Speculation about the political situation in DSC

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Purely as fun, what is your best guess for the political situation is in DSC's era, based on what we know from existing Star Trek, or maybe just what you think would be interesting? Obviously it's not important to the show, if it's going to be focusing on non-political events, but its fun to speculate - here is my view of the major political powers:

The United Federation of Planets - Leading a galactic scientific and cultural renaissance, it was established 100 years ago. It is a young, confident and vigorous superpower. Involved in a Cold War with the Klingon Empire.

The Klingon Empire - In a state of Cold War with the United Federation of Planets. It is currently plowing resources into science and the military. It possibly experienced a militaristic cultural revolution after the 2160s.

The Romulan Star Empire - In a state of self-imposed isolation similar to Tokugawa era Japan, following the devastating Earth-Romulan War. Any contact with the Federation is conducted via stealth reconnaissance probes.

The Cardassian Union - The Cardassian Central Command is attempting to lead the Cardassian people out of poverty through a patriarchal statist cultural revolution. The Cardassian people still suffer famines.

The Breen Confedracy - Opportunistic, mercenary and piratical, they have fought conflicts with the Klingon Empire, but are relatively isolated. Unpredictable and aggressive. Known for using captured crews for slave labour.

The Tholian Assembly - Isolationist, like the Romulans, but with no expansionist desires. They are extremely aggressive regarding alien expansion near their space, and will attack others pre-emptively to prevent this.

The Orion Colonies - In a variable friendly/antagonistic relationship with the Federation and Klingons. Home to pirates and criminals. Some colonies political elites are controlled by the Orion Syndicate criminal organization.

The Gorn Hegemony - UNCONTACTED [First contact in 2267 - James T Kirk]

The Ferengi Alliance - UNCONTACTED [First contact in 2364 - Jean-Luc Picard]

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Some interesting videos about the prequel idea and political philosophy in Trek:

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[Kevin Wolff]

The reason for the Cold war is storytelling. Diplomacy can occur during a cold war. Uneasy temp alliance, etc. Once the war goes hot it's all one note. Action and tactics. The opportunities to face your enemy and talk is reduced. You need somewhere to go after, and war is usually followed by reconstruction. Not exactly easy drama or exploration. DS9 was able to have a short Klingon war ( It was...GLORIOUS) because they knew they had a larger common enemy against whom they'd eventually unite.
I think the Romulans will be sidelined for a season or 2, since the Klingons will be the cold warriors this time.
The rest are up for grabs because none except the ferengi have been developed.
Speaking of the Ferengi, I believe we'll see them sooner than the Romulans. They're humanity in the 21st century. Greedy, suspicious, racist, etc. They are needed now more than ever as a contrast to where we want to be in the future.

 

[Mudd]

This isn't a prequel. It takes place during the 23rd century, during the TOS era that we saw in the episode "The Menagerie."

 

[Philip Guyott]

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

That was the mission statement of the starship Enterprise in TOS during Kirk's first five year mission. But what I would like to know is was the ship built for that purpose. 10-15 years before Kirk's famous five year mission, did Starfleet build these ships simply to seek out new life and new civilizations or were there other more political motives? And what will the mission statement of the starship Discovery be? Will it be a ship of peaceful exploration, a warship, a cargo ship, etc?

 

[Ovation]

Why, it'll be a garbage scow, naturally.

 

[Nerys Myk]

And what will the mission statement of the starship Discovery be? Will it be a ship of peaceful exploration, a warship, a cargo ship, etc?

Yes.

 

[Kevin Wolff]

Why, it'll be a garbage scow, naturally.

Naturally, and the captain will be a Denebian Slime Devil who speaks Klingonese. They can round out the diverse cast with a Medusan. They can just paint his box the color of his uniform. And think how much cooler the humanoid cast will look wearing shades all the time.

 

[Tenacity]

The United Federation of Planets - A wonderful multicultural mess, more than a bit of a societal confusion as the still young federation continues it's collective attempts to "find itself."

The thoroughly disorganized federation council's endeavor to be in control is alternately helped and hindered by the member worlds giving it power and then taking it away. A running joke in the series is most people in the federation are completely unaware that there even is a council.

