major goals of the series - bringing an end to the Cardassian threat and putting Bajor on the fast-track to membership in the Federation - have been met, along with the added bonus of creating a tentative peace between the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. Additionally, Ira Steven Behr was able to inject a bit of Judaism into the story through the Bajorans and their Emissary (messiah figure), Benjamin Sisko, whose story arc Behr based loosely on Moses.

While the story arc itself had its problems and the series as a whole did have its flaws (overuse of the Ferengi as comic relief, a very weak seventh season with a rushed finish, poor to non-existent exit strategy for the Dominion War story arc, etc), I think the Dominion War worked overall and helped define Deep Space Nine as a series, for better or worse.


By contrast, the Xindi storyline in Enterprise was a good idea that was not as well executed as the Dominion War... but that describes many of the ideas Berman & Braga have come up with over the years. To begin with, the concept itself was really a clone of the Dominion War done to drive up Enterprise's lackluster Nielson ratings. Created as a prequel by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (both of whom had lost their touch by then, in my not-so-humble opinion), Enterprise wasn't doing very well as a series. This was largely due to poor stories that either lacked internal continuity (on an episode-by-episode basis) or pissed all over established continuity for either the series or the franchise (by either introducing certain concepts from TNG way too soon in the timeline or by introducing potentially major threats to Earth in one episode, then completely ignoring them and the story-telling opportunities they could have raised in later episodes by never mentioning them again and zooming off to some other would-be threat). Remembering the brief viewer increase caused by the Dominion War in DS9, Berman & Braga decided to bring their own war into Enterprise with the Xindi.

While that might have been a good idea, the concept suffered problems from the start. To begin with, the entire Xindi arc wasn't its own story; rather, it was just one season-long subset of a larger conflict that was shown, but never explained in the series: namely, the Temporal Cold War. No real details were ever given as to what the nature of the Temporal Cold War really was (a cold war across time itself, we assume?) or who first started it. We know some of the factions, but not all, nor do we truly understand their motives, beyond the old "Saturday morning cartoon villain" m.o. of "destroy the Federation!" that gets so cliché. Like many concepts from Berman & Braga, it was a great concept poorly executed and given little true depth. We saw precious little of this concept in Enterprise (aside from the occasional Suliban episode or the odd appearance by either "Future Guy" or Daniels, none of whom give nearly enough exposition), and what we did see was rather lackluster. Originally, this concept was expressed through a rather poorly-conceived race called the Suliban (which, guessing by their name, I assume were supposed to be some sort of heavily veiled parody of the Taliban?), though that didn't quite pan out the way Berman & Braga hoped. With more viewers slipping away, they rushed the Xindi storyline into production.

Again, it began with a great concept: some faction in the Temporal Cold War called the Sphere Builders (really, you couldn't give them a better name than that?) attempted an invasion of the Federation in the 26th Century, but the Federation repelled them. Instead of retaliating in that era, the Sphere Builders attempted to prevent the founding of the Federation. (As time travel expert M.J. Young would attest to on his website about temporal anomalies, such a notion has its own problems, but Star Trek has always played rather fast and loose with the concept of time travel, anyway.) To do this, they provided the Xindi with trumped-up evidence that the Federation would one day cause the destruction of their homeworld. (So, they're fighting a war over something that hasn't happened yet based on evidence "from the future" that could easily be manufactured? We can manufacture war photos using Photoshop right now. What kind of photo/video/hologram-doctoring technology would they have in the 22nd Century? Surely the Xindi thought of that!) This managed to get the Xindi moving in high gear, and they initiated a conflict against humanity - the Federation's major founding member - by attacking Earth in "The Expanse", Enterprise's Season 3 opener. Enterprise gets recalled from its mission of exploration (which, I'm sorry to say, really hadn't been going very well, as the crew of Enterprise either nearly got their ship destroyed each episode or spent as much time as they could pissing off the Vulcans, who - for whatever reason - were written to be colossal uptight assholes during the series) and assigned to head for a massive area of space called the Delphic Expanse in search of the Xindi's homeworld. Once there, they would either parlay with the Xindi's leaders and try for peace, or kick their asses and come back home victorious.

