Gul Dukat was a good guy

[Yassim]

I can't help but notice an astonishing double standard when it comes to Dukat and Garak. ... Behr thought it was allright to romanticize Garak as a cool spy, "true outsider" (he had bad luck - but that's not all that different from Dukat's loss of power ostracism in season 4 after the Ziyal revelation) and have him ultimately end up as as a good guy?

There are several differences -
- Garak never deflects the blame for what he is. Dukat always tells us "he never made policy, only implemented it."
- Garak never asks why his victims don't love him
- Garak seems to act with a sense of greater purpose; Dukat serves himself
- Garak seems to have paid for his crimes; Dukat hasn't, and sees nothing wrong with what he's done

but storywise, I think Garak hints as a melancholy, at regret, so as an audience, we can forgive him - he's repentant. Dukat is not - he doesn't regret a thing.

In the Companion, Behr claims that Dukat's fall in Waltz was designed to remove the ambiguity, since the writers couldn't believe that anyone could believe Dukat was a good guy. Without this thread, I would never have believed Behr was right.

 

[PSGarak]

In the Companion, Behr claims that Dukat's fall in Waltz was designed to remove the ambiguity, since the writers couldn't believe that anyone could believe Dukat was a good guy. Without this thread, I would never have believed Behr was right.

The point is that it shouldn't have mattered to the writers what some people thought, and they should never have messed with the story based solely on what they wished some people would think but didn't. That's not good writing. That's didactic. It's equally annoying when an author wants to hammer home how great and wonderful their protagonist is, so they make him or her a Mary Sue.

Setting aside the fact that we're discussing a fictional character who happened to be an alien, "people" do not exhibit as full archetypes. It's the same reason I don't equate the story arc with "Paradise Lost" or "Dante's Inferno". Dukat was supposed to be a person, not a mythological creature or being, not a religious figure, and certainly not Satan. Sisko, on the other hand, was established from the beginning as being of the Prophets, something more than human conceived in an act of as near to divine intervention as you'll probably ever see in Trek. So having him go into some sort of "ascent" made sense in that context.

What they essentially did was insult every other fan's intelligence who recognized Dukat as a somewhat morally ambiguous but basically bad individual and who actually enjoyed the mature portrayal of somebody who wasn't a mustache twirler in a black hat, just so they could hammer home to a few people who, gods forbid, enjoyed the character a little too much for their taste, that there was nothing, ever, ever, ever good about him at all and that he was pure, unadulterated eeeeevil from the word go. Never mind that they went out of their way in every other season up to that point to show he had layers. Never mind that in doing so, they pretty much crapped on everything they had done up to that point.

You know the movies I wind up hating the most? The ones that start off with a killer premise, hook me completely for about 3/4ths of the way through, and then drop the ball so ridiculously and thoroughly on the ending that I wish I had never seen it at all because it seems like a colossal waste of a great premise. I hate those movies ten times more than I hate ones that are crap from start to finish. I felt the same way about what they did to Dukat. If they were just going to get stupid because they got their shorts in a wad that not everybody hated the character, they should've made him a mustache twirler from the start and saved everybody the headache.

 

[Yassim]

In the Companion, Behr claims that Dukat's fall in Waltz was designed to remove the ambiguity, since the writers couldn't believe that anyone could believe Dukat was a good guy. Without this thread, I would never have believed Behr was right.

The point is that it shouldn't have mattered to the writers what some people thought, and they should never have messed with the story based solely on what they wished some people would think but didn't. That's not good writing.

I didn't defend the writing. I agree that he was a more interesting character before Waltz. But I'd never heard anyone react the way Behr said before "So what if he ran a concentration camp. He was always a good guy... he's so nice!" I don't defend what they did to the character, but it makes some sense.

 

[PSGarak]

I didn't defend the writing. I agree that he was a more interesting character before Waltz. But I'd never heard anyone react the way Behr said before "So what if he ran a concentration camp. He was always a good guy... he's so nice!" I don't defend what they did to the character, but it makes some sense.

I see where you're coming from. I hadn't seen that reaction before posting here, either. It is a little...disconcerting I guess? I'm having a hard time coming up with the exact descriptive I want for that attitude. Disconcerting may be too strong given it's a fictional character and not an actual real life dictator. I can see how they were disturbed. I just can't see why they thought that justified doing what they did.

