I find it odd, though welcome, that there never was a truly direct conflict between the Founders and the Prophets during the Dominion War arc. Of course, the Prophets disappeared the Dominion fleet in SOA, and Weyoun makes some comments about which group truly deserves to be worshiped. Even that act of interference only involved an aspect of the Dominion, and not the founders directly, and almost entirely with respect to Bajor. (Not to mention, Sisko had to dare them to take action.) The Founder and the Prophets were the most deeply explored godlike entities in Star Trek. However, their interests would have been asymptotic had it not been for Sisko being both Emissary and architect of the Federation war against the Dominion. It would have been easy to slide into a more direct conflict between the two, the fluidity of the Great Link vs incorporeality, compelled devotion vs inspired revelation, the way that each related to the future. I think all the comparisons betwee the Founders and Prophets would be interesting, but I think it was for the better that there was no war between the deities that paralleled the larger war.
Interesting comparison, but I love how at the end of the arc, The Founders where just another pack of assholes looking to rule the galaxy with a hard on for control!
I think the weakness in the OP's idea is that the Founders were not in any way gods. Had they had anywhere near the power the Prophets had (not to mention the Q Continuum, which was the most godlike group in the Trek universe) then there's no way they could have been defeated. They just genetically engineered the Vorta and Jem Hadar to worship them as gods, to keep their loyalty (and made the Jem Hadar addicts to further ensure their loyalty). The Prophets actually did godlike things to "earn" their worship.
Frankly.... as much as I like Odo. In the end, he's willing to go along with whoever is in power. He was chief of security under the freaking Cardassians. The Bajorans spoke of him as the "fair" agent, but really... who ever speaks of the "fair" gestapo agent today? He complained routinely about due process, spied on people regularly and never once offered anyone a lawyer. It's easy to say he was about justice, but frankly I think his conditioning won over quite well. In the end he -was- an arbiter of order regardless of -who- was in power. The Founders no doubt would be pleased with that. He never was deliberately cruel, but come on? How many times did he spy on Quark? How many times did he complain about due process? How many times did he pine for the "good old days" of the Occupation? I like Odo, but yeah... he was something of a gestapo agent. Not a collaborator... but definitely an accommidator..
I was not making a judgement about the Founders, but I was reflecting the ideas in the script. Indeed, Weyoun says that the Founders, not the Prophets, are the real gods. Even so, the Prophets themselves are somewhat limited: they are outside time, therefore omniscient in a localized sense. They are not clearly omnipotent, certainly not like the Q, and they are not omnipresent. What I find more comparable is the role that they would like to serve toward two different populations, one authoritarian, the other patriarchal. Odo's commitment to justice can be seen as doubtful, virtually non-existent after Things Past. However, in many circumstances, occupying regimes don't put their harsh policies into legislation. They allow existing laws to hold, possibly with tweaking, and use their position of authority to manipulate the situation to their advantage. Following the law, in this respect, would serve to challenge arbitrary authority. The other side of Things Past is the future Odo telling himself how he should be conducting the investigation , which if followed properly, would undermine the Cardassians' case against the alleged assassins. Obviously, we are not in the position to see how he interacted with the station's authorities. All orders couldn't have been neutral, and at some point he should have butted heads with Dukat.
I guess what I took issue with was your referring to the Founders as "godlike entities." Weyoun was engineered to believe they were gods. That doesn't mean they were godlike in any way. And this isn't about their being villains. The Pah Wraiths were evil, but were still as godlike as the Prophets. The most frequently seen member of the Q continuum can be argued about in terms of whether he was more good or more evil, but unquestionably was not purely good. The Founders were ahead of Alpha Quadrant races in some ways, such as genetic engineering, but also were, for example, behind the Klingons and Romulans in cloaking technology. They just weren't godlike. Odo was strongly for law, order, and justice...and yes, he was willing to work for the Cardassian evil regime. Odo was more good than evil, though. As far as his spying and opposing due process, there are a lot of real life policemen, many of whom have good intentions but just feel hamstrung, who would have the same sentiment. There is a difference, in that rarely can the police be 100% certain that a suspect is guilty, whereas Odo very often could be. And in western society today, we believe that even someone we know is guilty deserves his day in court. Is it that awful for someone not to hold that same view, though? I don't think it's fair to compare Odo under the Cardassians to anyone in the real life SS, because as awful as the Cardassian occupation was, the Cardassians were much more about forced labor than extermination (whereas the Nazis were about extermination). This is not at all defending forced labor, but there are degrees of evil. That is a big reason so many Bajorans lived through the occupation and were able to feel gratitude toward Odo's fairness. A "fair" Gestapo officer, if it were even possible, couldn't be remembered because Jews who encountered him would still have mostly ended up dead. Odo evolved to have more of a good/evil sense, maybe partially due to loving Kira but also probably due to seeing the Federation's much superior example, and aided the resistance to the Dominion occupation of DS9 until he was distracted by the female Changeling.