This war lasted all of one season (when has an actual war ever lasted only one year? Hell, Voyager took seven damn years to cross the Delta Quadrant - a feat they only barely accomplished by cheating several times via numerous space/time "shortcuts" - and the NX-01 Enterprise, which is technologically inferior to even the [/i]shuttlecraft[/i] of Kirk's day, was able to cross this vast expanse of space in one year and return home in less time than that??). Some of the Xindi sided with our heroes; the others said, "Fuck it!" and launched a superweapon at Earth, which our heroes then had to stop in the Season 3 finale "Zero Hour". Since the producers weren't quite certain if Enterprise would return for Season 4 or not, they tried to bring all the major plot threads they had woven into the series (what few plot threads they actually bothered with, like the switch from a potential Archer/T'Pol pairing to a much more intriguing T'Pol/Tucker match)... Then they completely threw a giant WTF into it by ending the episode on a shot of an alien in a Nazi uniform. (I kid you not! Click the damn link and see for yourselves already!)

To be honest, Enterprise as a series bored me to tears (except for the occasionally interesting or even good episode, like "Regeneration"), and the Xindi storyline - while offering a few intriguing tidbits here and there (like "E²") - was something I was rather blasé about altogether. To start with, I had grown weary of the emotional highs and lows of the Dominion War, so another war in an entirely different Trek series - especially when that war wasn't the Earth-Romulan War we had been promised so many times - just didn't hold as much appeal to me. I had just come to terms with the ending of Voyager (good or bad), and I wasn't quite ready to commit to Enterprise the same way I had for TNG, DS9 and Voyager. Moreover, I had just started watching a different Roddenberry-based series - Andromeda - and had grown quite fond of it. The episodes I had seen of the Xindi war were very reminiscent of both the good and bad aspects of the Dominion War with a few interesting (and many not so interesting) twists. The writing, unfortunately, was still done by Berman & Braga (way past their prime, if you ask me) and the characters were still as... well, dull as they had been since series launch.

In Season 4, they left it to new Enterprise scribe Manny Coto - Brannon's & Braga's replacement, as they were refraining from writing duties (yay!) - to finish out the faux cliffhanger they created with the silly Season 3 finale "space Nazi" end scene. This he did in the two-part "Storm Front", which explained how aliens had gone back in time and aided Nazi Germany, changing the timeline and enslaving America, and how our heroes had wound up back in the 1940s and blah blah blah... Normally, I enjoy alternate histories, but these two episodes stretched the concept beyond credibility.

After this horrid start, Manny Coto gave us a kick-ass final season of Enterprise, as (unlike Berman & Braga) he actually had a little something called talent. By then, however, the damage to the series had been done by Berman & Braga, and not even the Xindi conflict or the talented Manny Coto's intriguing fan-wank scripts loaded with awesome original series references could save it. Enterprise was cancelled. The Earth-Romulan War plot they kept promising us and building up to? Never happened. As interesting as portions of the Xindi conflict were, maybe they could have focused on the Earth-Romulan War instead? *sigh*

To sum: Dominion War good, Xindi War so-so.


Anyway, that's my two cents on the issue. Apologies for both the length of the post and the time which I posted it. (I hadn't gotten to see my sister on her birthday, so I was taking her around town last night to make up for it.) What's your take on the whole mess?

Wow. Just- absolutely wow.

What an Amazing post and very well written! I am extremely impressed by it.

Now if only I could contribute, but I know nothing other than that The USS Make Shit Up*, compliments of Voltaire.

As it is, I really hope this thread takes off and look forward to reading the replies, especially if Glenn posts, and I hope he does. Him having trill spots tattooed on him (and I'm guessing you know what those are), I assume he might make an appearance in this tread, but I don't know.

Anyway, I hope to read some great posts here! Thanks for starting it.

*= This is a star trek thread, you HAD to be expecting that!

To echo Midi, that's quite an in-depth analysis you've written there, Agent Black. Have to admit that I didn't read it all, but as a Trekker I'll nevertheless attempt to answer your question:



On the basis of a single, outstanding episode that deeply moved me, I'm going to say that the Dominion War of DS9 was done best. That episode was titled "Duet" – a story of vengeance, mistaken identity, and humanity that left me personally shaken at the end of the story.

-- Nephele

First off: thank you thank you thank you for introducing me to what is now my favorite song. 8D

Second, he actually has Trill spots tattooed on him?? Holy shit, I think I've met my match!




I couldn't agree more! "Duet" was amazing, a superb ballet of wits by two actors who know their craft well and writers not afraid to push the envelope!

