Federation-Cardassian War

[Odo]

To my mind, it seems the Federation-Cardassian, including the events leading up to it and their first contact (with the exception of one comic) remains the only major interstellar event mentioned that we haven't seen expanded upon in the books. (Of course I could be forgetting other events mentioned in canon.)

If we can get Serpents Among the Ruins from a line from The Neutral Zone, I have hope we'll see this event someday expanded upon. In truth, I'd love to see more about the emergence of the Cardassians onto the Alpha Quadrant political scene, turning the Big Three powers into a Big Four.

Or am I missing something - have there been books that have touched upon this war and the events surrounding it?

 

[tomswift2002]

I believe The Art Of The Impossible by Keith R.A. Decandido (one of the Lost Era novels) touches on the Federation/Cardassion war (the book spans fro 2328-2346), but its mostly about the Betraka Nebula incident between the Klingons and the Cardassions.

According to Memory Beta these books have mentioned somethings about the war:

Titan: Taking Wing
DS9: Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers
The Slow Knife (short story in the [I}Deadly Sins[/I] anthology)
DS9: A Stitch in Time

 

[thribs]

Someone mentioned in another thread that the war was going on during next gen’s run which means it can’t have been that much of a war if it wasn’t mentioned once there.
The Tzenkethi War is another war that hasn’t been covered much except as a flashback in Typhon Pact #3. We still don’t know how it started.

 

[Christopher]

Jeri Taylor's Mosaic and Pathways depicted events from the UFP-Cardassian conflict. It seems to have peaked in the later 2350s, during Kathryn Janeway's rise through the ranks. I figure (and I mentioned in The Buried Age) that it had subsided to a cold war by the 2360s, a technical state of declared enmity without fighting (like the Korean War for most of the past 65 years), and that it had never been more than a localized border conflict, to explain why the first two seasons of TNG showed a peacetime Starfleet even though "The Wounded" retroactively claimed there'd been a war going on that whole time.

 

[Damian]

Someone mentioned in another thread that the war was going on during next gen’s run which means it can’t have been that much of a war if it wasn’t mentioned once there.
The Tzenkethi War is another war that hasn’t been covered much except as a flashback in Typhon Pact #3. We still don’t know how it started.

The Cardassian conflict is an area that maybe some future novelist could tell in more detail. As tomswift noted in his post, there has been little bits and pieces told about it but there's certainly plenty of stories that could be told during that era. Maybe even including younger versions of characters from the various TV series that may have been involved.

The Tzenkethi War is another that could have some story potential as well. Some good information was included in the Typhon Pact novel you cited but I'm sure there's more to tell.

The 2350's does seem a turbulent time in Federation History.

I'd also love to see more Stargazer stories. They sort of just stopped. There's a long time between Michael Jan Friedman's last SG book and 'The Buried Age', including Jack Crusher's entire tenure. Perhaps the Stargazer was involved with some of the conflicts during those conflicts (thought judging from the timeframe the Cardassian conflict is more likely). That could all fall under a Lost Era banner (maybe not formally, but something like the Terok Nor and Buried Age novels had).

 

[Christopher]

Personally, I'll never get why people think that wars are more interesting to tell stories about than other aspects of history. I think war stories are all pretty much the same. What really makes a difference, what determines the subsequent course of history, is what decisions the diplomats and politicians make after a war, which can either exacerbate its problems and spawn more wars (like the very bad decisions made by the winners in WWI, which provoked WWII, generations of Mideast strife, etc.) or can bring meaningful solutions and create something positive in the aftermath (like the Marshall Plan and the UN after WWII). So that's the part that's more interesting to me.

Early in my writing career, I had plans to do this big epic interstellar war trilogy in my original SF universe. Then I decided I should just do two books about the war and devote the third to the aftermath, the coping with the impact of the war and the decisions that needed to be made to prevent another war from breaking out, because I felt that was the most critical part of the story. And eventually I realized I didn't actually want to do the war part of the story at all. I'd only planned on doing it because it was kind of the expected thing to do.

