Spoilers It's possible that the Cardies were UFP members or allies before the occupation of Bajor.
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
- Start date
There's not much of a difference, why change it?
Because "Cardies" is offensive? Yes, Cardassians are a fictional race, but still...
You can't offend people who don't exist.
Not only is it completely impossible for a Federation member world - past or present - to carry out anything like the occupation of Bajor, but Cardassia once fought a war with the Federation, so that's another reason why they could never have been members.
Post-Dominion War, OTOH, is another bag of snakes altogether. I can totally see Cardassia, having been laid waste by the Dominion, asking for Federation aid, and then joining later on. But in the past? No way.
Post-Dominion War, OTOH, is another bag of snakes altogether. I can totally see Cardassia, having been laid waste by the Dominion, asking for Federation aid, and then joining later on. But in the past? No way.
I don't quite see why not. War is great for making people and peoples close. Basically all the alliances of old stemmed from the fact that the sides knew from firsthand experience that the other would fight like the devil, and it would be really nice to have the devil on one's own side. At least for the next round.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
I don't understand how you reached this conclusion. In 1861 11 states from the southern USA succeeded from the Union, formed a new government, and proceeded to wage war against the USA. It's quite possible to, at one time, belong to a government and later fight a war against that same government.
Now, I don't believe Cardassia was ever part of the Federation, but I've got to admit it's possible for a geopolitical entity to have been part of the Federation and then leave the Federation and wage war against the Federation.
In reality, though, my understanding is Ccardassia was always a separate sovereign civilization. After there government became more militant, some 60 years prior to DS-9's first season, the Cardiassians and the Federation engaged in a border conflict similar to the 20th century brush wars on the Asian continent.
Cardassia has been a military dictatorship for so long - at least two centuries, IIRC - that I highly doubt Federation membership was ever on the table.
Now, that is much more logical reasoning.
Like I said, I believe Cardassia was never part of the Federation. The Cardassian exile living on Vulcan does show they were a known political entity for centuries prior to TNG's "The Wounded."
Or at least known to certain circles. "Stuff Vulcans know" =!= "Stuff most folks know"... The heroes usually being part of most folks there. Indeed, Vulcan might be attractive to exiles exactly because what happens on Vulcan stays on Vulcan.
Conversely, there were Vulcan exiles on Earth in the 1950s. This has very little to do with "known political entities"!
Timo Saloniemi
Conversely, there were Vulcan exiles on Earth in the 1950s. This has very little to do with "known political entities"!
Timo Saloniemi
We see a Cardassian in Dead Stop (a dead one, it seems), and the Organians talk about Cardassian ships in Observer Effect, but neither of those are likely to be recorded by Enterprise's history, the latter explicitly wiped from the record and the former just a random alien on a randomly destroyed evil space station (see the novels for more on that). But even if they ran across a ship of Cardassians or talked about them with their Denobulan cousins, their record-keeping was pretty shoddy, what with the Ferengi and Borg being seemingly forgotten by history by whatever name they went by.
What's there to remember?
Space is no doubt full of pirates. When a set of heroes encounters some, why would they suddenly "remember" or "need to remember" the Ferengi? They might file a report afterwards, and some scholar somewhere would note that these were the same pirates as in stardate xxxx.x at coordinates yyy.yy, and perhaps write a paper on it. But even the fifth set of heroes wouldn't much care either way whether they had read that paper before being victimized by the Ferengi. Ultimately, there would be a pattern, and perhaps some sort of a Starfleet reaction, but nothing Archer saw would really matter to Picard in "The Last Outpost". Beyond the level of rumors, that is - so Picard clearly and presciently refers to Archer's adventure in that episode!
The cyborgs are a bit more distinct. When faced with those in "Q Who?", Picard might well check the records on cyborgs, and thus run into the important tidbit that these particular ones have found an offensive use for nanites. But he doesn't even realize he is facing cyborgs until his away team gets inside the Cube (a type of vessel not in Archer's report)! The assimilation thing is revealed to the heroes there and then, without the need to go through records.
Timo Saloniemi
Space is no doubt full of pirates. When a set of heroes encounters some, why would they suddenly "remember" or "need to remember" the Ferengi? They might file a report afterwards, and some scholar somewhere would note that these were the same pirates as in stardate xxxx.x at coordinates yyy.yy, and perhaps write a paper on it. But even the fifth set of heroes wouldn't much care either way whether they had read that paper before being victimized by the Ferengi. Ultimately, there would be a pattern, and perhaps some sort of a Starfleet reaction, but nothing Archer saw would really matter to Picard in "The Last Outpost". Beyond the level of rumors, that is - so Picard clearly and presciently refers to Archer's adventure in that episode!
The cyborgs are a bit more distinct. When faced with those in "Q Who?", Picard might well check the records on cyborgs, and thus run into the important tidbit that these particular ones have found an offensive use for nanites. But he doesn't even realize he is facing cyborgs until his away team gets inside the Cube (a type of vessel not in Archer's report)! The assimilation thing is revealed to the heroes there and then, without the need to go through records.
Timo Saloniemi
Is that a thing?
No. People were speculating on the similarity in makeup in another thread, so I kind of threw that in there as a joke.
Could be true, though, for all we know. I think it's just more likely that they have a similar semi-reptilian heritage. Hodgkin's Law, afterall.
I agree with this in principle, as I never had an issue with the Ferengi or Borg appearances on Enterprise, even if they had called them Ferengi and Borg (the term "Ferengi," presumably unrelated to the Persian word Ferenghi, possibly dates from a Valakian exonym for these aliens reported to Starfleet in 2151).
Mainly what I was struggling to get across was that the two references to Cardassians in Enterprise really tell us nothing, since our heroes aren't even informed of the Cardassian reference/appearance, and they are simply for viewer edification. The Cardassians may have begun trading with Zefram Cochrane in 2064 or they may have announced their existence with a surprise attack on Setlik III in 2347 and/or 2362.
For the Ferengi and Borg (and, other "first contacts" such as Gorn) we would have to figure out explanations or better yet accept that "first contact" means "first contact in a continuous chain" a la Christopher Columbus being the "first" to discover America, and ignore one-offs (it's likely the Federation and United Earth aren't counting all the times their civilian traders meet up with a Gorn ship to illicitly trade diamonds).
Pike might have made first contact with the Cardassian, or ushered them into the Federation, or killed their despotic Legate in a duel to end the Federation-Cardassian War of 2252 and proposed that their poor refugees be given free haven and education on nearby Bajor. We don't know.
I always remembered that they never joined and Picard rejecting their applications to join the federation. Just because Cardassians were relatively peaceful as mentioned by Picard before as he was being tortured doesn't mean they were Federations members. That would mean the same thing for Bajor as they were/are peaceful. And we know they didn't foy years. Ignoring canon? A retcon? It's been happening to other properties I love. Meh. Now its gonna be a mess connecting all the worlds together. Oh, well...