Did Sisko's Actions Provoke The Dominion War?

[M.A.C.O.]

Thinking about the episodes The Visitor and Children of Time, where the conflict with the Dominion never occured. I pondered that what changed was Sisko; Captain of DS9, Emissary to the Prophets and the people of Bajor, was removed from the equation and somehow the Feddies were able to work things out with the Founders.

What do you think?

 

[Jetboogieman]

I'm not sure I understand the question, so if DS9 was totally not DS9, would the Dominion war have occurred?

Well that's a tricky question to answer.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

1. Jake was never positioned to account for the geopolitical changes that occurred over his lifetime. Indeed, he doesn't account for events in the last 20 or so years.
2. Nothing is known of the infiltration of Changelings into Alpha Quadrant governments.
3. The Gowron, Leyton and O'Brien changeling were given free reign, and pulled the strings.
4. The war happened after Jake's lifetime and the Federation was not prepared.
5. If Sisko never saved Kirk's life, either V'ger, Khan or the Whale probe would have obliterated Earth. Any semblance of the Federation would have failed to provide significant resolve to uncover the conspiracy that opposed peace between UFP and Klingon Empire.


Any retcon, including the ones I offered or the one that insists the Dominion War never happened, are imposing an unnecessary level of continuity. The producers were not willing to reveal their hands. They wanted the development of the series to be a surprise.

 

[Finn]

Thinking about the episodes The Visitor and Children of Time, where the conflict with the Dominion never occured. I pondered that what changed was Sisko; Captain of DS9, Emissary to the Prophets and the people of Bajor, was removed from the equation and somehow the Feddies were able to work things out with the Founders.

What do you think?

How do you know the Dominion War never occurred in the "original" timeline of Children of Time?

 

[MacLeod]

Or perhaps the Dominion was still working behind the scenes slowly destablising the quadrant and playing the long game. Perhaps any actions Sisko took which caused the Dominion war only caused it to start earlier than the DOminion had planned for it to start.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

How do you know the Dominion War never occurred in the "original" timeline of Children of Time?

Just rewatched the episode. I thought the planet the crew was stranded on was located near the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole. Which would mean the Jem Ha'dar would have been able to detect the Federation technology coming from the service of the planet. Turns out, the planet is in a nearby solar system. My mistake.

However, the colony managed to go undetected by the Dominion for decades. The expansion of the Dominion and their war against the solids didn't seem to reach the planet Gaia.

 

[somebuddyX]

The Klingons somehow gained control of DS9 in The Visitor so maybe they just pointed all their guns at the wormhole and shot anything that came through. Or maybe the war happened slightly differently in the background but was unmentioned in the episode, which if they are meant to be accurate in-universe glimpses of the future from that point forward, is something I thought might have happened in the All Good Things future as well, ignoring the whole that out of universe "that storyline came later" idea though. Or maybe the war's been delayed until the Dominion makes the trip the long way round.

 

[Voth commando1]

Even if the wormhole was collapsed the rate of conventional fed and dominion expansion would have meant they would share a border in a hundred to two hundred years faster given trans warp tech and whatever Voyager brings back.

The dominion was preparing for war all the wormhole did was expedite said planning. Sisko being a belligerent and rather macho individual certainly provoked tensions and it could be argued the discovery of the wormhole itself was a catalyst(indirectly) for war.

All other factors accounted for war was inevitable the dominion would have accepted no less than the destruction or vassalization of its enemies and the Feds weren't gonna stop exploring and expanding. The differing ideologies were icing on the cake.

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure we can argue the Dominion was preparing for "war". After all, they themselves claimed they had lived in peace for either 2,000 or 10,000 years - that is, their expansion in that time had not involved major wars, just some easy crushing.

Now, the Dominion may exaggerate the stability of their reign, but its length is likely to be close to the figures quoted. It establishes a rate of expansion, and suggests that Earth wouldn't be in risk of assimilation yet for a couple of thousand years at least. And probably much longer, since the bigger the Dominion gets, the less distance is added between the center and the border for any given annexation of a volume of space, for simple geometrical reasons.

Whether the Dominion would have been a threat to the Federation when the two met through conventional means is difficult to tell. The UFP seems to be making rapid technological advances, such as being on the verge of transwarp in the 23rd-24th century already. The Dominion isn't noted for such, and might become obsolete in just a couple of centuries.

Then again, perhaps the UFP will soon stagnate, having found it impossible to actually do transwarp, and the Dominion is what a stagnated empire looks like, a couple of millennia into its existence. The two might indeed slug it out eventually on more or less equal footing.

The war we saw was certainly made possible by the actions of the Alpha players: the Dominion would supposedly not have found the wormhole without them, and would not have learned of the Alpha civilizations any time soon. And Sisko personally was pretty much the one responsible for the opening of the wormhole for traffic. But the subsequent Alpha push into Gamma, and the provocation of the Dominion into doing something about it (even when they had plenty of oppressing and conquering left to do in Gamma, and could simply close the wormhole if they so wished), was a group effort, and while Starfleet was in it big time, it was not Sisko's job to prod into Gamma. And it was not Sisko who first met and provoked the Dominion, supposedly, but one of those starships declared missing - UFP or Klingon or perhaps other.

