The idea of a Dominion War

[indolover]

Regarding the very notion of the Dominion War, did you support it?

I've heard some people say it was anti-Roddenberry in nature, but I don't think I agree with that. The Federation had been in wars before, and had encountered/fought deadly enemies prior to the Dominion. When Roddenberry was executive producer of TNG, the Borg were introduced under his tenure. The Romulans were also introduced as enemies in Season 1 of TNG, when Roddenberry had a lot of input into the show.

The difference in my mind was that the Dominion War was the largest scale conflict we had ever seen on Trek. I've always thought that even though humans and the Federation in general are "evolved", other species in the galaxy are not. In that sense, I think the Dominion War highlighted that point quite well, even if some may say it was anti-Roddenberry.

 

[Unicron]

I thought it was well handled, and I'm glad we got a longer conflict. The PTB wanted it to be wrapped up in only one season, and IIRC it was Rick Berman who fought against that (I could be wrong as to which production member did, though). I do think Gene probably would have opposed it himself, but I honestly find it difficult to respect some of his later judgments. I think early TNG suffered a bit from his desire that 24th century humans should be "perfect."

 

[RegFan]

I never liked the Dominion War even though it did fit the series. Roddenberry's death was a good thing to the franchise and I agree that TNG suffered a bit from the lack of conflict.

 

[Hober Mallow]

I never had a problem with the idea of a war, although I'm certain Roddenberry would have hated it. I just didn't find the war stories compelling in any way, with the exception of "In the Pale Moonlight."

 

[Admiral Shran]

I loved the Dominion War story arc.

I don't see why everyone got so upset when DS9 explored darker themes. It's not like those themes went there before.

- Racism still exists within humanity. Look at Stiles' reaction to, and treatment of, Spock in "Balance of Terror."
- Humans can still be brutal, dicatorial people (Kodos from "The Conscience of the King").
- The Federation was willing to go to war with the Klingons in "Errand of Mercy."
- Kirk engages in acts of espionage against the Romulan Empire, and flat out steals Romulan state property, in "The Enterprise Incident," all on direct orders from Starfleet and the Federation.

All of these examples happened when Roddenberry was calling the shots. Now granted, some of his later decisions and beliefs were that Humans and the Federation should be perfect in all ways. But, I think most people will agree, those were some pretty questionable ideas and TNG suffered early on because of them.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Very often with DS9 episode, and most often with their war stories, I'd be watching and halfway through the episode I'd realize it was a lot like another movie, another TV episode I'd seen, or a book. Then I'd think, "Wow, the book/movie/other TV episode was a lot better."

Didn't object to war as a subject matter, it's just that it was handled better on other shows and in other media. Except, of course, on "In the Pale Moonlight."

 

[Vonstadt]

I enjoyed the war arc even identified with poor Nog, having just returned from serving in a conflict at the time myself. Most of the Dominion War stories came across as well done and hit home for me being so close to my own experiences at the time.

I thought it was handled well, especially the fact that the UFP/starfleet was outgunned and was actually losing the war in the beginning. A real shake up from some of the arrogance that was established from early TNG episodes. They even had episodes that dealt with the characters having to deal with being so humbled by their opponents.

All in all I thought DS9 came the closest to the feel of the old style of Star Trek I grew up with, so I was glad to see the war evolved naturally out of the on going plot and was not just BANG they have a war and then bang its over..hit the rest button and on to next week's show.

Vons

 

[sonak]

I disliked it. Though I agree Starfleet is military in nature, Star Trek had never been "military sci-fi" before. DS9 became another sci-fi war show, like Babylon 5, or the newer Battlestar Galactica. Those were both good shows, but the idea's been overdone.

DS9 should have stuck with its core premise of a vulnerable Starfleet-run station trying to help rebuild Bajoran society and running into threats from Cardassia, etc.

The Dominion war was lazy writing in my opinion.
Also, I found that it strained credibility to have this major intergalactic war going on, and yet about half of the episodes of the last two seasons didn't focus on it too much. It's like they wanted it as a crutch to be used, but didn't want the show to be all Domion War based.

 

[Rush Limborg]

I thought it was well handled, and I'm glad we got a longer conflict. The PTB wanted it to be wrapped up in only one season, and IIRC it was Rick Berman who fought against that (I could be wrong as to which production member did, though).

Wow. Looks like, for all that talk about Rick being The Bad Guy, he made a great call here. Like it or not, not every conflict can be solved right away. Many times...they go on for a very long time.

I do think Gene probably would have opposed it himself, but I honestly find it difficult to respect some of his later judgments. I think early TNG suffered a bit from his desire that 24th century humans should be "perfect."

Dang right. The Bird was a very smart guy, but honestly--his humanism sometimes went way too far in his later years.

