Why didn't the Federation help Bajor??
- Thread starter WraithDukat
- Start date
So Sisko "thought" the station was built by slave labor?
Well, he was wrong. Empok Nor sits in the middle of nowhere after having been abandoned on the spot. Nobody around for having built that one in situ. And thus no reason to think Terok Nor was built in situ, either.
Quark in "A Time to Stand" waxes poetic about the woes of the occupation aboard DS9. He mentions ghetto fences, slave laborers and the cries of starving children. None of these appear in "Necessary Evil" where we get an actual look. Instead, we get commuters (who get managed by the chickenwire fences, much like commuters on bus stations today), entrepreneurs (Ferengi and Bajoran), and the cries of "Work detail tomorrow" (as in, "No work detail today").
I just don't think we're supposed to take all that foreign propaganda all that seriously.
Timo Saloniemi
Dukat didn't dispute it when Sisko said that.
And you'd expect him to do that?
Quite probably he dreams of having the station built by slave labor every second night, dedicating the other nights to Bajoran women. But he is not the type to get defensive about anything. And there's not an instance in DS9 where he would have risen up (stooped down) to a quip.
Timo Saloniemi
Quite probably he dreams of having the station built by slave labor every second night, dedicating the other nights to Bajoran women. But he is not the type to get defensive about anything. And there's not an instance in DS9 where he would have risen up (stooped down) to a quip.
Timo Saloniemi
Rewatching 'Babel' right now: the dialogue specifically states the sabotage device that O'Brien accidentally triggers (the one hidden deep in the machinery) was originally smuggled onto Terok Nor and installed there during the original construction of the station by members of the Bajoran Underground. The station was built at Bajor with Bajoran involvement.
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Well, the known involvement is limited to the Underground "smuggling" the device aboard during construction, at least as theorized by Odo. And this would have been five years after Dukat was seen abusing Bajoran women on the apparently already more or less completed station!
Being built "at Bajor" is not established in this episode, either. Where Dekon Elig operated is unknown - the only location he's associated with is the decidedly off-Bajor internment camp where he ended up. And when we first hear of Bajoran resistance to Cardassia, this involves expat groups far away from Bajor...
Until something more solid comes up, the Empok Nor case can't be lightly brushed off.
Timo Saloniemi
The date in WDTDON is a simple mistake or a retcon. There is no believable argument to make that Odo, who worked on Terok Nor for years, AND Kira, who literally grew up in the resistance, AND the resistance doctor, who was involved in a plot to sabotage the station as it was being built, AND Sisko, who was thoroughly briefed on the station's history by Starfleet intelligence were all wrong on the construction date of the station by five years. Nor is it in any way believable that the station could exist as seen in WDTDON and still be considered under construction five years later. The only logical thing to do is assume that Babel technically should've said '23 years ago' instead of 18, or that WDTDON should've said 2351 instead of 2346, but that everything else is the same.
Being built at Bajor is established in this episode. There is no plausible explanation for why any Bajoran would ever be allowed on a Cardassian construction site outside of the Bajoran system, where they were used as a labor force. If the station were constructed elsewhere, the resistance would never have had the chance to place the device 'during construction'.
Since we actually saw DS9 in ORBIT of Bajor when the show first started, how can there be any dispute as to where it was built? 
Since we actually saw DS9 in ORBIT of Bajor when the show first started, how can there be any dispute as to where it was built?
Absent any other information, it could theoretically have been towed to Bajor rather than built there. Of course, that would've been a huge waste of time and energy, and, also, the show is very clear that it was actually built there.
Or a dream sequence in which the Orb clouds Kira's judgement in many ways... We have no idea whether any of this stuff ever happened for real. But we can decide it did, and it still doesn't create undue complications.
Oh, it's simple to say that the construction took the better part of a decade and was "new and approaching completion" in "Wrongs Darker" as stated and still ongoing during Dekon's sabotage as stated - this covers all of the above with no contradiction.
