Garm Bel Iblis
Commodore
dont know if its been said, but SIsko stronly implies that his father is dead in "The Alternate."
DS9 Episodes- Silly Mistakes, NitPicks, Inaccuracies
- Thread starter Nightdiamond
- Start date
Why is Dax piloting the Defiant (throughout half the war, if she is a science officer?
And then Nog- who was a cadet, then newly made ensign, suddenly piloting the ship thereafter, when more experienced pilots are left out?
And then Nog- who was a cadet, then newly made ensign, suddenly piloting the ship thereafter, when more experienced pilots are left out?
After the battle in sacrifice of angels, the Founder tells Damar to contact their forces, and tell them to fall back to "Cardassian territory".
This was to all Dominion forces in Alpha quadrant. This could be taken to mean that Dominion forces retreated back into Cardassian space, basically giving back all the Federation territory they gained during the first months of the war.
If this is the case, and of course it may not be, why would the Founder order all ships in the Alpha Quadrant back into Cardassian space, rather back into Cardassian controlled territory?
The language from that seems ambiguous , but I could be wrong...
This was to all Dominion forces in Alpha quadrant. This could be taken to mean that Dominion forces retreated back into Cardassian space, basically giving back all the Federation territory they gained during the first months of the war.
That would also mean they reversed most of the progress they gained- they went back to pre war status.
If this is the case, and of course it may not be, why would the Founder order all ships in the Alpha Quadrant back into Cardassian space, rather back into Cardassian controlled territory?
The language from that seems ambiguous , but I could be wrong...
^ For the same reason she did it towards the end of the war, to tighten her lines, discourage attacks so to allow her to rebuild her forces. The Federation and Klingons would also then have to extend their lines to re-encompass these freed systems and given the Federation's "timid" nature it would sit back and just hold the line.
It also might be that the Dominion allowed itself to overextend itself by fighting the war in an unsustainable fashion because they knew they had thousands upon thousands of fresh ships and millions of Jem'Hadar just waiting on the other side of a the wormhole to join the fight. Now, reinforcements from the GQ looks like an impossibility so they have to change tactics, reassess their forces and the timetable for the objectives they can reach.
It also might be that the Dominion allowed itself to overextend itself by fighting the war in an unsustainable fashion because they knew they had thousands upon thousands of fresh ships and millions of Jem'Hadar just waiting on the other side of a the wormhole to join the fight. Now, reinforcements from the GQ looks like an impossibility so they have to change tactics, reassess their forces and the timetable for the objectives they can reach.
100% agreed. The Dominion vastly overextended themselves during that initial push into Federation territory. They were trying to keep them off balance while they disarmed the minefield so reinforcements could come through. With the reinforcements it would be no problem to continue their incursion into Federation held space. Without them, well they had no choice but to pull back and rethink their strategy.
In the episode The Alternative (season 2 - Odo investigates a mysterious alien attacker that turns out to be itself), Odo says Betazed is only 5 hours away.
Can that REALLY be right????
As I understand it, DS9 is only only the far reaches of the frontier in as much as they are next to a doorway to another quadrant, and are not actually on the fringes of Federation territory. But still, 5 hours from Betazed seems FAR too close!
Can that REALLY be right????
As I understand it, DS9 is only only the far reaches of the frontier in as much as they are next to a doorway to another quadrant, and are not actually on the fringes of Federation territory. But still, 5 hours from Betazed seems FAR too close!
With the Dominion withdrawal;
I think it may have well have cost them the war.
By pulling back, it was just like starting over for them. Why order the entire dominion fleet in the Alpha quadrant to pull back, just because their reinforcements didn't show?
Starfleet regained DS9 and their space, while the Dominion fleet lost ships, an entire fleet was destroyed, and they lost one of their top leaders- triple whammy.
If anything, they needed to hold any space they gained, rather than abandoning it and returning to their own space.
I don't really understand why the call was to all Dominion forces in the Alpha quandrant, and not just the ships fighting the Federation fleet.
Dukat said it himself, even without those ships, he was still winning the war... big nit!
