What impact will the Dominion War have on Picard?
- Thread starter Jayson1
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His background certainly fits with Nick Locarno and Tom Paris - prior to his rehabilitation while serving in 'Voyager.'
I think it was. Sisko's dad who noted that Earth being put on alery status when they thought the Dominion were about to attack earth was the first time since Wolf 359. I get the feeling people were very terrified back then. Makes me wonder if they were any planning of taking people off the planet at the time but it seems people got over it pretty quickly. I'm guessing it must have been more like the Cuban Missile Crisis if the America ships got destroyed but were still successful at keeping Russia out of Cuba.
Jason
I doubt there were any plans to move the population. There was no mention of an evacuation when Earth's power grid was disabled and it was left defenseless.
World War II was the biggest military conflict of all time, but quickly got overshadowed by the Cold War in the proceeding decades and now that is overshadowed by the ''War on Terror'' since 2001.
Really the Dominion War as a storyline is complete, there is little reason to revisit it at this point, it's done. At this point, most of the hanging plot threads from the TNG era involve the Romulans, not the Dominion.
Except Carddisia. I mean how will they handle them I wonder. Also the Klingons are also something that you got address at sometime. They were the Romulans biggest rivals and they have a blood hatred for them. To say the Klingons would be extremely interested in the state of fairs dealing with Romulans is a understatement. Also will they mention the Remans or pretend they never existed.
Jason
Jason
It'd be great to see an updated Cardassia (as opposed to that one and only shot we had of it's capital in DS9). Whether they will be present in Picard is doubtful.
As for the Klingons. Honestly, I'm not clamoring to see them again - I'm all Klingon-ed out. I'm quite happy to see The Romulans take center stage after playing second fiddle to The Klingons for decades.
But here's an idea: If The Federation is more hard nosed, militaristic and isolationist, I would imagine the alliance would still be in tact. But, I like the idea of the alliance being much more one sided than it once was. Section 31's Sloan predicted the Klingon Empire would spend at least ten years rebuilding from the damage inflicted on the empire by Klingon-Cardassian War, the Federation-Klingon War and the Dominion War itself. I'd find the Klingons more interesting if we saw them at the twilight of their civilization - completely overshadowed by the might of The Federation, which now stands as the unquestioned superpower of the AQ in the early 25th century.
As for the Klingons. Honestly, I'm not clamoring to see them again - I'm all Klingon-ed out. I'm quite happy to see The Romulans take center stage after playing second fiddle to The Klingons for decades.
But here's an idea: If The Federation is more hard nosed, militaristic and isolationist, I would imagine the alliance would still be in tact. But, I like the idea of the alliance being much more one sided than it once was. Section 31's Sloan predicted the Klingon Empire would spend at least ten years rebuilding from the damage inflicted on the empire by Klingon-Cardassian War, the Federation-Klingon War and the Dominion War itself. I'd find the Klingons more interesting if we saw them at the twilight of their civilization - completely overshadowed by the might of The Federation, which now stands as the unquestioned superpower of the AQ in the early 25th century.
I think the Cardassians would be in a better state than the Romulans are at this point. I also think the Cardassians would be more friendly with the Federation than the Romulans and it has been said the Cardassians will not show up in the first season, which I am fine with too.
Really the Cardassian story came full circle in DS9, their story is kinda done too. The Federation helped save them from Dominion tyranny, the Cardassians would be far more grateful than the Romulans are, where the Federation failed to save their planet. With the Cardassians, their militaristic way of life was discredited by the Dominion War, not so with the Romulans, its not militarism that destroyed their planet, it was a natural disaster that the Federation failed to prevent.
As for the Klingons, they can be there, but I do not think they should be the main drivers of the plot, after Discovery, I am kinda sick of them.
Really of all the major Star Trek civilizations, the Romulans are the least explored and how many major Romulans characters are vs. Cardassians, Borg, Klingons, Ferengi, the Dominion, etc.
As for the Remans, I guess you can have Reman refugees too (Nemesis is not popular, but this series is making more allusions to that movie more than any other), maybe the Romulans went out of their way to make sure they did not get evacuated?
