If it had been Gul Evek and...

[Guy Gardener]

Chakotay?

Or Gul Evek and Janeway?

Or Gul Evek and Janeway and Chakotay?

Would ay of these couplings have been able to get along inside one ship better or worse?

I was reading here comments last week about how Janeway and Chakotay HAD to get along, how it was only reasonable that the terrorists and these philosopher scientist Police figured out how to get along and buddy up... Really, did they?

but then what if Gul Evek and ship load of cardassians had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant too? Of course it then become a more pressing question when you have to wonder whic ship all these oil and water personalities would have to cohabitate within? Voyager, the val jean or whatever the cardassian ship was called?

Could the Maquis and the cardassians learnt to work together without killing each other?

And what about Seska?

Would she still have run away to queen it over the kazon because she thought the people at the top of ger command totem were losers, more so than her sworn enemies she must stymie and destroy?

O.

Would the birthrate have been more impressive with a Cardi/Maqi mix?

 

[od0_ital]

Seska wouldn't have left the ship if there were a team up with Cardassians. In fact, she may have been able to remain an operative for Cardassian interests among the Starfleet/Maquis crew, since they may have been able to keep her surgical alterations active, rather than the suble Cardassian look she had after joinin' the Kazon.

But, considerin' the way a few of the Maquis reacted to a Cardassian hologram six years into their time in the Delta Quadrant, I seriously doubt a team up would have worked at all early in the series.

 

[HIj'Qa]

I would have preferred the Equinox to have been a Cardassian ship. That would have gotten back to some of the root issues of the characters.

OTOH, I don't think Cardassians are so adaptable that they would have managed very well if stranded in the Delta Quad. It would have been interesting to have Gul Evek and his ship as antagonists for Voyager and the Maquis for the first season, teaming up with a Kazon faction. But they would be destroyed through some fault of their Cardassian nature as a lesson to us all.

But Seska would be problematic. Would she reveal herself, or stay undercover to cause trouble, or would she figure Evek was not going to make it and lay low until she could form her friendship with the Kazon? Seska's one of my favs, so I wouldn't want to take away from her storyline.

In typrical TV fashion, they couldn't have too complicated a storyline, so they walked away from some intersting possiblities.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Thing was since the tech level was so backward, that if Evek wanted to conquer a few worlds, take slaves or strip mine a planet for bartar currency, well not even Voyager would stand much of a chance against one of those Galor class Warships since that's exactly what that was, a warship, not "quick and smart" but a "powerful thuggish brute" ...There wouldn't be any opposition they couldn't hammer into submission.

But how would that help them get home?

How would it help Seska?

If she's Obsiddian, then she would have been operating on a parallel command structure that really didn't have to care diddly about the regular military and how their choices effect her life.

 

[apenpaap]

If Evek and Chakotay decided to work together on a single ship (highly unlikely), their crews would probably start lynching the other crew.

Evek and Janeway has a small chance of success. I doubt it would result in lynchings, but it would probably eventually end up with the one crew trying to kill the othe crew. If Evek was killed in the first episode, it may have a chance if his first officer was very cooperative.

As for all three crews together: not a chance.

It would've been very cool if Janeway and Evek had ended up together, and had made it work. We would've had cardies in starfleet uniform, which would've been a very cool contrast to DS9, where they were the enemy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Or Humans et all, in Cardassian uniforms?

 

[Anwar]

I think UPN would have had a harder time making them drop the tensions between crews if it had been Cardassians and not just a bunch of humans.

Also, the crews would have had actual reasons for disliking each other and operating differently since they really WERE enemies with major political and ideological differences.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe not, surely the Cardassians and the Federation were at peace? Allies. They had a treaty. A treaty which sold the Maquis up the river, but the major tensions between the Federation and the Cardassians were nearly two decades ago, from back when Miles O'Brien was a young man, so frankly this is just a reservation engrained in old people.

Might as well still be complaining about "the other guys" in WWII.

What happened in TNG of course, was a falsestart that was immediately buried.

 

[Anwar]

I'd say the Cardassians were as much "allies" of the Feds as the Romulans were. The Feds had a treaty with them too but that didn't help much...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't think Evek would have resented working with Chakotay et al - Evek seemed like a fairly decent sort in his first appearance (Journey's End). The Maquis would of course never want to work with *him*, since they all hate Cardassians, but I think he would have tried harder than they would.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

But ya know, the tension and everything else involved in this idea would've freaking ROCKED. I've wondered about this possibility myself!