Technically, Sisko again personally launched the war in "Call to Arms", by mining shut the wormhole, but it was clearly a preplanned action because it involved the synchronized launching of armadas of thousands of starships... And it just put a date to an event that was going to happen anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Voth commando1]

I'm not sure we can argue the Dominion was preparing for "war". After all, they themselves claimed they had lived in peace for either 2,000 or 10,000 years - that is, their expansion in that time had not involved major wars, just some easy crushing.

Now, the Dominion may exaggerate the stability of their reign, but its length is likely to be close to the figures quoted. It establishes a rate of expansion, and suggests that Earth wouldn't be in risk of assimilation yet for a couple of thousand years at least. And probably much longer, since the bigger the Dominion gets, the less distance is added between the center and the border for any given annexation of a volume of space, for simple geometrical reasons.

Whether the Dominion would have been a threat to the Federation when the two met through conventional means is difficult to tell. The UFP seems to be making rapid technological advances, such as being on the verge of transwarp in the 23rd-24th century already. The Dominion isn't noted for such, and might become obsolete in just a couple of centuries.

Then again, perhaps the UFP will soon stagnate, having found it impossible to actually do transwarp, and the Dominion is what a stagnated empire looks like, a couple of millennia into its existence. The two might indeed slug it out eventually on more or less equal footing.

The war we saw was certainly made possible by the actions of the Alpha players: the Dominion would supposedly not have found the wormhole without them, and would not have learned of the Alpha civilizations any time soon. And Sisko personally was pretty much the one responsible for the opening of the wormhole for traffic. But the subsequent Alpha push into Gamma, and the provocation of the Dominion into doing something about it (even when they had plenty of oppressing and conquering left to do in Gamma, and could simply close the wormhole if they so wished), was a group effort, and while Starfleet was in it big time, it was not Sisko's job to prod into Gamma. And it was not Sisko who first met and provoked the Dominion, supposedly, but one of those starships declared missing - UFP or Klingon or perhaps other.

Technically, Sisko again personally launched the war in "Call to Arms", by mining shut the wormhole, but it was clearly a preplanned action because it involved the synchronized launching of armadas of thousands of starships... And it just put a date to an event that was going to happen anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

I recall Ron Moore saying the dominion was aware of the federation and had "plans" a hundred or two hundred years down the line, So at the latest I imagine conventional contact by the late 26th century.

Trans warp was going to be invented, there were Starfleet engineers who were working on it and Voyager encountered species who used it(Voth). Voyager themselves experimented with it. In any timeline I can imagine Voyager will undoubtedly make progress in trans warp if it doesn't get back in 2445 finding the federation stock full of trans warp ships.

The dominion conquered the species that conquered the Skyreen. I don't believe the dominion controlled the entire gamma quadrant but all evidence tells me they controlled either a majority of it or a substantial portion.

Had a more advanced say 26th or at the latest 27th century Federation encountered the dominion border to border I imagine it would have been a struggle between equals or near equals.

War couldn't be stopped only a couple of things I think would have worked the Tal-Shiar-Obsidian Order operation succeeds, the Jem'hadar in the iconian episode launch a crazy Zerg rush overpowering the dominion itself or some massive change in the status quo occurs like the Alpha/Beta Quadrants being fully Borgified/Assimilated or an extragalactic invasion or the federation absorbing the whole alpha/beta quadrants. Something that would have radically altered the geopolitical calculations of everybody involved would have prevented an inevitable clash.

Sisko certainly provoked tensions and threw some matches but the gasoline was already on the road.

 

[Timo]

I recall Ron Moore saying the dominion was aware of the federation and had "plans" a hundred or two hundred years down the line

Aware at which point, though? The Hundred weren't scheduled to return any time soon, and we got no onscreen indication that the Dominion knew about the Federation or other Alpha entities before Sisko opened the wormhole for them. But after "Emissary", the Dominion would meet plenty of explorers and conquerors from the UFP and the Klingon Empire at least, plus a few Bajorans.

Trans warp was going to be invented, there were Starfleet engineers who were working on it and Voyager encountered species who used it(Voth). Voyager themselves experimented with it. In any timeline I can imagine Voyager will undoubtedly make progress in trans warp if it doesn't get back in 2445 finding the federation stock full of trans warp ships.

The thing is, nobody seems to have transwarp and still remain in the category of mortals that the UFP and the Dominion fit. The Borg are quite a few rungs higher up on the ladder, and the Voth are Ancients in the literal sense.

So we might deduce that no amount of experimenting will result in practical transwarp, despite plenty of false promise, until and unless the culture doing the experimenting itself evolves to a certain level of competence. And, further, that it's damned difficult to do since nobody else has managed it yet.

The dominion conquered the species that conquered the Skyreen. I don't believe the dominion controlled the entire gamma quadrant but all evidence tells me they controlled either a majority of it or a substantial portion.

How so? We get no solid figures on population or dimensions, or on conquered species or cultures. Might be the Dominion is a local bully, just conveniently situated fairly close to the wormhole.