Sorry if I seemed to be coming down hard on you specifically. That wasn't my intention. It's the subject matter that gets me fired up.

 

[DevilEyes]

I can't help but notice an astonishing double standard when it comes to Dukat and Garak. ... Behr thought it was allright to romanticize Garak as a cool spy, "true outsider" (he had bad luck - but that's not all that different from Dukat's loss of power ostracism in season 4 after the Ziyal revelation) and have him ultimately end up as as a good guy?

There are several differences -
- Garak never deflects the blame for what he is. Dukat always tells us "he never made policy, only implemented it."
- Garak never asks why his victims don't love him
- Garak seems to act with a sense of greater purpose; Dukat serves himself
- Garak seems to have paid for his crimes; Dukat hasn't, and sees nothing wrong with what he's done

but storywise, I think Garak hints as a melancholy, at regret, so as an audience, we can forgive him - he's repentant. Dukat is not - he doesn't regret a thing.

In the Companion, Behr claims that Dukat's fall in Waltz was designed to remove the ambiguity, since the writers couldn't believe that anyone could believe Dukat was a good guy. Without this thread, I would never have believed Behr was right.

I did not comment on how good or bad either of the personalities of those men were. I was refering to Behr's apparent regret that they made Dukat too multi-dimensional, and his opinion that, as far as what I could get from his statements that I quoted a few posts earlier, Dukat had to be made completely and unambigiously evil because of his role as Prefect of Bajor during the occupation; Behr also compared to Dukat to real-life figures such as Idi-Amin or Pol Pot (rather inaccurate comparisons, incidentally) and implied that finding such a fictional character appealing was as bad as hypothetically liking those real-life dictators. This is a fundamentally flawed premise IMO. The double standard I mentioned consists of applying that flawed premise only to one character, and not to any other. If they were to be consistent, they would have to apply the same criterion to every character in the show. We must not make the former head of the occupation authorites a layered or even likeable character! That would be like justifying real-life despots and war criminals! - Then why not: We must not make the former secret police operative a layered and likeable character! That would be like justifying all the notorious real life secret police organizations! or: We must not make a former terrorist a likeable character and heroine! That would be like justifying all the real world terrorists! If you're gonna apply that rule, apply it consistently. Of course, then you'll have a black-and-white morality play with flat characters. But that's exactly what Behr was advocating with those comments. IMO, if that's how he felt, maybe he should have made a black-and-white morality play with flat characters right from the beginning, not change his opinion halfway through. But if he wanted to make an intelligent drama with complex characters and realistic storylines, then there was no room for this kind of thinking:

The problem I find with a lot of writers, including myself, is that once you get involved with a character you start to get to know him and you humanize him. Michael Piller did the rewrite of 'Defiant' where he had Dukat talk about his children; My reaction was, 'Uh oh, we've crossed the line.' I realized that he was going to lose all credibility as a villain; we were going to shower him with our usual writerish empathy, and, like all good liberals, we'd see him as neither fish or fowl." "I really responded against that. Here was the guy who had been in charge of Bajor, and right away we were looking for excuses for him."

Sure, bad guys never have families or care for their children - they live in dark castles surrounded only with their henchmen and laugh manaiacally all the time. This is such a cringeworthy statement, I can't even begin to tell how wrong and absurd it is on many levels.

- Garak seems to act with a sense of greater purpose;

Which one is that? Garak had a variety of reasons for what he was doing. Was he working for the Obsidian Order because he thought it was the best for Cardassia, or to make his daddy proud? And is that so different from Dukat's motives?

I've noticed that people in these discussions tend to retroactively interpret everything that happened in the show's entire run according to what the show did with a character in the end - as if the writers actually had a clear plan and characterization from the beginning. Thing is, they did not. They made up as they went along, and all sorts of factors played a role in their decisions along the way. And I doubt that all the writers were on the same page, either. When you actually rewatch earlier episodes, you can see that a number of things could have gone differently. The show eventually turned Garak into a 'good guy', but for the most of the series run, he was an appealing and fascinating but ambiguous, mysterious and dangerous character, who could have gone either way depending on what the writers decided. Dukat started off as a classic antagonist/villain, but in season 2, season 3 and 4, he could have gone either way depending on what the writers decided. Characters with even more crimes in their bio have been "redeemed" in some other popular fictional works. And Damar started off as nothing more than a ordinary Cardassian thug that nobody would have predicted to become more complex, let alone a real hero.

