My favorite "villain" on DS9 is Gul Dukat for sure! He has a great personality and the way he carries himself is incredible. I wish he wouldn't have gotten so caught up in that prophets stuff at the end with Kai Winn ... but even there he was great. He is in some memorable scenes.
I wonder if Kira would have ever gotten with him ... I thought she was thinking about it hard in "Retrun to Grace" and "Indiscretion" .. who knows though.
Dukat is one of my favorite DS9 characters - which really means, one of my favorite Trek characters, since most of my fave Trek characters are from DS9
- although I am definitely not a fan of the Pah-wraiths storyline in general, or Dukat's role in it (this is also something a bunch of people, including me, have ranted about many times in various threads - so I'll spare you another rant here; but I could provide links, if you're interested...).
I really enjoyed watching him and Kira interact - partly because they are both among my favorite Trek characters, because the actors had great chemistry, and because the characters' relationship was so complex, twisted and multi-layered, and connected strongly to the Bajor/Cardassia history, which is a topic that I always found very interesting. But the reasons why their interactions were so interesting and fascinating to watch are also the reasons why a romance between them would never have been believable, as Kate has pointed out.
You're not the only one who got the impression that there was a certain attraction on her part as well, and a grudging respect (you can first see a hint of it in an unscripted and wordless scene in "The Maquis"), and even a dose of compassion as she saw in different side of him in "Indiscretion" and his feelings for Naprem and Ziyal. But she would never and could never forget or forgive who he had been and what he had done as a Prefect of Bajor.
And she
should not ever forgive him, because he never earned forgiveness. To be forgiven, one first has to feel remorse, to acknowledge one's crimes, and to be ready to be accountable for them. Otherwise, it would not be just forgiving a person - it would be excusing the crimes themselves, as if you are saying that nothing wrong had been done, or that it didn't really matter.
Dukat has never even come close to accepting the responsability for his crimes. He never seemed to feel guilty, at least not on the conscious level, even if Ziyal believed he did. If he felt some guilt somewhere in the back of his mind, he always managed to drown it in excuses and justifications, and never acknowledged that what he did was wrong. I think Kira might have been too generous when she used the word
forgiveness to describe what he wanted from her - that would imply he had feelings of guilt. I would rather describe it as justification. At best, exoneration. Or acceptance. He saw her as a symbol of Bajor and Bajoran Resistance and needed her to exonerate him and accept him. And make no mistake, there was also always a lot of hatred and seething anger towards her on his side, just as there was a lot of anger towards Bajor, for not giving him that acceptance - anger that he mostly kept restrained and hidden behind smiles and compliments and flirtation, and that surfaced in "In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light". His attempts to charm her were, in a way, like another war, an attempt to crush her resistance and have her surrender. And, even though he was genuinely very attracted to her and respected her and would have loved to have a relationship with her, I think his amorous advances were at the same time another means to get under her skin - which he loved to do and was so good at - because he realized how much they upset her. Eversince she first learned that he might be attracted to her (in "Civil Defense"), it was obvious that the very idea of getting romantically involved with Dukat of all people was extremely disturbing to Kira. It is easy to see why if you just put yourself in her shoes: imagine that your childhood, your entire life had been like hers, imagine that you only saw pain, suffering, hunger, violence and death all around you, and that you had to start killing and living a life of violence yourself when you were still a child, because that was the only way to fight the people who were oppressing, abusing and killing your people. And imagine how you would feel about someone who had been the symbol of that oppression, the face and name you hated the most and fought against for years. Keeping all that in mind, I would say that it was amazing that she was able to work with him and fight alongside him, to recognize another sides to him, and even to be reasonably civil and friendly to him before his backstabbing deal with Dominion. Contrary to what many people say about Kira - that she is stern, unforgiving, can't ever stop "whining" about the Occupation
I would say that belligerent attitude, sarcastic words and insults she would use in her interactions with Dukat - as a means to put him in his place and maintain a distance between them - were very mild, considering all the reasons she had to hate him. However, being civil with someone, working or fighting alongside someone is one thing - people often have uneasy alliances and partnerships out of necessity. But a personal relationship - whether a romantic relationship or a real friendship - is something else. That would require forgiveness, but since Dukat was unrepentant, it would have meant that Kira was excusing his crimes. She would have either have to become a brainwashed fool who bought into his excuses, a weak Harlequin heroine type who subjugated herself to his will, or someone who just did not care about what had been done to Bajor - and that was just not Kira Nerys.
I also do think that they had some things in common - they were both good fighters, strong, determined, capable of being ruthless - and that's why they made a good team, as you said. (That moment in "The Maquis" when Dukat bluffs the freighter captain into surrender by sheer attitude - which seemed to impress both Sisko and Kira against their will - always reminds me of similar moments with Kira against Gul Jasad in "Emissary" and the Romulans at the start of season 7.) And in "Return to Grace", Dukat was in a similar position to what she had been during the Occoupation, conducting a terrorist/guerilla war, and, ironically, enlisting her help in it (foreshadowing Kira's role in Cardassian Resistance in season 7) and asking her to go back to her old life of a terrorist, only this time at his side. This brings me to another element in their relationship: it often felt like Dukat represented and reminded Kira of her old life, the life of violence, hatred and ruthlessness. That bizarre compliment that Dukat paid Kira in "Indiscretion" - that she was the best example of a new, strong Bajor born out of the Cardassian occupation, for which he seemed to feel pride - was true: Kira's personality and whole life were shaped by Cardassians and Dukat specifically. To fight the Cardassians, many Bajorans became similar to them, as violent and ruthless as they were. But the difference is, Kira did not want that kind of life anymore - as she explained when she refused Dukat's offer to join him in his guerilla war. For him, violence and ruthlessness was his way of life and his career, and he saw nothing wrong with it, he despised diplomacy and peaceful solutions as weakness ("joy is vulnerability"); for her, it something she was forced to use to fight for freedom, and something that has almost become her whole life, but she regretted that, and she liked her new life in peace, joy and friendship with the people on Deep Space Nine, and, no matter how difficult it was, she needed to heal and change. This is why she cared for Ziyal so much: Ziyal's history - losing her family, years in imprisonment camp - reminded her of her own, and she wanted Ziyal to get the chance to have a normal youth that she herself never had.
