I don't think he was wrong about either; I agree with his decisions 100%. But then again I don't think Janeway is evil, too.
Sisko is a murderer
- Thread starter All Seeing Eye
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I don't think he was wrong about either; I agree with his decisions 100%. But then again I don't think Janeway is evil, too.
Why do people see Janeway as evil?
It's been awhile since I've seen the episode, but I'm under the impression that between the start of the fighters' assault and the Cardassians taking the bait, a span of a few hours had gone by -- compare that to the number of fighters implied to be lost, I'd say those fighters were under pretty heavy attack and still managed to survive quite awhile. We could perhaps attribute that to a combination of sturdier defenses and maneuverability.
It's pretty telling that near the end of the battle, we see not only the Majestic and the Sitak flying with the Defiant, but a small wing of fighters as well. That's several hours since the start of major combat and the Defiant was fairly close to the end of the enemy lines by that point (I think). So these fighters might be pluckier that we give them credit for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKnvRPIrl0
At about the 5:30-5:32 mark, we can see at least some post-impact explosions coming from that Galor hull, so they might count as holes being blown by the fighters. But since the fighters had been going at it for some time, it might also be that there were repeated attack runs on certain vessels in order to wear them down over time. At least, that's how I would interpret it if fighters aren't effective antiship weapons.
It's pretty telling that near the end of the battle, we see not only the Majestic and the Sitak flying with the Defiant, but a small wing of fighters as well. That's several hours since the start of major combat and the Defiant was fairly close to the end of the enemy lines by that point (I think). So these fighters might be pluckier that we give them credit for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwKnvRPIrl0
At about the 5:30-5:32 mark, we can see at least some post-impact explosions coming from that Galor hull, so they might count as holes being blown by the fighters. But since the fighters had been going at it for some time, it might also be that there were repeated attack runs on certain vessels in order to wear them down over time. At least, that's how I would interpret it if fighters aren't effective antiship weapons.
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I'm not sure I agree that the battle would have taken hours. For all we know, it transpired in "real time", with at most a few minutes cut. After all, once the Cardassians opened their hole, the sole aim of the Defiant would have been to push through to the other side, and we don't really see her maneuvering in more than one direction at any point...
But I have to admit I never noticed the presence of fighters in the Defiant-plus-Mirandas scene. They do seem to be persistent little buggers.
Or then there are simply a lot of them, enough to replenish horrid losses.
Timo Saloniemi
But I have to admit I never noticed the presence of fighters in the Defiant-plus-Mirandas scene. They do seem to be persistent little buggers.
Or then there are simply a lot of them, enough to replenish horrid losses.
Timo Saloniemi
One problem for the Cardassians was that as long as they had to hold their positions, they were sitting ducks for the Fighters.
In the scene just before the Cardassians break formation, a squadron of fighters attack and take out a Galor from above before it could even respond.
And there were only 4 of them. (Looked cool by the way!)
Another Galor looked like it got seriously damaged by a piece of a destroyed fighter crashing into it.
And even then they got away with it. They appeared to be very fast, fast enough to dodge phaser fire, there were quite a few misses.
If the Dominion held the line, it's possible Sisko could have weakened their front enough to plow through.
Those Galaxy did make short work of the Galors in front.
That would make sense, the problem is the crew is on record as saying Sisko wanted to provoke the Cardassians, not weaken their front in order to push through.
One thing for sure, if the Klingons and the other fleets were there, that opening would have been very different.
I'm starting to like those fighters-and the Galaxys.
In the scene just before the Cardassians break formation, a squadron of fighters attack and take out a Galor from above before it could even respond.
And there were only 4 of them. (Looked cool by the way!)
Another Galor looked like it got seriously damaged by a piece of a destroyed fighter crashing into it.
And even then they got away with it. They appeared to be very fast, fast enough to dodge phaser fire, there were quite a few misses.
If the Dominion held the line, it's possible Sisko could have weakened their front enough to plow through.
Those Galaxy did make short work of the Galors in front.
That would make sense, the problem is the crew is on record as saying Sisko wanted to provoke the Cardassians, not weaken their front in order to push through.
One thing for sure, if the Klingons and the other fleets were there, that opening would have been very different.
I'm starting to like those fighters-and the Galaxys.
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Why would the situation change if the Cardassians didn't hold position?
I mean, they were optimally placed for laying covering fire for each other to begin with. We see e.g. a long pass where the fighter formation swoops on a Galor and then gets pummeled by a Dominion battle cruiser when trying to pull out.
And it's not as if a moving Galor could dodge the fighters or anything.