I'm not sure either, but, in Sanctuary, didn't one of the Skreen boys take a ship and in a matter of minutes was already being warned about entering Bajoran airspace?
One of the things I noticed, is when they want Dukat to appear younger, they make his hair shorter.
Heres an arguement that works in your favor Nerys Ghemor- When Dukat gets himself surgically altered to look Bajoran, he appears as an older man, in his early to mid 60's...
The problem is, as a Cardassian he does not display the grayer hair and wrinkles, but shows the same basic 'youthful' appearance as Garak, Damar etc .
While Tain, Ela? and other Cardassians show the grey hair - none of Dukat's childeren were not much older than 18! When are these happening? lol
This is a modern shot of Dukat from "Deeds Darker"
Someone from Jammersreviews also noticed the age appearence thing;
I think it may have well have cost them the war.
By pulling back, it was just like starting over for them. Why order the entire dominion fleet in the Alpha quadrant to pull back, just because their reinforcements didn't show?
Starfleet regained DS9 and their space, while the Dominion fleet lost ships, an entire fleet was destroyed, and they lost one of their top leaders- triple whammy.
If anything, they needed to hold any space they gained, rather than abandoning it and returning to their own space.
I don't really understand why the call was to all Dominion forces in the Alpha quandrant, and not just the ships fighting the Federation fleet.
Dukat said it himself, even without those ships, he was still winning the war... big nit!
?
I'm not sure either, but, in Sanctuary, didn't one of the Skreen boys take a ship and in a matter of minutes was already being warned about entering Bajoran airspace?
One of the things I noticed, is when they want Dukat to appear younger, they make his hair shorter.
Heres an arguement that works in your favor Nerys Ghemor- When Dukat gets himself surgically altered to look Bajoran, he appears as an older man, in his early to mid 60's...
The problem is, as a Cardassian he does not display the grayer hair and wrinkles, but shows the same basic 'youthful' appearance as Garak, Damar etc .
While Tain, Ela? and other Cardassians show the grey hair - none of Dukat's childeren were not much older than 18! When are these happening? lol
This is a modern shot of Dukat from "Deeds Darker"
Someone from Jammersreviews also noticed the age appearence thing;
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Uh... For one thing, I don't think he looked that old as Anjohl.Heres an arguement that works in your favor Nerys Ghemor- When Dukat gets himself surgically altered to look Bajoran, he appears as an older man, in his early to mid 60's...
The problem is, as a Cardassian he does not display the grayer hair and wrinkles, but shows the same basic 'youthful' appearance as Garak, Damar etc .
While Tain, Ela? and other Cardassians show the grey hair - none of Dukat's childeren were not much older than 18! When are these happening? lol
This is a modern shot of Dukat from "Deeds Darker"
Someone from Jammersreviews also noticed the age appearence thing;
He did look closer to Marc Alaimo's real age at the time (late 50s) as a Bajoran, but I think 60s is pushing it... Yeah, he could be a well-preserved 60-something, but I would never say Alaimo ever looked older than his age... rather the opposite.Second... I don't know why you think that his children are under 18. We don't know how old Dukat's children are, we only know that one of his sons (presumably the youngest) was 11 in season 3. Since he has 7 children, I think it's most likely that some of them are older than 18, since I don't believe his wife was giving birth every year (and that's even without taking into account the amount of time Dukat was spending on Bajor instead with her).
Third... Dukat is clearly supposed to be much younger than Tain or Mila, and probably similar age as Garak. Dukat may as well be in his 60s or even 70s, but for a 24th century Cardassian this could be the equivalent of a man in his mid-to late 40s. You can stretch those things as much as you like with the aliens in Trek, since they could theoretically age much slower than humans. (Trek has even had some examples of 24th century humans having weird age inconsistencies: Picard's date of birth in TNG "Conundrum" made Picard 60-year old, which was a decade older than Patrick Stewart was at the time, and Picard was clearly nowhere near retirement time. Or should this be listed as "TNG episodes - silly mistakes, nitpicks, inaccuracies?")
