Its possible, its not the first time different segments have been shown in a clip out of order to fool viewers. I don't think he is quite the straight forward villain some think he is, I still think that is Georgiou/Emperor.
I don't in any way excuse his actions on the show (the "Dukat did nothing wrong" crowd actually morphed into the alt-right over time from what I gathered). But it's simply not fitting within the Trek message to argue that there are pure villains which are beyond redemption. Not only that, but heel-face turn makes for a great story. It's part of why people love Jaime Lannister's arc in Game of Thrones (which is even more explicit in the books). He slowly morphs from someone contemptible into someone complicated, and finally into someone genuinely heroic.
Dukat is one of the better characters the franchise ever portrayed. It's ironic that he wasn't even a "main" character...
I agree with you both; but I think not everyone needs to be redeemed - and I think it's worth considering that his villainy is important too. As I said Dukat is charismatic even at his worst - but he's far worse than Jaime Lannister, he's Tywin instead. We want people to be nice, to be heroes or have redemptive sagas - but why should we? Dukat's complications and flawed self-perceptions, as well as his evil acts/decisions, as well as that of many Cardassians (Garak, Tain, Damar, Ghemor, etc), are what make them such a brilliant collection to watch and read about. Also have you read Una McCormack's Never-Ending Sacrifice or Crimson Shadow? I know some people scoff at tie-in lit (although I think that is silly), but McCormack has been a judge on the Arthur C Clarke prize, is very well regarded in UK science fiction writing, has a phd in sociology from Cambridge Uni and teaches creative writing.... She's also a brilliant writer on Cardassian society, following on from Robinson himself (her earliest novel, The Lotus Flower, follows on well from his A Stitch in Time, as well as much of what you have both, and others have, written). Heck, through Stitch Robinson doesn't have Garak really learn the true errors of his society until really after the series ended, when he's compiling his memoirs and debating what political faction he might endorse. Both it and McCormack's works show this - definitely if you can, read Stitch, Lotus Flower, Never-Ending Sacrifice and Crimson Shadow. They are beautiful, especially NES and CS.
Maybe Prime Lorca will turn up and save the day, I hope he is just like his counterpart but without the xenophobia of the mirror universe. His slogan can be Make the Federation great again! The show needs more Starfleet officers that are real and not righteous Picardnistas. Lorca was real and now the writers have spoilt things!
However the Federation has colonies with only 17 people on it as in the pores Paradise episode and just a few million as in Deneva's flying pizza episode, so there is plenty of space for refugees to fill a whole planet. If this was ever a plot device I would stop watching.
The Federation IS Great because it rejects in totality all the things represented by the "Make the <insert political entity> Great Again" fascist rhetoric. Seriously, how the hell can Star Trek fans of all ppl buy into that kind of bullshit??!!
Agreed. Of all adversaries we've seen in Trek for the past half-century, he probably had the most depth of any of them. And like all good "bad guys" in TV and cinema, they never consider themselves "bad". Just misunderstood.
Absolutely. And don’t give me any crap about Section 31 cuz they are a horrible outlier that should NEVER have been written into the show
But they are canon, in at least two separate series now, almost a third. You may not like them, but that is irrelevant. They are canon.
The Federation was always the poster child of the very multiculturalism and globalism modern populism rejects, taken to its logical conclusion (species from different worlds with the same rights as each other? HERESY!), so I wonder from time to time what these people find worthwhile in such a setting. I don't think it's as simple as being Dukat/Dominion/Section 31/etc. apologists. If I had to guess, it's probably the result of Berman-era Star Trek continuously playing it safe. When no "hard" questions are asked or explored and the characters are mere plot devices whose only job is to maintain the formula, it's easier to just grab the popcorn and get lost in all the starship porn, big explosions, shiny gadgets and buxom girls in catsuits, and you won't have to even be conscious for a moment of it all taking place in a post-scarcity liberal utopia.
Look I admit I apologized for Lorca myself for several episodes. I viewed him originally as a Captain Jellico type figure, hard nosed, but still virtuous. The way he convinced Burnham to join Discovery by appealing to the explorer in Her was one of the most Trekian things I’d ever heard. But as the series has moved forward it’s become obvious he does not represent the basic values of Starfleet (sometimes the ends justify terrible means) no Starfleet Captain would ever sanction glassing a planet. That’s not who Starfleet is. And come to find out, the reason he doesn’t act like a Starfleet Captain...it’s because he’s not.
Nor were they intended to. They were chartered to ensure that the Federation and its lofty idyllic mission succeeded. Without them, arguably, the Federation might not have been DOA. They are a contradiction, as Bashir correctly pointed out, yet imminently necessary for their collective survival. And like any good allegorical science fiction tropes, that is the ultimate moral quandary inherent in S31's existence that the audience is invited to ponder. And THAT is why I love them and hope they reappear in DISCO. They make some people uncomfortable in the same way that same-sex relationships in the show make homophobes uncomfortable. They're all different strands of the same intricate tapestry.