I'm not sure if that is what Behr in particular set out to do. Maybe Wolfe did and after Wolfe left, that gave way to Dukat being fubared?
In any case, although Behr saw Dukat being a multi-dimensional good guy as a problem, that is not really a problem.
The real problem is Behr's position on that.
There is absolutely no reason why Dukat had to be a villain at all, much less the one-dimensional caricature version of one that Behr turned him into as of the end of Waltz.
No, it is Behr's out-moded way of thinking that any character that has a different point of view than the main star must be a villain that is the real problem. I'm surprised Behr didn't realize that. IMO it is very incongruent how Behr is on the one hand capable of writing such interesting characters/stories, yet on the other hand, capable of destroying the six years of brilliant development of Dukat's character, for no good reason, like one would expect to be done by a far less-skilled writer than Behr, rather than Behr.
This part I agree with you on - there was no need to shoehorn characters into boxes and have "villain", "antagonist", "protagonist" as their defining characteristics. Spelling it out for the audience and beating them over the head over a moral judgment of the character is counterproductive and it usually lowers the artistic value of the work. I was really disappointed both with what Behr did with the characterization of Dukat and with his explanations of why it was done.
IMO, a writer should be happy for having created a convincing, interesting and layered character, and leave it up to audience to decide how they feel.
Sure, some people will have a completely different interpretation of the characters and moral standpoints from what the writers intended - but that's only to be expected. People are never going to agree 100%.
Just like, in this case, I completely disagree with you on Dukat being a "good person"...
Yeah, bullshit. Even if he was only implementing policy -- and I don't buy that for a second, considering that he himself was depicted as ordering numerous murders by the Cardassian military -- that still makes him guilty of collaborating with and implementing acts of mass murder, forced labor, genocide, massacres, rape, and oppression. Even if he didn't set the policies, he implemented them. And as the Nuremberg trials established, "Just following orders" isn't an excuse.
Dukat was a war criminal, pure and simple.
I say that the original quotation by
USS Bones is accurate and the quotation in response by
Sci is not.
Dukat had nothing to do with massacres, rapes, or oppression. Especially not rapes - Dukat is a moral man who would never stand for such sickening behaviour to occur on his watch. I feel disgusting even having to bring that up in order to respond to this post.
Nuremberg has no relevance at all to Dukat.
Dukat did the best he could to improve Bajorans' quality of life while working under the restrictions he had from the powers above him. There is no way to ask more of him than that. No man can do more than his best.
Dukat had everything to do with the massacres, rapes and oppression, and not just those he personally ordered but also everything else that Cardassians were doing to Bajorans, because he was the head of the Occupation and nothing could have happened without his approval or at the very least implied consent, which even at best, makes him at least an an accomplice or accessory after the fact. And we know that there are a lot of things he was directly responsible for and that we've seen him give orders for - enslavement of Bajorans as workers in ore processing on Terok Nor under very difficult and unhealthy conditions, sexual enslavement of Bajoran women, executions.
Was Dukat as a prefect better than some other prefects might have been? Possibly, though we don't know for sure. But if some other guy is a bigger asshole than you, that still doesn't make you a good guy. Dukat's argument that he tried to be good and lenient as much as he could under the circumstances would sound much better if he had ever recognized that the Occupation itself was wrong. The Cardassians had no business being there in the first place, they had no right to strip Bajor's resources, spoil its land, and turn its people into slaves. If he had ever acknowledged that and accepted his share of responsibility, his case would have looked much better. But he always thought of Bajorans as inferior, and seemed to believe that Cardassians were entitled to simply take whatever they needed/wanted from them, that he was
entitled to their love and admiration. Basically, he expected an entire planet to develop a Stockholm Syndrome and be grateful to him for not killing them all and not being as awful to them that he could have been.
IMO they did a pretty good job of showing how nasty Dukat is in the occupation arc without resorting to character assassination.
On the contrary, the occupation arc showed how Dukat is a nice and good guy, and all that he
really wants is to be appreciated, which by the way, is a basic need that every person has.
Dukat said during that arc that he would only kill people if it is absolutely necessary. If he was a bad guy like many members are claiming, he would not have felt that way and he would not have said that.
