Katatori-kun said:
Therumancer said:
It was made pretty clear that The Dominion would have invaded no matter what happened.
I don't think so. All Dominion threats to the alpha quadrant were issued
after the Federation insisted on violating their territory.
But in any case, the problem that undermines the Dominion war isn't that the in-Universe Dominion were potentially not evil, it's that they were written to be cartoonish supervillains.
That said there was a bit of a criticism of US policy in the form of the whole Marquis concept, but it's not quite what many would think it is. It had a lot to do with the US not protecting it's own interests and citizens abroad, in order to try and maintain relations with a bunch of evil scumbags that were simply incapable of ever being friends or allies as they existed,
I know of few pertinent real-world parallels of that analogy. Especially as a US Citizen who has lived abroad.
The thing to consider though is that Star Trek doesn't quite have any direct political analogies, which is why attempts to say "this race represents this people" don't work.
I'm well aware of that, and I didn't claim that the Federation represented the US directly. But the brazen self-righteous naivety of the Federation as they are portrayed in DS9 is very much a product of the times the show was made in- a time when Americans were often blithely unaware of the way they were perceived by people in countries who had been wronged by American foreign policy. I don't think the writers of the show consciously intended to make a comment on American foreign policy, but rather were swept up in the zeitgeist of the times.
Nah, technically the Gamma Quadrant races made first contact with the Federation and arguably were responsible for several extremely hostile acts that bordered on acts of war, before The Federation even really committed to enter the wormhole seriously. They were treating it very cautiously, only sending a few explorers and such. Their first contact was with the Dosi (I think that's the right species) that showed up and said "hey we like to gamble". Quark cheated them at Dabo and they whipped out some Alien gambling device that force teleported most of the senior staff of the station into a pocket dimension full of tricks and traps, which your lead to believe is lethal, the episode ends with Quark admitting he cheated and begging for mercy for the crew, before the aliens let everyone go and say "hey it was just a game, you didn't really think it was lethal did you?". They Federation just kind of brushed that one off, when technically that was arguably an act of war since they attacked members of another faction, and senior military command personell no less, over a dispute with an independant third party, which was at the end of the day rather petty. Sure it wasn't lethal, but that's pretty even handed to just let it go. The next contact was even worse where a Tosk comes through the wormhole, and gets itself thrown into a brig, a bunch of "Tosk Hunters" come through and pretty much forcibly board the station, and start gunning people down (albiet apparently non-lethally) before finding the Tosk penned up in the Brig and get all butthurt because The Federation ruined their hunt. O'Brien helps the Tosk escape which redeems things, but again this was a case with the Dominion races pretty much coming through the Wormhole and going "hey, who gives a frak who the hell we slap around or why".
The Dominion never bother to introduce themselves, you first time you hear about the central authority if I remember is when the Ferengi are looking to corner the Tulaberry wine trade in the Alpha Quadrant, and you start hearing about The Dominion, how scared all the subject races are having been conquered, and that you can never speak to The Founders, instead everything goes through the Vorta.
You find out The Founder's motives and what they were up to during this time when all was quiet when Odo actually meets them.
As far as being cartoonish super villains, yes and no. Actually what they were was a parallel to things like The Middle Eastern cultures and China, indeed the entire run of DS-9 actually was on a lot of levels. Understand this was pre-911 though. The basic idea was that you were dealing with cultures that were by definition xenophobic maniacs to the bone, without rational motivations, and who might pretend to be your friends, but were actually always planning to stab you in the back. This was when patent violations and copyright problems were becoming an issue with China, and it was becoming clear that trying to change the culture through soft power was not working. It was also a case where we had pretty much watched Saddam who we were very supportive of, stab us in the back, and instead of working to stabilize and reform the region decided to go a-conquering, and what was a lot of two-faced Saudi diplomacy where on one hand the ruling Royals would take our money, pocket all of it, say "we're your friends" but then turn around to their people and start leading "kill Americans" rallies and blaming the US for the economic hardships in the region. A lot of the actual terrorists and their training and materials came from the Saudis, and I believe Bin Ladin himself was a decorated Saudi war hero who was exiled. He was actually a big deal and talking a lot of smack before he got blamed for the 9/11 attacks.
