Cardassians/ Damar and everyone around him

[TerokNor]

Well but maybe, if Garak would have been there as well, he would understand Damar better and sort of could "translate" to Kira?

Why would lGhemors dead let her come to her senses sooner?

And what would be examples generally for addicts who try to to drink or whatever anymore? (Now not only looked at what Damar might do)

TerokNor

 

[TerokNor]

Hmm, but what would he have said? I mean, he could have said it simply like: "I am sorry.... for killing Ziyal. It was wrong. I thought she was a traitor. But she wasn´t."
That would be straight and simple... Would Kira get offended by that?
Or would he have said suddenly something like: "I am sorry, ok?" Kira: "Sorry for what?" "Well..you know..." Kira: ....Yes?" "Oh forget it"
But here he could not truly say it...and it would come across very roughly...but would Kira find something there to get offended.
Or how else do you think he could have phrased it?
Or maybe he would not used words, but tried to apolozise by actions?

TerokNor

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think the latter two options are more likely--Damar not being able to get the words out, and either trying to speak them and failing, or trying to say he was sorry with his actions and coming off completely the wrong way. Maybe even looking as though he was romantically interested in Kira, which she would NOT want because that would look like Dukat's behavior, but what he's trying to do is to make up for what he did to Ziyal.

Even if he DID say something as straightforward as what you first suggest, I think Kira would take the "I thought she was a traitor" part and get offended, yell at Damar, and just leave him even more upset and feeling like he'd never be able to atone.

As to Ghemor's death--she very nearly made Tekeny die alone because of how Dukat used her racism to manipulate her into cutting Tekeny off and being nasty to him. I think that realizing how Dukat played her, how he was able to use her as a weapon against Tekeny would make her have to face the effects of her racism, and how it hurts people whether or not their character is such that they "deserve" it. And she almost didn't come to her senses with Tekeny until he was so close to death that she almost didn't have a chance to apologize where he'd be able to hear or understand her. So I can see Kira snapping, but maybe going back and thinking about it, and not wanting to take that chance again. (True, she would never think of Damar in terms that are ANYTHING like Tekeny Ghemor, but burning bridges might be something she's a little more reluctant to do.)

 

[TerokNor]

*giggle* I just imagine Damar bringing Kira flowers... *L* ..well ok, that would not fit, he seems no flower person and she does not like flowers. He probbaly would be more the person who does..hmm practical work as gestures for apolozising. Like..like.. like what? I have no idea right now.

By the way with the coming across as being romantically interessted...wasn´t it with Cardassians that they are rough and offending to the other...than he must have been romantically interessted in her before...he was always teasing her and offending her.

And what about Garak?
And what kind of strategies for the addicts would there be?

And, *nod* yes with Ghemor that makes sense. Kira also learned with time to be better with thinking things through before reacting.

TerokNor

 

[TerokNor]

Now I am just wondring, would he himself would have gotten the thought of "Dukat as traitor" in his head by rethinking all the events that happend...or would it have been in conversation with Kira and/ or Garak... that they would have mentioned, that Dukat betrayed Cardassia and first then he would have started thinking that thought?
I mean he was still loyal to Dukat also after he went completly insane....and if he had survived, and the three of them would have heard of Dukats death...I think he might have been upset by that and sad (I guess he would say nothing, but just look upset), while Kira might have been well not rejoycing, but certainly not being sad about it (however maybe she would still tell Damar, shes sorry?)...and Garak might have been relieved.


TerokNor

 

[Trek_princess]

I agree, that he would have seen it as murderin a girl and not executing a traitor, after he rebelled (maybe all ready before). If he had apolozised..hmm...maybe, but its rather hard to apolozise for murder..( I guess...). Still I would have liked such a scene.

Facing the truth that Dukat was the real traitor? Now, that would have been even harder... not sure, if he would had come to that point. I think he might would have kept the "soft spot" for Dukat in a way...maybe excusing him with his insanity. What do you think?

TerokNor

I agree that Damar would have deeply regretted killing Ziyal after he discovered the Dominion's true colors. Being a civilian in the thick of the action, Ziyal actually understood the political climate better than Damar and acted accordingly. At the time, Damar was killing a traitor, but later on, I believe he must have sincerely regretted that.

I would have liked to have seen a Damar-centered episode before he got killed. His reflections/regrets on killing Ziyal and an attempt to reconcile his former admiration of Dukat with Dukat's destructive alliance with the Dominion would have made for great drama.

 

[Trek_princess]

Hello

I just registered here, because in the last months I rewatched DS9, which brought back the "old flame" for it from 10 years or so ago quite a bit.

First of all, just so you don´t wonder, English is not my native language and I would view myself as an intermediate speaker/ writer. So please let yourself not be disturbed by messed up grammer and wrong use of vocabulary. I try my best.


TerokNor

I too am rewatching DS9, but I just finished watching it a couple months ago for the first time, so I guess my situation is different from yours. I was not a "Trekkie" until last August, so I have had a lot of catching up to do.

