History of the cardassians

[Crazyewok]

So here is my theory behind cardassians and why we don't see them to the 24th century.
Well I have 2 theorys.

1) Cardassians where prewarp with the union being confined to their own solar system and perhaps nearby stars if they had high impulse speed. It's not until they reached the mid 23rd century they got warp and began massive expansions.

A) being prewarp the federation would not have made first contact.
B) IF confined to there own solar system/nearby stars they could of just been missed in the vast quantity of stars.
C) they could of been on the edge of federation's space and when they got warp drive and started massive expansions they could of resented the federation getting a head start and grabbing so much territory nearby, hence the border wars.

Problem was this was the organians mention encountering a ship in the 22nd century. though this could have been a long range high impulse scout ship with limited interstellar capacity.

2) similiar to above but they where stuck at very low warp (like warp 1) and had no break throughs to higher war until the end of the 23rd century, limiting their expansion to local stars.

It also raises the question..... their are likely myriads of prewarp civilisations with federation boarders...... what happend when they get to warp 1 and the federation's make first contact and they DONT WANT to join the federation? Will that race resent the fact they are surrounded on all sides and unable to expand?

 

[Timo]

No doubt there would be some resentment. But being surrounded by UFP space doesn't mean you don't get to places. The UFP is not explicitly known to charge a fee for flying through their space, and isn't particularly efficient in keeping utterly unwanted travelers such as Klingons away, either.

Earth's first viable interstellar colony was founded "behind the neighbors", too - Terra Nova was quite a bit out. Who knows, perhaps a civilization from a surrounded homeworld decides to start expanding from a Beta Site, a distant colony beyond UFP space, leaving the actual homeworld to its own (well-cushioned) devices?

"Not seeing folks" in Trek is generally no evidence of absence. Klingons and Romulans stay out of the picture for the better part of a century at an end, too, for no reason beyond them simply not having anything to say to the UFP. A conquest-minded, expansionist empire no doubt carefully picks its enemies, and Cardassia may have chosen not to pick the UFP, which might always have been out of its league.

The currently favored "small core" UFP cartography model where the Feds huddle together in a cozy little sphere mere hundreds of lightyears across leaves plenty of room for the Cardassians to have a similar bubble empire relatively close by. It's just that conquerors don't extend vulnerable tentacles of territory into deep space, whereas the UFP is much more than just its spherical core. The original series was well in accordance with the "small core" model, with Kirk sometimes declaring that being "hundreds of lightyears" out would put them past the outer colonies and outposts, or with the heroes exploring nearby real-world stars like Pollux for the very first time.

The Kirks before Kirk may have met a Cardassian or three on their journeys, but there'd be little significance to such encounters, and little effort by the Cardassians to reach out, even if they had the technological means. Being busy with subjugating neighboring systems is basically the antithesis of having conflict or even contact with the more distant neighbors.

Timo Saloniemi