My favorite episode of DS9 occurred during the Dominion War: "In the Pale Moonlight". Damn good moral dilemma in that episode, and I'd wager Sisko does something you'd never see Kirk or Picard even consider.

Thanks for reminding me why Garak was my favorite character on DS9. I've really got to watch these episodes again sometime. You've also reminded me why DS9 was my favorite of all the subsequent Star Trek series.

As a side note, if Sheldon Cooper had been in charge instead of Sisko, he would not have been fooled.

Nutha' side note... Voltaire is a great big Trekker. You should check out some of his other hilarious songs (in addition to the one Mid linked) from his Banned on Vulcan album.

-- Nephele

It's my favorite series, too. Garak is one of the best characters I've ever seen in Trek, and - as a side note - had the Paramount executives not meddled in the story progression, he might've officially been the first openly bisexual (or as Andrew Robinson put it, "omnisexual") character in Trek. [Source 1] [Source 2]



I haven't really seen much of the Big Bang Theory, but I really need to start watching that show more often...



Thanks! Downloading it now LOL!

Isn't it ironic that Rick Berman was so obstructive towards having LGBT characters in the Star Trek franchise, yet from the earliest days Star Trek was perhaps the first television series to inspire a steady stream of slash fans? Man from U.N.C.L.E. may have preceded Star Trek for slash fanfic, I'm not certain -- but TOS and all the subsequent Trek series were always definitely right up there as slash fodder.

-- Nephele

There's enough evidence to make you think Berman was just an all-around bigot. Think about it: before he became the "crown prince of Trek" after Roddenberry's death, you had several positive Asian role models on Trek, like Sulu (who went on to captain his own starship) and a few admirals. After Berman? You had Harry Kim (a green peon - I think Chuck over at "sfdebris" called him the "Ops bitch" once - who never rose above the rank of Ensign and continually displayed his social ineptitude anytime Seven's boobs were within a 5 meter proximity of him) and Hoshi Sato (again, an Asian who never got promoted above her starting rank, was afraid of damn near everything in space and kept getting assigned to do random shit-work for Archer). How about for Native Americans? You had Chakotay (a guy who was technically more capable than Janeway, but never directly challenged her authority even once; he was written to have advanced tactical training, yet never displayed it much during the series), who gave us the horribly racist episode "Tatoo", where we find out that Native Americans were genetically engineered by space aliens to be the way they are and cannot successfully integrate themselves into any society more technologically advanced than the 1800s ever because of this. Ugh. Moreover, the character was so boring, undeveloped and underused that Robert Beltran hated playing him, and the only reason they stuck him in the last-minute romance with Seven of Nine near the end of Season 7 was because he kept bitching about his character not having anything to do. (I don't think that was quite what Beltran had in mind when he made that complaint; sorry, but bouncing Borg boobies don't placate all of us males, especially those of us who'd like to have a little something called good writing in our televised entertainment, and that is entirely why Voyager's Neilson ratings declined.) Want a positive black role model? Too bad! Outside of Sisko (whose character didn't really begin developing until after somebody other than Berman took over DS9), we had Tuvok, who - while being a kick-ass character marvelously acted by Tim Russ - was essentially Janeway's Vulcan henchman. As for Janeway, the first woman captain, they wasted two seasons futzing with Janeway's hair in a vain attempt to make her "sexier" before dropping that angle entirely, ditching the useless elf and bringing on the Borg Barbie doll in a silly (yet oddly successful) attempt to drive up teenage/young adult male viewership. The strong, female captain (who seemed a tad dominatrix-esque to me) took a backseat to the Borg newcomer, who managed to drive viewership up 60%... for a while. Apparently, the only "positive" role a female could play in Berman's version of Trek was as that of "sex object". He tried the same thing with T'Pol on Enterprise, but that didn't quite work the way he wanted it to. (Jeri Ryan could actually act. Jolene Blalock cannot.)

So, yeah, that's what I think of Rick Berman. Bigot, slightly sexist, doesn't seem to like Asians that much... I know, I'm probably reading more into this than I should, but I really don't have a high opinion of the man at all.


As for Trek slash, well, hell... here's a funny picture. :p

And for that link, you get this facepalm!