 

[Damian]

I guess in Star Trek it's partly because some of the wars (the Romulan War for example) had such a huge impact on the Star Trek universe. The Cardassian conflict is another since the peace treaty that resulted from it led the the creation of the Maquis. I'd be interested in both aspects of it personally. Some of the stories during the war, esp. what caused the war, then why there was a ceasefire.

Another war that really hasn't been covered in great detail the Star Trek universe is World War III. And that war also had a big impact in the Star Trek universe as well. It'd be interesting to see more information about that--not so much the battles themselves, but what started that war and why did WWIII finally end. There's some information in the First Contact novel and the Federation novel, about the Eastern Coalition, Colonel Green and the Quantum movement, but it'd be interesting to see how that all ties together. Dayton Ward's Elusive Salvation got tantalizingly close.

I really enjoyed Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars books (and how he tied in real current events into that 'shadow' war). Something like that for World War III would be interesting (though that's still in the future). And he wasn't really focused on the battles of that war as much as the politics behind it all and the people involved.

 

[Christopher]

I guess in Star Trek it's partly because some of the wars (the Romulan War for example) had such a huge impact on the Star Trek universe. The Cardassian conflict is another since the peace treaty that resulted from it led the the creation of the Maquis.

Yeah, but that's just it. The interesting part is what came after. The war itself is just the same old bang-bang-boom as every other war story.

I'd be interested in both aspects of it personally. Some of the stories during the war, esp. what caused the war, then why there was a ceasefire.

I see both the Cardassian and Tzenkethi conflicts as territorial border skirmishes that were small potatoes on the scale of a civilization as vast as the Federation, which is why the early-TNG Starfleet seemed so accustomed to peace and so unprepared when the Borg came along. They can't be major, civilization-shaking galactic conflicts, or it breaks TNG-era continuity more than it was already broken by the retcon that they happened at all.

 

[Damian]

Yeah, but that's just it. The interesting part is what came after. The war itself is just the same old bang-bang-boom as every other war story.

Maybe not. Sure, there's some of that. But there could be human interest stories too. We saw during the Xindi crisis some interesting episodes on Enterprise about how far Archer was willing to go to save Earth, including things that he would never have thought of doing before the crisis (like trying to suffocate a prisoner in an airlock, or stealing a warp core).

The Dominion War books (and episodes) had some of that as well. Ditto with the Destiny books.

Plus it'd be interesting to see how first contact with the Cardassians (and Tzenkethi) occurred, were relations frosty from the get go, as I suspect they probably were, and what led to eventual wars.

There can be interesting stories told during wars that aren't necessarily about the battles themselves. But about how the people react to it, what they do. What we do doing war is not necessarily the same as what we do during peace. In a way, I think you need both in Star Trek because that shapes the Star Trek universe just as much as peacetime.

 

[Christopher]

Plus it'd be interesting to see how first contact with the Cardassians (and Tzenkethi) occurred, were relations frosty from the get go, as I suspect they probably were, and what led to eventual wars.

One of the earliest UFP-Cardassian interactions is shown in Wildstorm Comics' one-shot graphic novel Enter the Wolves, written by A.C. Crispin & Howard Weinstein and depicting the origins of Spock and Sarek's longtime dispute over how to deal with the Cardassians.

There can be interesting stories told during wars that aren't necessarily about the battles themselves. But about how the people react to it, what they do. What we do doing war is not necessarily the same as what we do during peace. In a way, I think you need both in Star Trek because that shapes the Star Trek universe just as much as peacetime.

Star Trek got by fine for nearly 30 years with only one single episode showing the Federation in a state of war. We often saw the characters facing the threat of war, but finding ways to avoid it, to choose a better path. And yet in the 20-odd years since, we've had at least five entire seasons of three different Trek series devoted to various wars, plus books about the Eugenics Wars, the Romulan War, a cataclysmic Borg invasion, etc. Enough already. Modern Trek is not lacking in war stories. It's done far too many of them if you ask me.

