Damar, hero of Cardassia

[Kilana2]

The grudging partnership between Damar and Kira was fun to watch because Damar in his turn had to say goodbye to his quite unfavorable opinion of the Bajorans and had to accept that Cardassia had reached a point of no return and was never going to be the same. Garak did not have any affiliation problems or loyalty issues, so he was better prepared for the forthcoming changes.

Yes, the tables were turned. Damar had to realize how it feels to be part of an occupied world and to be bullied. The Dominion had dangerous weapons at its disposal, genetically modified viruses and the likes....... Nobody wanted them to be turned against them.

 

[Shada Dukal]

The Dominion came and went but Cardassia remained. No need to cry over Cardassia, Cardassia was great, Cardassia is great, and Cardassia will be great. It will always be frightening and incomprehensible to the general audience and that is why I love it so much. Not a cheap bubble gum for the masses. The greatness of a nation lies in its people and Cardassians are strong and determined and can rise like a Phoenix from the ashes.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. “Confucius

 

[Jetboogieman]

Nice to hear that. Kira is one of my favorite characters. But definitely not from the beginning. The first several episodes she was quite prickly, but she earned my respect over several seasons and the novels including the relaunch. .

I think it's a sad thing about many male writers in the industry and especially around that time period... so many great shows but women were often written horribly.

In the sense that many writers felt writing a "strong woman" meant making them unbearably headstrong, prickly, assertive and sometimes just bitchy.

Another great example was many of the female characters from the "West Wing". Fantastic show by my golly did they write some of those women horribly for the first few seasons... just made them plain unlikable.

They did eventually get Kira away from that pitfall but a really good example I think of someone who was done well was Jadzia Dax... Very charming, funny, wise, but when she meant business, she'd open a can of whoopass and she had no trouble commanding when she needed to.

 

[Jetboogieman]

well said,

Strong does not mean loud
Proud does not mean arrogant
Assertive does not mean aggressive
etc..etc..

I do think Trek had a lot of decent female characters, but whether its the writing or the whole bajoran thing I simply hated kira.

The thing was the actress herself seemed a decent actress.

I really liked her after Season 5, I think she became, dare I say it more human.

They fleshed her character out quite a bit more...

But I still think her finest moment was Duets... that's where they had an opportunity to really change her character for the better and failed.

 

[Kilana2]

They did eventually get Kira away from that pitfall but a really good example I think of someone who was done well was Jadzia Dax... Very charming, funny, wise, but when she meant business, she'd open a can of whoopass and she had no trouble commanding when she needed to.

Some people can't stand Jadzia and blame Terry Farrell for bad acting. Jolene Blalock didn't act any better and T'Pol had several odd scenes thanks to the writers......

No, Jadzia was fine and I was a bid sad when she died.

 

[Shada Dukal]

Despite the sheepish and unconstructive attitude displayed by the Bajorans as a whole, Kira chose to do something and fought. I don’t think that she realized what she was fighting for, she did it out of childish defiance, she joined the Resistance at the age of twelve so she is a typical example of a child soldier. Later, she tried to compensate for her shortcomings in all other spheres of life. She was 26 when the Occupation was over so she had spent about 12-14 of her life in killing and hating. I don’t think that it was plausible for her to overcome her hate more quickly. Still, at times her radical approaches, lack of interpersonal skills and quick jumping to conclusions were too much to bear.

I like “Duet” in terms of acting very much, there were good dialogues, true intensity and clash between the characters involved. Never liked it as a message because it presented an oversimplification of the Nazi-cliché and served nothing but to cement the Bajorans’, and by extension, the viewers’ blind hatred towards Cardassians.

Kira’s reaction was the most normal one, having in mind her past as a Resistance fighter. Marritza’s decision to take the responsibility for what a dead camp overseer had done was far-fetched at the best. In what way would his deed improve the dialogue between Cardassia and Bajor, had his mimicry remained undetected? Cardassians would consider it an act of revanchism, just another proof that the Bajorans were not to be trusted and Bajorans would fixate on their plights during the Occupation instead of trying to develop a more secular and cosmopolitan outlook. Both nations would keep circling forever in their past frustrations, blaming each other endlessly.

After all, this was the first season, the producers did not know how much exactly to vilify the Cardassians and whether they might not need to drink water from the well they spat into, so the Holocaust allusion was a handy but rather cheap way-out.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

the so called bajoran suffering a

Their planet was occupied, the place was strip mined, their population was enslaved, their religious artifacts and likely other things were stolen, and this had been going on for decades.

How is that not suffering?

