Re: How much weight should the objective viewer put on S7 Dukat/Winn s
You really can't think of any other reasons why someone could dislike that storyline? Seriously?
You don't think that someone could possibly have a problem with:
[*]magic books and red-eye demon possessions on a show that had up to that point been showing that religion and SciFi can mix perfectly?
I don't see a conflict here. The whole Science/Religion ties have been throughout the entire DS9 series and it's pretty much the backbone for everything important that happened. Much of the things that occurred involving the Prophets and Pah-W's involved religious/spiritual/magical attributes. Heck even Dukat did a few magic tricks to get possessed and kill Dax.... now suddenly because it was part of the season finale, it crosses the line?
[*]good/evil dualism of the crudest black-and-white kind on the show that had up to that point been an example of intelligent, complex, shades-of-grey storytelling about politics, religion and war?
As I saw it, the show overall was a story telling how this black/white contrast was created in the first place and was motives were involved. The politics was dealt with, the War was over and all that was left to conclude was the religious aspect of things, which they did.
[*]villains who don't have anything even approaching a believable motivation, and are there just to be eeeeevil (the Pah-wraiths) so the Prophets would look better by comparison?
I think you missed something in the overall story if that's how you view them.
[*] a character who used to be a truly great villain, reduced into a cartoonish puppet of the above mentioned eeevil spirits, and acting as a plot device rather than true to his earlier characterization - so Sisko would look better by comparison?
I don't see that either. The reason why Dukat wasn't like what he started out to be probably has to do with losing his power, losing his station, losing bajor, everybody hating him, having his daughter killed in front of him by his most trusted officer, fracturing the relations between Cardassia and the Dominion by losing DS9..... he had nothing going for him anymore, nobody respected him, nobody liked him.... and when you hit rock bottom like that, I'm sure most would lose their marbles and just resort to making everybody suffer as much as possible and enact revenge on those who made your life a living hell.
Let's not forget that the way other's viewed him was very important to Dukat. He was all about his own ambitions and popularity.
[*] a lot of screentime wasted during the show's "Final Chapter" on a storyline that has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot of the Dominion War, and ends up doing nothing in the grand scheme of things, except providing a rather lame reason for Sisko to die/disappear/whatever?
If you think the main issue/story of DS9 was all about the Dominion War, then once again, I don't think you truly understand the overall story that was trying to be told.
It's not an issue of whether he was
evil. I think he was always evil, but the thing is, he was
realistically evil, he was a convincing, well-written, complex, interesting villain. Until Behr and others decided to turn him into a one-dimensional sneering comic book villain, just because they thought the viewers were idiots who needed to be literally told which characters are good and which are bad. And their idea of showing that Dukat was a bad man was to have him go insane, then get possessed by evil spirits and do some dumb shit that makes no sense and has nothing to do with the main plot of the series, and finally laugh maniacally and wrestle with Sisko over a cliff that's supposed to represent hell.
Well even in one of the episodes after Dukat went nuts and before he went all religious with the Pah-W's.... he said that everything they've tried to do to defeat the Federation and control the wormhole was foiled because of the Prophets and for so long now, everybody on their side of the war passed off the Prophets as mere spiritual mumbo jumbo that wouldn't have any serious effect.... until they lost their entire gamma quadrant fleet.
So in order to control the worm hole, in order to defeat the bajorans, in order to beat the federation, and to beat Sisko, they needed to take out the Prophets..... nothing else was working.
Then once he decided to become possessed, that's when he took that extra step towards insane and jumped right into the whole one dimensional attitude of your typical villain, because the Pah-W's were feeding off his already existing rage, anger and vengeance.
At least they should have decided if they wanted Dukat to be insane, or "pure evil"! Because an insane person is not responsible for their actions, so if you make him insane, you've pretty much denied yourself the chance to condemn his as "pure evil" for any action he undertakes while being mentally ill. Way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Maybe that was the whole point. From the very beginning, Dukat was continually made complicated in his character so that for the longest time, it was difficult to pin him as a good guy, bad guy, or neutral.... because he did everything. You grew to like him and even admire him at times.... respect him even.... then when he went nuts and was obviously a bad guy, you're still left somewhat sympathizing with his character and everything he's gone through, as if you can understand why he's the way he is.
But the DS9 writers apparently wanted to have their cake and eat it, so they just couldn't decide whether he should be insane or rational.
The worst kind of villain is the one that's both.... and why can't he be both? Why does he have to be "Black and White" ~ Insane or Rational?
So first he's insane in Sacrifice of Angels and Waltz...
Well as I saw it, Dukat was sane right up until the Defiant came back out of the wormhole.... he was still a little normal then and was perfectly fine, because all that really mattered to him was his daughter, whom even when she told him she betrayed him, he still cared for her and forgave her.... then she was shot and killed right in front of him and the last thing holding him together was lost..... and that's when he went nuts.