If we accept that idea, it is plausible that he could have been a young adult some 25-30 years earlier. And Nerys Ghemor has illustrated that he does look younger in the past scenes in "Wrongs Darker". So, whatever his calendar age, let's assume that he was, say, an equivalent of a 30-year old in the past, and of someone up to 50-year old in the present. Is that OK?
BTW, if you want to see a real mess with Dukat's age and character's ages in general, look to Trek Lit. Terok Nor trilogy extends Dukat's and a bunch of other people's age (Cardies, Bajorans, and even some humans) to an even unlikelier degree, apparently since the writers have really taken the 'slower aging' idea to heart (which is a nice trick when you want to involve canon characters in events in a distant past) - which, however, clashes with the ages that the presumed ages from another novel, Stitch in Time. There's just no way to reconcile those two and make sense of Dukat's age: in one, he's supposed to have been an adult in 2118, before the Occupation; in the other, he is clearly supposed to be of roughly the same age as Garak, which always made sense, but Garak is supposed to have been a child when the Occupation was already underway. (Unless Garak was lying about his own age... you never know with him
). But that's another story, since none of this is canon...
When Dukat was surgically altered, I am figuring he could've actually appeared at any adult age he wanted, within reason.
However, Dukat DOES have wrinkles to some degree on his "modern" shot in "Wrongs Darker than Death or Night," so it's not like they're entirely absent. But, if the top layer of your skin is composed of tiny, tiny scales (I call them "microscales" in my fanfic, and yes, this is conjecture), I do think that might affect the display of wrinkles.
Personally, I'm thinking I did a better job with Dukat's age than some of those authors.
In my own work, I have him being born in 2305.
http://stexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Skrain_Dukat_(SigCat)
This means that the canon Dukat, at his time of death, was 70 years old. During "Wrongs," he would've been 41 (which in my version of Cardassian culture is quite young for a gul). What's interesting is that according to the formula I cooked up that converts their physical ages to 24th-century human ages (yeah, I know, waaaay too much detail, but as a fanficcer I am putting in a lot of effort into making sure I'm very, very consistent with Cardassian ages), he should appear what age by human reckoning? 30! Which I believe is exactly what Nightdiamond pegged him at in that episode. Now, his age at time of death by 24th-century human terms? 52!
If we do assume a long Cardassian lifespan, this is not that big of a deal--and in my own reckoning of the Cardassian lifespan, this is still quite young, considering they die at 175 on average, give or take 25 years. But if he is at less than half of his natural lifespan, this makes him as a Cardassian too young to be showing grey hair. At least when I describe them in my own work, they don't really start showing their age much in terms of grey hair until about 80 or so (59 in 24th-century human terms), though as with any race there are exceptions for those genetically predisposed to have grey hair sooner.
Now, about the ages of Dukat's children. To my mind, it is perfectly reasonable that his kids would still be very little with him in his late 60s. They don't have to be older than 18. In fact, in my own work, I've written Cardassians as deliberately waiting sometimes to marry and have children until they're between about 50 or 60 to have children. (I don't think Dukat waited that long, but it's not seen as odd if you do.) If you take the lifespan formula I just posted into account, and you assume that perhaps Cardassian women have a longer window in which they are able to get pregnant than humans do, this makes perfect sense. I also think this squares up with what we know about Cardassian families--description suggests they're quite large by human standards. (Which in turn also fits with the impression I get that there was population pressure on their homeworld, at least compared to the resources their world has.)
However, Dukat DOES have wrinkles to some degree on his "modern" shot in "Wrongs Darker than Death or Night," so it's not like they're entirely absent. But, if the top layer of your skin is composed of tiny, tiny scales (I call them "microscales" in my fanfic, and yes, this is conjecture), I do think that might affect the display of wrinkles.
Personally, I'm thinking I did a better job with Dukat's age than some of those authors.