The Klingon Empire - During this time period tensions are surprisingly low between the various Klingon family houses and the worlds of the federation. There is commerce and trade (Errand of Mercy spoke of cutting off trade), however Starfleet and Klingon ships still occasionally engage in saber rattling.

The Romulan Star Empire - The incredible boring Romulans are never seen or heard.

The Orions - A competitor with the federation, but never in a military sense (that's so old). More of a rival peaceful federation, vying for trade, natural resources, and new member worlds.

The Orion star systems and the federation star systems are intertwined in interstellar space so there can't be a clear border separating them. Show that they're not all criminals and pirates.

But still show pirates because everyone loves pirates.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

How anyone could think the Romulans are boring is beyond me.

I could however understand someone saying they had been written badly, and made boring on occasion as a result

A couple more interesting videos for the sake of it:

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[Sci]

I think it would be a mistake to include the Cardassians or the Breen. There's no canonical evidence, but the lack of canonical Federation-Cardassian Union storylines and the distance from Cardassia to Earth in DS9 seems to imply that the UFP was not expanding in the direction of the Cardassian Union during the TOS era, and thus likely did not have first contact with the Cardassian Union until some time in the early 24th Century.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Just because it wasn't on Kirk's route, don't mean they weren't contacted.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Also, there was a Cardassian dissident poet living in exile on Vulcan in our very own 21st century - perhaps even before Vulcans discovered Zephram Cochrane's warp-flight - so if a prominent Federation member world already knew of them, I'm willing to bet they were well-known in Kirk's time. I can understand wanting to preserve some discoveries of major races for Picard's time - but the Cardassians were not one of them, and were probably always as well known locally as the Klingons and Romulans - we just never happen to hear them mentioned in three seasons of TOS.

Cardassians and Breen may just have been part of the local neighbourhood even in Archer's time. I.E. well known to the governments of Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar and Denobula. We know the Breen fought a war with the Klingons sometime during the "Second Empire" in Klingon history. Earth may have found out about them shortly after joining the local neighborhood. The Ferengi however might be more truly remote than the Cardassians or Breen, perhaps the majority of their commercial interests and multi-cultural client worlds are toward the galactic centre.

 

[Sci]

The Ferengi however might be more truly remote than the Cardassians or Breen, perhaps the majority of their commercial interests and multi-cultural client worlds are toward the galactic centre.

The problem with that speculation is that DS9 established Ferenginar to be relatively close to Bajor and Cardassia. So it seems implausible to me that the Federation would have had centuries' worth of contact with the one and no contact with the other; it seems more plausible to me that the Federation would have begun exploring and expanding into their region of space in the early 24th Century and had contact with the Cardassians first, and then the Ferengi, per TNG.

I'm not saying it's impossible for the Cardassian Union to have been contacted in the 23rd Century. It's a work of fiction and ultimately you can justify whatever you want in fiction. But I don't think it's what the little evidence we have implies, and it's not the creative decision I would make.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

But the things you mention, at the end of the day, are circumstantial.

We don't even know how exploration functions in a warp drive equipped civilization - it might be possible for two relatively close species to be contacted far apart in time - the Cardassians may have been keen to be recognized as a major government far and wide; may have sent envoys to Tellar, Kronos, Romulus and Andoria - the Ferengi may not - we know private Ferengi individuals came across humans in the 22nd century (I wish they hadn't) - but actual official First Contact may not necessarily proceed from it, as we saw. The Cardassians also had some citizens present on the repair station in ENT season 2, and may have built a private space station near Klingon space:

Perhaps Cardassian territory marked the far west of local space. Perhaps the Ferengi star systems lie just beyond this. Perhaps DS9 gives a mistaken impression of how far Ferenginar is, due to a scene change. We all know how unreliable distance information is in Star Trek. Perhaps private Ferengi individuals had encountered Federation citizens for decades, but the majority of their interests lay in unknown space, being blocked by the Cardassians and Breen from expanding toward Earth.