Not to mention of course the Bajorans are still pissed in Duet it was only a few months after the Cardassians withdrew so I think its understandable to be kind of pissed at an expansionist power that had been enslaving them until a few months beforehand.

 

[Bossplaya]

Lol @ defending and identifying with Cardassians. Not sure why some watch Star Trek if they are going to identify with characters part of a totalitarian government. I really need to make a thread about 20/21st century garbage infecting Star Trek.

Yes, you were supposed to have empathy for Bajorans for what they went though being viciously oppressed in the strongest sense of the word. Yes, the show was exploring these issues like the relationships of the formerly oppressed with their oppressors. That's food for thought, that's meat on the bone, and a good reason why DS9 has held up for 20 plus years. I don't think the show only showed one side of the Cardassians. The show went out of it's way to show multiple aspects of them, much of that involving Kira. Kira, or the few other Bajorans depicted on the show are not all Bajorans.

 

[Shada Dukal]

My point exactly. Forums are contaminated by self-appointed do-gooders, ultimate arbitraries of good and evil and nerds who mix RL issues with fictional discussions and tilt at windmills. This type of people really don’t have a life so judging someone else’s tastes and preferences justifies their pathetic, anonymous existence.

In this sense, the reception of any artistic product should be free from cheap PC concerns and censorship. The interpretation of a fictional race is strongly subjective and relative, there are no right and wrong answers, this is not a quiz show. Cardassians have a point of view too so fans can explore their point of view as much as they want. There are no forbidden points of view and any attempt for such restrictions violates the freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This is pretty totalitarian indeed.

The Bajorans were victims. They were victims of their own stupidity and backwardness. Whoever wanted to take them over, could do it. Some were haters, others were whimpering losers and some were religious zealots stopping their children from going to a secular school and denying scientific explanations for space phenomena. Some Bajorans were collaborators, some were ready to plunge their planet into a civil war as though the Occupation was not enough for them, others tried to restore their caste system that could only reinforce their social stagnation. The rest just dragged themselves around the station as superstitious anachronisms, totally out of place. Too bad that the writers and producers reduced them to such a one-sided portrayal. It is difficult to root for stupidity.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I was mostly referring to the ongoing suffering and how they harp on and on.Yes they suffered, but 7 years on its still the same lines over and over,

Thats becuase 60 years of having your planet strip mined and the ecological damage from it don't just get magically get fixed the moment the assholes who did it leave.

Not to mention the various medical conditions that resulted from it, the infrastructure damage done to the planet, or that the considerable amount of the Bajoran population that is likely going through PTSD by the end of it, or the fact that the Cardassians spent a decent chunk of those 7 years denying they did anything wrong by enslaving them.

 

[DonIago]

I suppose it would have been preferable if Dr. Moset's project to sterilize the Bajorans had succeeded. Give it a few years and no more harping!

 

[Kilana2]

Experimenting on the Bajorans in matters of proceation is a severe intervention into their physical integrity. Enforced sterilization is disgusting.

On the other hand there a lot of zeolous and superstitious sects on Bajor. For me, Bajorans are not as one-dimensional as some of you think. Just my opionion, and I say that having read many DS9 novels including the relaunch.

But the Cardis are a complex race with many complex characters. Rugal for instance. He was raised to hate the Cardis instead of becoming a more neutral education. But that's another case, I recommend reading Never Ending Sacrifice.

 

[Trekkin]

Wow, I didn't know I signed up for TNZ.

I liked Damar, and my only real problem is that Kira and Garek didn't really get the chance to rip into him about killing Ziyal. I understand it would be a hard thing to write and keep him sympathetic, but them not holding a grudge about it even initially seemed kind of...off. I had a similar misgiving when Kira and Odo's 'discussion' about his betrayal of the DS9 resistance was off screen.

I do find it amusing that no one involved in writing or acting the scene seems to know how his last sentence was intended to end. I always assumed he was going to say 'keep fighting.'

 

[DonIago]

I'm sure they were holding a grudge, but they needed to work with Damar, not antagonize him.

 

[Trekkin]

I know. I'm not saying it's even something that had to be neatly resolved. It just seemed strange that nobody ever brought it up in any way (except Dukhat to forgive him, funny enough).

You could argue that Kira's reply to 'Who orders the murder of innocent women and children?' might be a refererence to it, but to me it always felt like an elephant in the room. Especially in that particular scene where Kira was antagonising him anyway.

 

[Kilana2]

I liked Damar, and my only real problem is that Kira and Garek didn't really get the chance to rip into him about killing Ziyal. I understand it would be a hard thing to write and keep him sympathetic, but them not holding a grudge about it even initially seemed kind of...off. I had a similar misgiving when Kira and Odo's 'discussion' about his betrayal of the DS9 resistance was off screen.

