Okay, you lost me there. Your idea of military preparedness is a fashion makeover??
Ditto. Especially since the current uniforms already look fairly militaristic, at least from a Human POV.
Concerning Captain Ezri Dax
- Thread starter Rush Limborg
- Start date
Ditto. Especially since the current uniforms already look fairly militaristic, at least from a Human POV.
Especially one which makes Ezri look like T'Pol with spots...?
Okay, okay. We're getting REALLY off topic--and I think we all can tell it's getting heated. This thread's about Ezri Dax's command style. Any thoughts on that, folks?
I'd definitely like to see the lovely Aventine incorporated into the Zero Sum Game cover, and a good shot of Captain Dax, and obviously something Breen-related, whether ship or person.
Ehh, in fairness the Breen fought for the Dominion in the close of the war as well and were responsible for some serious destruction. And Captain Dax has personal negative experience with them, I wonder if that will be referenced in Zero Sum Game?
Of course, Breen services were also bought by President Bacco in Destiny to the Tholian chagrin, so relations must be pretty normalized...
Also, the Kinshaya are openly hostile and warlike (albeit with good reason) towards the Klingons, and if they go outside the Pact the Federation might have to make some difficult decisons. Fortunately, IIRC, the Kinshaya seem willing to hold back for the good of the Pact.
I wonder if the relationship with the Pact and the expansion of the Khitomer Accords might also spur some change in how the Khitomer powers to some extent? I mean, the Ferengi Alliance and Cardassian Union (still, right?) have undergone some major changes lately; I wonder if the Klingons might as well under pressure from the Khitomer Accords?
I see no evidence of this peaceful Pact in any books. The Pact is made up of nations that have always been hostile to the Federation. The Tholians, in Singular Destiny, upon telling Bacco they were in the Pact, explicity said they joined to piss the Federation off, and informed her that now the Federation was surrounded by a heavily armed power.
As soon as they thought they had the backing of the Pact, the Kinshaya invaded and temporarily occupied two Klingon worlds, and other memebers of the Pact, through proxy agents attempted to disrupt the Klingons and Federation by sabotaging mining occupations, and tricking a member world of the Federation into temproarily withdrawing, thus impeeding help with survivorsfrom the Borg attacks.
The idea that the Pact is some benevolent entity out there working to better themselves via the Federation model is based on wishful thinking and nothing more. Even the blurbs for the upcoming books go out of their way to paint the Pact as the Federations enemies.
While going totally off topic again, I'm posting one more; less time and harder angles to match = bad quality and proportions. But it does give an idea of how an updated Nemesis uniform might look. I think this one is more fitting to an enlightened species then the previous one.
*runs
*runs
I'm not going to argue - I mean, I'm assuming the Pact is going to take the role of the major antagonist in the upcoming novels. The Pact's going to have to be at odds with the Federation at some point; they do have conflicting interests. But isn't basing your opinion on book blurbs a bad idea? I mean, the old numbered books always had something like "Captain Picard and his crew must save the galaxy from destruction!", no matter what the book was actually about. I haven't read the back of a Trek book in ages, but I think it would be geared towards trying to make it sound as dramatic as possible.
I appreciate the blurbs are not necessarily 100% accurate, the only point I was making is that both in the books that the Pact has been written about and in the promotional material, ie the blurbs, for upcoming books that have the Pact in them, they have been painted quite clearly as being hostile. And yet I read many people in threads on here, talking about how peaceful, benevolent, etc etc the Pact is, and all that stuff, and I just dont see how that conclusion can be drawn from anything that has actually been written about them.
Clawhammer, great second picture.
So? Italy fought alongside the Nazis in WWII, but that doesn't mean the Italians are our intractable enemies. On the contrary, they're our allies in NATO now. Political allegiances shift. Nations form alliances for a variety of reasons, and those reason can change over time. We don't know why the Breen chose to ally with the Dominion. Considering that they never caused the Federation any major trouble before then, it's unrealistic to assume their one and only reason for existing is to hurt the Federation. Like any nation, they're out for their own best interests. At the time of the Dominion War, they clearly felt it was in their interests to ally with the Dominion. And given the alternative, that's understandable.
And the Pact also includes the Gorn, a nation that fought alongside the Federation against the Borg and that's historically had good relations with them following an initial botched contact that was more the Federation's fault than theirs. So it's not just a collection of "bad guys."
First off, there's only been one book about them, so you have very little information about what they're like.
Second, I didn't say "peaceful." This isn't going to be a black-and-white story where the only choices are war and peace, good and evil, friend or enemy. This is more like the way politics works in the real world, where things are more complex and ambiguous. The nations that have united into the Pact are acting in what they feel to be their best interest, as every nation does. That's their priority: not to be cartoon villains, but to do right by their nations, to improve their prosperity, their security, and their standing in the galaxy. If they decide that hostility toward the Federation is the best way to achieve that, they will be hostile. But if they can be convinced that coexisting with the UFP, however tenuously, is in their best interests, they will coexist. This is what international diplomacy and politics are about. It's not about good guys and bad guys. It's about nations trying to advance their own interests and prosperity, and there are various ways of going about that.
