I think I'm starting to understand...

[Too Much Fun]

...all the love on this forum for Cardassians. When I first joined, I was only on Season 5 of Deep Space Nine (though I had seen all of TNG) and didn't understand why there were people here who love Garak, Dukat, and Damar (I didn't even know who he was!) enough to use them for avatars, put their quotes in signatures, and constantly gush about them in thread after thread. Now that I've just seen the six episode arc that begins season 6, it's beginning to make a little more sense to me. I found Garak REALLY annoying in the first few seasons...I just saw him as very irritating and smug, constantly yakking way too much, often only to brag about himself, but his heroism during the Dominion occupation of the station and his relationship with Dukat's daughter made me see him in a new light.

The same goes for Dukat. I've always found him to be rather one-dimensional, just a simple cliche power-mad megalomaniac dictator-type villain. The only thing remotely unique about his character was his attraction to Kira, but the way he was torn between his feelings for his daughter and Kira and his commitment to his planet (and through that, the Dominon) brought a lot more pathos and personality to his character. And I was completely shocked at the end of "Sacrifice of Angels", not only by what happens, but also by the fact that it made me actually care about Dukat and feel some sympathy for someone who I'd previously written off as just a typical villain. I still don't see why Damar is beloved, but I've heard he gets more fleshed out in season 7, so this time I'm not going to write him off like I'd written off the others.

I still dislike the episodes that focus too much on Bajoran/Cardassian politics and history and I'll never have the "Cardassian fetish" that many on here seem to have, but I do have a newfound appreciation for their potential to be multi-faceted characters and more than just stock villains. I never thought I'd be able to get past their silly make-up and how initially simplistic and over-the-top their characters and performances were, but the acting and writing involving Dukat and Garak is slowly starting to win me over.

I'm even starting to think they might have even made effective onscreen movie villains, certainly more than those races invented for Nemesis and Insurrection! Why did we get these lame, made-up races when we had a perfectly servicable villainous alien race that had never been done onscreen? Nemesis should have either stuck to being about the federation and the Romulans (as Star Trek VI was about them and the Klingons) or brought in the Cardassians rather than the Remans and their leader. Part of me thinks maybe the Cardassians weren't used onscreen because people thought their make-up would look too silly to mainstream audiences, but then it was certainly no worse than those guys in Insurrection (they were so forgettable I can't even remember what they were called)!

 

[Jono]

I'm even starting to think they might have even made effective onscreen movie villains, certainly more than those races invented for Nemesis and Insurrection! Why did we get these lame, made-up races when we had a perfectly servicable villainous alien race that had never been done onscreen? Nemesis should have either stuck to being about the federation and the Romulans (as Star Trek VI was about them and the Klingons) or brought in the Cardassians rather than the Remans and their leader. Part of me thinks maybe the Cardassians weren't used onscreen because people thought their make-up would look too silly to mainstream audiences, but then it was certainly no worse than those guys in Insurrection (they were so forgettable I can't even remember what they were called)!

Sorry to be the one to do this but all the non-human races are made up, including the Cardassians.

The problem with having the Cardassians in Insurrection would be that they were part of the Dominion a opposed to the Son'a who had a trade relationship with the Dominion so you could somewhat believably have the Feds work with the Son'a but not the Cardassians. I didn't have a problem with the Son'a and I liked that they were the "children" of the Bak'u back for vengeance and to strip their "parents" of that they lost.

Adding the Cardassians into the plot of Nemesis in the Reman's role makes no sense. I don't have a problem with the Remans either but the less said about Shinzon the better...

 

[Too Much Fun]

When I say "made-up", I mean created specifically for the movie, as opposed to previously established on the series. Sorry, I should have been more clear about that. And when I talk about them being in Nemesis or Insurrection, I don't mean replacing another race in the story, I mean as the focus of an entirely different story which probably would mean the movies had different titles. However, you do make a good point I didn't think of bringing up that Insurrection takes place during the Dominion War, so they couldn't have been in the movie for that reason.

 

[Sykonee]

I think the Cardassians were seen as mostly DS9's heavy, not TNG's. So, having them in a TNG movie doesn't make much sense since TNG's audience wouldn't have the same kind of familiarity with them as DS9's audience would (which would also explain the non-inclusion of anything Dominion related, methinks).