It's just that the whole idea is in contradiction of Empok Nor, so I don't want to think this would support the idea of Bajoran slave labor being involved in the construction. Again, we saw the place and the time, and again, we saw no slavery involved (save for the sexual sort, and that's a separate argument).
What do you mean? Surely the station could remain under construction for its entire existence - it's just that Terok Nor apparently did not, and also apparently there was no second or third spree of construction that would require closer defining from Odo here. This is highly atypical for an industrial plant, mind you, but perhaps Cardassia didn't consider Terok Nor much of a priority and never got around to constructing more stuff inside the shell we saw.
This whole controversy is a bit muddy to begin with. The 2346 date is based on Kira Nerys thinking her mother died when Nerys was three; in fact, if the episode is to be believed, Meru left for the station as described in the events when Nerys was three. But we don't know when Nerys was born! Making her five years younger would alter nothing. And all the other references to passage of time in the episode are vague and secondary to Nerys' conviction that she was three at the time.
Only the completion of the construction. And with no evidence of slave labor. (Or of construction, for that matter, save for the pimp Basso's statement that the place is nearing completion.)
Why would Dekon Elig need to be "allowed" there? He was up to no good - it wouldn't matter whether he looked like a Bajoran or a Wookie.
Some of them on Bajor were, while others just lived their own lives, and yet others vied for Cardassian favors. Conversely, there's no indication they weren't being used as a labor force everywhere within Cardassia's reach. And no indication they were being used as a labor force to construct Terok Nor.
Bajoran terrorists were supposed to operate basically everywhere in "Ensign Ro". While the evidence in that particular case was faked, it probably was against a background of true events in order to pass muster.
Timo Saloniemi
Unlikely.
When it was towed to the wormhole, all indications were that it had never been done before. If the Cardassians had done it, there'd be a record in the station computers, and O'Brien and Kira wouldn't have acted like it was an impossible thing to do.
Well, Empok Nor was towed. Or at least it was in the middle of nowhere, despite being a refinery identical to Terok Nor (identical not only in the sense of allowing the use of the same sets, but in the sense of letting O'Brien be certain that he would find the necessary parts on this station he had never set foot on before).
The pilot established that the station could move. It also established that the departing Cardassians had hobbled that ability. And it established a time limit to the movement, one the heroes could not meet with the remaining conventional drive capacity, and probably couldn't have met even with the original capacity.
All this is insystem movement. It gets us nowhere in explaining Empok Nor, which wasn't moving from A to B within a system (because the system was devoid of both A and B of worth). So, towing.
...At the end of the day, we're still left without examples of Bajorans building any parts of either station, least of all unpaid. The marks of Bajoran work aboard were marks of sabotage exclusively.
Timo Saloniemi
The pilot established that the station could move. It also established that the departing Cardassians had hobbled that ability. And it established a time limit to the movement, one the heroes could not meet with the remaining conventional drive capacity, and probably couldn't have met even with the original capacity.
All this is insystem movement. It gets us nowhere in explaining Empok Nor, which wasn't moving from A to B within a system (because the system was devoid of both A and B of worth). So, towing.
...At the end of the day, we're still left without examples of Bajorans building any parts of either station, least of all unpaid. The marks of Bajoran work aboard were marks of sabotage exclusively.
Timo Saloniemi
It's simple to say it, but it's also nonsensical. The station isn't *that* big and it's being built with 24th century technology. A few years is maybe believable, 5-10 years is not.
1. I'm not sure how any of it really is in contradiction with Empok Nor
and
2. Sexual slavery is still slavery - it's highly unlikely the Cardassians would openly practice the one, but turn their noses up at the other, unless they just considered Bajorans useless for anything other than sex, which we know is not true.
It could and did continue to have changes made throughout its life, but that is obviously not the same as remaining under construction. And the sabotage took place on the command level (not exactly an optional build site) - so should have been done early in the construction phase, not at the end of it.
Which is basically what I mean with 'or WDTDON should've said 2351'. If you prefer to believe it's an orb mix-up due to Kira's influence, rather than a mistake or a retcon, that's fine with me.