That is untrue. As I said, the Gorn have generally had peaceful relations with the Federation. The only exceptions are that first contact in "Arena" and the coup in The Gorn Crisis. In the former instance, Kirk showed mercy to the Gorn captain; in the latter, Picard personally saved the Gorn ruling family from extermination and defeated the insurgents who wished to overthrow the government. So the Gorn have no reason for hostility toward the Federation. We also know that the UFP has a colony on Cestus III in the 24th century, meaning the Gorn must have ceded it -- even though it was rightfully theirs to begin with. And since the UFP doesn't engage in territorial conquest, that handover of the Cestus system must have been made peacefully.
The Romulans have traditionally been hostile to the UFP, but were allied with them in the last year of the Dominion War and had generally good relations with them between the war and Shinzon's coup, and after Shinzon's defeat at Picard's hands.
The Tholians mistrust the Federation, seeing them as a threat, but have never started a war or invasion against them. On the contrary, they see the Federation as the invaders of their territory, which they're just trying to protect.
The Kinshaya have historically been hostile to the Klingons, understandably since the Klingons were hostile to them, but their interactions with the UFP have been minimal.
The Breen, as stated above, have no history of open hostility with the Federation prior to the Dominion War.
The Tzenkethi did have a war with the Federation at one time, but that doesn't mean they were "always" hostile. America has been at war with many nations that are now our allies or at least neutral, from Britain to Mexico to the Philippines to Germany to Japan to Vietnam and beyond. We don't know enough about the Tzenkethi to assume anything about their motives or priorities.
Yes, and in that same book, the more aggressive members of the Pact were pulled back by the rest and made to apologize for their aggressive acts. As I said, it's a mistake to treat the Pact as a single entity. These are six civilizations with their own priorities and agendas and little to no history of working well with others. They don't all agree on everything; indeed, it would be hard to get them to agree on anything at this early stage. As in any alliance, the Pact has its more extremist members and its more moderate members. Which way the balance falls is as yet unknown. But if the Federation responds in a kneejerk, paranoid way and treats them as an enemy, that will give the hardliners fodder for marginalizing the moderates.
I didn't say they were benevolent. I said they have the potential to go either way. And given how tenuous the situation is at the moment, the Federation's reaction to the Pact could shape which way the Pact goes, so that reaction has to be chosen carefully, in a way that nurtures and encourages the more peaceful possibilities rather than inflaming the potential for hostility that definitely does exist.
The Federation itself was based on wishful thinking, after all. Humans didn't like Vulcans, Vulcans and Andorians hated each other, Andorians and Tellarites hated each other, and nobody had a high opinion of humans to start with. The idea that these squabbling nations could put their differences aside and become friends was entirely wishful thinking. But because people like Archer and T'pol and Shran were brave enough to act on that wishful thinking and smart enough to find ways to make it happen, the wish came true.
Of course they do. They're meant to make the story sound exciting and dramatic, and there isn't a lot of room for nuance in a two- or three-paragraph blurb. But I've had conversations about the Typhon Pact books with most of the authors involved in writing them, and I daresay I know somewhat more about the story than you can get from a few blurbs. Certainly there's danger involved, certainly the Pact is a rival, and certainly their interests are going to conflict with the UFP's. But it's not a simplistic good-vs.-evil situation. It's more realpolitik than that, with plenty of nuance.
I'm not denying that the Pact is a rival or that the potential for conflict exists. I'm saying that their goal is not one of conquest, but of self-interest. They see the Federation as a threat, a rival, a power that wishes to dominate and control them. They formed the Pact to stand against that, to protect their own cultural autonomy. So if the Federation takes an aggressive stance toward them, it will reaffirm their fears and make them more hostile, more of a threat. The more you pre-emptively assume they're a danger, the more of a danger you make them. But if the UFP takes a better, more diplomatic path, a path of engagement rather than pre-emptive enmity, then maybe, just maybe, it could defuse those fears and allow the two powers to at least coexist neutrally. It could give the moderates within the Pact more clout and undermine the fearmongering of the hardliners.
So I'm not saying the UFP is in no danger from the Pact. On the contrary, there's definite danger, and that's exactly why it would be foolish to inflame the situation by taking a pre-emptively aggressive, threatening stance. It has to be played carefully in a way that attempts to defuse the danger.
While going totally off topic again, I'm posting one more; less time and harder angles to match = bad quality and proportions. But it does give an idea of how an updated Nemesis uniform might look. I think this one is more fitting to an enlightened species then the previous one.
