My thoughts on DS9 first time rewatched as an adult

[STEPhon IT]

^Marc Alaimo was so charismatic, one couldn't help liking Dukat, even when he became a demon posesssed psychopath.

Gul Dukat was originally a narcissistic, sociopath, one of the greatest characters ever created in Star Trek. Somewhere in the war seasons -- seconds after he talked to Kira about his disapproval of her allowing his daughter to be around Garak he became a psychopath. Joining the Dominion... just because... the writing forced it to be.

 

[Armus]

^I didn't like it when he joined The Dominion either but the writers wanted to make Dukat into a two faced egotist without any integrity. They didn't want us to like him anymore. But as I said, it's hard not to like Marc Alaimo.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Yeah, this turn is so not Dukat, and the writers and producers made a major misstep in not having the Cardassians the ones responsible in creating a device to prevent changelings from reverting to their liquid form or better yet creating a disease for them to die. Dukat mentioned his keen interest in Odo, and I'm sure he was keeping tabs on Dr. Mora's studies and findings and sharing them to the Central Command*: an insidious government who was constantly planning their next move to dominate their territory and their space... which included the Bajoran system and the wormhole, there had to be a deterrent for Odo just in case he went rogue and endangered Cardassians during the occupation. There had to be!!! They were Cardassians, something the War-band DS9er fans constantly forget or rather ignore.

Dukat in the first 3 seasons was this brilliant personality who always had something under his sleeve; a wild card he's salivating to reveal. I kept waiting, and waiting for that to happen with his laughable union with the boring, one dimensional Dominion... and nothing happened, but made ridiculous treaties with Bajor and all these uncharacteristic things when they supposed to be at war. Cupid seemed to strike everywhere in the war seasons and it got Dukat too, where he was in love with Kira and considered Bajorans... his children, Par-wraith devil worship and other loopy things??? OMG.

It's sh*tting all over the character to make Weyoun look better and everything developed wonderfully about the Cardassians flushed down the toilet; Dukat was too great of a figure to be handled that way. Bleh! The writing was the worst castration and character assassination since the Klingons on TNG.

*I don't give two sh*ts about the comedic so-called black ops Obsidian Order; they lost all cred when they made the most ridiculous position to join forces with another joke of a secret force who are Romulan based (DS9 - "The Die is Cast") to invade Dominion Space???

 

[Iamnotspock]

Don't get me wrong, in terms of actual tangible character growth, Worf was probably one of only a couple characters that really did seem to grow over seven seasons on TNG. It's just that DS9 took him to so many new places, that it always felt awkward to me when he went back to the Enterprise in the TNG movies and it basically felt like he was the 30 year old guy who moves back into his parent's basement, and is back under the thumb of mom and dad after having been places and done things as an adult in the world. Not that there's anything wrong with that, lol.

That's a problem I have with Nemesis in particular, but I've always felt that First Contact was an exception to it Worf's characterisation in that, most notably his confrontation with Picard, was very much in keeping with his DS9 development (probably due to Ron Moore's input).