I'm curious . . what IS your native language? Becuase you sure write English well. I live in the American South, so I am used to "creative" grammatical interpretations - your grammer/syntax/etc is so much better than a lot of people I hear around here.

I like Cardassians too - so much more interesting than Klingons (honor, blah blah blah). I always wished there was more insight into their culture shown on ds9. We get lots of Ferengi and Klingon cultural info, but Cardassian stuff is mostly military, historical, etc.

You've read Andrew Robinson's novel, right? One of the best Trek books ever.

 

[TerokNor]

You are a Trek fan since not even a year and REwatching DS9 right now? *g* You sure are fast with catching up!

My native language is German. And thanks for the compliment, though my goal is to one day speak/ write/ read and understand english as if it would be my native language... or at least nearly as good..and thats still a loooooooooooooooong way to go.

And yes I certainly would have loved more about Cardassian culture as well and one or two or more *g* Damar centered episodes. Guess thats even why I regret it most, that they had to kill him off... if they ever do something with Cardassians again and it plays after the Dominion war he could not even have a guest role. However...actually...now that they changed "reality" with the latest movie...

Yes, I have read " A Stich in time". I liked it, but I am not sure, if I catched everything, that there would be to catch. I think it came out this year also in German...but even I would understand more, I somehow feel reculant reading it in German.
A book I really enjoyed however was "The never ending sacrifize." Have you read that?

Oh and when you haven´t read those stories and articles on the Hero of cardassia webside that Nerys Ghemor posted the adress too here in this thread in the first post of page .. uhm ..4, you should really do so. Many of them are really good, some are rated quite high, but as I see, you are old enough.

TerokNor

 

[Trek_princess]

I'm a college student and am not working right now, so I have plenty of time to rot in front of the TV, lol. I haven't read The Never-Ending Sacrifice but I would like to. Right now I'm reading a new DS9 novel called The Soul Key by Olivia Woods. It takes place in the mirror universe and is confusing. I think maybe I should read some of the books that come before it.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

You definitelly should, Trek_princess. The Soul Key is actually 3rd book in the row, so you missed whole introduction to that plot. You read it from the middle, that's why it's so confusing.

I'm not sure Damar would appologise. Even if he would feel guilt for killing Zital, would he go to Kira (and why Kira? or rather why only Kira? Garak too? Ziyal's friends on DS9 too?) and say "sorry" in any form. And as TerokNor has noted - can one appologise for a murder?

I don't think that he would be tried in post-war Cardassia. Even if someone would like to, how to accuse of one murder the hero, who saved so many?

And for seeing Dukat as a traitor? I don't know. He didn't see it when Dukat came to him and asked him to help him to "become" a Bajoran. He still believed in Dukat, in spite of that very weird request and the declaration of faith in Pah-wraiths.

And when Dukat brought the Dominion to Cardassia, Damar was standing by his side. He wasn't happy about it, but neither was Dukat. Did you notice his face expression, when Weyoun told him that he served the Founders (the attack on DS9, Call the Arms)? It's not even hypocrisy, it's schisophrenic I think many people on Cardassia, including Dukat and Damar, at that time had thought it was the lesser evil. The Dominion or the Klingons. Later the Dominion showed its true face and proved they all had been wrong, but no one has luxury of knowing what their actions would bring - at least no ordinary, linear humanoid.

 

[flemm]

I'm a college student and am not working right now, so I have plenty of time to rot in front of the TV, lol. I haven't read The Never-Ending Sacrifice but I would like to. Right now I'm reading a new DS9 novel called The Soul Key by Olivia Woods. It takes place in the mirror universe and is confusing. I think maybe I should read some of the books that come before it.

Yeah, that's really not a good jumping on point for the DS9-R novels.

They're actually quite good, but you really want to start with the "season 8" material, beginning with Avatar books 1 + 2 by S.D. Perry and ending with Unity by the same author. In between there's a bunch of other stuff, most notably the Mission Gamma series of four books by other authors.

Otherwise for the specific plotline of The Soul Key, the prior two books are Warpath by David Mack and Fearful Symmetry by Olivia Woods.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I too agree that Damar would never formally be tried. But for a Cardassian--if he realized he had done something wrong, but was not punished for it outwardly, I think the need to atone, to balance the scales somehow would be strong.

I think it would take witnessing the destruction throughout the Cardassian worlds firsthand for it to finally sink in that yes, Dukat was a traitor. Damar never lived to see that aftermath in the canon universe, but I think that would've gotten through to him once he bore the full brunt of the results.

And what you say about "apologizing" for a murder is why I use the word "atone" instead. It would take something far, far more than JUST an apology.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Yes, atone is much better word.

But I'm still not convinced he would feel that guilty. I think she wasn't the only victim of Dominion/Cardassia "alliance", so would he feel equally guilty for everyone, who might have been killed by him? As somehow I don't think she was the only one, who stood against. We see only a fraction of that alliance after all. We don't see much of reaction to the Dominion presence from an average Cardassian's point of view.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I think that he would indeed have to wrestle with his guilt for the others who indirectly died by his hand as well as the one that he killed directly.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I just had a thought: and what about Dukat? What would he think and feel, if he would live, sane, to the moment of the Dominion's attempt to eradicate Cardassians?