*runs
Sorry - I see that I think of Drive...
I personally would prefer a return to something along the lines of STII - STVI uniforms...at least if we're going down the militaristic line...
As for Ezri, as I wasn't ever much of a DS9 fan, I came into Destiny fairly blind. I didn't particularly put her on par with any other captain, I liked the fact that she seemed to be a change of pace. She was young, fairly formal but also she seemed hardened somehow, as if the trill-ness gave her an edge that other Captains have lacked...It'll be interesting to see how this develops.
I like it but it needs the dark shoulder patch instead of white.While going totally off topic again, I'm posting one more; less time and harder angles to match = bad quality and proportions. But it does give an idea of how an updated Nemesis uniform might look. I think this one is more fitting to an enlightened species then the previous one.
*runs
Techincally they have appeared in two books, as they play a smallish part in the epilogue of "Loosing the Peace" (they are the reason why a potential colony system has to be disregarded as it is too close to Gorn space.).
I'm not claiming it is a huge wealth of info to use, but what little there is, is all negative in its depicition, which is what I was saying in the first place.
That doesnt change the fact that some of the individual members, once they thought they had the backing of the Pact as a whole, acted in a hostile manner towards the Federation and the Klingons, which was the point I was making.
Sure they could, and it might make an interesting direction to take the stories, all I was saying is I dont see any reason at the moment to think they will go any other way than the hostile/enemy agressor/opponent way, as in the (admittedly limited) way they have been depicted so far, there is no indication of anything other that.
No, you are right, the Federation and it's allies shouldnt launch a pre-emptive war or anything against the Pact, I agree, that would be a mistake. A peaceful co existence should be tred to be found first.
In the end, I just dont see the complexity that others do about the Pact so far. All I see is nations that have generally (the Gorn excepted maybe) been always hostile and aggressive to either the Federation or its Klingon allies, or both, banding together to form an equal sized adversary to the Federation/Klingons, and for that adversary to be quite overt in it's hostility. And I find it difficult to understand how people can draw a different conclusion about them, other than by them basing it on their wishes for the story potential rather than anything that has been indicated in either books or advertising material for future books, involving the Pact, so far.
But whatever, it is just a personal thing of mine and nothing that important.
No, it isn't all negative. A Singular Destiny makes a point of showing that all the Pact members are not uniformly hostile, that the two who do pursue their own individual vendettas are brought into check by the Pact as a whole, which apologizes to the Federation and the Klingons for those unauthorized, maverick acts. ASD clearly shows that the Pact has as much potential to be a stabilizing influence as a disruptive one.
And that point is missing the point. The key is that they thought they had the backing of the Pact, but they were wrong. They didn't have the backing of the Pact. They were acting on their own agendas and the Pact pulled them into line. It proved to be a mollifying force.
It also demonstrated that the nations of the Pact are not marching in lockstep, that they all have different and sometimes conflicting agendas. So you can't simplify the Pact as simply another enemy, and you can't assume there's only a single goal driving its members.
I'm not talking about what to think, I'm talking about what to do. I've said this over and over again: how the UFP reacts to the Pact has the potential to influence how the Pact develops, and therefore it is imperative for the Federation to choose its response wisely. And giving into kneejerk, Dick Cheney-style pre-emptive aggression is the worst possible response because it'll just harden them against us and close off any paths that might exist toward a more peaceful interaction. No, there's no guarantee of a peaceful resolution, but a militant, aggressive response will just guarantee a warlike resolution.
There's that word again. "Always." How the hell do you know that? How do you know that the Tzenkethi weren't originally friendly to the Federation before circumstances changed and led to war? How do you know the Breen weren't completely neutral before they decided it was in their best interests to join the Dominion? Basically all we know about them is that, in Worf's words, "They do not tolerate incursions into their space." That's not the description of an aggressive species, but of one that wants to be left alone.
Study history. Just because two nations were in conflict at one point doesn't mean they were "always" enemies. I've already given you examples of all the nations America once warred with and is now allied with. "Always" is a term that has little meaning in politics. Nations change, circumstances change. That's what the whole Typhon Pact story is about. It's rejecting the idea of an invariant political status quo. It's exploring the potential for real, lasting change in the nature of the relationships among the powers of the quadrant. "Always" is a word that's been thrown out the window now.
One more time: two members of the Pact engaged in hostility. The other four members of the Pact made them stop and apologized for their unauthorized actions. The Pact is not an "it." The Pact is a tenuous, contentious alliance of six distinct nations with separate agendas. They're as likely to be at odds with each other as with the Federation.
While going totally off topic again, I'm posting one more; less time and harder angles to match = bad quality and proportions. But it does give an idea of how an updated Nemesis uniform might look. I think this one is more fitting to an enlightened species then the previous one.