Ah, my time with Glenn is finally paying off in terms of star trek...maybe

Sounds like you despise Rick Berman nearly as much as I (and friends, like Peter David) used to despise Richard Arnold (originally a fanboy that Roddenberry took a liking to and subsequently gave him too much power). I remember Peter being so frustrated with Arnold's obstructions that he sarcastically dedicated his novel Vendetta to: "Richard, the biggest windmill I know." I think Arnold was so oblivious to how truly despised he was by all the professional Trek novelists (and a good many fans, as well), that he took that dedication as a compliment.

-- Nephele

Oh, there are a good many of us Berman-bashers out there. Don't get me wrong, he and Braga did well when they were just writers of TNG, and only when they wrote the occasional script here and there. (Berman did very well when paired with Michael Pillar. Braga was amazing with scripts that dealt with psychology and the mind, his storytelling strong points. He could do all manner of weird shit in those stories because dreams, visions and fantasies don't have to possess the straight-forward consistency that reality does. When he tries to do a straight-forward sci fi script, however...) Once Berman became one of the executive producers, his madness just grew worse and worse until he (and his post-Pillar partner Braga) ruined Trek for good, requiring the 2009 reboot (though I, for one, still think the reboot unnecessary; Paramount's executives and J. Michael Straczynski disagreed [as evidenced by a treatment Straczynski did for a television "reboot" of the original series here, sent to Paramount [i]after they had begun making secret plans for a new film with Abrams][/i]. Berman was one of the main reasons for Trek's downfall. Berman was the reason for the reboot. Berman's just "Number One" on my shit list.

At least Arnold's threat ended with Roddenberry's death (horrible as that is of me to say). Berman... ugh.

Back on track somewhat....

I felt the Dominion war to be let down by a few of Trek's SOP tropes.

1: The Federation is "good". At no point were the people shown as wanting to just blow shit up to ensure that the Federation didn't... ye know.... well... there were never shown as anything *other* than hand-wringing cackling evil. Of all the characters in the series, only Garak seemed to understand that in the grand scheme of things, sometimes you just gotta shank a bitch. The series wasn't so much darker and grittier as it was full of people for the main characters to feel morally superior to.

2: Space is flat. It *somewhat* evened out towards the end of the series, when I do remember a few combats where [strike]ships[/strike] fleets weren't oriented the same way and level. Okay, this may have been a technology issue as regards the production but... c'mon!

3: There were some nods towards the idea that Starfleet had actually thought about military conflict beyond "ugh... send in the Enterprise I guess?" but... yeah, not really all that much of it. I do remember seeing a few shuttle-sized and nasty looking ships flying in formation with the fleet during the episode when a large fleet engagement was being fought just so the Defiant was able to slip through and make a break for DS9 (newsflash: space is 3d! Go around! Or over! Heck, lets go nuts, UNDER! See #2).

As regards Enterprise... I heard the line "The man Kirk looked up to" and the words "First Captain of the Enterprise" and then.... it wasn't Robert April. Sad panda, killed the series from episode one for me.

Okay, these points I must reply to, primarily because they are points that should be addressed, and because I've honestly never heard anyone make them before...




Really? I disagree. You want darker? How about, hmm, "In the Pale Moonlight", where Sisko sanctions the cold-blooded murder of a Romulan senator under false pretenses to pull them into the war? It isn't as if he just does one bad thing in that episode! He kind of hits a slope of dastardly deeds and just keeps sliding down: agreeing to manufacture evidence against the Dominion; freeing a forger who has committed crimes against a friendly power (the Klingon Empire) to forge said manufactured evidence; bribing Quark (of all people!) to keep silent when said forger sexually harasses one of Quark's employees (whom Quark, in an uncharacteristic move of chivalry, got hurt defending) in order to keep that forger out of jail and keep him working on the manufactured evidence; accessory to the murder of the forger (okay, no big loss there) and the murder of a Romulan senator who had done nothing wrong (aside from being a dick, but that's standard for politicians). All of that you can write off as "good"? Really? None of the above is a moral shade of gray?

What about Starfleet Admiral Leyton's coup d'état in "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost"? He wasn't "hands-wringingly evil". He had, in my opinion, a valid reason to push for a military takeover of the Federation. The federation was woefully unprepared to face a threat like the Dominion, and civilian leadership just wasn't cutting it. (Folks, I'm a libertarian and I'm saying this!) Federation President Jaresh Inyo was not only unpopular, he was ineffectual and was likely to get them all killed. Leyton saw this handwriting on the wall and took initiative. Hell, the only reason Earth wasn't more bloodied up than it was (by, say, the Breen) was because of...