As for Waltz, that was the first episode that exposed exactly how damaged Dukat really was and how he was losing control between maintaining the life & reputation he once had and allowing vengeance and anger to take over to make others suffer for his pain.
and we get one of the most absurd moments in DS9 - Sisko declaring the ravings of a lunatic as a proof of "true evil". Well if Dukat is true evil, then Sisko should have concluded that based on the things Dukat had actually done (and he did them while he was rational). But apparently Sisko didn't think so, and only realized that Dukat was "pure evil" in
Waltz, based on Dukat's insane rambling?
It's complicated.
It wasn't just ramblings, that's how he dismissed his justifications that contradicted. Dukat went from trying to rationally justify the occupation and the things he did because he cared and loved the Bajorans, then Sisko trapped him in his own reasoning to the point where he ended up admitting he hated Bajorans and they should all have been wiped out, which was supposed to be the proof of how he cared and loved the Bajorans.
He wasn't just insane, he still held a decent level of rationalization (although flawed) which made him more dangerous.
And then post-Waltz, all signs of insanity disappear, except for the fact that his plans don't make sense. It is so convenient - and so lazy - to write a villain who is supposedly insane: whenever he does something that doesn't make sense, just because it is convenient to the plot, we can just say "oh, but he is insane, so it doesn't have to make sense"!
Even the things that were supposed to be insane still made sense to me.
It may have seemed that all signs of insanity disappeared based on how he acted, and for the most part, most of his insanity did.... but that's because he brought direction, focus, and an objective for him to accomplish into his life once again, which was vengeance and suffering through using the Pah's, which ended up using him and his now weak frame of mind.
He acted sane, because he had something insane to strive for and thus redirected his insanity to work for him.
I dunno if that makes any sense, but we are talking about insanity here, lol.
So then we get:
[*] Dukat forgiving Damar and blaming Sisko
for Ziyal's death. (WTF? What did Sisko have to do with it? At least if he blamed Kira or Garak or anyone who was either a) at the station at the time of the Dominion Occupation, or b) was close to Ziyal, it could have made some convoluted sense - at least you could say that he blamed that person for influencing her and making her "betray" him. But Sisko?) It is clearly just a plot device just in order to set up a Sisko/Dukat conflict.
Well Dukat couldn't blame Damar for doing his duty, which was the execution of a traitor to Cardassia, which I'm sure Dukat has done a few times in his past. He blamed Sisko because Sisko & the Prophets was responsible for the elimination of the Dominion reinforcements, attacked the station and forced them all to leave.
The key is that Dukat could never accept responsibility for his own actions and when something went wrong, it was always someone else's fault.
• It was the resistance that was at fault for the Bajorans not liking him
• It was the civilian government's fault for him losing the station and the Bajoran occupation.
• It was the Klingon's fault for him having to join with the Dominion.
• It was Sisko's fault for losing the station the second time around.
He could never once accept his own faults of over confidence and bad decision making and blaming the death of his daughter on Sisko is just another example of how far he would twist the truth to shift the blame from himself.
[*] sealing the wormhole in Tears of the Prophets while saying with a straight face that this would help the Dominion and hurt the allies. As Weyoun said: "How does that help us?" And you have to wonder why they are letting him do all that stuff. especially if he is known to be insane.
We the viewer knew he was insane.... Sisko and probably everybody else in the Federation knew he was insane, but I don't think the Dominion were totally in the loop over his insanity, because he was also still somewhat rational.
At the time of his idea, I believe the Dominion was already working on Alpha Quadrant Jem'Hadar and had new white facilities, so reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant were not as important as they were previously. And since the fleet from the Gamma quadrant was wiped out, getting reinforcements from there weren't all that likely anyways at the time.
Cutting Bajor and Sisko from the Prophets was important in the fact that it removed an important tool at their disposal and a key ally, ie: the Prophets.
[*]and there we come to another problem - Dukat was the man who aligned Cardassia with the Dominion and practically started the war, he was instrumental in the war and occupation - but now he gets some weird storyline that has nothing to do with the Dominion war; and suddenly he is showing no interest whatsoever in the war, in Cardassia, in Terok Nor, or even in his 7 Cardassian children, which he used to mention all the time without any provocation? He shows up to talk to Damar and urges him to be a great leader of Cardassia, but it's hard to figure out what he thinks about Cardassia and Dominion or anything else that's going on.
For one thing, he screwed himself with the Dominion and Cardassia because of his over confidence and losing the most important piece of real estate in the Alpha quadrant and the key to winning the war.... his input was irrelevant as far as the Dominion was concerned.... he was captured by the Federation, thus he lost his position as leader of Cardassia, which then fell on Damar..... besides all that, he was well beyond maintaining his reputation and stature in Cardassian society.... he was out for revenge.... and if he couldn't keep and maintain power through his own people and the alpha quadrant through military might, he'd do it by using "Gods."