Well, all we see is that the Galor begins to move down on the z axis. Perhaps she's doing evasive maneuvers as the Hidekis start to move offensively?
And those four were probably just the survivors, finally inflicting damage on the 16th pass.
Yes, that's remarkable. Galors seem to have very poor aim here - even Evek's much-hurt ship in TNG "Preemptive Strike" was scoring perfect hits, albeit at a rather low rate of fire. Perhaps Starfleet pilots are better than Maquis ones, or have better maneuvering computers, or better jammers?
Timo Saloniemi
Wall of text incoming! Evasive maneuvers!
First off, I agree with the idea that for a military commander to send soldiers to do a task during a war KNOWING they will likely die is not in any way "murder." Weather or not it's RIGHT comes back to a more fundamental question of weather or not war in general is "right" under certain circumstances. I will not go into that issue in much depth here, except to say that I think DS9 effectively portrayed what was a "necessary war" for the Feds and their allies.
That said, the attrition rate of these fighters is really being inflated quite a bit here. Consider that the number of fighters we actually see get taken out is three. Now, I'm not saying that only three were lost throughout the entire battle; that'd be silly. But the visuals show fighters weaving in and out of the enemy formation, firing relentlessly, and out of a minimum of 9 in the first wave (at 4:52 in the video Cyke101 linked to, we see 5 initially, one gets pasted, then a different group of 4 more can be seen, and this is all before Sisko tells Nog to send in the second wave), only three are known to be lost. So, if a wave is 10-15 fighters, and they are losing 2-4 per wave while attacking a vastly more numerous force, that's actually pretty good.
As far as what you said earlier, Timo, about the lack of clear depictions of Dominion forces really biting it... I kinda see what you're saying (I remember it struck me at the time how little we saw that during this battle, too), but I don't think it reaches the degree you describe. Besides the previously referenced ship that was taken out by fighters, we have:
-a Galor being taken out by those two Galaxy-class ships that suddenly just APPEARED and started drilling holes in it (that was an awesome sight) at 6:15
-the Defiant definitely taking out at least a couple of ships (6:23 and 7:26)
-a Galaxy blows something away at 7:23 (on the right side of the screen, just next to the Defiant... it's hard to see precisely what's going on there, but you can clearly see the Galaxy firing its phasers, then right where they terminate, there's a huge explosion... do the math.
)
-quite a few ships blow up spectacularly when the Klingons show up at 7:52
-and finally, right at the end, at 8:35, the Defiant and the BoPs take out one of those big Dominion battleships.
I know I'm reaching a little bit on a couple of those, and I think what you say about perhaps the VFX money getting a little overextended makes a lot of sense. Maybe that's WHY there weren't more "sure" Dominion/Cardassian losses, but I do think it's pretty easy to assume everything in my little list up there counts, even if the visual presentation was muddier than we would like.
First off, I agree with the idea that for a military commander to send soldiers to do a task during a war KNOWING they will likely die is not in any way "murder." Weather or not it's RIGHT comes back to a more fundamental question of weather or not war in general is "right" under certain circumstances. I will not go into that issue in much depth here, except to say that I think DS9 effectively portrayed what was a "necessary war" for the Feds and their allies.
That said, the attrition rate of these fighters is really being inflated quite a bit here. Consider that the number of fighters we actually see get taken out is three. Now, I'm not saying that only three were lost throughout the entire battle; that'd be silly. But the visuals show fighters weaving in and out of the enemy formation, firing relentlessly, and out of a minimum of 9 in the first wave (at 4:52 in the video Cyke101 linked to, we see 5 initially, one gets pasted, then a different group of 4 more can be seen, and this is all before Sisko tells Nog to send in the second wave), only three are known to be lost. So, if a wave is 10-15 fighters, and they are losing 2-4 per wave while attacking a vastly more numerous force, that's actually pretty good.
Right... except that never happened. Again, not saying that there weren't some fighter kills off screen, but only one of the ON-screen kills was from a Dominion ship (right at 5:05) and not once did we see an entire FORMATION getting "pummeled". And also at 5:05, one is taken out by a Galor, and it took two strikes from said Galor to take the fighter out. Those two plus the one I mentioned above at 4:52 are IT for fighter attrition as far as what we actually see. The logical conclusion is that the off-screen fighter deaths wouldn't be randomly WAY higher than the on-screen ones, leading to (as I speculated) 2-4 fighters lost per wave. Which holds up well against how fighters perform in most space opera type sci-fi I can think of. Having said that:
I agree with your general sentiment here. I think fighters are effective in Trek under the right conditions; Starfleet certainly felt these were the right conditions, and I think they performed well enough to support that. And speaking of support, though this unfortunately wasn't shown on screen in any meaningful way, Sisko's dialog at one point (not included in Cyke's vid) mentions moving several destroyer groups in closer, because the fighters need "more cover fire." So, it could be that fighters can be effective against a significantly less mobile enemy as long as they have proper support from some of the starships behind them. But I do think they would be VERY situational, and their effectiveness would be quite limited outside of those situations, unlike in say, Star Wars, or (especially) Babylon 5.