In my own work, I have him being born in 2305.http://stexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Skrain_Dukat_(SigCat)
This means that the canon Dukat, at his time of death, was 70 years old. During "Wrongs," he would've been 41 (which in my version of Cardassian culture is quite young for a gul). What's interesting is that according to the formula I cooked up that converts their physical ages to 24th-century human ages (yeah, I know, waaaay too much detail, but as a fanficcer I am putting in a lot of effort into making sure I'm very, very consistent with Cardassian ages), he should appear what age by human reckoning? 30! Which I believe is exactly what Nightdiamond pegged him at in that episode.
Now, his age at time of death by 24th-century human terms? 52!If we do assume a long Cardassian lifespan, this is not that big of a deal--and in my own reckoning of the Cardassian lifespan, this is still quite young, considering they die at 175 on average, give or take 25 years. But if he is at less than half of his natural lifespan, this makes him as a Cardassian too young to be showing grey hair. At least when I describe them in my own work, they don't really start showing their age much in terms of grey hair until about 80 or so (59 in 24th-century human terms), though as with any race there are exceptions for those genetically predisposed to have grey hair sooner.
Assuming the median Cardassian age of death to be 175, for those who live to old age (though anywhere from 150-200 is considered normal in my version of Cardassian society), and the median human age of death in the 24th century to be somewhere around 125/130, I hit upon a conversion factor of 1.35. It's not perfect, but it's close enough for me to be consistent with my descriptions of my Cardassian characters according to the ages I give them. The conversion factor would be MUCH different if we were dealing with 21st-century humans, of course, given the average death age is much lower. What's really funny was that to some degree this was based on a pure gut reaction to watching "Wrongs Darker than Death or Night," but it actually worked!
Now, about the ages of Dukat's children. To my mind, it is perfectly reasonable that his kids would still be very little with him in his late 60s. They don't have to be older than 18. In fact, in my own work, I've written Cardassians as deliberately waiting sometimes to marry and have children until they're between about 50 or 60 to have children. (I don't think Dukat waited that long, but it's not seen as odd if you do.) If you take the lifespan formula I just posted into account, and you assume that perhaps Cardassian women have a longer window in which they are able to get pregnant than humans do, this makes perfect sense. I also think this squares up with what we know about Cardassian families--description suggests they're quite large by human standards. (Which in turn also fits with the impression I get that there was population pressure on their homeworld, at least compared to the resources their world has.)
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Particularly if he wanted to emulate the age of the real Anjohl, if he were still alive. Not that it changes much, since I think he looks like a man in his early 50s in human terms, anyway (although I guess Nightdiamond would disagree).
As for the ages of his children, again, I don't see why we should assume that they're all so young, or that Dukat and his wife waited so long to have children? I think it's more likely that the children are quite apart in age and that some are older than Ziyal.
That's a good point about Anjohl...I'd forgotten that.
And his kids could certainly be any age--my point, though, is that if Cardassian ages are the way the series makes them look, that there's no reason they couldn't be younger, given that there wouldn't be a biological incentive to have them at as young an age as a human would.
And his kids could certainly be any age--my point, though, is that if Cardassian ages are the way the series makes them look, that there's no reason they couldn't be younger, given that there wouldn't be a biological incentive to have them at as young an age as a human would.
Ahhh good catch - aren't their whole suits described as environmental suits? I'm not sure - but very good nit.
Then again Kira's the only person in the allied forces who knows what actually lurks inside those suits, having beaten up several Breen for their suits over the years, so if she says its possible...
Oddly enough, it seems to make something else more reasonable - how the Dominion could capture Betazed without breaking through a lot of Federation defenses. If you consider the Federation as being split into 'rings,' with Earth and Vulcan and the assorted key worlds in the center, I'd probably peg Betazed as being in a middle ring close to the outer one(s).
Just watched "Trechery, Faith..." and Weyoun positively states that the Founders are dying. As far as they should know only the Founders in the Alpha Quadrant are sick (or Founder given we don't see one other Founders after the war starts). For all they know the Great Link might be fine.
Good catch! I noticed that one... before, when they were together on DS9, the Founder says NOTHING to Odo about a disease, and there seemed to be no communication from the Gamma Quadrant before they abandoned DS9 about any disease.
I'm sure she would have told Odo when they were linked all that time.
