Dominion War

Should DS9 have focused so much on the dominion war, and what other stories could the producers have featured instead, and why?

It seems unlikely at best, given how many civilian and military casualties they endured then, but with the collapse of the Cardassian Union, one might assume that the remaining Cardassians formed a new government in its absence.

The Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk was sent on a special mission towards the gamma quadrant where a orange ship was spotted by an Orion trader who sent word to more of their people but the signal was reflected to Federation space instead. Starfleet Command wanted one of their best captains so they sent Kirk with about a hundred extra crewmen just in case they needed to fight in hand to hand combat. It only took about a month from where the Enterprise met the USS Excalibur to take on board a large number of its crew before they headed back to Earth for R&R.

When the Enterprise reached the strange orange colored ship they found a small debris field with what looked like an escape-pod. They beamed the pod to the Enterprise when they discovered that the escape-pod was modified into a stasis chamber in case of a prolonged rescue. Dr. McCoy attended to the Orion male’s wounds while Kirk asked him what happened to his shuttle among other questions. In turn the Orion said that his name was Cordan, his vessel had been fired upon by the orange vessel’s automatic defenses and that he barely got to his escape-pod in time before it exploded.

Communications Officer Lt. Uhura hailed the strange vessel that kind of looked like an ancient Earth sea creature and it’s computer responded with phaser fire. Chekhov returned fire that temporarily lowered the unusual ship’s shields which allowed Kirk and his boarding parties to beam to the ship’s bridge, engineering and various locations throughout he ship. They managed to take control of the alien vessel but set off a default program which activated a temporal anomaly that the ship was compelled to go through as soon as it’s automated systems were shutdown. The portal closed when the alien ship passed through then it’s reality coordinates were erased including their location and flight path. Commander Spock was only was able to determine the time and location of where they were now after the anomaly dissipated leaving Kirk and his away teams deposited into another timeline. Spock told the captain that they were apparently in orbit around an unknown planet in the Alpha Quadrant, in the year 2352 according the the ship’s computer. The alien spacecraft was from the year 2879, so it had a record of time traveling until the last trip which it’s temporal technology self destructed as soon as all of it’s related records and data were erased.

Captain Kirk ordered shake-down crews throughout the ship while he had Uhura open communications with the planet and an orange bubble- headed alien answered with: this is Ferengi Commerce Agent Gelnak, what do you Humans want and how do you have control over one of our ships? Commander Scott called the captain to tell him that their new ship has a working cloaking system and a very advanced warp engine. About that time, four Ferengi cruisers headed for Kirk’s new ship renamed, Tortuga, and the captain ordered Lt. T’Ro (an Andorian from the crew of the USS Excalibur who also was a pilot) to activate the cloak then jump to warp, fastest possible speed.

Commander Spock told Captain Kirk that it would appear that the Tortuga’s origin must be a Ferengi cruiser from the future because the approaching vessels were of less technically but the same design. Kirk gave the command to evade the four Ferengi cruisers that were in pursuit of them after he de-cloaked and fired on the lead vessel with a an unusual torpedo type called a TLCT-Torpedo which didn’t detonate like everyone expected. It approached the alien vessel, stopped just short of reaching it, then it gave a false latinum reading that stirred up the Ferengi greed instinct and they beamed it on board. As soon as the torpedo materialized in the lead ship’s cargo hold, it locked onto every life form on board and from first glance, they appeared to vaporize. The Ferengi crew materialized on a Ferengi prison planet which the coordinates were previously set to where they were at war with the Romulans in the future. (Romulus in the future exploded and they decided to take over all of Ferengi space since they were believed to weak. The Ferengi weren’t as weak as they thought because they were extremely smart and designed temporal based torpedoes were programmed to transport enemies to a Ferengi prison planet.) prenamed their new ship the Avalon after a version of Heaven on Earth when they landed on an M-class planet on the border of Ferengi space. Fortunately for those Ferengi, the planet they were transported to wasn’t a prison planet yet because the Ferengi who designed TLCT-Torpedo or the Time Location Coordinates Transporter Torpedo were far off in the future.

Captain Kirk sent out three more TLCT-Torpedoes to the remaining 3 Ferengi ships who each one’s greed took over and they also beamed the torpedoes to their cargo bays. One ship however, was under command of Daemon Derante’ who was particularly greedy and he beamed over 2 of the torpedoes for himself. This only left 1 Ferengi vessel crewed by the Ferengi who tried to send some of its crew to the other three ships to continue their attack on the Ferengi ship from the future captained by James Kirk. Kirk, however, had already beamed 15 crewmen to each of the three empty vessels which turned the tide of the battle and the remaining Ferengi ship jumped to warp, escaping Captain Kirk. Spock commanded 1 of the ships he renamed the Intrepid after a Vulcan vessel, the 2nd ship was commanded by Chekov which he renamed the Red October, and the final vessel of the 3 they captured was commanded by Sulu which he renamed the Hiroshima.