Section 31, the most "moral gray area" organization I have ever seen in Star Trek. These guys - the Federation's shadowy "Men in Black" - are willing to do any damn thing to save the Federation from its enemies, including (but not limited to): psychological torture of a Starfleet officer they wish to recruit as an operative; working with hostile powers (friendly or not) to mastermind the detention/murder of one of their own in order to balance galactic politics out in the Federation's favor; committing genocide via a special virus specifically designed to target an entire race that has been designated as an "enemy of the Federation" (sure, it was the Dominion, but what happens if it's a friendlier race? how many other races have perished offscreen because Section 31 deemed them to be "enemies"?); and (possibly, if Riker's line in "These Are the Voyages..." may be taken as evidence) willingness to develop a Starfleet-manufactured cloaking device in full violation of the Treaty of Algernon, which forbids Federation vessels (save only the Defiant, due to later addendum to the treaty stipulations) from using cloaking devices. While these actions may be painted as "evil", there are many fans of Trek (including yours truly) who see these guys as good guys doing dark things in order to do what must be done.

None of the above counts as "moral gray areas"? Willingness to just "blow shit up" to keep the Federation safe, really? And those were just the obvious examples I could think of! Hell, the Dominion War (and Deep Space Nine in general) introduced several concepts that hadn't been even touched upon in Trek since the original series, including racism and its effects in wartime. (Some of the Starfleet marines even had derogatory terms for Cardassians - "Cardies" [like "Jerries" for Germans, used during World War II] or "spoon-heads" [like the term "wetback" used today against those of Mexican descent] - as seen in "The Siege of AR-gg8". That seem like something common th Trek?)

What you've got to understand was that Deep Space Nine - actually, Wolf 359 before it - represented a turning point in how Starfleet operated. Before Gene Roddenberry's death, Starfleet was always the "white hat" good guys and everyone else - the "enemies of the week" - were the "black hat" bad guys. This dates back to the original series and was a concept Gene borrowed from old television Westerns. Starfleet (and the Federation) would represent Gene's idea of the "utopian society". That was something Gene himself put in his own notes for the series, and it became something of "canon law" for the entire Star Trek franchise in general. Remember the first seasons of The Next Generation? How damn preachy they were? (Seriously, I've heard church sermons less condemning!) Picard and crew cruising about the galaxy spreading the "Starfleet gospel" to the "unenlightened savages" in space (the warp-capable ones, anyway, lest the "The Prime Directive" - which was often treated less like a man-made rule and more like some sort of angry god - be violated). Sure, we heard about other wars waged since the end of the Federation-Klingon Cold War in "Star Trek VI", conflicts against the Cardassians (the "Border Wars" Miles O'Brien often spoke of) and the Tzenkethi, but they were always presented as minor issues. Remember that one captain's line in "Star Trek VI" about "mothballing the Fleet"? That's essentially what Starfleet did: they "mothballed" their warships and focused on peaceful exploration efforts instead. Starfleet Command honestly believed that all conflicts could eventually be solved through peace.

The Battle of Wolf 359 changed all of that. Before that, the "enemies" the Federation had faced were beings that were, by and large, very much like humans, only with different societies (that were really just versions of ancient human cultures "in spaaaace!"). For the first time, the Federation had faced an enemy that wanted to dominate them completely and would give them no quarter: the Borg Collective. From then on, Starfleet moved in a more militaristic manner... but you could tell it was still too new to them. The Starfleet officers of The Next Generation had gotten so used to their peaceful paradise - if you were sick, nothing you had was incurable; if you were hungry, you had replicators; if you were bored, you had holodecks or, you know, jobs (what a future! getting a job or higher education are considered "answers to boredom"!); no such thing as intolerance or bigotry (think about it! you could be as Goth as you want to be and not be ostracized by anybody) - that they were no longer used to warfare or conflict. That was something only Starfleet officers dealt with, and even then it was so rare that it didn't happen all the time (unless you served aboard the Enterprise, of course; that ship was just a "weird shit" magnet). The Borg undid all of that. For the first time ever, the Federation was fully aware of just how fragile their little "paradise" truly was, and for the first time ever they were asked how far they were willing to go to save it.