 

[Damian]

Star Trek got by fine for nearly 30 years with only one single episode showing the Federation in a state of war. We often saw the characters facing the threat of war, but finding ways to avoid it, to choose a better path. And yet in the 20-odd years since, we've had at least five entire seasons of three different Trek series devoted to various wars, plus books about the Eugenics Wars, the Romulan War, a cataclysmic Borg invasion, etc. Enough already. Modern Trek is not lacking in war stories. It's done far too many of them if you ask me.

Part of that was probably Rodenberry's insistence that the future be as bright and cheery as possible while he was alive. Some things were hinted at (Romulan War).

It was nice to finally get some Romulan War stories, because of all the wars, that was the most pivotal to Federation History it always seemed, yet ironically had virtually nothing about it (and still nothing in canon--I guess that's why Pocketbooks finally decided to just do it already--once Star Trek Beginnings fell through, they probably figured it was never going to come up in canon).

For me personally, the only other war that I thought was pivotal to early Star Trek history that hasn't gotten much coverage over the years is WWIII. That seemed to be a foundation event to Star Trek history that just hasn't gotten much coverage. Obviously anything on that would involve mostly new characters (except for maybe characters from other novels of that period). If someone were to tell me, ok, we'll cover one war that hasn't had much coverage before, just one, that would be my personal pick.

As far as the Cardassian and Tzenkethi conflicts, yes, I think there's some stories out there, but they don't seem to me to be foundational events like WWIII and the Romulan War. Frankly during that period of the mid 23rd century, I'd rather see more Stargazer, Enterprise-B and C stories. If they included some stories pertitent to those conflicts in some way, there's certainly room for that, even indirectly. But there's still a ton of stories during that period that are untold.

 

[Christopher]

Part of that was probably Rodenberry's insistence that the future be as bright and cheery as possible while he was alive. Some things were hinted at (Romulan War).

No, that didn't happen until the TNG era. TOS-era Roddenberry hadn't yet bought into the idea of himself as a visionary philosopher; he was just a TV producer trying to make an entertaining show. Humanity had overcome bigotry and war within itself, but TOS was hardly "as bright and cheery as possible" -- you had lots of episodes with tragic endings (e.g. "Charlie X" and "City on the Edge..." and "A Private Little War" and "Requiem for Methuselah"), you had the Tarsus IV massacre, you had homicidal madmen like Tristan Adams and Garth of Izar, you had bigots like Lt. Stiles and vengeance-obsessed people like Ben Finney and Janice Lester, you had corrupt humans like Harry Mudd and R.M. Merik, you had tragic mistakes like the mass killing of the Hortas and John Gill's fatally misguided theories about Nazism, you had planetary-scale disasters befalling worlds like Deneva and Maluria, you had multiple entire starship crews being killed en masse, etc. And there were a lot of episodes about civilizations at war or on the brink of war. It's not that war didn't exist, it's that the focus of the stories was on ending or preventing it.

 

[Garth Rockett]

Yeah, but that's just it. The interesting part is what came after. The war itself is just the same old bang-bang-boom as every other war story.

I'd like to thing that there are writers who are talented enough to make it more interesting than just "bang-bang-boom." Certainly, I could point to some of the more compelling DS9 war episodes from later in the run that were much more than that. Or for that matter, consider M*A*S*H. War is just a setting, like any other. How interesting it is depends on the skill of the writer.

What comes after can be interesting, but it can be most interesting when it's placed in the context of the situations that led to that point. To use the WWI example, the postwar failures that ultimately contributed to WWII are fascinating. But something like the Treaty of Versailles is best understood, I think, when looked at in the context of societies who had lost almost an entire generation of young men to trench warfare, and understanding the nature of that type of warfare. Also, knowing about an event like the Christmas Truce of 1914 can be edifying in illustrating how another solution should have been possible.

 

[Damian]

True. During the original series he seemed more open to various ideas. But once TNG came out he wanted a sanitized, everything is wonderful we'll live happily ever after feel that was much more pronounced. I had heard he didn't even want conflict among the crew.