On what basis are we judging? The fact that the Prophets and Pah'wraiths are more ethereal presences than the Founders, who in spite of their ability to change shape, are still physical? If we were to go down the list of Neoplatonic concepts of godhood, we'd find all the the godlike entities of Star Trek wanting.
I have this idea that the Pah'wraiths could stabilize the Barzan wormhole much like the Prophets stabilize the DS9 wormhole--if they could be transported there. A nice link to the Ori might be interesting.
I listed members of the Q continuum as the most godlike entites, and we see them as physical beings-- though they probably could choose to exist ethereally, given how close to omnipotent they are. It's a matter of power. As I recall, a primitive civilization came to worship Picard as a god even as he tried to discourage them. That certainly doesn't make him godlike. It's a matter of power, whether a being can do something we can't imagine possible through any technology that races would even eventually have in science fiction, that would seem like "magic" and not just technology we aren't anywhere near having (post-light speed travel I guess is arguable there, but it just turned out that in the Trek universe and nearly every space-based sci-fi universe that Einstein was wrong about its impossibility). Prophets, Pah'wraiths, and Qs all have such powers, as opposed to Founders who do not. One could argue for shapeshifting as such a power I guess, but I see it as more of a racial trait like Betazoid telepathy/empathy. I think the Pah'wraiths are in terms of power, probably even in terms of species, the same as the Prophets and could stabilize a wormhole. The difference is in their intentions. I think both are more powerful than some realize. The Prophets just choose to be restrained with the use of their power, but have many subtle influences on actions. At the beginning of Season 7, Weyoun, in probably his only praise of Dukat after the Dominion lost DS9, admitted that after Dukat released the Pah'Wraith into the wormhole, the Dominion was getting more breaks in the war, including Bajoran/Federation/Romulan tensions about to flare. As soon as Sisko found the Orb of the Emissary and released the Prophet, the Romulans "coincidentally" changed their minds and backed down. It's certainly implied that the Prophets may have had the ability to alter some decision trees, a godlike power that the Founders had nothing near.
I never said otherwise. Just that he did have a lot of morally questionable characteristics. No doubt. Law enforcement officers are like any other demographic. Some have good moral values, some have questionable ones. Youtube police brutality if you don't believe me there. Did I miss an episode where Odo had some sort of physic powers? Yes, he can spy on people better. But I'm quite sure the Federation(who ran that station) had some equivalent of the 4th amendment, you know that protects people against illegal searches and seizures? Is it awful for someone not to hold that view? When he has the power to incarcerate you apparently on his say so, yes.. I'd say so. If he can just point at you, say you're guilty and not offer any proof... how the hell is that justice? The Dominion would approve. Do you really think the Holocaust was the only crime the Nazi's committed? Where do you think they got the idea for those death camps? They had existing labor camps already. All the Nazi's political opponents ended up in those long before the Jews did. Later when they started conquering countries, well there's more labor. Over 12 million people were put into them to strip their conquered lands resources, manufacture goods and weapons for Germany and so forth. And do you think they were very high on the priority list for food and shelter, especially later in the war when things were running short? Sounds a lot like the Occupation of Bajor doesn't it? The only difference being the Cardassians weren't worried about the racial purity of the Bajorans. So yes.. comparing Odo to a Gestapo agent is very fair. So he wasn't the guy rounding up the forced laborers, but he was policing them. That was the whole purpose of Terok Nor... a forced labor facility and command center. Heck he even did execute innocent people once just because his Cardassian overseers didn't give him time to thoroughly investigate. He felt bad, no doubt, but he did it. He put himself in that situation and he knew what the Cardassians were about. He did evolve and definitely by season seven, it's hard to see him going back to those days. Kira definitely softened his great stone face. I like Odo a lot, but he's not innocent by any measure of the word. That's part of what made DS9 so real to me more than any of the other series. These weren't Mary Sue characters all perfect, with everything always ending up happy go lucky. Things went wrong, and sometimes there weren't any perfect answers.
This thread got me to wondering, what would have happened if the wormhole had not been discovered in "Emissary"? Would the Dominion have made the initial first contact with the Wormhole Aliens? Would they then have immediately proceeded to establish a presence in the Alpha Quadrant, starting with the weakened Bajor?
Given the it took two years of the various Alpha Quadrant powers poking around to elicit any kind of response from the Dominion, I'm inclined to say no. The "Anomoly" seemed to be either at the very edge or outside their territory. Even after that counter stroke of destroying the Bajoran colonies and the Oddessy they never built a counterpart station or maintained a fleet presence near it until they decided to invade.