The Dominion War was meant to push those envelopes further than the Borg already had. The Dominion War - and, by extension, Deep Space Nine itself - asked the painful questions: When your ideals are threatened, how far will you go to preserve them? How much can you sacrifice your ideals (Section 31; "In the Pale Moonlight") and still be true to them? Do you truly keep yourself whole, or do you (as was asked in "The Dark Knight") "live to become the bad guy"? (Consider this: Ben Sisko - I remind you, his character arc was based on Moses - considered seeing Bajor join the Federation as his "Promised Land". Did he get to see his Promised Land? He definitely didn't become the "bad guy", though "In the Pale Moonlight" pushed him close to it. Just like in "The Dark Knight", you live to be the bad guy or you die a hero, and Sisko "died" a hero in the end.) The point of the series wasn't just about being "darker and edgier". It was about delving into dark topics and still striving to become something greater. Ultimately, Roddenberry's dream had to stay the focus. Deep Space Nine only made that clearer by contrast; that was the series' purpose.

As for the bad guys always being "hand-wringingly evil", that was definitely true of the Cardassians, but I wouldn't count the Dominion as such. The Dominion did what they did out of a very understandable emotion: fear of the unknown. Us "solids" were as unknown to them as they were to us. They didn't trust us and we didn't trust them. In fact, according to their own history, "solids" had persecuted them before. The changelings had decided they'd had enough of persecution and that the only way to keep themselves and their people safe from such harm was to dominate those who might dominate them. I don't consider that "evil"; I consider that "misguided, but understandable". Genetically altering other beings (the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar)? Hell, we're considering doing that now. That's one of the things that scared the Federation so. During Earth's history (according to Star Trek), humankind had embraced genetic engineering only to have a group of genetically-altered "supermen" (the Augments seen in Enterprise Season 4; we know of one Augment in particular, Khan Noonien Singh) take over Earth. Genetic engineering was outlawed in human society after that. Had that war against the Augments never happened, what would the Federation have been like? Would they have been using genetically-altered or "test tube grown" soldiers, like the Jem'Hadar? (Would Star Trek have looked more like the Star Wars prequels, with clone troopers running around everywhere?) Would the captains, admirals and leaders of the Federation hold their positions because they were genetically altered to be leaders and administrators (like the Vorta)? I think the Dominion were as frightening as they were because they were a dark mirror of the Federation. They weren't doing what they did because they were evil, but because they were afraid of the unknown... just like the human beings in Section 31 who engineered a virus to kill all changelings (the aforementioned genocide) and willingly sacrificed one allied changeling (Odo) in order to infect the rest of them. Section 31, like the changelings of the Dominion, was afraid of the unknown: the possibility of losing to the Dominion and the loss of paradise that might have represented.




True, but that's a sin Star Trek in general has committed. They even lampshaded that in [url=http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wrath_of_Khan]"Star Trek II" when Spock poked fun at Khan's "two-dimensional thinking"... all the while, the Enterprise crew was committing plenty of "two-dimensional thinking" of its own. This is because Starfleet has more in common with the U.S. Navy than it does NASA, just how Roddenberry designed it. The sad thing is, most Trek writers - many of them being former military men themselves - tended to continue that tradition rather than break it. :S




That's because, as I explained in my response to #1, Starfleet hadn't thought of things in a military mindset since the Federation-Klingon Cold War ended.




What, you mean Star Trek: Enterprise?

1: I grew up with Warhammer 40k. The worst Star Trek gets is "slightly dirty white" in moral terms. And even looking at it in moral terms is still looking at it in the wrong terms. Morality is a luxury in warfare, worry about it after you survive. As regards the villians, I was more refering to the internal ones. The external threats never got the same development as Starfleet (obviously) and so them being mild caricatures wasn't quite so jarring.

2: It was one of the few points that Star Wars did right until Revenge of the Sith. Kind of sad that they turned into a WWI ship-of-the-line conflict there with laser-recoil and everything....

3: The Federation-Klingon cold war ended only with the loss of the Enterprise C IIRC. I'm very possibly wrong on this though.

Addendum: yup. I was rather fond of the Best Destiny novel when I was a child. What amounted to a total invalidation of the book did not sit well.

As regards the reboot, well, I'm sure you know how that would have been impossible in the timeline as established yourself. It was a somewhat fun movie if you turned your brain off though.