Those were some serious explosions going off when that thing started to "list." And, more importantly, some of them looked like internal explosions. IMO, that Galor was definitely toast.
Having better equipment seems like the best explanation, actually. What the Maquis could scrounge together shouldn't hold up well when compared to what Starfleet outfits its fighters with for a major offensive during a war, not to mention that "Sacrifice of Angels" is about 4 years after "Preemptive Strike".
As far as what you said earlier, Timo, about the lack of clear depictions of Dominion forces really biting it... I kinda see what you're saying (I remember it struck me at the time how little we saw that during this battle, too), but I don't think it reaches the degree you describe. Besides the previously referenced ship that was taken out by fighters, we have:
-a Galor being taken out by those two Galaxy-class ships that suddenly just APPEARED and started drilling holes in it (that was an awesome sight) at 6:15
-the Defiant definitely taking out at least a couple of ships (6:23 and 7:26)
-a Galaxy blows something away at 7:23 (on the right side of the screen, just next to the Defiant... it's hard to see precisely what's going on there, but you can clearly see the Galaxy firing its phasers, then right where they terminate, there's a huge explosion... do the math.
)-quite a few ships blow up spectacularly when the Klingons show up at 7:52
-and finally, right at the end, at 8:35, the Defiant and the BoPs take out one of those big Dominion battleships.
I know I'm reaching a little bit on a couple of those, and I think what you say about perhaps the VFX money getting a little overextended makes a lot of sense. Maybe that's WHY there weren't more "sure" Dominion/Cardassian losses, but I do think it's pretty easy to assume everything in my little list up there counts, even if the visual presentation was muddier than we would like.
Agreed on that. It seems a single hit will kill a fighter - but it also seems hits are difficult to score.
Yet again we are deprived of the sight of the ship actually dying...
The thing is, gigantic "gasoline explosions" in episodes like "Call to Arms" did zero damage to the structure of DS9, and they seem to do very little visible damage to the ships hit in this battle, despite valiant efforts to hide this fact. Sometimes the stock explosion is accompanied by surface texturing that indicates charring, sometimes not. So we are theoretically left uncertain whether a giant explosion is harmless or terminal in a given case. But we could go with the intent of the VFX people and declare kills where kills are due.
To be sure, I was only speaking of battles until this one - it's a watershed of sorts, as its latter half finally starts to routinely feature the sort of treats that were one-offs previously ("Way of the Warrior") or then completely absent ("The Die is Cast", let alone TNG)...
Timo Saloniemi
I think the show indicated that the battle lasted 2 hours before the Defiant broke through and then another 3 hours after that given that's roughly how long it took the Defiant to make the journey from the battle site to DS9. I can't remember exactly but I'm sure just before the fleet attacked that there was something the indicated that there was around 5 hours until the minefield came down.
Hmm. When Sisko sends the fighters, Dukat says the detonation is eight hours away. Later on, Weyoun says that the reinforcements are due in five hours, and he wouldn't be expecting them before the minefield is down. There is no talk about a hastening of the schedule in between those, so yeah, it would seem three fighting hours had passed. And those hours only involved fighter action, unless there was one final cut after Sisko sent his ships in but before the next scene where Weyoun says "five hours".
And when Sisko is halfway through the enemy fleet and loses his escorts, he thinks he has three hours left. Later on, when his ETA is 11 minutes, he thinks he's cutting it close. So apparently it is true that the timetable held, and that the entire battle took eight hours, three of them fighter action, and two capital ship action, before the Klingons joined the fray and the Defiant got through.
Which brings up the question: if DS9 was three warp-hours away from the battle site, how come the battle was fought at impulse? Why didn't the Feds simply go around at high warp and avoid the Dominion blockade altogether? Or attack from sixteen directions at the same time? Granted, every individual invasion force would have been relatively weak - but still no doubt strong enough to disrupt the mine-clearing efforts, forcing the Dominion to split its forces in defense, while the Feds could regroup and hit the weakest Dominion defenses, until the Dominion was finally forced to do point defense with all its forces on DS9's impulse-speed doorstep.
...Which would mean that the Dominion would have been smart to start out with deploying at said doorstep. So why didn't they? Why did the Feds stop?