That does not follow. Say, if someone kidnaps you, keeps you imprisoned for weeks and extorts money from your family, but keeps you relatively unharmed during that time, does that mean that they are "good people"? If someone robs a bank and kills a couple of people in the process, and keeps other people hostage but does not kill more than "absolutely necessary", would you call them good? I think that most people would kill only when "absolutely necessary" - but the definition of "absolutely necessary" varies. One may think that "absolutely necessary" is only in self-defense or defense of another person, while someone else might find it absolutely necessary to have someone killed because they have compromising information about them that might destroy their career, a bank robber may find it "absolutely necessary" to kill certain people in order to conduct a robbery, a mobster may find it absolutely necessary to kill a few people because they are endangering his business, a head of an occupation force might find it absolutely necessary to kill some people in order to put fear unto the population. You might claim that they are better than people who kill out of sheer sadism and bloodlust - but it still doesn't mean that those murderers are good people.
I don't see how the Occupation arc showed Dukat to be a good person, but I guess we may have very different ideas of what constitutes a "nice" or "good person". Of course, he has some good personal qualities. Sure, he is brave - we've seen it with the Maquis kidnapping, the personal war with the Klingons, and standing up to Cardassian society and claiming Ziyal. But that on its own is not enough to make one a good guy - plenty of murders, criminals and tyrants were brave, too. He is intelligent, articulate and charming. Which, again, says nothing about one's moral character and their moral choices or their deeds. A person with those qualities might be wonderful, or a complete sociopath, and might do great or terrible things.
And of course he has basic needs that every person, or most people have - like being appreciated. But how does that tell us anything about him being a good person or not? As you said - wanting to be loved and appreciated is a basic need, like food or drink or a comfortable environment. It's how you do about getting these things that determines what kind of person you are. A good person does not take away the freedom of other people, does not try to force, blackmail or manipulate them into loving or appreciating them. A good person respects someone they claim to love and treats them as an equal, and does not demand more than he himself is ready to give in return. On the other hand, in Dukat I see a narcissistic, condescending, power-hungry person who is incapable of treating anyone as an equal, and who thinks that everyone should bow down to his greatness and obey him. On top of it, he's racist (believes that Bajorans are inferior to Cardassians) and an epitome of the "White Man's Burden" mentality. He thinks that his former slaves should have been grateful for having their freedom taken away and adore him for treating them less horribly than he
could have. He loves his daughter, but is capable of disowning her when she disobeys him. And we better not start about his relationships with women... There's something particularly unsavory about a man who likes to keep concubines of the race that he considers inferior - and who, despite having relationships with the women from the "inferior race" for years, having children with them, and claiming to "love" them, never abandons his racist attitude. I can understand racism and prejudice from people who haven't had enough chances to get to know people of that race, but this... This seems more like your classic colonialist/slaveowner who enjoys "native" women exactly because those concubines do not have the status of an equal and can't challenge his position of power. If he was really a nice guy, he would have wanted to help starving families without asking anything in return, rather than using it to blackmail women into becoming sex slaves for him and his soldiers. The fact that he treats them relatively well, attempts to charm them and claims to love them (and I don't doubt that he believes that, it's what passes as
love is his mind), doesn't change the fact that they are slaves, it only adds the additional emotional manipulation on top of it all. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that being treated the way Dukat treated his concubines is a lot more pleasant and preferable to being beaten, brutally raped, verbally insulted and openly treated as a thing - but a golden cage is still a cage. Let's see... If the woman cannot leave on her own will, cannot decide to end the relationship if she wants to, cannot see or contact her family, her children and husband, has no friends to spend time with, has nowhere to go and nothing to do except what her master/lover allows her to; while the man has absolute power to decide what happens to her, and could any moment, if he wanted to, dump her, replace her, throw her out, send her to ore processing, give her to one of his soldiers, or kill her/have her killed (not saying he would actually do it - just that he would
have the power to), and while he himself is free to have other mistresses he chooses and to regularly visit his wife and children back home, and have more children with his wife and his other mistresses... would you call that an equal relationship? It sure sounds like slavery to me.
Voyager was absolutely frakking racist to the Cardassians - see Nothing Human. Nobody calls Harry Kim on his casual racism - "they are not the nicest species in the galaxy" 
