Okay, I see your point about there being no real facts, but my problem is that you basically are making excuses here! You use the phrases 'reasonable to assume', 'stands to reason' and 'Id wager that'! These arent really phrases that should be used in response to such a huge event as the Breen attacking Earth with new superweapons!
What superweapons?
And no, I'm
not making excuses. Allow me to clarify that point.
Yes, I used qualifying phrases, as you point out. But all of those phrases were in reference to things that are icing on the cake. I need no qualifying phrases when speaking about what was clearly the main point of the attack in-universe: to shake everyone up. To deal a psychological blow to to the Federation, to impact the morale of Starfleet, and to show them and their allies just how badass they were. I think those things are blindingly obvious from watching the show.
Everything I said in that paragraph you quoted - about how many high-level tacticians Starfleet lost in the attack, about how many Breen ships participated in the operation, about the possibility that there was some sort of trickery/sabotage/informant/what have you involved - all of that is speculation, yes, but it's also all superfluous. The creators were under no obligation to touch on any of those things in a definitive manner, because they had already provided an adequate reason for the attack: the morale blow. Would it have been NICE to see a few of those things addressed? Sure. It would be nice to see a LOT of little forgotten/ignored details in a LOT of shows (not just Star Trek) addressed. But not doing so isn't "bad writing".
In the Star Trek universe, this is probably the biggest event in Earth history in a long, long time, far bigger than the Borg scare.
That seems extremely unlikely to me. The Borg were about to begin assimilating the entire planet; if they hadn't been stopped by the Ent-D, they would have done so (and that would have had rather drastic repercussions for the UFP as a whole). Whereas the Breen attack, while it did real
damage, did not have nearly the scope of the Borg scare. It wasn't a global event, and there was never any danger of the Breen attack force decimating Earth's entire surface or anything.
But it didnt really matter in the show, there didnt seem to be any consequences at all, so what reason was there to put in apart from to 'up the ante' somehow, because the writers were out of ideas?
By what measure do you conclude that "the writers were out of ideas, so they just went with this thing"? You don't LIKE the ideas they came up with, but that doesn't invalidate them as ideas, nor can you
know that they actually were going "Uh, crap, we have no idea what to do here... Oh, hey! Random third party! How about, uh... Breen, yeah!"
That aside, there IS a purpose to the Breen. The balance of power was no longer favoring the Dominion. Once the Romulans joined the war, things really swung the Allies' way. Not that things were
easy, mind you, but they were able to finally take the offensive, into Chin'Toka (and took that system), Martok and company destroyed an entire shipyard with a single ship, the Dominion STILL wasn't getting any reinforcements from the GQ, the Klingon raids in "Once More Unto the Breach" were successful (and the Klingons did make it back to Allied lines nearly unscathed afterward, too), etc... And the general feeling of near-hopelessness that was present through parts of season 6 (with practically every mention of the ongoing war reminding us how badly it was going) was missing. Even eps like "The Siege of Ar-558", which was obviously meant to be dark and grim and about the horrors of war and all that... consider what happened in that ep, not emotionally, but tactically: a badly fatigued, worn-out Starfleet ground force DID HOLD against a numerically superior force of Jem'Hadar! Things just weren't going as badly for the Allies anymore. The Breen were brought in to change that. Suddenly, there is a new force to contend with, one that brings a new weapon to the table. That was why they were introduced, as a way to tip things back in the other direction, without doing something as drastic as suddenly allowing the Dominion to use the wormhole freely again.
Yeah, sorry, but just destroying the ship only to have it come back a couple of episodes later is just bad and lazy writing. Either actually get rid of the Defiant, or come up with someone better that makes more sense. It would be like killing off O'Brien, then the next episode Bashir comes in and says he bought him back to life. Cheap and clumsy.
