How big of a Mistake...
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Seeing how that decision came to bite the founders in the rear, I'd say that it was significant.
Several things could have happened. The Cardassian rebellion might have floundered without Kira and Odo to help. The Breen weapon would have worked for longer, how long depends on how long it takes Starfleet to come up with a solution on their own or they capture an example. The Founders would have died. With Bashir dead it was likely that Odo would have died and no one would have confronted Section 31 for the cure.
So in the end the Founders would have died and the war might continue for many more years to come.
So in the end the Founders would have died and the war might continue for many more years to come.
I don't remember the details but why did the Founder not have the escape pods destroyed, other than the fact it contained the heroes? If it had just been another Starfleet ship there'd have been no hesitation, any pods that escaped would have been destoyed the moment they left the ship. I think it's just a case of discrimination, the Founder knew the crew of the Defiant and decided to give them a chance.
The reason was that the crews in the escape pod were demoralised and would spread the word of their defeat to the Dominion with their new Breen allies to the rest of the Federation Alliance, which would further demoralise the rest.
Never understood it really. Destroying the Defiant and kill her crew would demoralize them the same.
I always found this to be a far too easy of a cop-out by the writers. They needed a way to keep the important characters alive, so they just made up some silliness to do so.
War conducted in space ships does not require morale. In the olden days when the people went to butcher each other to death directly on grassy fields, that required morale. That concept can't be ramrodded into the Dominion War, other than perhaps as it relates to direct ground skirmishes, and even then, that's an iffy proposition since they are just firing laser guns at each other anyways.
Doesn't really make sense why they would have let the escape pods go. That decision doesn't ring true at all IMO. Much like how the female Founder always takes the appearance of a humanoid even though she hates them.
War conducted in space ships does not require morale. In the olden days when the people went to butcher each other to death directly on grassy fields, that required morale. That concept can't be ramrodded into the Dominion War, other than perhaps as it relates to direct ground skirmishes, and even then, that's an iffy proposition since they are just firing laser guns at each other anyways.
Doesn't really make sense why they would have let the escape pods go. That decision doesn't ring true at all IMO. Much like how the female Founder always takes the appearance of a humanoid even though she hates them.
Personally, I think that's just the thing - she has such a low opinion of the solids that she's underestimating what this will do to them, thinking that by surviving, they'll fall apart because of the death and devastation around them, that they'll roll over in fear and submission because of this. She thinks that the weak solids will see how powerful that the Dominion is now, having destroyed the allied fleet with relative ease and they'll fall over themselves in surrender. The fact that the Vorta are the quintessential yes men and her own disregard for the Cardassians doesn't help her either - she and the Founders are superior, so they will win, no matter what.
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As long as you have people doing the fighting morale will matter.
I believe that killing all of the people in that battle would have had the opposite effect on the Federation, Klingons, Romulans - it would make them want revenge.
Of those three I could only see the Klingons really caring. Warriors spared from an honourable death would likely have an impudence (sp?) for more aggression towards the enemy. The Romulan would probably view it as, "fair enough. We'd do the same." The Federation would just bemoan the brutality (though I doubt given that the Dominion showed in "Valiant" it wasn't above destroying escape pods I doubt they would be surprised), plus the Fed already have Betazed, Benzar, the Tyra system where they suffered losses I really can't see them getting much out of Chin'toka.
As was said before it was a cop out to make sure that Sisko and co survived. I'm willing to look past it since it is hard to figure out how you can have it happening and Sisko and co getting out. Any ship that moved to rescue the pods would be at grave risk to suffer the same fate. Maybe if they said something to the effect of the Breen pushed so hard with the assault that they essentially got to a position so far ahead of the initial battle that rescue ships could get around them and rescue the pods and only had to deal with the Cardassians and Jem'Hadar vessel, which did not have the magic Breen weapons installed and could mount some sort of recovery mission.
The Founder actually allowed ALL the escape pods to escape from the ships destroyed in the battle, not just from the Defiant.
It just goes to show that the female Founder had absolutely no idea on psychology. In her mind, yeah, they'd spread rumours and fear, but it was a huge blunder.
Like at the end, when she ordered the wiping out of all the Cardassians - what, she never thought to warn her ships? Or thought that the Cardassian warships would continue to fight the Feds rather than turn against the race commiting genocide on Cardassia?
While you can justify it within reason and chalk it up to her just not understanding the solids, it really has always seemed like a cop-out to me. However, I'm not sure what the best way is to have the Defiant crew survive but the ship be destroyed, unless one of the non-affected Klingon ships happened to be the Rotarran and picked them up before quickly running away.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess the Rotarran wasn't at that battle since it appeared later, or was it indeed one of the non-affected ships?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess the Rotarran wasn't at that battle since it appeared later, or was it indeed one of the non-affected ships?
^ Only one Klingon ship was mentioned as unaffected and it wasn't the Rotarran. The Rotarran was later mentioned as taking part in an attack when the Klingons were the only ones holding the line. That means it had to have either missed the battle, likely due to needing repairs since given the desperate nature of the battle there isn't any other reason that would be suitable and Martok took command of another ship since we heard his voice over the comm channel. Or it was there and way at the back of the fleet and after the Breen smashed through it retreated rather then waste the ship in a pointless effort.
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