Personally, I would have lost all respect for her if she had. He's a great character, and I love watching him, and I'm indebted to the folks who had a hand in creating him (the writers and, particularly, Marc Alaimo). But the Kira I came to know, the one who risked her life trying to free her people from Dukat and people just like him, would never get romantically involved with the enemy of her people. That's just disturbing, frankly - like a resistance fighter in Paris 1940 (or even after the war in Paris 1948) getting cuddly with a Nazi general or the commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp. Brrrrrrrr!
That said, one of my favorite Dukat moments was when he flicked Sisko's baseball to the floor. It was so...so...Dukatian!
Why would you have lost respect for her? The occupation was over. They really do make a good team too. Time heals all wounds and after they got to know each other more they got to learn more about each other and forgive and forget. I mean... she cared about his daughter enough to watch over her ... there had to be something more there than just trying to protect Ziyal. Man she wanted her there so Dukat would come back and be in her life.
Plus... if they hooked up and actually got married or whatever, that would be a huge symbol of unity to the Bajoran people and Cardasians because they both held such esteemed positions on their worlds.
Open wounds do not heel with time. They fester. For any real healing and reconciliation to begin between Bajor and Cardassia in general (rather than just peace, or even cooperation, based on necessity and circumstances, while the majority of the people on both sides still hate each other), Cardassia as a society would first have to acknowledge the crimes that Cardassians had committed against Bajor, and would have to come to general agreement that this was wrong and should never be allowed to happen again. And I don't just mean the mass murders or the torture, or saying something like "sorry for the 5 million dead... it was just a few bad seeds in the Cardassian military, and besides, that pesky Resistance drove us to it" or apologizing for not having made the slavery more pleasant. Someone would need to officially recognize that the occupation itself was wrong, that the Cardassians had no right to enslave Bajorans in the first place, that they had no right to exploit their land and to use them sexually or as a work force or for whatever they felt like doing with them; and that Bajorans were not inferior, that they were people who had the right to be free. Some people would genuinely feel that way, some would not, and I am sure that there would be a fair number of those who would feel that the Occupation was wrong, but only because it didn't end well for Cardassia. But still, whatever the individual feelings and opinions, the society and the public would have to accept some general truths.
That would certainly help the Bajorans, in turn, to start letting go of their own prejudice that all Cardassians are evil butchers.
And it has to be said that Bajoran Resistance no doubt committed awful things as well, and not all of it can be justified - but at the same time, one has to keep in mind that the blame is still more on Cardassians, who had no business occupying Bajor in the first place, and who did not leave the Bajorans a choice. There is a fine line between shades of gray and moral relativism - but those are still two very different things. (Just like trying to establish some basic truths about right and wrong is not the same as painting a ridiculously black and white picture, especially not one that involves Good vs Evil in a supernatural battle complete with demonic possessions and divine interventions... but that's another story.)
You know about "truth and reconciliation" - first the truth has to be universally recognized, so there can be reconciliation. And you know what they say about owing justice to the dead? I think one owes it even more to the living, because, if you don't deal with the past, if you sweep crimes under the carpet, you risk for them to happen all over again.
You can see that with Dukat: he never acknowledged that the Occupation itself was wrong, and he never let go of the belief that Bajorans were 'children' that needed to be enslaved for their own good. Of course he used the first opportunity to try to gain more power through the deal with the Dominion, and retake Terok Nor and later Bajor, which he thought belonged to him. That colonial attitude and racist belief in the inferiority of Bajorans that Dukat kept throughout his years on Bajor and his relationships with Bajoran women and even despite his love for his half-Bajoran child, is something that I find particularly disturbing about him (it is also something that has grounds in real life, in personalities of many Colonial masters and slave-owners). But, it is consistent with his character - he never seemed able to treat people as equals, even people he loved or respected (maybe
especially people he loved). He enjoys power and he is too used to being in charge - you can even see it in "The Maquis", when interacting with Sisko, someone who is his equal and who he had respect for - at all the decisive moments, Dukat would start telling Sisko what to do and trying to be in charge, apparently forgetting in the heat of action that Sisko is not someone he can order around. You can see it with Ziyal, someone he really loved, but was still ready to disown and let her die because she did not obey him. But it has to be said that he showed, just before Ziyal's death, that he might be able to love and accept her even though she opposed him and held her own against him. It would have been interesting to see a better resolution to his story than what we got - something that would deal with Dukat's psychology (without any of the demonic possession nonsense). Would Dukat be able to face up with the truth about himself, and would he accept his guilt or remain unrepentant. I also would love to have seen some kind of real resolution, or 'closure' between him and Kira, instead of having it all fizzle out after "Covenant" with them not even sharing a scene ever again.
OMG, I can't believe how long I've been writing this! I hope you won't all fall asleep before reading the entire post...
Before posting a new thread, I usually check if there has been another one about the same thing recently. There was another thread with exactly the same subject about a month ago.
It seems like you need to lighten up and not get into a fit and start attacking people, or spout nonsense about 'sense of order and balance' 
just because I pointed out - and linked to - previous threads about the same subject. Which might or might not be necessary, but it certainly helpful, unlike your post - because, see, by linking to previous threads, I can spare myself and others from having to post the same things all over again. Get it?