Positive is great. One of the reasons I love Star Trek is it's one of those futuristic sci-fi shows that depicts a positive future where we've overcome the worse parts of ourselves. But sometimes it takes conflict to get us to that point.

I know Rick Berman gets a lot of flack (some fair, some unfair) but I give him credit for being more open to the idea that not everything was perfect. He resisted things like the Dominion War, but eventually relented. I think because in the real world conflict does happen, wars happen unfortunately, even when you don't want it. But it's the result that matters, and one thing about the Federation that's depicted is it usually comes out on top (they are the good guys after all). They're not perfect, they make mistakes, but they try to move forward and become better for it. I do credit Roddenberry for that basic idea, that the Federation tries to learn from it's mistakes and become a better organization. And I credit his successors for injecting some of that realism, that we do the best we can but we're not perfect idea.

 

[Damian]

I'd like to thing that there are writers who are talented enough to make it more interesting than just "bang-bang-boom." Certainly, I could point to some of the more compelling DS9 war episodes from later in the run that were much more than that. Or for that matter, consider M*A*S*H. War is just a setting, like any other. How interesting it is depends on the skill of the writer.

What comes after can be interesting, but it can be most interesting when it's placed in the context of the situations that led to that point. To use the WWI example, the postwar failures that ultimately contributed to WWII are fascinating. But something like the Treaty of Versailles is best understood, I think, when looked at in the context of societies who had lost almost an entire generation of young men to trench warfare, and understanding the nature of that type of warfare. Also, knowing about an event like the Christmas Truce of 1914 can be edifying in illustrating how another solution should have been possible.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. I think of 'In the Pale Moonlight' as an excellent Dominion War story. Or 'Anomaly' on Enterprise (though technically the Xindi crisis was not a war). Sometimes it's under duress that the true character of people can come out.

I agree with Christopher that not every story should be a war story. In his Enterprise novels, there is conflict, even a bit of a cold war with the Orion Syndicate, but it appears the Federation is entering a time of peaceful expansion. That doesn't mean everything is smooth, but they're not at war. And the post-Destiny novels show a Federation trying to get back to exploration while dealing with a cold war with the Typhon Pact. I just think there's room for both. There are conflicts that happened in Star Trek history that I'd like to see some information on. The battles themselves aren't always the most interesting part though, but the politics behind them and the challenges people face and how they deal with them that I am most interested in.

 

[Christopher]

I'd like to thing that there are writers who are talented enough to make it more interesting than just "bang-bang-boom." Certainly, I could point to some of the more compelling DS9 war episodes from later in the run that were much more than that. Or for that matter, consider M*A*S*H. War is just a setting, like any other. How interesting it is depends on the skill of the writer.

Yeah, but it's a setting that Star Trek has devoted roughly a fifth of the past quarter-century to exploring. That's an astonishing amount of war for a franchise that managed just fine without it for the preceding three decades. There has been a ton of war in modern Trek already, so I don't understand the attitude that we somehow don't have enough.

I had heard he didn't even want conflict among the crew.

As I understand it, his rule was that there shouldn't be petty conflict -- that conflicts shouldn't be generated from characters lying to each other or hating each other or sabotaging each other, but should arise from more meaningful causes, like challenging moral dilemmas. And that could be a good thing, because it meant that the writers couldn't fall back on the usual lazy cheats for generating arbitrary conflict by having characters just be jerks to each other, but instead had to really think and challenge themselves to come up with more meaningful bases for conflict.

If anything, I think it was Rick Berman who tried to apply the "no conflict" rule more rigidly than Roddenberry himself had probably intended. Berman was trying to be true to what he understood Roddenberry's "vision" to be, and I think he took it a little too far at times.

I know Rick Berman gets a lot of flack (some fair, some unfair) but I give him credit for being more open to the idea that not everything was perfect. He resisted things like the Dominion War, but eventually relented.

Still, as you say, he resisted. Left to his own devices, without Ira Behr pushing him to be more flexible, I doubt he ever would've approved something like the Dominion War.