"By the 24th century, children have accepted that death is a part of life. Therefore, you can't have this kid morn his mother's death, and find it hard to recover."

"Money doesn't exist in the 24th century--because We Work To Better Ourselves, And The Rest Of Humanity."

"Starfleet is scientists and explorers: we don't sneak around."

And my personal favorite:

"By the 24th century, humans have learned to be free of conflict."

Honestly? Half the time, I don't think The Bird even knew what he was talking about.

But it's an example of what Sisko said about that embarrasingly naive and black-and-white Admiral Necheyev: "It's easy to be a saint in Paradise." But what happens when you have to defend Paradise, hmm?

Then...you have to make a lot of hard choices, with no easy answers--which will prey on your conscience, no matter what.

Especially in war.

 

[Arix]

I thought it was well handled, and I'm glad we got a longer conflict. The PTB wanted it to be wrapped up in only one season, and IIRC it was Rick Berman who fought against that (I could be wrong as to which production member did, though).

Wow. Looks like, for all that talk about Rick being The Bad Guy, he made a great call here. Like it or not, not every conflict can be solved right away. Many times...they go on for a very long time.

The bandwidth cap on my internet is blown, so I can't check on Memory Alpha (though I will tomorrow, when it resets), but I remember reading that Berman did the exact opposite. He was the one representing the PTB, saying the war should only last a few episodes!

It was Ira Steven Behr, DS9's showrunner, who fought for the Dominion War being long and serialised, and was responsible for most of the decisions on DS9.

I distinctly remember reading about an argument between Berman and Behr when they were making "The Siege of AR-558", Behr wanted Nog to lose both his legs, but Berman wanted him to be completely fine - so they 'negotiated' how much of his leg Nog was going to lose!

 

[Nightdiamond]

I remember the reaction I had when I first saw "Call to Action" and
saw the war started- I had thought that the conflict would die down before it ever escalated into anything.

Then when the first attack happened, I thought, "they're really going through with it".

Up until then, it was either "Yesterday's Enterprise" or "Best of Both Worlds", but now we were seeing huge space battles and a long drawn out war.

We got see what it looked like for the first time, at least in the Star Trek Universe.

And it created a heck of a contrast to TNG's view .

 

[Nick086]

I'm for it and it should of lasted three seasons. I wanted to see more battles fought on the ground and in space.

 

[TheGodBen]

I disliked it. Though I agree Starfleet is military in nature, Star Trek had never been "military sci-fi" before.

Balance of Terror
Errand of Mercy
The Enterprise Incident
The Wrath of Khan
The Undiscovered Country
The Defector
Yesterday's Enterprise
Redemption
Chain of Command
And so on and so forth and suchlike...

What you meant to say was that Star Trek was never exclusively military science fiction before, but neither was DS9. In fact, later in your post you criticise DS9 for not being exclusively military science fiction, so I'm not sure what your point is.

DS9 became another sci-fi war show, like Babylon 5, or the newer Battlestar Galactica. Those were both good shows, but the idea's been overdone.

How was the idea overdone when one of those shows was on air at the same time as DS9 and the other started four years after DS9 finished up? In today's TV landscape it might seem derivative, but back in the 90s DS9 and B5 were setting a new course for science fiction on television.

Also, I found that it strained credibility to have this major intergalactic war going on, and yet about half of the episodes of the last two seasons didn't focus on it too much. It's like they wanted it as a crutch to be used, but didn't want the show to be all Domion War based.

This was partly due to interference from the studio which wanted DS9 to be episodic so that it would be easier to sell in reruns, just like TNG. Ira Behr and other writers on the show wanted more focus on the war, the original plan they were considering for season 6 was that the Dominion would occupy the station for the full year. This was scaled down to four episodes by Rick Berman and TPTB at Paramount, and they were reportedly told to the end the war by episode 5 of season 6. Behr negotiated that up to 5 episodes, and he managed to turn that fifth episode into a two-parter to bring us a total of six episodes focusing on the war. The only way he could get the studio to agree to the continuation of the war was to agree to place it in the background of the show, that's why seasons 6 and 7 had so much filler.


As for the OP's original question, I thoroughly enjoyed the Dominion War. I have no problems with it conflicting with the Roddenberry box because I don't find the Roddenberry box terribly interesting. That being said, I'd like to live in the Roddenberry box.

The more I say Roddenberry box the dirtier it gets.

 

[sonak]

Yes, GodBen, what I meant was it had never been exclusively military sci-fi before. And I wasn't just thinking about television sci-fi when I wrote that it was overdone, but movies and books, where military sci-fi has always been a major part of the genre.

Starfleet's mission was always shown to be primarily exploratory/scientific. The war arcs or episodes they had were largely aberrations.

It just seems like since they put the show on a space station instead of a ship, they figured an easy way to make it "interesting" was to have a war.

