I LOVE the character development on DS9. Unparalleled!
Agreed on all points, but this line right here I just had to mention along with Casey Biggs. The guy was a genius with his character. I remember the first few episodes with Damar and just hating the guy for being a sniveling, sneering opportunistic right-hand man with no guts for himself (and this was even before the war!). But as he gained more and more screen time, I started to wonder why I hated Damar so much, and reasoned that it was because of Biggs' excellent acting. He went out of his way to make Damar memorable, as villain and as conflicted pawn. Damar under any other actor would have been a far lesser character.
Quoted for Absolute Truth!
I think that Bigg's understated acting made Damar a believable Cardassian. He played Damar as a honest, simple and uncomplicated man. I think it may have been on other website or in a piece of fanfiction but there was a particular phrase that was used about Damar, that he was a man who would look you in the eye when he talked to you and meant everything he said.
In my mind Damar was never the villain, he was the misunderstood hero, a man who was completely loyal to his people and who believed in Cardassia.
This was a man whom Dukat lied to and tried to recreate in his image. This left Damar with a inferiority complex as he believed that he could never match up to Dukat or the high standards set by the Cardassian state.
When Damar killed Ziyal I think he began to realise that, at least on a subconscious level, that the system and ideas that he had lived under were wrong and did not serve the Cardassian people.
(In fact in my have been sooner than that. Witness Damar's heavy drinking from season six onwards, a guilty conscience about the alliance with the Dominion?).
From the start of his supposed 'leadership' of Cardassia Damar became a weak and pathetic figure, a drunkard who used what power he had to chase women and developed a passive aggressive relationship with Weyoun.
In my personal view this all stems from his sense of inferiority. Damar knew that he could not be the leader that Cardassia deserved and as a loyal patriot he despised himself for being a failure. Of course with the Dominion slowly turning the Cardassians into second class citizens the pain grew even worse.
At a certain point Damar finally broke free of his indoctrination and the tissue of Dukat's lies and became the man he truly was, a rebel.
When Damar became a revolutionary he gained both redemption and the status of one of the most iconic characters in trek history.
To Legate Corat Damar, a true Cardassian legend!
) attempted to deal with a Big Idea. It failed, of course, but when Trek tackles a Big Idea and nails it...well, TV just doesn't get much better.
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