Was it more or less cheap and lazy than destroying the Ent-nil, only to replace it with nearly the exact same ship at the end of the following movie? (For the record, I don't think either qualifies as "lazy". I don't see the problem with bringing in a new ship the way they did. In both TVH and "The Dogs of War", there was more than enough justification - in-universe - for why Starfleet would give them a replacement of the same class, and allow them to holdover the name of the destroyed ship as well). The
Defiant's destruction was part of an overall arc: The Breen attack Earth. They keep their energy dampener a secret. They crush the enemy's morale, OR, they make the enemy react with aggression, thinking "these guys are serious, we'd better strike back." Either way, they win, since striking back is exactly what they wanted them to do. NOW they reveal their weapon, decimating a large frontline fleet and retaking a strategic location.
To have the entire fleet get flattened, yet have the hero ship survive, would have been much MORE stupid, IMO.
And your analogy makes no sense. A ship can be destroyed, and another ship with almost the same characteristics built to replace it, in both real life and in Trek. Bringing someone back to LIFE isn't so simple, nor should it be depicted as such. For a main character to die and just come back later like "Oh yeah, he's back, by the way", WOULD be dumb.
Incidentally, they didn't even
do that with the ships. Neither the Ent-A or the
Sao Paulo were introduced in a "oh yeah, by the way, we got a new ship" way. A big deal was made out of the first appearance of both of those vessels.
And to the question of "was the attack worth it"? In the short term,
yes. They impressed the hell out of the Vorta and Founders, earning greater standing in a short amount of time, and the Alliance reacted exactly as they wanted them to, flying right into a trap. In the long-term? Maybe not so much, since the UFP was pretty determined after that, though to be fair, the Cardassian rebellion played in role in the final outcome, and the Breen had no way to predict that. But even if it WASN'T the absolute wisest strategy... that's not bad writing. Even if it had backfired horribly on the Breen in the short term, that's STILL not bad writing. Real military leaders do make mistakes; real military forces do commit strategic blunders, or miscalculate the value of a given move. It happens in real life, why shouldn't it happen in Trek?
My memory is a little hazy on the last season, but I cant really remember anything the Breen did that couldnt have been done by the Dominion or Cardassia. Just let the Dominion develop that weapon and thats pretty much it, I think.
So taking the Dominion or Cardassians, whose style and capabilities had been
more than well-established by that point, and just having them magically produce this totally out-of-left-field weapon in the seventh season, would be LESS lazy or MORE creative than taking a species that had been name-dropped a bunch of times but almost never seen, and fleshing them out a bit, presenting us with a new and VERY alien menace, spending money and time to create their costumes and ships and those weird voices they had, and allowing them to bring a new weapon with them?
Frankly, I think that would have been silly. Introducing something like the energy dampening weapon as a new factor was best handled via a new player entering the war.
The reason they were 'underdeveloped' is because they were bought in at the last minute and thereafter had no real impact on the story.
Except they served to further drive the developing wedge between Damar and Weyoun/the Dominion that helped lead to the rebellion. The relationship between the various high-level Dominion players during those last few eps was a strong driver of Damar's thoughts and actions.
As far as Im concerned, this just makes it easier for writers to write more terrible shows, because they know its just going to get accepted. The number of times some Voyager fan sticks up for Janeway not just setting a timer to blow up the Caretakers array, and not strand them in the Delta Quandrant, cos of some technobabble rubbish is incredible to me. People shouldnt make excuses about this sort of thing. Sometimes bad writing just happens, I get it, nothings ever perfect, but it doesnt have to be lazy writing as well, and thats what the Breen attack was.
The Janeway/timer example is different, because there IS no explanation for why they couldn't do that. I still say the main reason for the Breen attack, the morale blow and psychological "look what we can do", is glaringly obvious in the show. Nothing about why a timer wasn't used on the Caretaker's array is glaringly obvious, AND, making matters worse is the fact that coming up with a different way to write that scene, so that they could destroy the array without getting home yet make it make sense, would have been very easy.
I simply do not think the Breen attack was lazy writing. THE BEST and most creative idea DS9 ever had? No. But not lazy, or bad.