Timo Saloniemi
And when Sisko is halfway through the enemy fleet and loses his escorts, he thinks he has three hours left. Later on, when his ETA is 11 minutes, he thinks he's cutting it close. So apparently it is true that the timetable held, and that the entire battle took eight hours, three of them fighter action, and two capital ship action, before the Klingons joined the fray and the Defiant got through.
Which brings up the question: if DS9 was three warp-hours away from the battle site, how come the battle was fought at impulse? Why didn't the Feds simply go around at high warp and avoid the Dominion blockade altogether? Or attack from sixteen directions at the same time? Granted, every individual invasion force would have been relatively weak - but still no doubt strong enough to disrupt the mine-clearing efforts, forcing the Dominion to split its forces in defense, while the Feds could regroup and hit the weakest Dominion defenses, until the Dominion was finally forced to do point defense with all its forces on DS9's impulse-speed doorstep.
...Which would mean that the Dominion would have been smart to start out with deploying at said doorstep. So why didn't they? Why did the Feds stop?
Timo Saloniemi
I don't think those actions were evil; all right necessary evil perhaps, but I agreed with her every time. Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six.
Or then there are simply a lot of them, enough to replenish horrid losses.
There's nothing on screen that contradicts this, I know that for sure
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
Sisko didn't "murder" enough. He should've vaporized the Dominion forces fleeing DS9. Bye-bye female changling and Damar. That would've thrown the enemy a curve ball.
"We're in no condition to stop them." My ass.
Of course, we don't see the transports the Dominion is using. They sure weren't docked at DS9 when Sisko enters the wormhole. So maybe, they were armed significantly. Or maybe they were mere shuttles.
"We're in no condition to stop them." My ass.
Of course, we don't see the transports the Dominion is using. They sure weren't docked at DS9 when Sisko enters the wormhole. So maybe, they were armed significantly. Or maybe they were mere shuttles.
IIRC, The Doc attempted to relieve her of command in Part 2 because she was obviously exhausted and her judgment was quite possibly impaired, and she basically told him to piss off.
I don't think those actions were evil; all right necessary evil perhaps, but I agreed with her every time. Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six.
Well, one person's necessary evil is another person's murder/terrorism...that's sort of what this thread's all about.
You're right. I find these kinds of discussions very intriguing. What's evil? What's murder? In Sisko's and Janeway's case, I could usually empathise. In other cases, I can't.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
The Dominion was aware of the Fed fleet leaving the starbase towards Bajor and knew their direction and heading. The Dominion fleet moved to intercept it and had the Fed fleet tried to go around the Dominion fleet would a) Just get in the way and b) Likely deploy tactics to cause the warp fields to collapse of the Fed ships leaving the fed ships in a bad position.
Makes more sense to drop out of warp out of weapons range when an enemy fleet has intercepted you.
The Cardassians lost some of their Capital Ships. The Galor was their main battleship, their most powerful.
Whether it was by small fighters, or by bigger ships that still had to be serious loss to them.
Meanwhile Starfleet's capital ships were undamaged and in tact.
There were too many fighters. Just in the first wave, a small squadron scores multiple hits on a Galor with visible damage, followed by lots of other squadrons in all directions.
And that was just the first wave.
Reverse the situation and imagine swarms of Jem Hadar ships flowing throw the Federation formation pounding and destroying some Galaxy ships, while the Galors and others remain unscratched.
By the time the Federation ships made their move, the Galors fell less than 5 minutes at the hands of the Galaxy ships.
The Cardassian and Dominion ships were packed in tightly -they had to lay cover fire while being careful not to hit the other ships nearby.
So...sittting targets-one Galor didn't even get to fire, when that squadron swooped down and destroyed/damaged it.
Either way, when you looked at that Galor, it was through, lol..
Whether it was by small fighters, or by bigger ships that still had to be serious loss to them.
Meanwhile Starfleet's capital ships were undamaged and in tact.
There were too many fighters. Just in the first wave, a small squadron scores multiple hits on a Galor with visible damage, followed by lots of other squadrons in all directions.
And that was just the first wave.
Reverse the situation and imagine swarms of Jem Hadar ships flowing throw the Federation formation pounding and destroying some Galaxy ships, while the Galors and others remain unscratched.
By the time the Federation ships made their move, the Galors fell less than 5 minutes at the hands of the Galaxy ships.
The Cardassian and Dominion ships were packed in tightly -they had to lay cover fire while being careful not to hit the other ships nearby.
So...sittting targets-one Galor didn't even get to fire, when that squadron swooped down and destroyed/damaged it.
Either way, when you looked at that Galor, it was through, lol..
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