 

[Damian]

Still, as you say, he resisted. Left to his own devices, without Ira Behr pushing him to be more flexible, I doubt he ever would've approved something like the Dominion War.

I can see that. It's also easy to forget all the shows had more than one producer. Berman was the head guy, but there were a lot of people involved. And you're right, probably on his own things would have been far different. I give him credit for listening to others, despite what his inner Roddenberry may have been saying. And maybe he provided a counterbalance to keep Star Trek from going to far the other way, to keep it from going too dark.

Berman had his faults. But I know on another website I frequented there was a lot of Berman bashing (usually by Abrams fans--sometimes old school fans who didn't like Abrams either). They forget sometimes that he oversaw a very prosperous period of Star Trek also during the mid 90's and TNG and DS9 were excellent shows (I liked Voyager and Enterprise too, but I know more than any other show they have their critics).

I've been a huge fan of Star Trek since 1986 (when I first saw TMP--my favorite Star Trek film--I know I usually get crazy looks). And I've loved every series and movie since them (yes even TFF). I'm also one of the 10 people on this planet that liked Nemesis (I frankly never understood the hate this movie receives, but I digress). I thank Gene Roddenberry creating Star Trek in the first place, and each of his successors for keeping it going, from Rick Berman and his team, Abrams and his team and even though I've only seen the premier episode of Discovery to Alex Kurtzman and his team for keeping it alive.

 

[Christopher]

Berman had his faults. But I know on another website I frequented there was a lot of Berman bashing (usually by Abrams fans--sometimes old school fans who didn't like Abrams either). They forget sometimes that he oversaw a very prosperous period of Star Trek also during the mid 90's and TNG and DS9 were excellent shows (I liked Voyager and Enterprise too, but I know more than any other show they have their critics).

Oh, to be sure. The thing to remember about Rick Berman is that he was primarily an executive producer on the logistical side, like Herb Solow before him. He oversaw and occasionally had a hand in the writing process, but mainly he was in charge of everything else, the stuff that turned scripts into finished episodes, and he managed to consistently put out some of the best-made, best-looking, best-acted dramas on TV for 18 years running, even when doing two of them at a time and working on movies on top of that. He deserves plenty of credit for that.

 

[JD]

I believe The Art Of The Impossible by Keith R.A. Decandido (one of the Lost Era novels) touches on the Federation/Cardassion war (the book spans fro 2328-2346), but its mostly about the Betraka Nebula incident between the Klingons and the Cardassions.

According to Memory Beta these books have mentioned somethings about the war:

Titan: Taking Wing
DS9: Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers
The Slow Knife (short story in the [I}Deadly Sins[/I] anthology)
DS9: A Stitch in Time

The Slow Knife is probably the one with the most focus on the Cardassian-Federation War.

 

[Garth Rockett]

Yeah, but it's a setting that Star Trek has devoted roughly a fifth of the past quarter-century to exploring. That's an astonishing amount of war for a franchise that managed just fine without it for the preceding three decades. There has been a ton of war in modern Trek already, so I don't understand the attitude that we somehow don't have enough.

Fair enough. I don't understand the attitude that just because one person is not interested in something, it's a puzzle that someone else should be interested in it. I see this from time to time in all different types of things. A few weeks ago I saw someone saying on a message board, in response to complaints about recent Marvel comics, "Why do we need new comics? We have the movies now." Because I like comics and want to buy them. You don't, that's your prerogative. Why should you care if I want new comics? Someone this week said they didn't understand why I wanted to travel to see a game in every MLB stadium. Because I like baseball and I like to travel. What do you care? It's not your money and you're not going. Same thing here. It's fine that you think there's been enough war in Trek. Why should you care if someone else is still interested in it? You don't have to consume it.

I'm sure there are people out there who don't understand why they still make Star Trek episodes, movies, novels and comics at all. There's thousands of Star Trek stories already, surely we have enough? I say if there's a market for something, let those people enjoy it. If I don't like it, I don't have to understand why they do like it. IDIC, baby.