You call him a trator, but that's not exactly how I would describe him. I mean it's not how I understand this word. He did not bring the Dominion to the AQ to destroy Cardassia and start a war with everyone else. At that time he thought it was good for Cardassia. Yes, he was power-hungry, but he was not planning to destroy his people. His intentions were good; yeah, I know, the hell is paved with good intentions. A traitor's intentions are not good for their country. Dukat didn't want to betray the Cardassia, he wanted to help it. But he chose a wrong way, that is sure.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Dukat betrayed Cardassia because it was all about self-aggrandizement for him; his patriotism, and even his family members were a means to an end in that regard.

I think Dukat would be faced with two choices--try to do like Gaius Baltar and continue to justify himself to his own soul and to others, or to break...and that could either lead to a total breakdown or to a St. Paul on the Road to Damascus type moment. The enormity of the moment makes me think there wouldn't be an in-between.

 

[DevilEyes]

I'm a college student and am not working right now, so I have plenty of time to rot in front of the TV, lol. I haven't read The Never-Ending Sacrifice but I would like to. Right now I'm reading a new DS9 novel called The Soul Key by Olivia Woods. It takes place in the mirror universe and is confusing. I think maybe I should read some of the books that come before it.

Yeah, that's really not a good jumping on point for the DS9-R novels.

They're actually quite good, but you really want to start with the "season 8" material, beginning with Avatar books 1 + 2 by S.D. Perry and ending with Unity by the same author. In between there's a bunch of other stuff, most notably the Mission Gamma series of four books by other authors.

Otherwise for the specific plotline of The Soul Key, the prior two books are Warpath by David Mack and Fearful Symmetry by Olivia Woods.

Yeah, the DS9-R is mostly really good (or at least the earlier books are)... Trek princess, if you're having problems finding older books, you can get the 2 omnibus editions which are still available on Amazon, Twist of Faith (the first 5 novels - Avatar book 1 & 2, Abyss, Demons of Air and Darkness, and novella Horn and Ivory) and These Haunted Seas (the next two novels - Mission Gamma 1: Twilight and Mission Gamma 2: This Gray Spirit). The next books are trickier to find as they're out of print - Mission Gamma 3: Cathedral, Mission Gamma 4: Lesser Evil, Rising Son and Unity. Then after that, the 3 Worlds of Deep Space Nine anthologies (with 2 novellas each), Warpath and Fearful Symmetry, and only then The Soul Key.

But you can read The Never-Ending Sacrifice any time you want, it's a side story not connected to any of the other books' storylines. I definitely recommend it, it's an excellent novel about Cardassia from season 2 of DS9 to the aftermath of the Dominion war. I also recommend the Terok Nor trilogy (Day of the Vipers, Night of the Wolves, Dawn of the Eagles), which is also still in print and not hard to find. It is a great prequel to DS9, about the Occupation of Bajor. The books span some 50 years, from the first contact between Bajor and Cardassia to the end of the Occupation, and there are lots of familiar characters (they assumed Cardassian and Bajoran lifespans to be very long so they could have DS9 characters like Dukat in the story right from the start - I find that rather implausible, but I can get past that since the books are wonderfully written panoramic portrayal of Bajoran and Cardassian cultures, and despite a huge number of characters, they are all, down to the minor ones, given depth and plausible motives and POVs.)

Among the books that aren't in print anymore, there's Prophecy and Change, an anthology of stories that mostly take place during the show's run and fill some gaps, but the last story is Andrew Robinson's sequel to A Stitch in Time; and another anthology, The Lives of Dax. I enjoyed both of them.

Finally, the two-part novel The Left Hand of Destiny is a sidestory about Klingon Empire with Martok as the main character, but it's not a typical Trek book, and whether you like it or not depends not just on how you feel about Klingons, but whether you would enjoy an epic/mythic story inspired by the King Arthur legend, with a lot of battle, melodrama, blood, monsters and mysticism. For the record, I found it very entertaining.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

:whispers: In the case of the Cardassians, evidence in the show makes it seems as though their lives might well be longer than those of humans.

 

[DevilEyes]

:whispers: In the case of the Cardassians, evidence in the show makes it seems as though their lives might well be longer than those of humans.

Not that longer... maybe even not any longer than 23rd/24th century Humans, who seem to also have longer lifespans and somewhat slower aging than real life humans of our time. (Although, come to think of it, Day of the Vipers also makes a certain Human character much older than we could have ever thought.) There's a lot of inconsistency between DS9 books regarding relative Cardassian ages - while they're mostly consistent with each other in other aspects, there's no way to reconcile Terok Nor with A Stitch in Time and The Never-Ending Sacrifice when it comes to the ages of canon Cardassian characters..

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Seems like humans are quite short living creature in comparison with Vulcans, Klingons (if they don't die in battle that is ), Romulans, and now Cardassians...

If you take books under consideration, Dukat was waaaaay older that 55.