Had a more advanced say 26th or at the latest 27th century Federation encountered the dominion border to border I imagine it would have been a struggle between equals or near equals.

We really have to wonder why the only culture with galactic reach in the era (that is, the history of the human culture) is the conquest-disinterested Borg. What happens to all the Dominions and Federations to stop them from doing that sort of expansion?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spot261]

I recall Ron Moore saying the dominion was aware of the federation and had "plans" a hundred or two hundred years down the line, So at the latest I imagine conventional contact by the late 26th century.

Have you a reference? It wouldn't hold as canon but might be interesting to see what kind of discussions were shaping what we see onscreen.

Aware at which point, though? The Hundred weren't scheduled to return any time soon, and we got no onscreen indication that the Dominion knew about the Federation or other Alpha entities before Sisko opened the wormhole for them. But after "Emissary", the Dominion would meet plenty of explorers and conquerors from the UFP and the Klingon Empire at least, plus a few Bajorans.

Timo's assessment holds here for me. Onscreen at least the Dominion seem to be learning pretty much from scratch and show no signs of having planned the invasion in the long term, or even had any reason to suspect it might be on the horizon. They has the same few years the Federation did, the nature of their existing forces deployments making a wartime muster more readily possible.

I don't believe the dominion controlled the entire gamma quadrant but all evidence tells me they controlled either a majority of it or a substantial portion.

This, or at a very least they were the dominant power in that technological/development bracket.

Had a more advanced say 26th or at the latest 27th century Federation encountered the dominion border to border I imagine it would have been a struggle between equals or near equals.

This for me depends on a lot of unknowns and speculation about the future progress of the Federation. Based on what we have observed, extrapolating their tech levels a couple of centuries would put them way ahead of the Dominion, arguably to the point where "conflict" might become a meaningless concept. Then again, a lot can go wrong in two centuries,

The thing is, nobody seems to have transwarp and still remain in the category of mortals that the UFP and the Dominion fit. The Borg are quite a few rungs higher up on the ladder, and the Voth are Ancients in the literal sense.

One might argue even the Borg aren't really at that level in conventional terms. Rather they have bypassed the usual developmental process by virtue of being able to assimilate technologies. Certainly it is very difficult to imagine their having independently "invented" transwarp in the way another species might and they don't fit the image of being as technologically "mature" a species as the Voth.

 

[Nyotarules]

Once the wormhole was discovered war was on the table. The Dominion don't differentiate between solids, so once the Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar invasion came, that just solidified their determination to bring their version of order to the Alpha/Beta quadrants.

 

[somebuddyX]

I recall Ron Moore saying the dominion was aware of the federation and had "plans" a hundred or two hundred years down the line, So at the latest I imagine conventional contact by the late 26th century.

That was Robert Hewitt Wolfe and was from the Birth of the Dominion and Beyond featurette, from the Season 3 dvd set, I believe. I watched it on youtube at some point. Very cool look at the behind the scenes creation of the dominion.

 

[Tomalak]

How so? We get no solid figures on population or dimensions, or on conquered species or cultures. Might be the Dominion is a local bully, just conveniently situated fairly close to the wormhole.

They aren't even that close to the wormhole, as it takes a couple of years to make confirmed contact, and then it's lengthy expedition before Starfleet actually get to talk to someone who identifies as "the Dominion".

It could be that Idran is a bit of a backwater. But the main interest of the Founders is to make sure no one can hurt them, and they are safe to Link in peace. They mainly did this by constructing an economic alliance, backed with some heavies to bring wrongdoers into line.

It's the Federation's expansionism and inability to take no for an answer that convinces the Founders they need to actively deal with them.

 

[Nyotarules]

It's the Federation's expansionism and inability to take no for an answer that convinces the Founders they need to actively deal with them.

IMO this makes the Federation partly to blame for what happens. The Federation has plenty of room in the Alpha quadrant, why do they feel the need to have this 'lets explore and stick our noses where its not wanted attitude' . Are they running out of space or something? Stay in your own backyard where its Paradise. Close your damn borders and stop your pseudo colonialism.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The Federation has plenty of room in the Alpha quadrant, why do they feel the need to have this 'lets explore and stick our noses where its not wanted attitude' . Are they running out of space or something? Stay in your own backyard where its Paradise. Close your damn borders and stop your pseudo colonialism.

What about the Prophets and the Bajorans? Geopolitically, the space around the wormhole is theirs and they may dispose of it as they wish. Indeed, that space has almost no value outside the existence of the wormhole, and the Prophets demonstrated their ability to deny access to it.

 

[Voth commando1]

What about the Prophets and the Bajorans? Geopolitically, the space around the wormhole is theirs and they may dispose of it as they wish. Indeed, that space has almost no value outside the existence of the wormhole, and the Prophets demonstrated their ability to deny access to it.

Chroniton radiation might show those wormhole aliens who runs the show, not that the Federation would do such a thing...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Chroniton radiation might show those wormhole aliens who runs the show, not that the Federation would do such a thing...

I'm also sure the a nuclear weapon would show the British who's boss in Gibraltar, but then it wouldn't be an access point anymore.

 

[Spot261]

The Prophets are Spanish?