Imagine DS9 without the Dominion and the war involving them. In what ways would that have changed the show? Would the rest of the series be primarily about the fight to get Bajor to join the Federation?
I think if it weren't for the Dominion War they would have gone in the Klingon direction. They would have also definitely had less hostile GQ races and maybe transformed Dukat into a hero instead of a villain. That might have been a good series but wouldn't have had the same impact.
The Dominion War went on too long for me. They started hinting at it, then Worf came in and the Klingon arc took over, then the DW began regaining importance. And it went on for years. It didn't help that I wasn't able to watch the series consistently every week during first run.
I think without the Dominion war the series would have ended quicker (after 4 seasons maybe?). Or maybe other conflicts would have taken center stage, klingons, marquis, cardassians.
The Dominion started to be mentioned during the second season. When they finally come around at the end of that season thoug, it did make me wonder just how the species of hunters that were after Tosk were related to the Dominion. They never showed again (the alpha quadrant was out of bounds).
I feel like the Dominion encourage the Tosk hunt for the same reason the bad guys in the Hunger Games make teenagers murder each other. A combination of fear and entertainment that distracts people in an obedience-inducing way.
DS9 without the Dominion War is different than DS9 without the Dominion. I am sure that there would have been a desire to cultivate a Gamma Quadrant threat. However, they may have and dealt with it more distantly, de-emphasizing infiltration of Starfleet or alliances with Alpha Quadrant powers.
Yeah, I could see them just following the route they were already going in the first couple seasons: having a mixture of 'Political Intrigue' plots involving Cardassia and Bajor, alongside more traditional 'Starfleet Meets The Planet Of Hats' plots as typically seen in other Star Trek shows (with the only proviso being that those planets are from the Gamma Quadrant and come through the wormhole). *Maybe* the format would still have stretched enough to allow our heroes to go through the wormhole and "explore strange new worlds" too. Either by using a Runabout, or maybe with the introduction of a starship. On some level that didn't change with the introduction of the Dominion War, it just got given a bit more of an edge to it..... I honestly think the creation of Voyager had as much to do with DS9's change of format as anything else. With VOY coming along to take on the more traditionally Star Trek type format, it freed up DS9 to really go in a different direction. Without VOY, I suspect DS9 would have needed to absorb a lot more of those 'post-TNG' type traditional Star Trek plots which VOY ended up with.
There was a very good episode about an Incident made Sisko disappears from existence then Jake brings him back at the end of his life restarting everything to the Incident moment. because Sisko started the war the episode explained what would've happened if the war didn't started That other time line without Sisko in it seemed to be much more gloomy
I don't think the show would be as highly regarded. DS9 took a lot of big risks. Being serialized and having a world that continued to evolve was an important part of this. I'm sorry to admit, but I never found the Maquis and Bajor to be that interesting. Showing the Federation in a weak position was very interesting. They had already done enough about the squeaky clean flagship, but I really liked getting to see the big picture. Putting them in a war situation gave us more of a chance to see them at their most desperate and realistic.
I would have been interested in exploration of the Gamma quadrant. Dominion space was large, but from my understanding wasn't that big. There was a lot of untouched territory. Even the Beta quadrant was pretty unexplored.
If there wasn't the dominion war, than I would hope DS9 would focus on its original mission statement of bringing Bajor into the federation. More episodes like the circle trilogy would have been a very good thing.
Maquis storyline might have been more interesting, IMO, if Eddington had been established as a double agent much earlier. He was very unassuming in most of his episodes, but played a villain fairly well in his last two. More of that would have been welcomed.
I think one of the beautiful things about DS9 is there is something for every taste. Unfortunately the longer I stick around, the more I realize there are a lot of people out there with truly awful taste.
I don't think you could have based a 7 season arc on the bajorans joining the federation. I'm pretty sure it would be extremely boring, and the ideas would be completely contrived and redundant by the end. Plus there probably would have been more insufferable religious undertones than we already had.. If people criticized DS9 for no trekking before, they would have lost their minds about this idea.