Did the Dominion ever try to find out what happened to those 2800 ships they lost in the wormhole?

[at Quark's]

I mean, they still had access on one side of the wormhole and they're usually not taking 'no' for an answer ...

Or would they have understood that these "wormhole aliens" were so powerful they'd simply not risk it again?

 

[Tosk]

Yes.

 

[BigDaveX]

The Founders probably decided it wasn't worth the risk, considering that even with the loss of those ships they'd already established enough of a presence in the Alpha Quadrant that they'd probably have won the war if not for the Romulans turning on them. And if they actually had sent any of their ships into the wormhole from the Gamma Quadrant end, worst case they'd just get magicked into nothingness by the Prophets, and best case they'd survive their trip through the wormhole, only to end up being blown to pieces by DS9 and/or the Defiant.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I imagine that Dominion forces on the Gamma side of the Wormhole would have sent in search ships but they probably got vaporised by the prophets as well.

 

[kkt]

Or the scout ships they sent just couldn't enter the wormhole or find out anything.

 

[at Quark's]

It is interesting though, because at the end of the same season we have this conversation:

Weyoun: Pah-wraiths and Prophets. All this talk of gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious nonsense.
Damar: You believe that the Founders are gods, don't you?
Weyoun: That's different.
Damar: [laughs] In what way?
Weyoun: The Founders *are* gods.

This while Weyoun (and I believe it still was the same Weyoun) had seen firsthand that they were a force to be reckoned with when they simply made their entire fleet disappear while the Defiant was unharmed. Or would he have chalked that up to a natural phenomenon?

 

[Samuel]

Wasn't there a "Strange New Worlds" story that dealt with the fate of the 2,800 missing ships?
I never read it and don't know how it came out.
Anyone here. ?

 

[DonIago]

Wasn't there a "Strange New Worlds" story that dealt with the fate of the 2,800 missing ships?
I never read it and don't know how it came out.
Anyone here. ?

I don't know about that, but they get a bit of a nod in the novel "Unity".

 

[captainkirk]

They also show up in STO.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Out of curiosity, why would they want to look for them? Or more precisely, is there something in the Founders' ethics that would compel them to try to save the ships? There might have been no Founders, only Vorta and Jem'hadar, on the ships. They might want to get back the equipment and manpower, but that would be efficacious, not ethical.

 

[kkt]

That's a lot of resources to just wave goodbye and not even look for. Besides, having the fleet wink out is a new phenomenon and they'd want to know all the hows and whys. It's also good for moral of the Jem Hadar and Vorta to go look for them if they get lost; willing to die if it pleases the founders, yes, but it's nice to think they care at least a little.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Which brings up the point, why didn't the Founders think of just pointing a big ol' chroniton radiation beam at the wormhole? Maybe they have a greater understanding of the Prophets than the Federation does and understand that they would have seen this in advance and engineered the failure of the plan a thousand years in advance.

If they have this understanding of the Prophets, then they would also understand the futility of looking for them. Or the Founders may even respect them as perfectly orderly beings and know the futility of disturbing their order.

 

[at Quark's]

Out of curiosity, why would they want to look for them? Or more precisely, is there something in the Founders' ethics that would compel them to try to save the ships? There might have been no Founders, only Vorta and Jem'hadar, on the ships. They might want to get back the equipment and manpower, but that would be efficacious, not ethical.

That's a lot of resources to just wave goodbye and not even look for. Besides, having the fleet wink out is a new phenomenon and they'd want to know all the hows and whys. It's also good for moral of the Jem Hadar and Vorta to go look for them if they get lost; willing to die if it pleases the founders, yes, but it's nice to think they care at least a little.

Agree to this. They might not even have cared about the loss of those 2800 ships in particular -probably can be replaced relatively quickly-. The female founder for example tells us that Odo rejoining the link means more to them than the entire alpha quadrant, so they probably don't attach too much value to the lives and opinions of their 'underlings'. Still perhaps they might have cared enough about imposing their order on the alpha quadrant that they'd might wish to find out what went "wrong" in order to try to prevent that from happening again. Now it seems in effect they just accepted they could never send a ship through the wormhole again (or at least, for the time being), and risk loosing that war-- as they indeed did.

Which brings up the point, why didn't the Founders think of just pointing a big ol' chroniton radiation beam at the wormhole? Maybe they have a greater understanding of the Prophets than the Federation does and understand that they would have seen this in advance and engineered the failure of the plan a thousand years in advance.

If they have this understanding of the Prophets, then they would also understand the futility of looking for them. Or the Founders may even respect them as perfectly orderly beings and know the futility of disturbing their order.

While I like the episode in which Keiko is taken over by a pagh-wraith, it makes the 'divine' prophets far too easy to kill IMHO and hence I tend to disregard it. About them being 'orderly', that's an interesting point. In my book, they aren't exactly 'orderly', with their messing around in the history of other species (mainly bajorans, but also they didn't hesitate to mess with Sisko's father or returning the Grand Nagus to an earlier state of existence, etc). Then again, that's just my notion of orderly and the Founders may have a very different concept. For that matter, I don't even know exactly what made the alpha quadrant 'chaotic' in their view, except from the fact that it was'nt subjugated to their 'orderly' rule .

 

[DonIago]

I think it's reasonable to assume the Founders sent anywhere from one to a handful of ships into the wormhole and gave up when none returned.

 

[BigDaveX]

Which brings up the point, why didn't the Founders think of just pointing a big ol' chroniton radiation beam at the wormhole?

They might not even have known that would have worked, given that O'Brien also didn't know that chroniton radiation was lethal to the Prophets, and he probably has far more hands-on experience with the wormhole than any Founder does.

And that's assuming that when the Founders made the wormhole totally indestructible during In Purgatory's Shadow, they didn't also make it impossible to kill the Prophets via chroniton radiation.

 

[Timo]

Of course, we don't know what happened to those ships, either. Perhaps they were all safely returned to Gamma?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

True, we don't know either. Then again, most of us probably don't care, as long as they aren't coming to the Alpha quadrant

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Based on Prophet Motive, I like to think they put them somewhere else and de-evolved them to have free will. At least I think if I ever wrote fanfic that'd be the premise.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It seems clear that the Founders care little for the Jem'Hadar as such. To the Founders, Jem'Hadar are nothing more than disposable cannon fodder. So I doubt that senior Dominion leadership made any serious attempt to find out what happened in the wormhole.

 

[Tosk]

Would have been a heck of a Voyager ep if 2800 Dominion ships suddenly materialized nearby.