 

[Phily B]

People always talk about Roddenberys vision, but I bet he would've had more battles in TOS if he had the budget/technology. The Dominion War was well executed for the six episode arc where the Federation were losing, getting desperate etc but they built the Dominion up way too strongly in the past so it was a bit of a disappointment. They saved it a bit by introducing S31/The Virus.

 

[Myasishchev]

The more I say Roddenberry box the dirtier it gets.

Any box in close proximity to Roddenberry became a Roddenberry box.

I liked the war a lot. It's the best thing Star Trek ever, ever did. Even if it was sometimes handled poorly due to executive meddling (the notion that Bajor is on the border, but not a regular combat zone--did they dig trenches around it or something?) or lack of thought (the Breen have joined the Dominion! why? who cares!).

 

[TheGodBen]

Yes, GodBen, what I meant was it had never been exclusively military sci-fi before. And I wasn't just thinking about television sci-fi when I wrote that it was overdone, but movies and books, where military sci-fi has always been a major part of the genre.

That's not what you said, you criticised DS9 for being too much like other shows, one of which was a bold, new innovator that nobody watched and another of which came about 4 years later and was created by a guy that used to write on DS9.

Even if there had been movies and books focused on military science fiction, television is a completely different animal to those mediums. Even an epic sci-fi trilogy such as Star Wars was still only 6 hours of screen-time, whereas DS9 was 125 hours, or thereabouts. Character arcs happen differently on TV shows than they do in movies and novels, stories are told differently.

Starfleet's mission was always shown to be primarily exploratory/scientific. The war arcs or episodes they had were largely aberrations.

Because the two Star Trek shows we had at that point were set aboard deep-space exploratory vessels. If there had been a Star Trek show called Star Trek Epsilon IX then we'd think that Starfleet is an intelligence agency designed to spy on hostile neighbours. If there was a show called Star Trek Crazy Horse we would think that Starfleet is all about shuttling admirals across Federation space. Starfleet has lots of different facets, if the shows stuck with the premise of exploring strange new worlds we'd have narrative stagnation and a retreading of old material. Which is exactly what happened with most of Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise, and that's why the franchise was on its knees until Trek XI came along and renewed people's interest.

It just seems like since they put the show on a space station instead of a ship, they figured an easy way to make it "interesting" was to have a war.

It wasn't easy, they had to fight the studio to be able to do the war, and if you read the behind the scenes material for the six episode opening arc to the war you learn that they found it very stressful to manage all the plot-threads over all these episodes. It was hard work for them as none of them had experience with serialised story-telling, but they felt that the end result was so good that they decided to try a ten episode arc in the final season.

By the way, I'm sorry if I appear to be coming on too strong, I don't mind if other people don't like DS9, I know lots of people that don't like the show and I've only killed three of them. I just don't like the claim that DS9's ultimate direction was lazy, and I'm desperately procrastinating because I have to send an important email later on and I don't want to think about it.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

I think it was a good idea which allowed the writers to take the show in interesting directions, notably the multi-episode arcs at the beginning of Season 6 and end of Season 7. They weren't perfect, but they were bold and exciting, which is what DS9 needed to be. There probably were some drawbacks - overall the show didn't feel quite as rich and wide-ranging as it had in the middle years and I feel that Bajor fell regrettably out of focus - but the show had to move forward and the Dominion War allowed some really terrific stories to be told.

 

[sonak]

I disagree GodBen, that the only reason for the impression of Trek's exploratory theme is that the first two series took place on ships.


The whole opening "To boldly go..." is an explicit expression of that premise. It's also become iconic in pop culture. I don't think "hey were on a starship,so let's take a look around" would have had the same cultural impact. I recall reading that some hard-core (or perhaps "fundamentalist") fans were even turned off of DS9 by the lack of this opening mission statement.

By the way, it doesn't even have to be a rigid definition of exploring of new planets and stars. It's also about exploring alien cultures and the human condition. And I'm not bashing DS9. I liked DS9 a lot, I just didn't like to see it turned into a war show when there were other approaches I'd have liked to see.

And hey, were on a Star Trek message board. If I didn't come here for discussion and disagreements, I came to the wrong place.

 

[ClayHefner]

I really think the Dominion War should have been shorter.

While I see how a long, bitter conflict can be beneficial to a show, they did not seem to have the resources to really sell that.

The most convincing, "shocking" moments were right at the beginning of the war arc (decimated fleet) and just before it ended (Cardassia). We didn't see Betazed being overrun or anything similar, only casualty lists and reports of something happening somewhere (Even the attack on earth wasn't that dramatic imo).
So they imo better had made it shorter, easier to follow and focus entirely on the conflict and closely related stuff.
Like the "Final Chapter", but going for an entire season, with a final season after that.