There was a thread in DS-9 about not wanting to recognize threats that are right in front of you, and being too moral and even handed in dealing with peoples that don't deal with it, as well as the tendency to not want to hold a culture or nation responsible for the actions of the leadership when it's not always a seperate thing. The federation basically got itself into crap by being too nice. Points were made early on about how Federation ships were largely designed for exploration and not outright warfare, which is why it was a big deal when they were actually dusting off Warships like The Defiant. It was also too little too late as we saw when DS-9 was taken over and The Federation actually started fighting because it simply didn't have the numbers, or the types of ships, to face threats it wound up letting build. Guys like Thomas Riker (Riker's duplicate) showed them EXACTLY what was going on, as did the Marquis (Eddington) but The Federation refused to acknowlege it, putting principle ahead of reality. There was an 11th hour save by wormhole aliens but the point is that by rights The Federation should have died because of it's own moralism and stupidity.
It's not a mistake that you had a situation where The Dominion were largely motivated by religion. A key element of the entire thing is that The Founders are xenophobes, and they are literally viewed as GODS by their subjects who act for religious reasons. Attempts at diplomacy with the Dominion oftentimes will lead to suicide before looking at things rationally... if that sounds like The Middle East to some extent, you'd be right. Remember before 9/11 we had all kinds of crap going on down there as well.
As far as the Marquis goes, it was a plot device, and not a perfect analogy, but a big part of it was that the US was backstabbing it's own interests in the name of peace and soft power solutions. The US was pretty much limiting what US run companies could do internationally to compete for moral reasons, while letting foreign businesses run roughshod over them. On top of this it was allowing nations like China to steal and counterfeit goods and IPs, as part of a long term economic strategy that was hoping prosperity would ultimalty lead to a more progressive culture. The bottom line being that if a company like say Pfizers with US interests (even if they are French) comes up and says "hey, we spend billions developing that Viagra drug, and testing it to YOUR standards before release, we did everything you asked, and now The Chinese have analyzed it and are manufacturing it and selling it without us getting a cut, despite all of the time, effort, and money we invested, your supposed to protect us, do something about it" and the US doesn't send the military, or really do much of anythin at all... that's a problem, especially when it's compounded by thousands of products, and also in part the result of the US goverment forcing businesses to bring manufacturing to China which lead to them getting a lot of the patents and IPs for them to knock off to begin with. (Please also note Viagra is a general example, I don't remember the exact time frame Pfizers brought that one to the forefront and got smacked down, but it was a big one and pretty much summarizes the problem).
The truth is you can see the problems the US is facing right now, and arguably those of the Western World, as a result of not taking action on problems we saw building during the 1980s or 1990s, following losing strategies, and other assorted things. It's also why the US is increasingly polarized, we very much have a moralistic "peace at any price" movement (left wing), in conflict with those calling for direct action even if it means war and bloodshed (right wing).
This is not to say that Star Trek was saying "right wing is good" it slammed both sides, simply that it was critical of US foreign policy at the time, but not nessicarly in the direction you'd like to think (especially if your Anti-US, even from within the US). 90s Trek basically took the approach that we needed right wing foreign policy, combined with left wing domestic policy... though that is a simplification since it covered a lot of things, and not everything was US-centric.