Kirk’s original boarding party to the Ferengi Ship from 2879:

100 crewmen 55 crewmen left after 45 were sent to capture 3 Ferengi vessels after their crew were transported to a prison planet in the past.

The 3 captured Ferengi ships renamed:

Crewmen sent to the Intrepid: 15, Spock in command

Crewmen sent to the Red October: 15, Chekov in command

Crewmen sent to the Hiroshima: 15, Sulu in command

Captain Kirk used the Avalon’s quantum time tunnel (the ability to go anywhere, anytime or any reality) generator to find their origin reality but the information was permanently lost so they looked for the next best reality. The Avalon was visible in several different realities and times while they scanned for the right place to generate their QT tunnel. A battle was waging in one of the Universes where the Jem’Hadar had been fighting a combined fleet of Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians and Starfleet and they were winning. The Alpha Quadrant fleet of defensive vessels were being overpowered by the Dominion troops. The Enterprise-D lost power, shields and weapons and there was a Jem’Hadar boarding party killing everyone they could just like a lot of other vessels in the Alpha Quadrant fleet. The Avalon was hit by Dominion torpedoes that activated its QT tunnel to exit prematurely in that universe along with the Red October, the Intrepid and the Hiroshima. Kirk told Spock to help the Starfleet ships until otherwise then told Scotty to replicate more TLCT-Torpedoes so they could begin launching asap. Spock said that one of the ships was the Enterprise 1701-D and that the other ships were Dominion vessels according to their computers which contained records from their past of the same battle, but the alpha quadrant fleet won in their reality.

Captain Kirk decided to transport the TLCT-torpedos which he had Scotty modify them to give off Human life signs just outside the Dominion ships’ shields instead of launching them. The modified torpedoes tricked most of the Dominion commanders into believing they were escape pods so they beamed them on board their ships. The TLCT-torpedoes beamed those Doninion crews to the same planet in that reality because of the same coordinates which left only 5 Jem’Hadar vessels left with their original crews. The Avalon crew began beaming federation soldiers from the remaining alpha quadrant fleet onto the 28 empty Jem’Hadar ships. The tide of the battle quickly turned after 95% of their ships’ crews were sent to a Ferengi planet on the border of their space.

Captain Picard was in charge of the Alpha Quadrant fleet and even though he’d lost more than 50% of the Enterprise crew before the Avalon came to their aid, he thanked them for their help on behalf of the remaining Alpha fleet. The other ships in the Alpha fleet suffered major losses in both damage and fatalities as the Enterprise.

Commander Data became Picard’s acting 1st officer after the death of Commander Riker and Lt. Wesley Crusher because Chief Tactical and Security Officer. Lt. Crusher was put in charge of rounding up any remaining Jem’Hadar that weren’t sent back to their ships while the Dominion fleet (5 vessels) escaped back to the Gamma Quadrant. The Avalon had Captured 10 Jem’Hadar from among their 4 Ferengi vessels and the Enterprise had collected 7 Jem’Hadar. The ending total of Jem’Hadar that were captured from the entire Alpha fleet were 75, 8 Vorta and 2 Changelings and they were all deposited on a federation prison planet.

Supposing if Admiral Leyton's attempted coup d'état against President Jaresh-Inyo was successful, what do you think would be the name of the Federation's replacement state? And what kind of government do you all think it take on? Just wondering, I suppose.

Q would be one of the major reasons that the Federation won the Dominion War.

In the TNG episode "Q Who" Q introduced the Federation to the Borg, and said: "You're not prepared for what awaits you" and many people thought he was referring to future Borg encounters, but could he really have been referring to the Dominion?

In the episode "The Best of Both Worlds" Starfleet suffered the loss of over 40 ships to a single Borg cube and if they hadn't, Starfleet would not have started constructing more powerful ships and refitting current ones with better weaponry. So, the Federation may not have constructed the Akira Class, the Saber Class, the Defiant Class or the Prometheus Class and would not be prepared for the Dominion.

Perhaps there is like a sort of conference, with Q, the Prophets, the Organians and other species to decide the fate of the galaxy, and maybe the Prophets saw that at some point, the Dominion would attempt to take over the Alpha Quadrant and called Q to give the Federation a hint, a helping hand, so that the Alpha Quadrant would push the Dominion back to the Gamma Quadrant. It would be silly if the Q Continuum, the Prophets or any other god-like beings weren't aware of each other.

