A who’s who of Cardassian officers and Bajoran collaborators (Darhe’el, for example) were persona non grata at best, and arrested to face charges of war crimes at best. I can imagine that, if there were no specific incidents which could be linked to Gul Dukat, perhaps he and other Cardassian officials would be tolerated… But as he was the head of the occupation, I’m not sure this makes sense.

Is the best explanation that this is merely a matter of convenience to normalize relations between Bajoran and Cardassia, or is there a plausible justification for his semi-frequent visits to DS9 and/or Bajoran in the early seasons? What real historical examples are analogous to his relationship with the Bajoran (provisional) government?

  • rtxnEnglish
    00·
    8 months ago

    “It’s just a station? That stays in one place? How can it measure up to the galaxy-spanning adventures of TNG?”

    Three seasons later it had its hooks in me and wasn’t letting go.

    • CorganaEnglish
      00·
      8 months ago8 months ago

      One of my favorite fun facts to throw at people who dismissed DS9 for that reason is that TNG actually has more bottle episodes (where the ship in effectively “goes nowhere”) than DS9.

    • ChicoSuaveEnglish
      00·
      8 months ago

      Babylon 5 showed a young me that space stations were magnets for trouble while ships had to see what they could find.

    • mercanoEnglish
      00·
      8 months ago

      Staying in one spot was an asset, it helped justify recurring guests and villains if everyone’s in the same neighborhood. There’s no way the Kazon should have been bothering Voyager after Season 1 if they had been making a bee line for the Alpha Quadrant.

      • The Bard in GreenEnglish
        00·
        8 months ago

        That always bugged me. For a “primitive species, unworthy of assimilation”, their ships must be incredibly fast…

        • CorganaEnglish
          00·
          8 months ago

          I could think a good scenario where small fleet of Kazon (or other pirate-like enemies) pursue Voyager far beyond where they first encountered, nipping at their heels and causing trouble sporadically… but yeah there’s no reason Voyager should have been always in the heart of Kazon territory.

          Add to that the fact that they weren’t a very compelling bad guy in the first place and, well, we get what we got.

        • T156English
          00·
          8 months ago

          Maybe that’s part of why the Borg never bothered with the Federation much? They weren’t actually worthy of assimilation until they started developing drone separation tech.

    • gregorumEnglish
      00·
      8 months ago

      To be fair, DS9 had far less to do with exploring space and much more to do with the intense political intrigue of one specific part of space.