Here's one for the Breen;
The Breen attacked earth, just to incite fear in the Federation citizens. However they lost almost their entire fleet doing that.
Damar mentions this, but Weyoun praises the decision and rationalized it.
Was this wise or even smart? In the end, it was the equivalence of going against an enemy fleet (intending to win) and losing an entire fleet.
When the Federation alliance went to invade Cardassia, those ships could have made a lot of difference. (Not that I'm disappointed of course).
It seemed that at that point, any few extra ships, let alone an entire fleet, could have affected the turning point in the battle...
Ok, I've been trying to look up the ages of various Cardassians, and pictures too, and found that the ages of certain Cardassians, the big characters, are hard to find or pinpoint. Clever, it so much like their culture, secretive, cunning.
I have found some contradictions and if I can nail some of these, then I can come back with a huge arguement, lol.
Until then, Ghemor's explanation still stands...
I'm sure she would have told Odo when they were linked all that time.
Here's one for the Breen;
The Breen attacked earth, just to incite fear in the Federation citizens. However they lost almost their entire fleet doing that.
Damar mentions this, but Weyoun praises the decision and rationalized it.
Was this wise or even smart? In the end, it was the equivalence of going against an enemy fleet (intending to win) and losing an entire fleet.
When the Federation alliance went to invade Cardassia, those ships could have made a lot of difference. (Not that I'm disappointed of course).
It seemed that at that point, any few extra ships, let alone an entire fleet, could have affected the turning point in the battle...
Ok, I've been trying to look up the ages of various Cardassians, and pictures too, and found that the ages of certain Cardassians, the big characters, are hard to find or pinpoint. Clever, it so much like their culture, secretive, cunning.
I have found some contradictions and if I can nail some of these, then I can come back with a huge arguement, lol.
Until then, Ghemor's explanation still stands...
Well...I'm actually wondering about this. Didn't the three Cardassian scientists in "Destiny" make it so that you can always communicate through the wormhole even when it's closed? If so, is it possible a signal got through apprising the female Founder of the status of the Great Link?
BTW--if you're going to use Tekeny Ghemor (born appx. 2301, though it could be slightly earlier or later) in your argument to suggest a shorter Cardassian lifespan, I wouldn't try it. The fact that he had an illness I suspect to be a terminal autoimmune disorder (Yarim Fel syndrome) on top of his dissident activities AND his military career means that he may well have sped the appearance of signs of aging.
Didn't the Dominion destroy the listening posts during their first invasion? Plus the wormhole aliens would have kept the Wormhole closed thus preventing any signals from getting though.
Good point regarding the Old Man's age NG. I'm also of the opinion that most Cardassians would not tell an non-Cardassian their real age. Either due to paranoia or to establish trust with others (I'm sure that Garak told Dr Bashir his true age...)
Good point regarding the Old Man's age NG. I'm also of the opinion that most Cardassians would not tell an non-Cardassian their real age. Either due to paranoia or to establish trust with others (I'm sure that Garak told Dr Bashir his true age...)
Thor--not sure, but even with the listening posts destroyed, I think that the Cardassians DID still wedge the wormhole open. If someone got a ship close enough to the GQ entrance to the wormhole, I see no reason why they couldn't still transmit.
As to Cardassians revealing their ages...I'm not sure they'd ALL feel like they had anything to hide by telling their ages, actually. At least, an older Cardassian wouldn't...you gain status in your years. A younger person, however (one that feels he's young by Cardassian standards) would probably be more reticent because in his society, if you are young you are not as likely to be taken seriously. Dukat, for instance...I suspect he was young for his post of gul and later that of legate, and I bet he would guard his age quite zealously.
As to Cardassians revealing their ages...I'm not sure they'd ALL feel like they had anything to hide by telling their ages, actually. At least, an older Cardassian wouldn't...you gain status in your years. A younger person, however (one that feels he's young by Cardassian standards) would probably be more reticent because in his society, if you are young you are not as likely to be taken seriously. Dukat, for instance...I suspect he was young for his post of gul and later that of legate, and I bet he would guard his age quite zealously.
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