So, that's my theory. Hope you liked it!

Am I the only one who gets confused with the fact that many of the numbers in star trek don't exactly make sense? I'm talking about the number of deaths, losses in wars for example.

We are often told that the Cardassian occupation of bajor was a very deadly and brutal and 10 to 15 million Bajorans died (according to different sources). That are a lot of people. At least 15 million people sounds like a lot but for a whole planet with billions of inhabitants it's incredibly low. Arguably this couldnt even be called genocide (as many Bajorans said) because the percentage is so low that there is no way that they planned to exterminate the bajoran people. They had 50 years after all and "only" killed about a dozen million Bajorans.

Let's take another example. The Dominion war. A very destructive war wasnt it? And deadly. Well, 7 million cardassian soldiers died and 800 million civilians. If we ignore the civilians (which are certainly a lot of deaths but this wasnt really part of the war, more of the dominion killing their own citizen) the number is again fairly low. 7 million dead cardassian soldiers means they lost fewer soldiers than the USSR in World War II. And the Cardassians arent a nation, they are a system spanning empire with probably dozens of billions of people.

Don't get me wrong these numbers are still huge. But I do feel like they are not matching the numbers of inhabitants or with the numbers of planets and systems.

So am I the only one who gets confused when the people in Star Trek talk about these things? It just doesn't add up, does it?

What do you think would've happened to the federation, klingons, romulans, the rest of the alpha quadrant, and the dominion if the dominion had won the dominion war? What would a dominion controlled alpha quadrant have been like?

Were the combined forces of the dominion, breen, and cardassians pretty evenly matched with the combined forces of the federation, klingons, and romulans?

Also, why weren't other federation or dominion member worlds' species and ships (like the vulcans, andorians, karemma, etc.) shown fighting in the dominion war?

Towards the end of the dominion war the Dominion and the Breen had to retreat to the cardassian system because they were defeated by the Federation and their allies.

I was wondering what that meant for the Breen. If that was truly the last planet/system of the dominion-breen alliance then all of breen space must have been occupied as well.

So was breen space and their homeworld already occupied by the Federation alliance at that point?

What do you think are the biggest consequences of the dominion war? Was the war good for anyone? Who gained the most influence or profited the most? And what happens to Garaķ and his people?

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I wouldve loved to see DS9 go one more season explaining all of it.

At the end of the Dominion War the Federation and the Dominion signed a treaty, one of the conditions was that all Dominion personal except for the female changeling were to leave the Alpha Quadrant within 26 hours and a permanently withdrawal of Dominion forces.

I couldnt find anything about whether the Alpha Quadrant powers could still use the Bajoran wormhole or whether it is now forbidden for anyone to use. If not that should likely have caused a second war, I think. Would be nice to hear your thougts on this.

You know when in DS9 we meet another shapeshifter not one of the founders but one of the hundred sent out with Odo I forgot his name but he left to start a new link. Well he’s dead probably died same time as the dominon war ended because he linked with Odo. If you get it then let me explain at the time Odo linked with the other shapeshifter he had the channeling disease the one killing the founders. So Odo transfered it then. And unfortunately the other shapeshifter never got to make a new link. Idk if you were interested but I just watched DS9 and put two and two together. Big sad.

I don’t remember hearing anything about the Enterprise during the Dominion War. I believe the Enterprise E was newly christened shortly before the war. Does anyone know if the ship fought, and if so to what extent?

After the Battle of the Omarion Nebula, the Obsidian Order collapses and the Tal Shiar is weakened, making Section 31 the only Alpha Quadrant shadowy secret service to remain intact. At this time, I believe it’s possible that Luther Sloan could’ve reached out to Elim Garak as a potential asset.

A scenario for my fan theory would start like this:

Garak is complaining about Starfleet Intelligence being not tough enough to take on the Dominion. Later that night, when he’s asleep, a shadowy figure sitting in a bedside chair says “You’re right Garak. Starfleet Intelligence isn’t prepared to deal with the Dominion, but we are.” Garak turns on the lights to reveal Luther Sloan. “I’m Sloan, and I have an assignment for you. Does the code-name Section 31 ring a bell to you?”

What do you think of this concept? IMO, Sloan and Garak would quickly hit it off in regards to bending moral norms to save lives. Plus, Garak had come to the conclusion that the Federation was the best hope to fight the Dominion and would see him and Sloan on the same side, even though their devotions lay with different governments.