 

[PSGarak]

Slightly off topic, but I did come across an interview with Andrew Robinson recently where he addressed the whole Garak disconnect with Ziyal that we've talked about here before. He flat out said the writers dropped the ball from the beginning. They had three different actresses portray the character. They never seemed to be able to decide what to do with her or how to write the relationship, and that they dropped it altogether after she died, so he was left with no choice but to assume that she never meant that much to Garak. He sounded very displeased with the whole thing, and I can't blame him. It's symptomatic of what you're talking about DevilEyes. Sometimes they seem to come up with just a notion or a concept, or even a use for a character and don't treat it with any logical follow through. The character becomes merely a device or a vehicle to drive a point rather than a person unto itself. That's just sloppy, IMO.

 

[DevilEyes]

I don't know who here has read Paradise Lost, but the way Satan is characterized in Milton's epic is very interesting. There are times when his version of Satan manifests guilt, ambivalence, even seeming sometimes to sorrow in his actions, and his bad choices, but never truly accepts responsibility for them (because remember, if he fully accepted, he'd have to plead forgiveness which his pride will not allow him to do). And there comes a point where he decides he's going through with it all anyway, and he's condemned...because in the end, he could never swallow his pride, never become better, and it caught up with him: yes, he might've seemed sympathetic at times, even like he could turn around, but because of his choices, he was condemned.

That characterization reminds me a LOT of the fall of Dukat. Indeed, Dukat seems to have decided by "Covenant" that "'tis better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven."

The funny thing is, there are some critics of Milton's to include William Blake, who actually thought Milton's writing was practically Satanic in nature because of the fact that there was any ambiguity at all--though to my personal reading, while there's the ambiguity that is very accurate to how sin and evil present themselves in real life (i.e. they try to appear attractive to hide their ugliness), in the end one cannot help but recognize that evil is evil...no matter how slick it is.

So while in the end, evil could've been recognized differently (such as the ending some have suggested of Dukat seeing Cardassia broken and being reviled, or perhaps taking his own life or just finally breaking completely), I can't help but think "Paradise Lost" or Dante's Inferno.

(Man...I really need to read Paradise Lost again...)

Getting off-topic here, but I want to comment on this. I don't think you're accurately describing William Blake's reading of Milton.

Blake was well aware that Milton's intention was not to make Satan the hero, but Blake himself saw Satan as a more likeable, fascinating and heroic character than God was in Milton's epic. And that is completely legitimate reading of the epic as much as any other. There is authorial intent, and there is personal reading and interpretation of every individual reader. The latter does not have to be the same as the former - it may be completely the opposite. A work of art takes life of its own, and it is richer and more valuable if it can lend itself to various interpretations (the reason why Shakespeare is still considered a great writer, still popular and still being interpreted and re-interpreted in many different ways).

Satan, especially in Book 1, plays the role of a proud rebel; while God himself comes off as something of a despot, or, in any case, the symbol of the patriarchal authority and establishment. This is really not so much Milton's doing, as the consequence of the story itself. Milton claimed that his intent was to explain and justify God's deeds - he was trying to solve the old theological problem that can be, in the simple terms defined as 'is God is all-powerful, why does he allow Evil to exist?' Critical opinions differ on how successful he was in this. Many critics think that Milton's God never comes off a fully realized, convincing or likeable character; and I agree, but I can't really blame Milton, since this has always been a problem with any attempt to portray Judeo-Christian God as a character (I'm not talking about Jesus - he is a completely different story). The best way to portray him has always been not to portray him at all. OTOH, most critics think that Satan is the best realized and most compelling character in the epic, but many of them don't find him as likeable as Blake did, and argue that Blake's and the Romantics' view of Satan is mostly based on Book 1, and that the rest of the epic shows Satan is a less grand or favorable light.