 

[Anwar]

Exactly, the problem with putting the Maquis on VOY as an opposing crew wasn't that well thought out to begin with because the Maquis weren't really ideologically opposed to the Feds or their true enemies.

The Cardassians however WERE real enemies of the Feds and DID have genuine ideological and political differences with them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Exactly, the problem with putting the Maquis on VOY as an opposing crew wasn't that well thought out to begin with because the Maquis weren't really ideologically opposed to the Feds or their true enemies.

Except for Eddington, of course. He let the power trip get to him. He started to believe his own revolutionary bullshit.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, and when the Feds finally acted like the villains he painted them as he caved like a little bitch.

 

[Praetor]

You know, if TPTB wanted a conflict generator, pairing the Voyager crew with the crew of an enemy vessel, such as Evek's, really would have been the way to go. It would have been all the more interesting had they been stuck on the enemy ship, but I'm reasonably sure that wouldn't have worked for a variety of reasons. Then again, they might have worked it all out by the fifth episode.

I can't help but suddenly wish it was a Romulan ship that had been pulled to the Delta Quadrant with Voyager...

 

[Guy Gardener]

What was her name? T'Rul? Martha Hacket played a Romulan in DS9: The Search.

if they could have stomached paying some royalties, cheapskates, "Seska" could have been mostly the same but some one we'd seen before, which would have been aces.

Yeah, and when the Feds finally acted like the villains he painted them as he caved like a little bitch.

Is that how you read that episode?

Eddington wanted to stop, but he didn't want to quit, so he rebuilt Sisko into the sort of superman that could take him in a fair fight since lets face it, Michael was on a doomed road to nowhere. Even as he was being taken down, Sisko was still falling for Eddinton's crap like a little bitch being out thought 5 steps behind the true hero of the story.

I saw the same thing on Bones the other day when Bones' dad played by Ryan O'Niel, a bank robbing serial murderer decided he wanted to hand himself over to the authorities so that he could re-enter his daughters life rather than hiding out in the underground, but then as "Angel" was about to put the cuffs on him, he said something like "No, this doesn't feel right, I don't think I can let you take me in with out a fight, so lets get down to it. You fight me, I'll feel better and then you can take me to jail."

 

[Praetor]

What was her name? T'Rul? Martha Hacket played a Romulan in DS9: The Search.

if they could have stomached paying some royalties, cheapskates, "Seska" could have been mostly the same but some one we'd seen before, which would have been aces.

That would have been awesome! Now we know why she vanished from DS9 - her ship was pulled to the DQ.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, and when the Feds finally acted like the villains he painted them as he caved like a little bitch.

Is that how you read that episode?

Yes, I did. Micheal Eddington is not Johann Liebert, he doesn't plan on turning people into Ubermensh through devious planning. Eddington was just some wannabe "hero" in his own mind who realized he could never be a Starfleet hero but could be a hero to the weak Maquis, and then when it came down to facing a real "villain" he caved because his delusions came apart and we saw the weak man within.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Wow.

The whole heroes and villains talk you are using is what Eddington told Sisko. Sisko ( and you too it would seem too) was seeded with Rhetoric to transform how he fights a battle. Hero vs Hero was getting Sisko no where, and Sisko would never have acted like a villain unless he was provoked to do so by Eddnigton using the humiliating gift of literature. A hero will sacrifice himself for the greater good, meanwhile a villain will destroy an entire planet to strike one man. You're calling Edington "weak" because he had too much compassion to let other people "die" when it was in his power to save lives... Tom Riker had the same issues when Kira was explaining what a "real" terrorist would have done if they had the power of a starship at her bek and call druring the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor.

I might have to put some tapes in the vcr tonight.

 

[Anwar]

On the other hand, what happened in "For the Uniform" could be seen as a deconstruction of the "taunting the pursuer" concept that cockier "hero" types do to others. Eddington truly didn't think Sisko would go through with any threats and when he finally did and played by Eddington's rules (Eddington did the exact same thing Sisko did, use bio-weapons on innocent people), Eddington's moral hypocrisy came up (he decries Sisko but refuses to accept when HE did it it was a bad thing) and he quickly caved in someone decided to play by his rules. In other words, allof Eddington's delusions came down around him and he had to put an end to his grand delusion.