*runs
I like it. I wasn't sure about the white shoulders at first, but they're growing on me. OTOH, the dark turtleneck was striking as well... but like you said, this one looks "lighter" and more "enlightened" and appearances are important.
Oh, I definitely agree. Of course, part of that was due to the very intentional act of the Marshall Plan working to help rebuild a devastated Italy (and Germany, of course) which fostered that sort of closeness. Like you've been saying, when faced with massive destruction, the best way to build a lasting peace is cooperation and rebuilding together.
The alternative being... join the F/K/R alliance and end the war faster? Remain neutral and end the war faster? Sorry, but one of my biggest beefs with The Final Chapter, and which I hope Zero Sum Game addresses, is something, anything, about the Breen mindset; why did they join the Dominion War Effort? I definitely agree with you and don't think they're out to hurt the Feds as a larger goal, especially given their role in Destiny. They're a Confederacy, maybe they're even more loosely affiliated than we realize?
Still, the point I was making was that the freshest memory of the Breen for most of Starfleet is likely the assault on San Francisco, so Bacco and Co. will probably tread more lightly around them than the Gorn and Romulans, for example, and will likely instruct Dax and Aventine to do the same.
Unless there's been novels dealing with the Breen that I've entirely missed, in which case I should feel like an idiot...
I know, bless the Gorn.
And until recently, the RSE has had very solid relations too. I think the Pact is a good mix of folks and I look forward to seeing how they interact with one another and the Feds.But I do wonder what role the increased Khitomer Accords will play in all this. I mean, by increasing the Accords we're not just talking Fed relations with the Pact anymore, but also Klingons with the Kinshaya, the Romulan "squabble," the likely-positive Ferengi trade influences, and who knows what the Cardassians and Talarians think.
Looks like this thread is disolving into a Typhon Pact argument.
And it was all started by someone trying to justify the "aggressive" look given to Captain Dax in the first custom pic....
C'mon, guys. The Typhon Books aren't THAT far off. Let's JUST WAIT AND SEE HOW IT TURNS OUT!!!
Or at least start another thread...or something....
Now...on the new custom pic--I think it's FAR superior to the previous one--although I kinda prefer the "dark grey" top of the outer uniform....
Still think Ezri looks a heck of a lot better with her DS9 hairstyle. Sorry, but the "Dead Zone" style looks kinda messy--IMHO, of course.
Now...the original topic was Ezri's command style...what are your thoughts on that?
And it was all started by someone trying to justify the "aggressive" look given to Captain Dax in the first custom pic....
C'mon, guys. The Typhon Books aren't THAT far off. Let's JUST WAIT AND SEE HOW IT TURNS OUT!!!
Or at least start another thread...or something....
Now...on the new custom pic--I think it's FAR superior to the previous one--although I kinda prefer the "dark grey" top of the outer uniform....
Still think Ezri looks a heck of a lot better with her DS9 hairstyle. Sorry, but the "Dead Zone" style looks kinda messy--IMHO, of course.
Now...the original topic was Ezri's command style...what are your thoughts on that?
Actually, we don't know that at all.
The Gorn, for instance, have had exactly two instances of conflict with the UFP -- once when the Federation put a colony on a world the Gorn had already claimed, causing the Gorn to believe the Federation was threatening them (a world the Gorn later gave to the Federation after the misunderstanding was resolved), and once when a terrorist group led an unsuccessful coup against the Gorn royal family in a policy the legitimate government ended once the Federation helped it get back into power.
Further, we don't know under what circumstances the Federation-Tzenkethi War started. It's entirely possible that, as in the case of the Cestus III conflict, neither side intentionally engaged in aggression -- that it was just a big astropolitical misunderstanding that was never resolved as with the Gorn.
It's also possible that it was the Federation that was the aggressor, starting the fight with Tzenketh. Perhaps the Federation President at the time, for instance, was a Nixon-type who thought it would be a good idea to try to overthrow the Tzenkethi government a la Operation Ajax or the 1973 Chilean coup. The Federation, after all, does have a history of sometimes engaging in aggressive war even though it's not supposed to -- Tezwa, for instance.
You need to re-read A Singular Destiny, because ASD rather firmly established that the Typhon Pact forced its members who tried to act in a hostile manner against the UFP and Klingons to stop and to apologize.
Oh, it's perfectly fine--because, frankly, your point proves mine.
We're engaging in runaway speculation. And frankly...as I recall...all this has been discussed before--in the appropriate thread, labled "The Typhon Pact"--in the exact same way....
Ladies and gentlemen...what is the definition of insanity?
Okay--on a more positive note:
I have been reflecting on Dax a bit lately, and it hit me--
Ezri is the ninth host to the Dax Symbiont.
In other words...Dax has nine lives.
I have been reflecting on Dax a bit lately, and it hit me--
Ezri is the ninth host to the Dax Symbiont.
In other words...Dax has nine lives.
Similar threads