They dealt with it offscreen in one of the DS9 short stories. If I'm not mistaken, Damar apologizes for killing Ziyal. I don't remember any details or Kira's reactions, though. I don't have the book at hand.

 

[Shada Dukal]

Well, in terms of martial law what Ziyal did is qualified as sabotage and high treason. Even before that Damar could not tolerate her pro-Bajoran attitude and thought that she had to be more loyal to her father. Dukat never held any grudges against Damar for killing Ziyal nor did he question his demotion for acknowledging Ziyal. Personal matters and state objectives are different things. It is good that Kira and Damar discussed Ziyal’s death in the novels, but they had other problems to solve.

The whole Nazi hysteria around the Cardassians was instigated and widespread by TPTB and Ira Steven Behr in particular who wanted to reduce the popularity and the favorable early reception of the Cardassians. Cardassians have a totalitarian system of government. Equating Nazism with every type of totalitarian society is incorrect in terms of political analysis. There are authoritarian regimes, juntas, different types of totalitarian democracies, military dictatorships, autocracies and mixed types so not every totalitarian system is a Nazi one. Ironically, what Behr did is the quintessence of the Nazi propaganda – he reiterated this oversimplified cliché for many years, dissuading fans from favoring Cardassinas until the ST community started happily parroting his views. So if you repeat a lie 1000 times, it obviously becomes a truth.

Yes, the novels are important because they shed light on events what were not explicated in the show. The problem with the Occupation is that it was not presented in the show. All we got was the Bajoran perspective and the Federation perspective. On the level of the ”Terok Nor” trilogy, the Occupation is presented in details and the Bajorans make a sequence of wrong political moves that finally lead to a full-fledged Occupation. These novels also present Crell Moset as a mad scientist with too much academic freedom close at hand, no one really knew what he was doing, what he was researching, even the medical and scientific community on Cardassia. His own mistress, who was his assistant as well, was horrified at his plans and destroyed his research when she realized what he was going to do.

 

[Shatna]

I think the american government is scum, a war machine that has brought misery on millions of arabs, I have no sympathy for any yank soldier dying in a foreign country they have no place in, but I do not have an issue with american people.

Likewise when british invading soldiers walk the street of ireland I detest the British system, government and military, but have no problem with the ordinary british person

While I think comparing the politics of DS9 to world history is interesting and appropriate, opinions like these are untethered to the discussion and are best left to a forum like TNZ. So let's not have them here. Thank you in advance.

 

[Kilana2]

I think the american government is scum, a war machine that has brought misery on millions of arabs, I have no sympathy for any yank soldier dying in a foreign country they have no place in, but I do not have an issue with american people.

Likewise when british invading soldiers walk the street of ireland I detest the British system, government and military, but have no problem with the ordinary british person

While I think comparing the politics of DS9 to world history is interesting and appropriate, opinions like these are untethered to the discussion and are best left to a forum like TNZ. So let's not have them here. Thank you in advance.

While I appreaciate a proper discussion about and their politics, I didn't like this comment either, because I thought it was a bit off Star Trek related discussion.

I don't agree with Shada regarding his perception of the Bajorans, but the Nazi comparison doesn't do justice to the Cardassians. Crell Moset certainly did cruel things with his Bajoran subjects, like some Nazi doctors. But Cardassia has more to offer than just experiments, war and lust for conquest. It has a history. It has people like Damar, Garak, Rugal and Natima Lang. And Cardassia suffered during the Dominion War. It's time to look ahead. I'm curious of Garak's part in the rebuilding efforts after the war and the role he's going to play for his people .

 

[Kilana2]

I always found the klingons cliche'd and the vulcans dull and the bajorans the worst of the lot.
Any episode of ds9 that was predominantly bajoran related was for the most part the worst episodes in my opinion, just like the vulcan ones in enterprise.

It's your opinion and I respect it.

I have my difficulties with the Romulans, especially in the novels and short stories. Don't get me started with Romulan politics.
The last Romulan short story was rather dull. By an auther whose novels I usually love. And there was a Typhon Pact novel involving the Romulans that was surprisingly interesting. So I can't really say that the Romulans are dull per se. As long as a boring Romulan story is only a short story... On the other hand, I've never put aside a novel involving the , that counts for something. Rewatching TNG with ? Most of the episodes I skip, though.

The Bajorans and their spirituality was something that put me off in the first place. But I got to look behind their lives and their culture and came to appreciate them.