Which of course blew up in his face.
And, you know, Dukat (or his pairing with Winn) is certainly not the only problem of this storyline. If we disregard him, I still hate the Pah-wraiths storyline alltogether, and I equally hate the unnecessary and unfortunate retcon of Sisko as Space Jesus and his Prophet mom. The latter only made the Prophets look ultra-creepy. Both the Prophets and the Pah-wraiths had possessed people and used them for their own ends before, but Kira at least was voluntarily possessed. But now we learn that the Prophets used a woman's body, made her have sex and live with a man and conceive and give birth, regardless of her will?
And they manipulated a man into thinking that he was in love with a person who basically ever even existed, before she left him and he never learned why?
He wasn't manipulated into thinking he loved her, he really did love her.
But from what I gathered from the whole Space Jesus concept, was that it was a logical and possible explanation on how current religions we believe in could exist.
It didn't make me a believer, but it's still possible.
So, we want a black-and-white battle of Good and Evil, but the Prophets don't really seem all that good, what do you do? You make their enemies look as bad as possible. So, it wasn't enough for the Pah-wraiths to just have a a rational motivation, like having a long-standing conflict with the Prophets and wanting to get back to the Celestial Temple; no, suddenly we learn that they want to... end all life?
Eh, what? Why? What is their problem? It doesn't matter, all that matters is that they are eeeeevil enough.
Sounds like Dukat and his intentions at the end.
The story could have worked if it was only written differently. The Prophets and the Pah-wraiths could have just been two warring factions of aliens, with believable motives.
That's what I gathered from it all....
If you want to portray the Prophets as being the better of the two, try to make the Prophets genuinely seem good (rather than just "better than those other guys who are really evil") - maybe by showing some interest in the non-linear world other than helping Sisko after he's begged them for it. Or, alternatively, make both the Prophets and the Pah-wraiths basically indifferent to everything but their own conflict, but aligned with different sides in the Dominion war.
Well they were indifferent to everything but their own conflicts.... that's why both sides used people to do their bidding, which in the end was either in the interests of the Prophets, or the interests of the Pah-Wraiths.
The only good the Prophets really held to was that they were "Of Bajor" and thus had an interest somewhat to what happened to the planet and the people..... as far as I know, they didn't give much of a damn about anything else other then themselves and Bajor.
Meanwhile the Pah-Wraiths who were once occupants of the Temple and eventually dubbed "False Prophets" (aka: another alien force like the Prophets, but not, aka: Klingons and Humans) and their only care was to take over the Temple again, destroy the prophets who locked them away for so long and destroy all those who supported them.
Seems pretty clear to me.
Dukat aligning himself with the Pah-wraiths because Sisko is aligned with the Prophets, would have worked much better if Dukat had still been the leader of Cardassia and aligned with the Dominion when he did it. Dukat would be rational in that scenario, and would be trying to win the war by countering the power of Sisko's allies, the Prophets, with powerful godlike aliens of his own, believing that he could use them to his own ends, just as they wanted to use him (pretty much the same reason Dukat had aligned Cardassia with the Dominion). Then the whole Prophets vs Pah-wraiths arc would actually be connected to the main storyline, rather than sticking like a sore thumb.
Well I don't really see why Dukat needed to still be the leader of Cardassia for it all to work..... There simply wasn't a need to seek the spiritual side of things, because he originally thought all he needed was the Dominion to win.... he didn't leap to the Pah-Wraiths until he lost everything and eventually escaped from the federation, which at that point, the entire situation went well beyond just personal.
That's exactly how it went, I'm going through the DS9 series from start to finish for the third time right now, my memory is very vivid on the details at this time and how Dukat's character unfolded over the seasons.
You’re giving far too much credit to the writers, as if they actually had some grand plan from the beginning.
Do you have evidence stating otherwise?
In fact, they were just making stuff up as they went, just like in most TV shows. Dukat was at first meant to be just a one-dimensional villain/antagonist, but Marc Alaimo (who had been typecast in villain roles for far too long, for whatever stupid reason) took every opportunity the writers gave him to play his character as multi-faceted, and as he made Dukat charismatic and popular with the DS9 fans and had a good chemistry with Nana Visitor, the writers took that up and wrote more and more such scenes and storylines (Ziyal, his children, etc.). But then Behr – by his own admission – became worried that Dukat had become too popular with the fandom, and that some fans were finding excuses and justifications for him, so he decided to send the character on a path that should have proved once and for all that he was “true evil”.
I'd be interested in finding some sources for those claims.