Anyway, since Satan played the role of the rebel against God, it is not surprising that Blake found Satan more appealing, as Blake himself was a rebel who criticized and opposed the established social and political order and the generally accepted religious and ethical ideas. Same thing with the Romantics. Blake wrote that Milton was "on Satan's side without knowing it"; i.e. of course, Blake was aware that making Satan sympathetic was not Milton's intention, and a deeply religious man like Milton would certainly have been appalled by that idea; but every good writer has to infuse a part of himself into each of his characters; and Blake seems to have believed that Milton had subconsiously identified with Satan and his rebellion, to an extent. And he might have had a point there: Milton himself might be, after all, described a rebel - a radical and pamphleteer as against the King and the Anglican Church, and a supporter of the Puritan Revolution, who had eventually, at the time when he was writing "Paradise Lost", been cast out from the public life when the Restoration started.

 

[Yassim]

I did not comment on how good or bad either of the personalities of those men were.

I thought you made an interesting point, that the audience sides with one and not the other, even though it's clear they both have crimes in their past. It's an interesting question, what the audience is willing to overlook, and what they demand a character pay for.

I was refering to Behr's apparent regret that they made Dukat too multi-dimensional, and his opinion that, as far as what I could get from his statements that I quoted a few posts earlier, Dukat had to be made completely and unambigiously evil because of his role as Prefect of Bajor during the occupation; Behr also compared to Dukat to real-life figures such as Idi-Amin or Pol Pot (rather inaccurate comparisons, incidentally) and implied that finding such a fictional character appealing was as bad as hypothetically liking those real-life dictators. This is a fundamentally flawed premise IMO.... IMO, if that's how he felt, maybe he should have made a black-and-white morality play with flat characters right from the beginning, not change his opinion halfway through. But if he wanted to make an intelligent drama with complex characters and realistic storylines, then there was no room for this kind of thinking.

I agree that re-writing Dukat in shades of black was a mistake, but I understand Behr's motivation. There's clearly a segment of the audience that couldn't see past his charm, and since all his crimes happened off-screen (though they were never disputed), the audience didn't hold him responsible. Behr wanted the audience to hold him accountable. I think his mistake is more in caring what the audience thinks than anything. But I imagine he thought he could yank the carpet out from under Dukat's sympathizers... I can see the appeal in that. And understand the desire to pull down the admirers of a concentration camp supervisor... no matter how charming.

Which one [purpose] is that? Garak had a variety of reasons for what he was doing. Was he working for the Obsidian Order because he thought it was the best for Cardassia, or to make his daddy proud? And is that so different from Dukat's motives?

Dramatically, Garak's chief difference in motivation is, he's not relentlessly self-serving, even if his actions are just as bad. I don't think it makes him any more moral, but it allows an audience to forgive him more easily.

I've noticed that people in these discussions tend to retroactively interpret everything that happened in the show's entire run according to what the show did with a character in the end - as if the writers actually had a clear plan and characterization from the beginning. Thing is, they did not. They made up as they went along...The show eventually turned Garak into a 'good guy', but for the most of the series run, he was an appealing and fascinating but ambiguous, mysterious and dangerous character, who could have gone either way depending on what the writers decided. Dukat started off as a classic antagonist/villain, but in season 2, season 3 and 4, he could have gone either way depending on what the writers decided. Characters with even more crimes in their bio have been "redeemed" in some other popular fictional works. And Damar started off as nothing more than a ordinary Cardassian thug that nobody would have predicted to become more complex, let alone a real hero.

Somehow, though, Garak was always on the good guy's side. His first serious action is helping Bashir with the Klingon sisters, and while it was unclear just how dark his past was, Garak was always an enemy of Dukat's... maybe it's just down to the portrayal. But Dukat... even at his best in seasons 2-3, he's looking to Sisko to see if Sisko approves. His need to be lauded makes him thoroughly unlikable.

They never seemed to be able to decide what to do with her or how to write the relationship, and that they dropped it altogether after she died, so he was left with no choice but to assume that she never meant that much to Garak. He sounded very displeased with the whole thing, and I can't blame him.

I kind of liked it. It was clear that Ziyal felt more for Garak than Garak felt, and that Garak himself never knew exactly what to make of her... I agree that the writers veered around a little, into romance, into family... but it worked enough for me. Three actresses... what are you gonna do? It's good enough for James Bond. But that's another thread.