Of course. Roddenberry poured much of his own personal morality into Trek. As for morality being a luxury in warfare, I will say this: whether I agree with that or not, try telling that to the drafters of the Geneva Convention. Moreover, any decisions made during wartime will be reviewed and lauded/prosecuted after, and you still have to take the will of the people (i.e. "how likely they'll be to overthrow your ass later") into account, too. Warfare, like life in general, is never clear-cut, morals or no being taken into account.

As for the internal ones, c'mon, Section 31 was willing to commit genocide. Granted, the changelings were all of one mind (almost literally) and were essentially all combatants (like the Borg), pondering genocide is a major step down the dark path.

As for the opposing sides being mild caricatures, that's one thing I actually liked about DS9. While it didn't always succeed, the series did try to flesh out those caricatures some. The Bajorans were the spiritual hippies, but they did have their darker, more violent side, usually represented by Kai Winn or the Cult of the Pah'wraiths. (Did someone say, "Inquisition"?) The Cardassians weren't set-in-stone on the moral compass, either. Sure, they had their societal flaws, some of them glaring or even frightening - no real justice system to speak of, the "all or nothing for the state" mindset, a tendency toward totalitarianism, the whole "Nazi" regime during the Bajoran Occupation - but they did also have their good points - strong family values, loyalty and honor (unless you were a spy for the Obsidian Order, but that was to be expected), a willingness to fight against tyranny when pushed far enough and a really awesome sense of style (I rather liked their military armor and their very gothic, German expressionist architecture, evident throughout the space station Deep Space Nine or its dark mirror Empak Nor). Even the Ferengi - a Jewish stereotype if I've ever seen one (made more humorous by the fact that most of those stereotyped episodes were written by a Jewish writer - Ira Steven Behr - and acted out by Jewish actors - Armin Shimmerman [Quark], Max Grodénchik [Rom], Aron Eisenberg [Nog], Wallace Shawn [Grand Nagus Zek]) - evolved somewhat throughout the series, with such novel concepts as labor unions and equality for females being introduced into their society over time.

The one race that really got on my damn nerves, though, were the damn Klingons. Space Vikings! Don't get me wrong, Vikings can be cool, but that was all there was to Klingons! Even Vikings had more depth! The best Trek to see if you want Klingons with depth and pathos, in my opinion, was either "Star Trek VI" (where the Klingons were very Russian, very Shakespearean, with a dash of samurai ethics thrown in, very cultured, political warriors), "Star Trek III" (the ambiguous cold warrior fighting for his people's survival in a galaxy dominated ever more by Starfleet) or Star Trek: The Next Generation (where they tried to mix more of the Shakespearean angle with the samurai ethics). They touched on this briefly in the excellent Enterprise episode "Judgment" (yes, I just referred to an Enterprise episode as "excellent"), where Captain Archer is put on trial on Qo'noS and sentenced to Rura Penthe. (Damn, Rura Penthe really isn't all that hard to escape from! Kirk's done it, Archer's done it, even Nero did it in the deleted scenes from Star Trek... They really need to install some better security measures aside from snarling beasts and a magnetic shield.)




I kind of liked the action at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Everything after that opening "rescue the Chancellor" scene was total shit.




Actually, it was more of a lengthy process that took quite some time. The end began with "Star Trek VI", but ended with the demise of the Enterprise-C, all the while we had guys like Spock, Sarek and Curzon Dax doing their damnedest to keep the peace on the diplomatic front while the Romulans did all they could to disrupt it.




Not quite! Robert April was still the first captain of the Federation Starfleet vessel U.S.S. Enterprise. Archer was captain of the Earth Starfleet vessel Enterprise NX-01. If you keep that distinction in mind, then Best Destiny is still valid and "in play".

In fact, the reboot film's authors - Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, J.J. Abram's favorite staff writers - used Best Destiny and Spock's World as source material for the 2009 Star Trek film. Technically, elements of both books have just been canonized. (This is great to me, as I totally effin' loved the book Spock's World.)




That it was, that it was. Aside from that, I was totally pissed off with Vulcan going "BOOM", as Vulcan is my favorite Trek planet. (I have a thing for desert planets: Vulcan, Arrakis, Tatooine... Probably comes from growing up in a desert.)

What saddens me most about the new film? The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, all the better parts of Trek... gone. Totally gone. Erased from history. Fucking Enterprise? Still in canon. They even mentioned it in the damn movie. Remember? Scotty's line about "Admiral Archer's prize beagle"? Yeah. Fuck you, J.J. Abrams.