You ARE correct though that it was calling the Federation naive, but you have to understand it was not because it was mistreating other peoples, it was because it was too tolerant towards them, and sowing the seeds of it's own destruction as a result. This is why they made a big deal about a Galaxy Class ship getting wrecked in an initial encounter with the point that "it's not a warship", and about how "The Defiant" which was more effective (though still getting it's butt kicked in a "too little, too late" sense... being competitive more than superior, and was only one ship) being an actual bona-fide war ship... with The Federation having decided NOT to mass produce Warships. Sort of indicative of the US pretty much sitting on it's hands instead of banging heads when we really should be. A reactive strategy in terms of "we will wait for the other guy to actually attack" lead to a giant Cardassian/Dominion fleet (the Cardies being a faction that should have been blown away early on) pretty much wrecking everything, because the Federation more or less ignored them until it was too late, by the time they rallied they were outnumbered like 3 to 1, and behind the tech curve at least when it came to warfare.
To an extent this was later mirrored in "Enterprise" where Archer comes back to earth and pretty much tells The Federation "you know, when I went out into space I didn't want to do it in command of a warship, I didn't take weapons seriously or feel they were a priority... now I realize, we needed the intended weapons and far, far, more". On some levels while he compromises on his dose of sudden reality there, "Enterprise" as a whole had a very similar message. Archer starts out as a naive, ultra-liberal twit, by the end he's realized you can't live that way, he's engaging in space piracy for the greater good on the behalf of his own people, and has learned that sometimes you need to lead with your phasers and shoot people in the face right off the bat. You need some common sense and restraint of course, but at the end of the day there are groups out there that are just flat out evil from your perspective and don't deserve to be treated like rational human beings, and yes... sometimes innocent people need to suffer for the greater good, Archer stealing the warp core from another ship, pretty much dooming them to death, was kind of a statement on the nessecity of collateral damage. Plenty of moralizing about it, but at the end of the day... well, you see what happened.
Of course it's not a popular point of view given current political trends. I've also kind of suspected that it's one of the reasons why "Star Trek" hasn't seen another series for a while. With things coming to a head I don't think all of the analogies, especially the "big picture" ones would go over well in a polarized nation, and would be more recognizable for what they are. Especially seeing as there DOES seem to be a very left wing trend in the media to pretty much promote exactly the kind of naivity and relations Trek ultimatly presented as bad in a big picture sense as the right thing to do. Right now if someone did that episode where Archer finally broke down and stole the warp core/engine, sacrificing a bunch of innocent people who were totally uninvolved for the greater good, there would be more of an outcry because the final bottom line is EXACTLY the kind of thing the media goes out of it's way to get away from nowadays.
But do NOT get me wrong, when Trek uses real world and US analogies (which isn't always) it is not always on the militant/right wing side of things. The overall message (if you must include one) is that it depends on the situation, and as I've said, it tends to be socially very liberal in it's general presentation. It simply goes further to the right in overall message the bigger the picture gets and the higher the stakes, and typically it does so through story arcs rather than individual episodes. Sometimes you see all those little desicians that seemed like the right thing, turn out to be the wrong thing in the big picture.
Ask yourself for a second sometime how things might have played out if The Federation has decided after the whole "Tosk" incident that it was dealing with a group of hostile aliens from the Wormhole right off the bad, maybe not conquerers, but at least generally uncaring of anyone else. Assuming the gamesmen, and Tosk Hunters were the factions closest to the wormhole and the most likely to come through. Instead of putting one station there with some weapons, The Federation puts a fleet there. Looking at the Borg Front, hostile wormhole aliens, etc... it decides to begin producing dedicated warships like The Defiant in earnest. It doesn't actually go on the offensive right off the bat, but more or less simply adopts a less naive policy, it increases security, and becomes better prepared for an increasingly hostile universe in response to the facts it's dealing with. The entire situation plays out differantly, and probably for the better. At the end of the day The Dominion isn't rational, it's going to make it's attempt, it's acting on behalf of xenophobic gods with totally obeidient genetically engineered soldiers, that are also controlled by drugs, but when it comes through it's not likely to either get to the point for forming an alliance with the Cardies, and it's not going to wind up outnumbering Federation forces 3 to 1 or more with those odds beign futher stacked by having dedicated warships while all the Federation ships are at best hybrids.