Because a Cardassian guard can pretty easily see the difference between a Cardassian and a Bajoran. Someone with no legal access to a military site is the worst possible person to try to sabotage that site.
Except that the show explicitly said they were used as a labor force to construct Terok Nor, and we were never given any indication that I can recall of any kind of Bajoran civilian (slave or otherwise) life happening anywhere outside the Bajoran sector that was still under Cardassian jurisdiction, aside from 1 or 2 references to Bajorans being sent somewhere as prisoners.
Of course the terrorists wanted to operate everywhere - better to strike fear in the heart of Cardassia. It doesn't mean anything if you automatically get shot the second you set foot on the construction site.
In fairness, there was no actual towing involved in the pilot. They were making the station move *under its own power*, which it obviously wasn't designed to do. I tend to agree that evidence there makes it highly unlikely towing would work at all, but it is still a fair point that Empok Nor sat in the middle of nowhere, so it's a choice between believing that these stations can be towed to their final position or believing that they are always built on site (and therefore that Empok Nor was constructed entirely on site, as well, despite there being no site there to use for logistical support/storage/labor force, etc).
Prior to the discovery of the wormhole, what was Bajor? A rural backwater on the far edge of nowhere. They might not have even come up on the radar for most of Starfleet and Federation officials, except those security/intel officers trying to analyze the Cardassian Union. And the prime directive applies -- the Federation should no more be the Galactic Police than the US should be the World Cops.
However, Bajor was well known. Picard mentions learning about the Bajorans in elementary school. It's not like it was an obscure little known world.
It's way bigger than Picard's ship, which supposedly (that is, backstage sez so) took ages to build.
Empok Nor wasn't built in situ. She's an ore refinery, too, but she sits in the middle of empty space, so the situ doesn't qualify. But see at the bottom of this post.
It doesn't get any space stations built, though.
Nonsense. People today are all for sexual slavery when they aren't for construction work slavery, and vice versa - the two have basically nothing in common. And what went on with Meru and Dukat wasn't Cardassian policy anyway, but their private arrangement conducted under the radar; you don't get space stations built under the radar.
Or then it is.
Quite to the contrary, command functions would probably be the last to be completed, and the first to be upgraded. There'd be no Ops to go to until late in the game, and the plumbers wouldn't install the food replicators until the place was ready to receive hungry people.
But it's not necessarily either. Deep down, nobody says 2346 anywhere in the show, least of all in "Wrongs Darker". It's just a piece of rather unjustified deduction from the fact that Nerys was three years old during the events and from the noncanon idea that she would have been of some specific age during the actual show.
We never learn Dekon Elig would have had legal access. And a Cardassian guard or his scanner could easily tell a legitimate Bajoran apart from this distinctive-looking criminal, too.
We're neck deep in double and triple negatives if we try to argue that a criminal achieving X is proof of X being regular, legitimate or expected.
Well, if you do choose to believe in the former claim (more like a smug comment than a statement), it sorta follows that any prisoners sent offworld could also be used as labor force to construct stuff or whatnot.
Huh? It had engines. Kira expected it to move. O'Brien said it was no starship, not that it wouldn't move under its own power. It did move under its own power, despite having just six working thrusters out of a total of 36 (and only making use of four of those in the end). Nothing suggested this would not have been the design intent.
But movement of this sort would be unlikely to be the method of interstellar deployment. Firing more than a dozen of those thrusters at once would not be helpful, as they seemed Newtonian and were all firing radially - only the ones on one side would count, then. And firing at 1/3 this capacity meant a trip of months across what looks like one AU or so. Now, even those four thrusters may have been a bit underpowered at the time, but it still doesn't seem viable to wait for decades (millennia, really, unless they were significantly underpowered) to get the station deployed from another system.