I still think there are hanging plot threads from Unification, In the Pale Light, Nemesis and Star Trek 09 that involve the Romulans, I am not sure anyone else has this many hanging plot threads.
I don't think one can say someone's story is ever really over when it comes to the core aliens. They don't really have a story so much as they are part of the rich tapestry of the universe, always around helping make the Trek universe feel like a real place at least enough to ground some of the more far fetched elements that come with the universe.
Jason
Jason
I am just not in a hurry to revisit Cardassia, I think the vast majority of hanging plot threads from the TNG era involve the Romulans and really the Romulans are just less explored than the Cardassians.
Cardassia has likely become a Federation allied world at this point, I am not sure what you can do with the Cardassians at this point, maybe visiting the planet for an episode or 2 could be fun, but you need a good story reason to stay there for a while. If Cardassia is a recovering or recovered world, that is now allied with the Federation, where is the story?
Hmm.
Sir Patrick has said that there isn't a single Cardassian in the first PIC season (he made that remark while he talked about Gul Madred and the torture scenes), so... kinda rules that one out. For now, anyway. Unless he simply forgot about a Cardassian being there. Which is equally possible. lol
"Overshadowed"? What does that even mean? It's nonsense.
WW2's geopolitical impact still reverberates to this day. The entire history of the 20th Century revolved around it. Where do you think the Cold War came from?
And the Dominion War is still very recent history in the Picard timeline. You don't think WW2's effects were felt in the 60s? Come on now....
Look, I honestly don't think they'll do much with the Dominion War aside from a possible passing reference.
But just because there are no Cardassians in the season doesn't mean that the war couldn't be/couldn't have been a meaningful part of the political backdrop of the show, either in the flashback timeline or the present.
Which doesn't mean I think it will actually be the case...
But the Cold War was a different animal from WWII and it changed a lot calculations after WWII ended, the Western Allies wanted to make Germany weak after WW2 so they would no longer be a threat, later decided a strong Germany was needed to counter the Soviets, you can't just conflate these 2 things. History builds upon itself, but Nazi Germany was dead after WW2, the Dominion is more like that then the USSR, the Romulans have more in common with post WW2 USSR than they do with anything else, they were an enemy turned ally who became an enemy again after the common enemy was defeated.
Also, we are not talking about the real WWII, we are talking about fiction.
What plot threads from the Dominion War are there that are worth exploring in Picard? It seems like there are way more plot threads surrounding the Romulans then their is about the Dominion, the Dominion story has ended. By your logic, the Dominion War fallout should just be used as part of the Romulan story, like dealing with events from "In the Pale Moonlight".
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The "effects" of a war would be distinct from whether people talk about that war or not. So, was WWII a popular topic during the wars in Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan? It would certainly be mentioned in the context, but only as a minor element in a barrage of facts, opinions and general angst that concentrated on the crisis at hand. Living in the past is not particularly alluring when the present is challenging you rather more directly.
In Trek, would the Dominion War have "effects"? We never visited a "homefront" world other than Earth so we have very little idea, but on Earth an alert status was a major exception. OTOH, the Federation appears to be constantly at hot war with somebody, and the Border Wars or whatnot, or the Talarian fight, or the Cardassian War, didn't seem to have any impact even on the lives of our Starfleet characters beyond the moments of actual fighting. Perhaps civilians in the brave new world also have this mental calm that is immune to post-traumatic disturbances?
Cardassians I would love to see return in some capacity, chiefly because the production values on them were so high. The makeup is among the Star Trek best; excellent actors were cast to perform roles written well and featured in a great number of stories that brought the culture to life. But the very fact that the Cardassians were such a successful addition to the Trek pseudoreality tells us that such random two-bit cultures can be created out of scratch, made absolutely central to a story, and then promptly be forgotten and/or replaced by others. PIC would probably do well to sow the seeds of another such all-new pseudoculture (the Synths?), although obviously it won't have time to flesh that out.