 

[Jono]

Also given a movie is around 1 1/2 to 2 hours long the chances would be if the Cardassians appeared or one was the main villain. There would be no way someone like Dukat or Damar would be used since both are dead by the second movie and with Insurrection happening during the Dom War the DS9 producers would fight hard not to let them appear in the movie as the movies tend to kill off the villians. We might end up with villains that are no better then Shinzon anyway. It is a big assumpation that just because the Cardassians were explored more in DS9 that their inclusion into a movie would make that movie better (or even as good) as what we have in reality.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Bwaaahahaha! I love this! It's always wonderful to see someone else turn towards the light. Cardassia always wins.

Eventually I think you'll come around and see that their makeup is one of the best ever created for Star Trek.

 

[Danoz]

...all the love on this forum for Cardassians....

Good post.

The Cardassians are a species you have to understand in context. The annexation of Bajor and the militarization of their culture stemmed from the fact that Cardassia is a vile, hot planet with limited agriculture and it was incapable of handling the inevitable overpopulation (leading to decades of extreme poverty). Its people (once culturally rich) saw Bajor, overflowing in natural resources, and through force were able to transform Cardassia into a prosperous military regime at very high costs. Bajorans, a deeply spiritual people, responded with an aggressive terrorist campaign which gave Cardassian leaders all the justification they needed to employ torture and death camps-- and the subsequent dehumanization of the entire Bajoran people. Cardassian civilians back home were (mostly) oblivious to the levels of cruelty being committed off-world and, through a tightly controlled media, saw only the terrorist acts on Cardassian "peacekeepers," making it easy to marginalize the Bajoran people as a nation of zealots.

It's no wonder you're learning to care for Cardassians. They are a tragic, complicated species-- and by the end I'm sure you'll be shouting, "FOR CARDASSIA!!"

 

[JustKate]

Bwaaahahaha! I love this! It's always wonderful to see someone else turn towards the light. Cardassia always wins.

Eventually I think you'll come around and see that their makeup is one of the best ever created for Star Trek.

Oh, I agree with Nerys about the make-up - well, about other things, too, but especially the make-up. I think it's brilliant - human enough that the actors wearing it can still act and emote, but alien enough to look really, really alien. That is a very difficult line to walk.

I'm surprised that you found the Cardassians stereotypical villains, Too Much, because I never saw them that way. (Then again, I never really got the appeal of the Klingons, and clearly lots of people disagree with me on that. ) But I'm glad you've discovered that there's a lot more to them than the obvious.

 

[Danoz]

Bwaaahahaha! I love this! It's always wonderful to see someone else turn towards the light. Cardassia always wins.

Eventually I think you'll come around and see that their makeup is one of the best ever created for Star Trek.

Oh, I agree with Nerys about the make-up - well, about other things, too, but especially the make-up. I think it's brilliant - human enough that the actors wearing it can still act and emote, but alien enough to look really, really alien. That is a very difficult line to walk.

I'm surprised that you found the Cardassians stereotypical villains, Too Much, because I never saw them that way. (Then again, I never really got the appeal of the Klingons, and clearly lots of people disagree with me on that. ) But I'm glad you've discovered that there's a lot more to them than the obvious.

I love Klingon culture. They are a warrior race with carnal, aggressive biology-- but then they are fiercely melodramatic in everything they do.

 

[JustKate]

^ Oh, I know - lots of people really enjoy the Klingons. The fact that I don't very much (I enjoy many individual Klingon characters, just not Klingons en masse) is no doubt a flaw within me rather than within the species as imagined by TPTB.

 

[Thor Damar]

Firstly I love this thread, it's great to see the appreciation for the Cardassians both as a culture and as a dramatic device. A ruthless occupying imperialist nation but with a proud society based around duty to the state (or more importantly to the people) and an inherent spiritually that has been forcibly repressed.
In terms of the drama in DS9 in think that the relationship between the Bajorians and the Cardassians provided some of the finest episodes ever seen in trek for example Duet.

And as for why Damar is such a beloved character? Watch the last few episodes of season 7, in particular The Changing face of Evil and you'll soon see why myself and Nerys Ghemor have these avatars.

One other great reason to love those MSB comes in the form of the infamous Cardassian monologue, the Cardassians love to talk and in the hands of a great actor it is sheer verbal perfection. (just watch AJR playing Garak).

Long live Cardassia!

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Glad to see another soul come to appreciate one of the key aspects of DS9: good character development. Because that is REALLY what this is about.