It's just that this should not matter, as we do know towing of large objects is perfectly possible in Trek (see "Final Mission", say) and we know warp towing is fine as a concept, too. It's merely a matter of scale. And not necessarily all that great a scale, either, as with that tiny tug towing the big Excelsior, supposedly across interstellar distances, at the beginning of "A Time to Stand". Or, say, Sisko's runabout towing the big Galor in the very "Emissary".
So the big question is, could Terok and Empok be fundamentally different despite being fundamentally identical? The two stations are built the exact same, so that O'Brien can rely on being able to cannibalize one for the other despite never having visited the place. Does form not follow function here? Can a station of this design serve some other role besides combined ore refinery and orbital intimidation headquarters? None was ever quoted for Empok Nor, save for the secret and unexpected military R&D bit.
If we can drive a wedge between Terok and Empok, then we can plead different construction methods, too. Perhaps stations of this design are quite standard, but Terok was a rare experiment in in situ construction? One that yielded the two important results of i) in situ with slave labor stretches construction time to more than a decade and ii) in situ with slave labor facilitates sabotage?
Timo Saloniemi
It's never been established the Cardassians nor the Federation have the technology to move a structure as big as DS9 across light years at warp. The Pilot "Emissary" explicitly demonstrates that the moving of DS9 from orbit of Bjorn to the Denorios Belt as an unexpected maneuver.
"Empok Nor" reveals that station was built in the Trivas System. I don't know why you keep referring to it being in empty space. Nothing was ever established what the Trivas System was like. You keep insisting on it being empty space and that nothing was there and that Empok Nor was not built there, but the evidence does not support that.
Huh? The episode is clear on there being nothing or nobody at Trivas. The baddies pulled out; they are not around, and the heroes bet their lives on that. Yet when the heroes get into trouble, they wish to signal for help all the way from DS9, not from potential neutrals or friendlies at Trivas, even though their problem is one of insufficient signal range.
Terok Nor was on orbit around Bajor in order to achieve its mission, as easily visually confirmed. Empok Nor orbits no planet, as equally easily visually confirmed. So our two options are two different missions (which is highly problematic because O'Brien bets everything on Empok being absolutely identical to Terok in engineering detail, without having known intel on the place specifically), or two cases of a station of this type moving across space (and we know one such case worked fine despite the best attempts of the Cardassians to sabotage it, whereas here the Cardassians would be in control).
Timo Saloniemi
Terok Nor was on orbit around Bajor in order to achieve its mission, as easily visually confirmed. Empok Nor orbits no planet, as equally easily visually confirmed. So our two options are two different missions (which is highly problematic because O'Brien bets everything on Empok being absolutely identical to Terok in engineering detail, without having known intel on the place specifically), or two cases of a station of this type moving across space (and we know one such case worked fine despite the best attempts of the Cardassians to sabotage it, whereas here the Cardassians would be in control).
Timo Saloniemi
I can't remember whether or not the political situation prior to the occupation was ever established in dialogue, but there's two options:
1) The Federation was not in a position (either militarily or geographically) to help them.
2) The Bajorans never asked for their help, or at least not until it was too late.
The thing to remember is that it's been rare in our history for empires to form entirely through military conquest, and I do seem to remember some piece of dialogue mentioning that the Cardassians said they were there to help when they first came to Bajor.
When the English first arrived in India, they were there to trade, and the thought of England controlling most of the subcontinent would have been laughable. The Raj formed through a complex sequence of political, diplomatic, military and economic events that unfolded over two centuries. There's no reason I can think of why the Cardassian annexation of Bajor wasn't the same.
1) The Federation was not in a position (either militarily or geographically) to help them.
2) The Bajorans never asked for their help, or at least not until it was too late.
The thing to remember is that it's been rare in our history for empires to form entirely through military conquest, and I do seem to remember some piece of dialogue mentioning that the Cardassians said they were there to help when they first came to Bajor.
When the English first arrived in India, they were there to trade, and the thought of England controlling most of the subcontinent would have been laughable. The Raj formed through a complex sequence of political, diplomatic, military and economic events that unfolded over two centuries. There's no reason I can think of why the Cardassian annexation of Bajor wasn't the same.
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