In the Star Trek: Encyclopedia, the Okudas very rarely accepted supposition, and usually included it in italics below an entry - so we can't really take things like apparent distance to Ferenginar into equal consideration with say, the words of the crew of the Enterprise D - and our guesses about Cardassian first contact are based on things like fan interpretations of Star Trek's geography - some of them are reasonable guesses, but for example, the idea that just because the Federation had had ships visit a certain region, may not necessarily mean they know everything in that given region - given that there might be tens of thousands of stars near Bajor, Cardassia and Ferenginar. To quote Christopher L Bennet again:

One way to look at it is in terms of numbers. The galaxy has something like 4-500 billion stars. Even if the Federation could visit a new one every single day, it would take more than a billion years to visit every star in the galaxy. In three centuries at that rate, the most they could cover would be 0.002% of the galaxy. Even in that 4-5% covered in Star Charts, the vast majority of star systems would probably have never been visited by anything but unmanned probes at best.

Even if we conservatively assume that only, say, one star in a million has sentient life, that's still nearly half a million intelligent species, so if you could visit one per day, it would still take over 1,300 years to contact them all. And in Trek, sentient life seems to be far more common than that.
​

T'Pol gave an estimate of one intelligent species in every 43,000 planets.

It's good that we Trekkies think about political geography. But there is no point forming a dogma about it based on so little. I just have a personal preference for the Cardassians being an early contact - when I was a kid, I assumed, like the Star Trek: Chronology might have suggested, that they were first contacted in Picard's century. But now, I have changed my preference, especially considering all we saw in ENT, that changed out concepts about early Star Trek history so thoroughly. I tend to think to myself now, that probably the core members of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union, the Tholian Assembly and the Breen Confederacy represent local space - a region that has known each other for a long time (i.e. that Cardassian poet living on Vulcan).

 

[Tim Thomason]

In "The Nagus," I believe, the Grand Nagus and the Ferengi talk about the Gamma Quadrant as a good place to do business, because they don't know who the Ferengi is.

This makes me think that it was in the Ferengi's best interest (and almost certainly official policy) to keep themselves from active diplomatic contacts with other polities over a long period of time. The Ferengi were known before The Last Output (they were discussed in Encounter at Farpoint) and had isolated contacts with Earth people before (in Acquisition, of course, but also with Picard and the Battle of Maxia).

Christopher Bennett blamed the lack of Ferengi contact on an economic depression during the 22nd century. I always figured that the Alliance was a very, very small government, perhaps confined just to the planet Ferenginar, and Ferengi mostly showed up as cantina aliens throughout the galaxy.

So, I like the idea of a Cardassian Union in a pre-militarized state, showing up as peaceful traders or the like. Maybe they could be a one-system government dealing with problems with their bloodthirsty neighbors, the People's Republic of Bajor.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

I imagine a Bajor System in Pike's era swarming with wooden solar sail vessels, each visiting Bajor's M-class moons, such as Jerrado, and meeting the warp ships of other species. The Bajorans have been using them for hundreds of years. Rigellian, Tarkellian and Vulcan Merchants have visited the system for almost as long. People visited the planet for trade, art and philosophy. Occasional Bajoran citizens venturing further afield on the warp vessels of other species, becoming acclimated to the ways of the wider galaxy; adopting the cultures of others.

Then I imagine Cardassian Central Command eyeing the vast resources of the Bajor System and thinking "this is our ticket out of famine". Introducing the Bajoran government(s) to planning advisors and foreign investment in mining operations, playing one province against another. Lending military advisors and logistical support to regional governors to quell existing uprisings resulting from Bajoran corruption or instability (after all, there is always some truth to the colonialist claim that the subject people were fighting among themselves before their conquerors arrived). It would be really interesting to see a Cardassia which is not yet the great power that they are in the 24th century - still suffering poverty - but becoming increasingly militarized and abandoning the peaceful ways of the ancient Cardassian civilizations, in an attempt to create a stronger, more modern state, and warp-equipped fleet. Their focus on Bajor bears fruit 60 years later when Cardassia assumes direct control of Bajor, via the Occupational Government, formed of collaborating Bajoran elites, and backed by the Cardassian military.