DS9 took three recurring characters (more if you count Ziyal and others) and MADE something of the Cardassian race from them. Something that was 3-dimensional, multi-faceted, and interesting.

It did the same thing with the Ferengi, the Bajorans and the Dominion, by the way...and it did alot with the Klingons as well (that was something other than Worf's ongoing personal drama) but there is no doubt that the Cardassians were one of the larger successes.

That said, I'm GLAD we never saw too much of the Cardassians in the movies. Because they wouldn't have been the Cardassians which evolved on DS9. They would have been Berman and Braga's stick figure Cardassians. And just like Worf's post-DS9 film appearances annoy most DS9 fans, so likely would B&B's superficial treatment of the Cardassians.

Those two wouldn't know 'character development' if it whacked them over the head.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

And you know...the Cardassians were never all evil even from the VERY start. All the way back to "The Wounded"--I don't think you could tell me Glinn Daro was evil. All three Cardassians there had such different personalities, and that was SUCH a breath of fresh air after a lot of aliens-of-the-week.

The Cardassian who gets my avatar space the most, though, is one Tekeny Ghemor. In addition to being a big sweetheart, he's also a fantastic example of the great potential the Cardassians have. I mean, he has all the virtues: love of family, love of the state, apparently able to speak in a way that compels people to follow (he got a hell of a resistance going!)...and he's so eminently sane.

That was the great thing about the Cardassians. Even with all the horrors, you got a sense of the everyday people. Of the good among them. They were more than just one-dimensional baddies. And especially by the end--you just HAD to see them as individuals, and care.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

they have a a rich culture. That's what I like. Also like the fact that they aren't so much villains insomuch as they are a spacefaring race without anything like the Prime Directive.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Seriously, the Cardassian make-up alone makes them rock. The fact that they are an awesomely developed species is icing. Tell me I'm not the only one who wouldn't love the Cardassians in quite the same way it they looked different - there's something about their appearance that really makes me look at them and say that they are alien. It might just be that they have such distinctive looks to their attire and architecture (which, incidentally, is incredible beautiful) or their distinctive necks, or maybe just the grey of their skin - just a glance at them says they're not human, whereas some of the more familiar Trek races have something that is, beyond bein humanoid, almost human-esque to their appearance.

 

[Anwar]

As for the Cardassians not being the movies, I think that may have been more due to the DS9 Production staff not wanting them used outside of DS9. I remember they were PO'ed that the Defiant was used in FC at all, and wouldn't have wanted the Dominion used as the bad guys in INS because they didn't want to bother with dealing with that story's effects within DS9.

 

[TheGodfatherSJP]

I wouldn't call myself an out and out "fan" of the Cardassians. I liked Dukat as a character a lot: he was obviously evil but very complex as well and anything but the cut and dried villain. "Waltz" crystallized things about Dukat for me. He was clearly insane in this episode, yet in the rantings I saw a man who was willing to do anything, no matter how horrific, to advance the cause of his people. It was very self serving, but this was a commander willing to damn himself over and over again if it returned the Cardassian Union to primacy.

I've always thought the Cardassians in DS9, and to a lesser extent TNG, were a lesson in why an empire always falls violently. They were a once great people with a vast empire, and when the power they wielded began to slip from their fingers they refused to accept they're ultimate fate and did whatever they felt was necessary to maintain their people/government. In the process they brutally occupied a peaceful planet to strip it of its resources (and failed to do so), and ultimately sold their souls to the Dominion to regain their power. We all know the ultimate price they paid. Of all the peoples of the Alpha Quadrant, none suffered more than the Cardassians in the Dominion War.

Quite the bitter lesson.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Seriously, the Cardassian make-up alone makes them rock. The fact that they are an awesomely developed species is icing. Tell me I'm not the only one who wouldn't love the Cardassians in quite the same way it they looked different - there's something about their appearance that really makes me look at them and say that they are alien. It might just be that they have such distinctive looks to their attire and architecture (which, incidentally, is incredible beautiful) or their distinctive necks, or maybe just the grey of their skin - just a glance at them says they're not human, whereas some of the more familiar Trek races have something that is, beyond bein humanoid, almost human-esque to their appearance.

Definitely agreed that their whole aesthetic is just gorgeous. MAN, the architecture! And a lot of their clothing is really cool-looking, too.

I also think the neck ridges go a long way towards making them stick out right away as not being clones of humans.