Timo Saloniemi
In Trek, would the Dominion War have "effects"? We never visited a "homefront" world other than Earth so we have very little idea, but on Earth an alert status was a major exception. OTOH, the Federation appears to be constantly at hot war with somebody, and the Border Wars or whatnot, or the Talarian fight, or the Cardassian War, didn't seem to have any impact even on the lives of our Starfleet characters beyond the moments of actual fighting. Perhaps civilians in the brave new world also have this mental calm that is immune to post-traumatic disturbances?
Cardassians I would love to see return in some capacity, chiefly because the production values on them were so high. The makeup is among the Star Trek best; excellent actors were cast to perform roles written well and featured in a great number of stories that brought the culture to life. But the very fact that the Cardassians were such a successful addition to the Trek pseudoreality tells us that such random two-bit cultures can be created out of scratch, made absolutely central to a story, and then promptly be forgotten and/or replaced by others. PIC would probably do well to sow the seeds of another such all-new pseudoculture (the Synths?), although obviously it won't have time to flesh that out.
Timo Saloniemi
Why are you hung up on the concept of "plot threads"? There are no Romulan "plot threads" that remain from TNG or DS9 for that matter. None. Zero. TNG used Romulans as one-and-done villains in each episode. There was never any coherent arc or central narrative about them at all.
It's not about plot threads -- whatever that means. It's about it being a meaningful part of the political landscape of the galaxy and an important part of the recent history of the Federation and the other Alpha Quadrant powers. It could be just a factor in the tapestry of the universe of the show.
It could also be used as potentially interesting backstory for some of the main characters. Not even necessarily Picard, but Raffi and Rios and others.
Then again, the same was true of the Klingons, until it was found that Worf was a popular character, and gradually and retroactively all those standalone stories about the villains formed a narrative, one that ultimately was a hefty percentage of all Trek storytelling, in TNG and DS9 and to some extent ENT and DSC as well.
Romulans haven't gotten that treatment yet, except perhaps in novels. But any story is just as good as any other for triggering such a thing. Perhaps the Romulan characters of PIC will be popular and suddenly all Romulan stories past and present will be absorbed into an epic arc that is supposed to be touching and three-dimensional and whatnot? In that case, any random utterance in a thirty-year-old episode could become a huge plot thread. Pretty much like how Bruce Maddox here does this eldritch ascending from obscurity...
Timo Saloniemi
There’s nothing to “handle” about Cardassia. Picard is focused on a single main character, supported by a small ragtag crew he assembles, focused on the particular job at hand. In absolutely no way does the show need to explain anything to us about what is happening on Cardassia.
Heck, even if we meet a Cardassian, we don’t need to know anything about what has become of his/her home world, since the war. That’s just not a natural thing to come up, and would feel incredibly forced. It’s the bad kind of fan service, and exactly what Trek needs to be moving away from, in fact (which it largely has).
As for Klingons, exactly the same. I’m sure they ARE interested in the fall of the Romulan Empire, but that’s at the top of a political chain that we are simply unlikely to explore on this show, nor should we. Maybe we’ll come across some Klingons, who knows? I certainly hope that, if we do, they don’t start hitting me over the head with exposition that explains their last 20 years of politics with the other empires in the Alpha Quadrant, etc.
Picard really isn’t here to give us awkward updates on plot points from other shows, which have no relevance to this new shows plot.
I can see why Cardassia might not be needed but I got to say it would be cool if they could somehow bring back Garak for season 2. The guy did use to live on Romulus as a spy and assassin so that is sort of a in for making a connection to what is going in with this show. Garak seems like someone who Picard might need to go to because he has some important bit of plot info. Or he has some inside info on a important Romulan leader. Something like that.
Jason
Jason
Really, what about the the fact their planet blew up is not a plot thread that would have a major impact on the galaxy? What about the Unification movement? Or the fact Sisko and Garak tricked the Romulans into the Dominion War? Or the fact the Romulan Senate was assassinated and the Romulan military was chopping at the bit to attack Earth in Nemesis? That is a lot threads.
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