Later, in the 24th century, they salvage or buy cast-off/used Federation, Talarian and Cardassian technology, making phasers, warp capable transport ships and impulse fighters that we see in DS9, as they are forced to adapt to the galaxy around them and defend themselves against the Cardassian occupation. The irony being that they are repeating the history of the Cardassian state in some ways; the coup of 2370, by the ultra-nationalist 'Alliance for Global Unity' (aka 'The Circle'), against the 'Bajoran Provisional Government', is almost an exact repeat of how Cardassian Central Command probably came about - a desire for a stronger, militarized Bajor.

 

[RAMA]

Cold war Brinkmanship with the Klingons. Possibly the reason why they mentioned STVI and confused so many literal minded Trekkies.

According to Memory Alpha:

As stated in the Star Trek Encyclopedia (1st ed., p. 18), "it was not established who the opponent was in Garth's victory. It has been speculated that it might have been the Romulans, although the history implied by TOS: "Balance of Terror" indicates that there was no Federation contacts with the Romulans during that time frame." Additionally, based on Kirk's comments, "the Axanar battle apparently had something to do with holding the Federation together." According to the FASA source book The Four Years War, the battle was fought between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. This is also highly unlikely, as the history implied by TOS: "Errand of Mercy" indicates that the Federation had been involved in a strictly "cold" war with the Klingons during that time. In addition, Garth's reaction to the fact that Kirk seems to have successfully made peace with the Federation's opponents in the battle would exclude the Klingons as a potential enemy.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

I think it would be a mistake to include the Cardassians or the Breen. There's no canonical evidence, but the lack of canonical Federation-Cardassian Union storylines and the distance from Cardassia to Earth in DS9 seems to imply that the UFP was not expanding in the direction of the Cardassian Union during the TOS era, and thus likely did not have first contact with the Cardassian Union until some time in the early 24th Century.

well, we know of a cardassian leaving on vulcan in 21st century as USS Einstein said, and we know cardassian travelled near Earth in the 22nd century (we saw a cardassian in the misterious repair station on STE season 2 and in STE season 4 organians speak about a cardassian ship which reached their planet)

 

[Sci]

But the things you mention, at the end of the day, are circumstantial.

Sure. That's why I said it's a work of fiction and you could justify it another way. But what little evidence we have implies -- does not prove; implies -- that the Cardassian Union and the UFP had not contacted each other in the 23rd Century.

It's good that we Trekkies think about political geography. But there is no point forming a dogma about it based on so little.

And I didn't do that. I said what I think would be a better idea based on what little evidence we have, but I did not say another idea could not be justified.

Then I imagine Cardassian Central Command eyeing the vast resources of the Bajor System and thinking "this is our ticket out of famine". Introducing the Bajoran government(s) to planning advisors and foreign investment in mining operations, playing one province against another. Lending military advisors and logistical support to regional governors to quell existing uprisings resulting from Bajoran corruption or instability (after all, there is always some truth to the colonialist claim that the subject people were fighting among themselves before their conquerors arrived). It would be really interesting to see a Cardassia which is not yet the great power that they are in the 24th century - still suffering poverty - but becoming increasingly militarized and abandoning the peaceful ways of the ancient Cardassian civilizations, in an attempt to create a stronger, more modern state, and warp-equipped fleet.

For whatever it's worth, the novel Terok Nor: Day of the Viper by James Swallow depicts Bajoran/Cardassian first contact and the process by which Cardassia usurps control of Bajor. Parts of it resemble your scenario; others don't.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

I've mentioned in other threads before, but I quite like the idea that the Klingon Empire underwent a revolution in this era (paralleling 20th century European states such as Germany and Italy) - maybe around 2200. It might go some way to explaining why their culture was slightly different in TOS. Perhaps for about 90 years or so, they became more like the Klingons of John M Ford - an empire which was nicely described by the ship's computer in the video game Star Trek: Judgement Rites as believing "in survival of the fittest". Then they had a counterrevolution before TNG, which explains how they are seemingly more reactionary and atavistic.